1/48 Predator Digital camo

[Guest]

Hello, My first post in a while as been busy. I've been doing more digital camo projects and and thought i would show you my progress so far...

This didn't turn out as well as i wanted as i made the mistake of not using primer like a fool...

I will post a tutorial on how to do this if people want

Anyway here are some pictures>>>

[takeslousyphotos]

That is fantastic........... I really like that. Top Work.

Peter

[mossiepilot]

Must ask, do you plan where each colour is going to go or do you make it up as you go along, and you paint light colours on top of dark, which is the opposite way to all the advice i've seen.

Either way that looks awesome.

Great looking Predator.

Tony.

[Guest]

Hello, Thanks for kind comments. i most likely wont make sense, so>>>> i work backwards or opposite to how you would paint the camo.... so the darkest colour i apply first and space it out as there wont be alot of it, then for the sencond colour i place the second set of stickers over the first set but make it larger, because it needs to main highlight colour.... One peice of advice i will give, is stick to tamiya tape because for the first three colours i used cut down WHsmith sticky tabs but they stick quite hard to the paint and leave it all sticky "not good"..

I will post some models up in a minute with the digital cam i have also done

[Guest]

I've been curious about why digital camo would give better concealment. The following extract from Wikipedia suggests that (at least in the form of MARPAT, for clothing) it is not very effective. Also, for aviation, the background is relatively much further away than on the ground (viewer to object distance is a much smaller proportion of the object to background distance) and therefore the background appears relatively more fuzzy than the object. This would be more so with mist and haze which would not be a factor in ground battles. I get the impression that digital camo is a bit of a fashion, including for aviation.

"In the 1970s, US army officer Timothy R. O'Neill suggested that patterns consisting of square blocks of colour would provide effective camouflage.[19] This aroused little interest at the time, but by 2000, O'Neill's idea was combined with patterns like the German Flecktarn to create pixellated patterns like CADPAT or MARPAT. Battledress in digital camouflage patterns was first designed by the Canadian Forces. The "digital" refers to the coordinates of the pattern, which are digitally defined.[20] The term is also used of computer generated patterns like the non-pixellated Multicam and the Italian fractal Vegetato pattern.[21]

"According to the patent for MARPAT, pixellation does not in itself contribute to the camouflaging effect. The pixellated style, however, simplifies design and eases printing on fabric, compared to more traditional "splotchy" patterns. While pixellated patterns are becoming widespread, critics maintain that the pixellated look is a question of fashion rather than function.[19][22] However, the basis of "digital" camouflage was lost in tech reports; the design technique actually has three purposes: (1) to add high spatial frequency texture components that add concealment at closer ranges, (2) to modify visual processing of edges, and (3) to produce intermediate colours by a dithering effect.

"Digitizing" a pattern does not of itself improve performance; the design process is actually more complex, and involves color and contrast as well as overall disruptive effect of specific pattern geometry. A failure to consider all elements of pattern design tends to result in poor results. The US Army's universal camouflage pattern (UCP), for example, performed poorly because of low pattern contrast ("isoluminance" -- beyond very close range the design looks like a field of solid light gray) and arbitrary color selection, neither of which could be saved by quantizing (digitizing) the pattern geometry."

[Adrian "Marvel" Reynolds]

I love the time and effort you have put into this build.

Adrian

[Guest]

SO, Here are a few more that i have photos of, as you can see with the harrier, the first colour was light blue,,,, Excuse the state of it but i bought the model off Ebay and 30% of it was missing so smashed it together to try this Digital camo effect..... Also be aware for who ever has never done this before, its a very time consuming effort, and i have refined it down to mostly cutting little squares now as cutting the whole shape out takes a long time and also you dont always get the best clean edges....

[Guest]

I've been curious about why digital camo would give better concealment. The following extract from Wikipedia suggests that (at least in the form of MARPAT, for clothing) it is not very effective. Also, for aviation, the background is relatively much further away than on the ground (viewer to object distance is a much smaller proportion of the object to background distance) and therefore the background appears relatively more fuzzy than the object. This would be more so with mist and haze which would not be a factor in ground battles. I get the impression that digital camo is a bit of a fashion, including for aviation. "In the 1970s, US army officer Timothy R. O'Neill suggested that patterns consisting of square blocks of colour would provide effective camouflage.[19] This aroused little interest at the time, but by 2000, O'Neill's idea was combined with patterns like the German Flecktarn to create pixellated patterns like CADPAT or MARPAT. Battledress in digital camouflage patterns was first designed by the Canadian Forces. The "digital" refers to the coordinates of the pattern, which are digitally defined.[20] The term is also used of computer generated patterns like the non-pixellated Multicam and the Italian fractal Vegetato pattern.[21]

"According to the patent for MARPAT, pixellation does not in itself contribute to the camouflaging effect. The pixellated style, however, simplifies design and eases printing on fabric, compared to more traditional "splotchy" patterns. While pixellated patterns are becoming widespread, critics maintain that the pixellated look is a question of fashion rather than function.[19][22] However, the basis of "digital" camouflage was lost in tech reports; the design technique actually has three purposes: (1) to add high spatial frequency texture components that add concealment at closer ranges, (2) to modify visual processing of edges, and (3) to produce intermediate colours by a dithering effect.

"Digitizing" a pattern does not of itself improve performance; the design process is actually more complex, and involves color and contrast as well as overall disruptive effect of specific pattern geometry. A failure to consider all elements of pattern design tends to result in poor results. The US Army's universal camouflage pattern (UCP), for example, performed poorly because of low pattern contrast ("isoluminance" -- beyond very close range the design looks like a field of solid light gray) and arbitrary color selection, neither of which could be saved by quantizing (digitizing) the pattern geometry."

I've just always found it very interesting and tend to paint alot of things like this, because believe it or not but i cannot paint solid grey colours how most modern planes are, i just always fudge it up haha....

i am currently painting a 1/48 F117 and f-19 Stealth planes which are also digital, so i can maybe do a little write up on how i intend to achieve my finale goal..

EDIT, Also the stingbat and AV8B are 48th scale and the UAV 35th, but its still tiny.....