1:18 Dio help

[grunt1]

I'm working on finishing up several custom projects with the intent to use them in a dio. The intent of the dio is to show a mechanized unit with a solid assortment of vehicles and equipment. As I finished the fourth item I realized that I wanted them to look cohesive (proper period, front, season, etc..) and that most of the items (AT guns, artillery, trucks, tanks) may be in the same area at the same time but probably wouldn't all be a tri-color camo and there would be some variety. I've verified that just about everything I'm using was in the same division at the same time but I haven't had much luck finding photos of mixed German armor/vehicles to use as a reference. Does anyone have any good shots of vehicle columns, repair depots, air reconnaissance or anything with a lot of German vehicles in a single shot?

Here are two good ones, looking for more:

[flyboy_fx]

From what I have seen the first two pics are great examples. Be creative... Not really a "Standard" way of parking or setting up shop.

[aferguson]

do you know where the colour picture was taken and when? It's an odd picture. All those panzer grey vehicles with a dark yellow or tan kubelwagen smack dab in the middle? From the german flag, i would guess it's either the early days of north africa or russian front around mid 43, right around the time of the change over to the tricolour system. Strange picture. edit: i'm thinking it might be taken in Greece.

I can help with your dio a bit maybe. The idea behind the tri colour system was to allow units to tailor tbe camouflage they apply to their vehicles to the local surroundings; varying the amount and pattern of green and brown applied over the dark yellow base to suit local conditions. So, because of this, there was a tendancy for all vehicles in the same unit to have similar camo patterns. The crew of each vehicle was responsible for the application of the green and brown, so there was naturally a reasonable degree of variation but the idea was for all vehicles to have pretty much the same type of camo. Of course sufficient paint supplies would be needed and there were often shortages. In the early days of the change over, the crews had to paint the vehicle dark yellow as well and this often didn't happen. Instead they would apply streaks of dark yellow/green/brown over the panzer grey (like the S1 sdkfz 251).

So the point is, you can make the vehicles look as similar or as different as you like and get away with it, but if it were me, i would try to make them appear somewhat similar as to amounts of green/brown applied as this would be the goal of the unit.

[flyboy_fx]

OH I see what you mean. Your talking about camo... For a sec I thought it was vehicle positions at rest... Something like that.

Yea, Units would probably have a similar camo on all the vehicles.

[grunt1]

Thanks guys, this is the discussion I was hoping for. Flyboy, I was asking about placement as well as color, not so much about rules but examples of other situations. That part is more to establish a theme or backstory for the dio than accuracy. In the color picture you can tell it's some sort of command meeting (lots of brass) but that they were close enough to the action to be concerned about enemy fire or observation and have parked the vehicles behind buildings. So a convoy headed toward the front, versus a retreat, if it was a repair depot or a meet-up would all guide the little details on vehicle and equipment placement.

The thing I'm trying to capture is that it appears in both photos that alike vehicles may have a common pattern, but that other alike vehicles would have their own divisional patterns relative to the specific timing or location that they were painted. So all of the panthers being tri-color with subtle variations and the trucks being striped or something would seem to make the most sense.

As for the color photo, I'm not sure where it was taken. Feels eastern front-ish to me because of the buildings.

[flyboy_fx]

To me I would also say greece. But, in that campaign they used different crosses so not sure.
Probably eastern front.


As for placement, just hide! lol
From pics I have seen, when they are at rest/meeting with comand/ect. they normally seam to hide the vehicles. Like, park off the side of the road, behind buildings, under trees, ect...