Thread 23319174

post camo painted mechs doesnt need to be any particular theme. i got these looking through old hobby magazines. (if you know where i can find more of these online let me know) source is hobby japan and dengeki hobby.

if i find more i will add them to the thread but post anything if you have it since im collecting paint scheme ideas and just think they look based.

i consider aqua theme to be camo as well i will definitely be trying this out once i get an airbrush. i dont think you can achieve this effect well with brushes even if you were to use a drybrush technique. would love to see more mechs painted in this manner.

this one they used tape to mask all of the areas to make this pattern. idk what sort of tape you would use since masking with tape in my experience usually has some level of bleed. if you can suggest anything let me know.

if anyone here knows any cool websites where people post and share their painted models let me know. would rather not use reddit it has a cumbersome user interface. a gallery with thumbnails would be ideal.

last one i have for now- but if i find more i will add it to the thread later. i just think mechs in camo paint schemes look really good and are more interesting than the default paint schemes in most instances.

the other appeal is you can paint mechs from different franchises in a similar paint scheme and as a group they can look cohesive that way.

i forgot i had a second group of images i had found this is just zeon stuff.

some of these are hit and miss but are still interesting to look at regardless

it would be cool to have some gundam/front mission/armored core/vitual on etc shit all painted in the same scheme.

i named this entire group zaku just to group them together so ignore some of the file names.

i really like these paint scheme mock ups a lot. perhaps i will try to find some line art and edit them in GIMP or something to brainstorm some concepts. a lot of MA.K paintschemes would probably look good on one year war gundam designs

its crazy that the gunpla boxes never really show paintscheme examples like this, i think they dropped the ball not doing that. even warhammer would show you funky theoretical ideas for inspiration just to inspire people to experiment.

wish i could read japanese is there something i can use to crudely translate any of these for a rough idea what it says?

this is the last one i have now for real--but like i said earlier i will try to find more. i fucking love these. paint schemes like this have the potential to turn an otherwise boring looking model into something really cool.

>>23319226
Just run them through google translate. It has a little tab for image translation now. You can also use yandex or other sites, but I think they're generally not as reliable.

If you go on twitter there's a pretty big community for custom mech models, and that's where I see a lot of people doing camo mechs or other "gritty" custom work. It's always been more around the hobby part of gundam scene. Lots of MaK and general kondo stuff as well. Just follow creators who make things you like.
Unfortunately they don't really use tags like #gundamcamo. It's always shit like #it's a sunny day so lets flash each other our gundams. I dunno why they do that.

>>23319317
i dont have a twitter account and dont want to make one no offense intended of course. i was hoping for a website similar to "cool mini or not" which was very fast to look through back in the day without having to scroll through unrelated stuff. i dont doubt there is a lot of cool stuff on twitter i just dont like the website and dont want to make a mandatory account to simply look at images.

do you need to download anything for google translate or is it just something you can access on googles homepage? im only looking for something with like 25% translation accuracy to get a rough gist of what theyre saying.

>>23319327
https://translate.google.com.au/?sl=auto&tl=en&op=images

Yeah unfortunately the japanese don't really seem to do that. They like using social media and 90% of their feed being their holiday photos and random nice meals. It's a real cross to bear.

>>23319369
that must be a recent thing because my general impression was that in japan its much more common than in the west for artists to not have social media/ or to use alias's because they dont want fan interaction and embrace having privacy.

hell they were the ones that made the website this one is based off of but maybe things have changed there in recent years. probably also a thing with newer artists or younger people in japan. if you look up a lot of japanese concept artists/designers from older IPs a lot of them to this day seem to not have any social media presence at all.

i just appreciate how light weight this website and others are where you just go there, dont log in, dont register, just look at cool shit, then exit the window when youre done. something appealing and pure about it.

>>23319317
the zimmerit is really retarded but also pretty cool, I guess it's placement makes sense but it seems like a mecha would have a built in system to scan for landmines

I've posted these in /gpg/ before but here goes

>>23319388
>the zimmerit is retarded
It's about model making.

