camouflage colors used?

[Marko]

Hi,

Now with the Toy Story soldiers one can create very well hiding armies using standard green. Also you can make vehicles etc in the standard green for terrain fighting armies and in light or dark grey (depending on road plates vintage) for urban areas combat.

Or you still think that military creations should be in real world camouflage colors?

Please post here some of your military creations that use standard green and light/dark grey.

[Ralph_S]

Hi,

Now with the Toy Story soldiers one can create very well hiding armies using standard green. Also you can make vehicles etc in the standard green for terrain fighting armies and in light or dark grey (depending on road plates vintage) for urban areas combat.

Or you still think that military creations should be in real world camouflage colors?

Please post here some of your military creations that use standard green and light/dark grey.

It depends on what you want. I tend to look at my models as actual scale models of real vehicles, albeit still obviously build in LEGO, and I'd like their colour schemes to be realistic. For those regular green is too bright IMO. Of course, dark green is pretty rare, certainly small plates, which seriously limits the options, but I'll show what a difference it makes. Several years ago (in 2005 or 2006), when I didn't have any dark green, I built a HumVee, using black, (old) brown and regular green.

HumVee by Mad physicist, on Flickr

I don't think it was a bad effort, but the green did strike me as far too lurid.

In 2009 I decided to rebuild it replacing the green. Because I couldn't swap the parts one for one this meant basically rebuilding the whole thing, but I think you'll agree that the end result looks far more convincing.

HMMWV revamped (3) by Mad physicist, on Flickr

I made a few other changes while I was at it, but I think the colour scheme made the biggest difference. Of course, there's been an option to build realistic military colours for years. tan!

Cheers,

Ralph

[Aanchir]

I'd say the regular army men color (Dark Green/BL's Green) would be great for camouflage in sets, at least in a real war situation. Needless to say, there will not likely be any real war situations in a LEGO set, so that's basically irrelevant. The camo we're likely to see in LEGO will be, like real-world camo, a mix of different colors, and will mostly appear on minifigure clothes and vehicles that are meant to stand out, not blend in. So it could use colors like Sand Green, Sand Yellow (BL's Dark Tan), Brick Yellow (BL's Tan), Earth Green (BL's Dark Green), and maybe some other green colors. Again, since camo in sets wouldn't likely be meant to blend in with backgrounds, it would be a purely stylistic decision which colors were used.

In MOCs, which camo color is appropriate depends entirely on the setting. MOCs, after all, can have a lot more variety in what colors and patterns can appear in their landscapes, and so the ideal camo colors are wholly dependent on the colors the builder chose for the setting. Earth Green, Reddish Brown, Dark Stone Grey (BL's Dark Bluish Gray) and Sand Yellow are all popular colors I've seen at conventions, and they lead to very attractive vehicles, but I rarely see these models with any type of brick-built backdrop.

Overall, if meant to blend in with a backdrop, the colors should be chosen according to the backdrop. But if meant to stand out (or if there is no backdrop), then more mottled and realistic-looking colors are the best.

[Marko]

Thank you for good post and specially for Ralph for two versions of HMW (these pics were exactly that I was looking for here with my post). Definitely the dark green version is better. Also I like the logic of Aanchir - depending on the back drop and the fact that there are no LEGO military sets.

Still I believe that creations meant to blend in with "official" sets would benefit more in "naive" color choices like standard green and bley as when I look from distance my Toy Story soldiers set on patrol in my town they are quite well blended in with road plates green. So for combat purposes in LEGO world this camouflage choice would be better : )

With planes bley works well on last airstrip road plates that was released.

But how about navy? LEGO standard for sea is BL blue. If I would like to make good camouflage choice in purist sense I would need to build my ships in bright blue

[AndyC]

But how about navy? LEGO standard for sea is BL blue. If I would like to make good camouflage choice in purist sense I would need to build my ships in bright blue

Well for a realistic navy camoflage, you need to go crazy with a bit of dazzle camoflage, unless you're building modern ships of course which are a rather more tedious grey due to the invention of radar technology which makes trying to visually hide ships a shade pointless.

[Ralph_S]

Thank you for good post and specially for Ralph for two versions of HMW (these pics were exactly that I was looking for here with my post). Definitely the dark green version is better. Also I like the logic of Aanchir - depending on the back drop and the fact that there are no LEGO military sets.

I don't really care about the backdrop, but for real-world camouflage it's obviously important.

I want the camouflage to look like that on the real vehicle. By all means, if your purpose is for your LEGO military units to blend in with official sets, regular green is probably the way to go. I wrote a blog post in 2009 about building camouflage with LEGO that you might find useful.

Well for a realistic navy camoflage, you need to go crazy with a bit of dazzle camoflage, unless you're building modern ships of course which are a rather more tedious grey due to the invention of radar technology which makes trying to visually hide ships a shade pointless.

<Lecturer at naval academy mode on>

No offense, but if that were the case, why not paint them bright orange? Wikipedia gets it wrong / your interpretation of what is written on wikipedia isn't right. The point of dazzle camouflage isn't to hide the ship, it is to make it harder to identify the size or type of ship and the distance and relative heading, in particular through optical systems such as range-finders and submarine periscopes.

Visual location of targets has become less important with the development of radar and sonar, but that isn't the reason why dazzle camouflage has fallen out of favor. The reason is the threat posed by aircraft. When seen from the air, traditional dazzle camouflage makes the ship stand out like a sore thumb and no less easy to identify. Tedious grey (or a slightly blueish shade) makes far more sense.

<Lecturer at naval academy mode off>

Cheers,

Ralph

Edited April 19, 2011 by Ralph_S