Tau Color Schemes: Help Me Translate Infantry to Battlesuits & Vehicles

[ElectricPaladin]

Here are some (slightly cr@ppy) photos of my infantry:





Please help me figure out how to translate these colors - dark green weapons, light green armor, cream cloth, gold accents - into a color scheme for my battlesuits and vehicles. I'm kind of stumped! I think that the cream color would look really dumb on the battlesuit's arms and legs! At the same time, I can't just do my battlesuits entirely armor-colored green, or they'll stand out weirdly.

What do you recommend?

[UltramarineFan]

Battlesuits have lots of segmented armour so while cream for a whole leg my not work, you could always try having the middle armour segment in that colour, with the top and bottom being the normal green? and then use the darker green (which you've used on the fire warrior weapons) on the battlesuit weapons?

[DeadPanda]

How about doing the joints and un-armoured areas of the suits the cream, instead of the traditional blacks and greys ?.

[ElectricPaladin]

How about doing the joints and un-armoured areas of the suits the cream, instead of the traditional blacks and greys ?.

I'm specifically worried that making the metallic joints and un-armored areas cream will look... insufficiently metallic. The cream looks pretty good on the cloth parts of fire warrior and pathfinder armor, but could you buy it as a structural part of a battlesuit?

What would you think about doing those parts dark green, like the weapons? And then incorporating the cream into some of the markings on the battlesuit body, maybe?

[DeadPanda]

I'm specifically worried that making the metallic joints and un-armored areas cream will look... insufficiently metallic. The cream looks pretty good on the cloth parts of fire warrior and pathfinder armor, but could you buy it as a structural part of a battlesuit?

What would you think about doing those parts dark green, like the weapons? And then incorporating the cream into some of the markings on the battlesuit body, maybe?

Actually that sounds nice, the dark green on the joints would even add some depth to the suit. As for the cream, I'm not sure where else it could go. You could do a few of the smaller panels on the armour cream as a kind of spot colour (bit like the orange on my riptide). I think that could look really nice actually. I like what you have done with the fire warriors. Greens a fantastic colour for Fire Warriors

I just noticed your use of sprue and fantasy bases to make scenery. Very cool idea.

[Aegwymourn]

I'm specifically worried that making the metallic joints and un-armored areas cream will look... insufficiently metallic. The cream looks pretty good on the cloth parts of fire warrior and pathfinder armor, but could you buy it as a structural part of a battlesuit?

What would you think about doing those parts dark green, like the weapons? And then incorporating the cream into some of the markings on the battlesuit body, maybe?

Don't forget that Tau "metals" are completely different than standard imperial ones. They touch on it in the Tauros book but they are a crystalline compound if I remember correctly? Or maybe that is just their armor, cant check at work >.<

[gcsmith]

Tau armour is a crystalline not metallic compound.

[Merce2222]

I think you could either use a bright white instead of cream because it would show a difference between the cloth and unarmored joints. If you put on a high gloss finish it will "shine" enough to seem like a hard surface.

Or if you have an airbrush (or not, just harder) you could paint some diagonal faded camo with the green from the infantry armour and the cream and maybe a green darker than the armor And lighter than the weapons or a light brown.

Or you could separate the darker camo colors with defining lines of cream color.

With the second two you could also still use black/gray for the joints. I think a dark or medium gray would look best.

I might have to copy yours

[ChacoStylez]

Looking at your color scheme, you should stick with the traditional composition:

For the armor panels, stick with the light green

Use the cream to pick out some segments on the panels

For the weapons, go with the dark green

And it looks like you use orange for your Sept markings, that will look good on the light green and cream

You could always use a test model, see if you like it, and make changes if you don't!