>>23319431
retarded in a good way

>>23319388
If I had to place standards, I dig zimmerit on lower parts. If you can provide a "oh it's on the legs to avoid hand-thrown sticky grenades" you now have a cool visual thing.
I mean it doesn't really matter either way, but it's nice.
>>23319327
I don't want to try and twist your arm or anything, but that's where I find them. If you want them, they're out there.

>>23319776
i appreciate the thought and thank (you) and anyone else who has contributed to the thread. a lot of these are amazing look models and genuine art pieces.

i imagine if they made a action figure line and it was even just a single mold like a zaku 2 in a myriad of camo paint schemes, people would collect them and it would be a big hit. would look pretty stunning on a shelf. the squad building potential alone sounds fun. would be better with a GM in similar paint schemes that they could fight.

>>23319388
it can be something other than zimmerit like a paste meant to reduce heat signature or something
but you can just have it be zimmerit since some MS do use magnetic weapons like the gouf custom wire

>>23319776
i didnt expect to like it so much but that DOM looks pretty cool- in a weird way it reminds me of some of the advertising/ imagery of MGS2 with the blue hexagon stuff fading in and out in a non uniform layout. looks slick.

if any of you guys remember playing with green and tan army men when you were younger setting up bases and diorama battles, i feel like doing something similar with painted camo gundam squads would make for exciting and visually interesting photos.

>>23319859
these rustic looking colors kind of looks like they could work in some mars land war. idk if any early UC stuff took place there or not but thats what the rust tones make me think of.

Imagine getting flatlined by a zaku using a small park's worth of fauna as a ghillie suit

Can you post other specially painted models in here too? I love these freaky cel painted ones.

>>23326128
dont see why not. any paint scheme which is creative is interesting to look at.

>>23330688
reminds me of this prepainted fusion works hygogg figure i had growing up

>>23319174 (OP)
What's the point of camo-painting a skyscraper? They're still visible visually, thermally, via radar, sonar, and gravity sensors. There's no longer any such thing as stealth and especially not in space.

>>23331849
Because it looks cool?

>>23331849
well its science fiction so why are there giant robots at all? anyway it looks cool and professional and fits with the tanks and other things painted in camo/earth tones. i think a gundam is like 3 or 4 stories tall so if it was crouching it would be like 2 stories. so in a forest even though its a giant robot it would blend with trees. or laying prone in a woodland area. or against a cliff in a mountain environment. urban camo would make it blend in more with buildings if there was smoke and shit or it was dark. idk though it just looks cool. anyway youre retarded though. camo doesnt need to work all the time for it to make sense. it only needs to work some of the time to justify using it even if its only like 5% of the time. but yeah a giant robot looks sick painted in military colors. i dont only paint my model kits in camo sometimes i paint them in metallic colors so they look like cars and shit.

>>23332154
Based little bit schizo but well meaning rant. I agree camo looks cool as fuck and is semi functional even for large units. Worst case scenario it is useless but so is any other paintjob so why the fuck not.
I'd love to see more dazzle camo on mobile suits, it makes sense to use it in an age of visual-range identification, especially in space!

>>23331849
You put camo on things that aren't expected to hide in order to blur and conceal things like unit identification and heading. If you're squinting at a mech and you're not sure what type it is or if it's facing you, that's a couple seconds less to react when it whips out the beam rifle and it turns out it was indeed facing you.


Also I wanna bring up that "the screens actually show reconstructions of what the cameras pick up" thing and say that's stupid and wrong. No real reason. I just like saying that every so often. Of course they wouldn't do that.

>>23333362
kek what was it that sounded the most schizo i had been up all night and it was like 10 am.

>>23333378
what you said about reaction time makes sense, like i said before even if it only gives you an advantage in fringe scenarios its an advantage that has a large effect when you scale it across x 1000 mobile suits produced/ destroyed. but truly its a matter of what looks based or not based. if the enemy thinks that you look based it gives you the advantage and they may join your side in order to look based themselves. i dont have have sources for this btw.

