My attempt at tiger stripes

OK, I will put in my 2cents here...  The pattern you are replicating looks more like the post war repro pattern, rather than the types used in Vietnam. I have several original items in my collection an the colors are lighter, and the stripes are wider. On all of them, be the base fabric, "silver" or "gold" there is no real brown in the pattern, more or an OD or Field Drab, along with the medium green and the black.

here is a shirt

and here is one of my atempts to replicate on Dragons MACV SOG set.... yes my face painting needs work...

I agree- definitly about the folds and the main areas of visibility. I think my 1/16 scale figures definitly get a little bit more attention to correct pattern, but like I said- for 1/35, what you have looks great- the only problem being it looks a bit symetrical.

I agree with you about staying away from too much pattern, as most uniforms are, like you said, build in sections and patches.

I think the colors you chose and the layering looks nice, it just looks too symetrical

I've never really been that wild about getting every splotch and stripe to scale... The only places where a camo-pattern is easily recogizable is the long/wide, flat areas of the thigh, calf, upper arm, and back.  The chest area can be, if the figure's more or less at attention, or something similarly "stationary" and without web gear, mag pouches, and such, while the back of the thigh, the shin, sides of the torso, are usually in shadow or deep shadow in "action" poses, and the arse isn't an issue either, since the fabric's pattern is disrupted there anyway by the cut of the cloth during manufacture, especially those uniforms with re-enforced areas in that location, which is the case with pretty much all combat uniforms since the 60s...  Also, for soldiers in the field, the arse-end is usually the same color as the local ground, lol...

I stay away from trying to paint a uniform exactly "in pattern" over-all... I just concentrate on getting it right where it'll show to the viewer, and then only what shows after all the gear is on the figure... 

Your mileage may vary..

ajlafeche!! That groundwork is awesome!! However... I might argue that the off white color is a little too white and dotted? hmm... I think one of the big problems is there are quite a few variants of Tiger Stripe camo, including some that South Vietnamese spec ops designed and wore that had some yellow in it? I think depening on what you want to portray you have a few options. The Tiger Stripe I own is more OD green and brown, with a little light colors and black is never really "black"

Mine are on the left and you can see the difference with the green on the woodland my brother is wearing on the right. The off white doesnt really stand out at a significant distance

Study the patterns as there are several. Then practice it on sheet stock or an index card until you get it down. I'd say the black stripes are too heavy and too long in general. Make sure you use a very fine, high quality brush to do the black and off white striping. I attempted this last summer on a sniper from Seil.

You can still "save" these figures. Check out my OIF figure write up ... I just got done doing a 120mm figure in ACU pattern. I know what you mean about getting tired of painting! However, check it out and see how adding in the shadows and highlight hid a lot of "concerns" that I had about the figure.

Bottom line ... don't count these guys out until you're actually done with them. I think you'll be surprised in the end.

Just my 2 cents.

deanz,

Looks good. I agree with psst in that the stripes, while they do look good, they tend to all look the same. Take a second look at it and see if you see the same thing. We can't see the real thing, so we just have to go off your images.

Also, I know that you still have weathering and such to go, and the colors' boldness might be adding to the above. Getting some highlights and shadows in, might help it out as well.

Keep us posted.

Hey!! Looks great to me, you definitly appear to have the colors down for the most part- however if you look at 1:1 Tiger Stripe camo you'll notice that the not all the black lines are "line"like and a good majority of them are more interwoven within eachother, the stripes tend to make "Y" shapes in places if that makes sense. The colors look a little too "stacked" other than that- this looks great!

Hmm... I'm looking more closely and I notice that in places you have indeed made the "Y" shape... so perhaps the problem is not that, as much as it's all the black lines appear to be equal distances appart? I'm not sure... I think this is very well done- especially in 1/35, I think you could leave it as is and it wouldn't be a problem at all... it's just something.... and I don't know what, it just looks the tiniest bit off...

Definitly looking forward to updates though!- especially of the rest of the squad!! Really wish Dragon would re-release some of their old Vietnam kits