Kabal of The Ebon Fire [Updated on February 10th - I've decided on a paint scheme!]

So.
Time passed, things happened. And I've seen the new Tau. New paint scheme!


Deeply inspired by the Vior'la Tau scheme, the space suits from The Martian and of a bit of Clone Troopers, I've come up with this new guy. He was done in 3 hours and meant to enable me to test new things fairly quickly. For the rest of the models I'd paint it cleaner and probably add some armor panels in the color of his war paint to break up the white. Also, as always, less battle damage.

I quite like this scheme, as it makes the troopers kind of canvasses for 'art' to be created on them with blood and grime. Like, no Kabalite is allowed to come back from the raid unsullied, or something. But still, I think it looks a bit too clean! Not dark enough!

What do you think? An alternative would be to adapt the original turquoise scheme with white war paint and panels, and/or to have the coven units have the white color scheme while the Kabal is turquoise. Maybe the elite units could be white? Argh!

I like it a lot. I don't think you need to amend anything. The battle damage and blood splatters come out really well on the bone white background. Like you say it is an excellent canvas for the grime and damage.

SC

How do you decide for a paint scheme? I'm really, -really- torn between the blue/turquoise one from last page and this new white one. I've asked many friends and some strangers about their opinion and it's really a 50:50 spread. My own opinion is of no use, because how can I choose between two pieces of my own work?

The blue one is darker, more eery, perhaps more evil. The orange eyes look bad-ass and harmonize very well with the turquoise armor. All in all I think it's a very striking scheme.
However, the bodysuit parts are somewhat... lacking. I can't seem to get the dark brown leathery tone right and the highlights look out of place. Also, the battle damage and blood splatters - two things I want to keep consistent across the entire army - are hardly even visible on the dark armor. Brightening up the blue would result in a completely different feel for the army, so I'm stuck with an overall dark theme.

The white one is brighter on the one hand, but on the other it makes the blood and damage more visible and therefore the overall miniature more gritty and rough. This scheme, especially with the planned dark red troop markings, would male the army seem more organized, more military and less alien, savage and terrifying. I do like the visuals, but I'm not sure that's the feeling I want to evoke. But I do love the scheme!!

Tl;dr: HALP

I can see why your so torn between the two they are both fantastic.
If it helps the white scheme put me in mind of a 30K World Eater, not a Tau.
The blue is much eerier and the orange eyes are very striking. As for the body suit I think you are being hard on yourself it does look leathery and the battle damage is subtle and very effective for that. I've always shied away from doing battle damage on my forces as it is so easy to go over the top and spoil it, something you have avoided.
So long story short overall I think the blue is better but really like both.
I hope that helps...

I am totally digging on the white. It was a color scheme I planned on incorporating into my own army personally, but I am a little more on the organized army or warband side of the fence.

Either way they both look good and maybe a smattering of white armored doods with the gray wont look bad. I hope you can make up your mind and when you do let me know how you did it.... Ill need help making my own up lol.

I've gotta vote on the white. It is so nice on the eyes, and the red on the mask of the helm looks vicious as hell.


edit: You make a good point about the cleanliness of the white though. This is a toughie, alright. Maybe if you really threw around the red and metal from model to model you could break down that feeling of uniformity? If you could be bothered varying models on an individual level, that is to say. Like, a red helmet here or there. I tend to agree though, white is tricky to get right on DE. I spoke a bit too soon. This probably doesn't help much now sorry!!

2nd edit: I've gone over it all and I think ultimately if you want a sense of alien savagery and classic DE "darkness" then you've got to go with the blue. IMHO the weathering you did works well on the blue anyway. If you go with all white you'll have to work hard to mitigate the sense of a unified force. For the best of both worlds, perhaps your elite units could be painted in white to make them stand out? Just a suggestion.

Something else to consider- if you're having helmetless units, how will their flesh look in contrast to the white? It could make for a nice monochrome model but that may not be the effect you want. I hope this points help you decide. Ultimately, go with the one that will give you the greatest sense of satisfaction with the final result- that's what I would do.

What if you brought the white to close to a shade of bone?

Yo it's me, was a pleasure to meet you in person, hope we meet again, currently i'm at that GW often for building/painting.
Here's a link to my PLog, so you don't have to search, it got buried a bit by the project logs of the more industrious members on here

On Topis:
I like the pattern and especially the red paint on the face, very unique and it adds character, thumbs up!

Hey man, it was a pleasant surprise indeed to meet another member of this forum in real life! I'll definitely come around to the store more often; you guys seem like a fun lot.

Thanks for the comment, but as you have seen in the store, I went with the blue scheme now. Hope it's still okay.

And @punk_possum, @hailian, and (especially) @Fidra: thank you so much for your well-expressed opinions. I'd like to apologize for only replying now, but the dilemma of having to choose a paint scheme and the frustration of not being able to do so, have in combination made me put all things Dark Eldar aside for a couple of months. What has made me come back, funnily enough, was a pair of shoes that I have bought! They were of such a nice and rich brown, that I somehow had an epiphany of how to paint the bodysuits of my Dark Eldar:



So the next step was to replicate that on my miniatures. I tried to paint a new model in the blue that I had done earlier and... well, this came out:



So yeah, not at all how it was before. Much brighter, much... stonier? This was just the armor plates done, mind you, everything else would still have to be painted in their respective colors. Somehow, though, I liked where this was going. So I refined the brush technique and added some crazy washes here and there to get this:



Yay, now I was happy. The armour has nice texture, more different hues to it the longer you look at it (it's three blues, a sandy yellow, a reddish brown, a dark brown, bone color and turquoise!), and it is bright enough so that battle damage and blood etc. will actually show on it!

The last two pictures for today show my attempt at recreating the leather texture on a base for practice and then the miniature from above after getting the base color blocked in.





That's it for now. More to come!

Peace,
Kinnay

Wow! That is an awesome recreation of leather, top notch! Really interested in how that is going to look transferred to the model now.