>>23333378
>Also I wanna bring up that "the screens actually show reconstructions of what the cameras pick up" thing and say that's stupid and wrong. No real reason. I just like saying that every so often. Of course they wouldn't do that.
It happens from time to time when looking at things from a long distance

>>23333402
also the monitors can and will CGI certain details, like displaying the Kshatriya's giant funnel binders when funnels are docking so the pilot can confirm certain things are happening but then erasing them from view so it won't be blocking their view all the time as gigantic blindspots

>>23333405
NTA but even in terms of it being science fiction in the future, if the ai interpreting what the cameras see has to make sense of it, it would not be reliable all of the time im sure and sometimes it would help make things crisp and other times it may totally misjudge what something is which could make camo paint while partially obstructed more viable because the camera would get confused what shape it see.

camo works by using color but at the simplest level it uses contrast of light and dark to change what a 3d shape looks like at distance.

>>23333401
The general stream of consciousness vibe was very amusing, sleep deprived is the more correct term. Very enjoyable.
Care to post some of your camo gunpla? I've never painted any gunpla myself and would love to see them.

>>23333413
yeah, that happens in the Zeta movies when they try to CG enhance a live visual of a mobile suit they've never seen before and have no data on

there's also the idea that some MS are kinda similar to each other, e.g., it was not uncommon for some AEUG GM IIs to be painted in the exact colour scheme of the Nemo even though the GM II did have a distinct bright green and white colour of its own in AEUG service, might have confused some enemies into thinking they weren't the slightly inferior GM II rather than the mildly better Nemo

>>23333434
Also worth noting that up close, things like dummy balloons don't work other than blocking your view, but at a distance they might trick some unsuspecting pilots.

even with minovsky particle jamming, it might be close enough that certain sensors like infrared can tell that they're gas-filled balloons and therefore not trick MS computer systems

>>23333427
thats really funny i needed that laugh. it did sound unhinged. i got rid of a lot my my model kits the the last few years and havent painted any since like 2022-2023 so am only now getting back into it. made the thread so i had some inspiration. I've been thinking of doing some HG gelgoogs and zakus. i think those have simple painting surfaces and arent too expensive to experiment with.

I have a painted camo zaku 1 converge minifigure somewhere around here and if the thread is still up in a day or two i will post a picture when i find it. i used warhammer paints. its sort of a 45 degree angle diagonal camo pattern in an autumn leave color scheme. brown with some orangeish yellows

>>23333454
the areas on the zaku 1 which are that bluish color i left brown which i coated the entire minifgure in, but the areas on the zaku 1 which are green have the same brown underlayer with the orangey yellow camo on top of that. so i kept the original color blocking of the zaku 1. it was a real bitch to hand paint all of the camo with a brush and not have it look shitty. i ended up feathering the edges of the camo shapes because at such a small scale it looked better that way than being crisp lines.

>>23333454
>>23333465
> i got rid of a lot my my model kits the the last few years and havent painted any since like 2022-2023 so am only now getting back into it.

I feel that anon, I recently got back into mecha after a stint being interested in other hobbies + a depressive episode and pondering what I was doing. Selling off a lot of other shit I bought and no longer want, trying now to focus on gunpla since it's more fulfilling and creative than buying action figures and books.

>I have a painted camo zaku 1 converge minifigure somewhere around here

I think you should definitely paint some Zakus, the Zaku is a mecha that is very suited for camo paintjobs and looks really good in them. If you could find the time and post your Zaku 1 that'd be great.

Ignore the horrifying nails. I found this pic years ago for a real easy aqua camo.

>>23333442
The dummy balloon case is exactly what I was thinking of and the main time I see people bring it up, that they work by actually tricking them into displaying a fake image. It being plainly visually disproved by them showing the balloons instead through the camera is the bit that gets me riled up over it. Otherwise it's just cases of manually enhancing super long distance images, which doesn't feel like the same matter.
I don't think anyone would want their cameras to constantly display made up info even if it was supposed to be clarified or something. Just sounds like a really lousy idea.

>>23333705
kek we've all been there. That paint job came out fucking cool.i wonder if it would look better with a gloss or matte coat?

>>23333476
yeah its a bad cycle ive gotten rid of some stuff i really wish i hadnt but such is life. just objects. i tend not to buy finished figures myself either these days, but if i do its usually from a line im nostalgic about or one where the factory paint job was artistic/unusual in some way/unique somehow.

yeah zakus are fun to paint its really the design that sold me on the gundam universe for whatever reason. i like a lot of early UC federation stuff too but something about the zaku/zaku1, idk what it is.

>>23334042
> just objects. i tend not to buy finished figures myself either these days, but if i do its usually from a line im nostalgic about
Same here. I still have several I'm keeping, mainly ones I've had for years, but I've downsized significantly and may do so more in the future.
>yeah zakus are fun to paint its really the design that sold me on the gundam universe for whatever reason
Same here! I truly do think the Zaku is one of the best designs from Gundam, and I love it more than even the original Gundam. It's just such an amazing piece, a sleek mix of retro futurism and tacticool parts. It's also why I love the Scopedog since that design feels like a platonic ideal Zaku.

>>23334790
yeah its easy to amass a lot, my earliest kits i got in 2009 so i had a bunch over the years. mainly tossed them out in moves which are always stressful.

i still need to find that zaku 1 converge mini figure to post but what ive been doing today is looking around at generic detail part packs to add to a zaku kit. I have a rough idea where im trying to find plastic parts which are things like extra armor/ sheet metal/ etc but its been tough finding anything that looks like it would match the aesthetic. i even looked at some 30 minute mission stuff but didnt find anything that would work in a kitbash.

im thinking something like a zaku 1 with field repairs. my plan is something like a dark forest green paint job. maybe some camo here and there. just dont know if the extra armor slapped on will be painted in the same dark green or if it will be something like dark gray/metallic. the final paint job may look something like this- but if the theme is field repairs i may need to add some weathering so the extra armor plating doesnt look out of place. pic related are some of the gundam shit i still have from way back and i look the look these have.

>>23335898
forgot to mention that pic is an action figure from the zeonography line which is incredibly based. prepainted minifigure.

there is another weird line called gundam ultimate operation and those are interesting for having the occasional camo paint in addition to air brushing and this is this line here but i no longer own any of them. these are 1/200 or 1/220 or something. zeonography are roughly 1/144 i think. sort of blend in with gunpla but not perfectly

>>23333401

>>23333476
Here’s that zaku 1 converge minifig. It’s about 2 inches high. I never finished it but I would say it’s about 80% done. I had some trouble painting the camo on something so small and cramped. Perhaps a different sort of camo pattern would have worked better, not sure. Might clean it up at some point. May even look good with a decal or two somewhere, what do you think? The one arm is all brown which is kind of weird but I tried to keep the color blocking of the original which is green and blue. I’m unsure if I will keep the color blocking I added to the weapon but I thought it looked more interesting not just being standard metallic grey. I’m unsure if it would look better with camo but it might be hard to do that on something cylindrical. I think it’s like a 6.5/10 right now. Sorry it took me so long to find this.

The camo is pretty messy but at this scale I felt like it being overly clean shapes made it look worse so I tried to break the shapes up more by blotting the edges with the brush. I think this on a HG 1/144 would look cool though.

>>23338523
I may potentially go over all the camo sections with that light brown and just use the yellow for an accent piece like the shoulder and remove the camo. I think the idea is cool but I didn’t execute it well. Unsure if I will be able to salvage it. But I can turn it into a desert zaku variant

>>23333835
It's explicit in the novels and seems to be implied by a number of scenes so people just assume that part of the setting is unchanged. The balloons can be explained by the computer in the scene explicitly not recognizing them as MS but as unknown so it wouldn't overlay an image.
>But the image was not a true depiction of reality. The system
detected what information it could; the computer analyzed it and then, using inference and
extrapolation techniques, finally output a detailed computer graphics image. Since the
computer data base did not yet contain specific information on such a new design of ship,
however, the system could only display a silhouette of what looked like a resting 180-meter-
long wooden horse.

>>23335898
>I have a rough idea where im trying to find plastic parts which are things like extra armor/ sheet metal/ etc but its been tough finding anything that looks like it would match the aesthetic. i even looked at some 30 minute mission stuff but didnt find anything that would work in a kitbash.

Good luck with your search. I myself have been meaning to learn airbrushing since I wanted to try and make an orange color scheme for the Kampfer: it's decently hard to find a good style for that color without it being too much or looking halloween-ish.
That, and I've been meaning to eventually make my Armored Core 6 mech into an actual model. The Melander part set is releasing soon so that'll be most of what I need.
>>23338521
>>23338523
That's sick as hell anon. I think a decal or two would look really nice, then a matte clear spray. Not sure how well panel lining works at that scale but you could give it a go to add some popping details.
Still, that's super cool, the camo looks really nice as well. I think the blotching was a good idea. I do agree the right arm could use something though. Instead of camo, you could stamp a unit insignia onto it?

>>23339010
ah fuck, I included my email. Ignore that, forgot to clear my name field! Just selling some of my things on the /toy/ board like I mentioned, honest mistake.

>>23319226
I love these sazabi illustrations with the teeny arms and hands

In hindsight, I wish I'd been less lazy and painted more sections in dazzle. Still happy with it as my first attempt at any camo.

>>23339071
Cool

>>23339010
I think I saw some guys had ripped some of the ac6 models and have been 3d printing the parts, so that may be an option if you they don’t make everything you need.

I think gloss white and orange accent looks good and futuristic. I think some metal gear solid designs in some game may have used it with forest green and orange as a trim. I made a scheme for a kit a while back which was black dark grey and copper accent. Orange could work there maybe. The grey made it less Halloween. Just potential ideas. when I played ac4 my guy had a camo more or less like my zaku here.

I’ll probably put some decals and a coat on it one way or another. It’s tempting to want to panel line them but I feel like with the chibi scale too much grime might clash with the aesthetic so I probably won’t do that even though I’d like to add it.

>>23339022
based /toy/ enthusiast

>>23339071
Wow, that is excellent. Great job at dazzle. Especially for the Asshimar, it really matches with it. I can imagine this being useful for messing with the enemy while it zooms around.
>>23339182
I did consider 3D printing the parts, but I'd rather wait for now unless it becomes impossible (sells out or something).
Gloss white is a solid idea, it's moreso that I just prefer matte looks to mecha as opposed to metallic or gloss looks. I'll definitely try it though, I've basically been using the AC6 paintjob system to try out colors. Forest green and orange might also look really good, I was also considering a rust brown/really deep red with orange highlights and armor portions (chest, pauldrons). Sort of like a Gelgoog but less red.
>It’s tempting to want to panel line them but I feel like with the chibi scale too much grime might clash with the aesthetic
That's fair, I just mention it for the grooves of the arms and such, the really recessed areas. Hope the coat looks nice though, it's a very nice piece. I imagine with a 1/144 Zaku you could go further in on the details and really go ham with the camo.
>based /toy/ enthusiast
I mean gunpla are basically /m/ toys haha

I'm surprised at how uncommon camo is in Votoms, Given their size.

>>23339415
solid colours are more effective on machines that move fast

>>23339415
Diving Beetle my beloved

>>23333405
They also talk about this in the Gen 5 Armored Core art book. The machine is covered in sensors so the pilot has the option to view from the third person. I assume this bleeds back to earlier gens since they are also all covered in cameras.

Any good artbook recs that I can download from sadpanda? I want to paint my boys in camo colors.

>>23346448
Gonna be honest, I dunno how your camera array is so good you can look at yourself from a distance with it.