Friday, May 27, 2011

Albatros Project #1

The Albatros Project Report #1

The Albatros Project is in full swing. I have made new master files for the D.I, D.II, D.III, D.V, C.VII, C.X, and C.XII. While working I have replaced all the older less accurate profiles and been on a roll producing new examples for my profile galleries at my main site WWI Aviation. I will be posting some of the new work here.

I had found a reference picture for this aircraft in my reference archive. It is the only example of a multiple color camouflage scheme on a D.I I have seen. Needless to say I needed to give the scheme a try. The camouflage is done using 3 colorized monochrome layers, top to bottom, rust brown, green, blue. I simply remove the bottom of the two top layers to expose the blue belly. The next step is to remove the areas of the brown exposing the green areas. Next I turn off visibility to all the layers except for the brown, green, and blue. Now I can merge the visible parts into a single layer. Now when the final shadows from the wing and tail plane are applied it is quicker and easier to do.

My old master for the D.II was flawed. The side of the fuselage looked rounded instead of flat. I replaced the old profiles with new ones, and changed the type wood for the fuselage from an ash to a maple. THE D.II above is a new profile which I had saved for when I had a better master file.

I have said before I love flashy paint schemes. So when I saw the scheme on the D.II above I had to do it. it is a fairly straight forward project. I had made the propeller fairing, metal nose, and engine compartment as a separate layer so it took minimal work. I had selected the rear of the fuselage and colorized it green. I skinned the body layer under the green layer in maple with a multiply fill filter to combine the shading and the wood pattern. The final flash was the blue piped white stripe which started as a stroked and filled rectangle which I rotated and trimmed to fit. I had made the rudder a separate layer. I copied it and pasted it onto a sheet of Bavarian checks I had drawn and keep in my "decal" library. I selected the area around the rudder, increased selection, then inverted it. Next I moved to the check layer and copied the new selection and pasted the checks over the rudder in the main image. Presto! From there it is simply a matter of adding details and shading..

The final example is a D.Va which uses all the same tricks and techniques as the other profiles. I find doing computer graphics to be very similar to when I was building scale model kits. There is a lot of working with "decals" either virtual or film. But I did come to this through model building and gaming. We go with what we know.

Have a great weekend and I hope to see your comments and thoughts here soon.

Best Wishes
Will

5 comments:

The Angry Lurker said...

Never knew about the other site, it's bloody good.

Unknown said...

Thanks Fran, My main site is pretty much straight educational material. I use the blog to show the process from behind the scenes and personal commentary that I do not think would be appropriate there.

kingsleypark said...

I am complete luddite when it comes to computer graphics and although you make it sound pretty easy to do, it strikes me that there is a helluva lot of effort going into producing this wonderful pictures.

So thanks for going to all that effort!

I've been bitten by the Wings of War bug, and although I will look to pick up a few of the pre-painted minis, having this site as a resource makes me very tempted to try painting up some of the Skytrex models

Unknown said...

Thanks KP I have only been doing aircraft profiles for 15 months, in that time I have done over 500 profiles. When I began they were bloody awful. It is like any thing you do, the more you do it the better you become (hopefully).

The one thing that makes it easier is building a library of insignias, skin patterns, engines, propellers, wheels, and weapons. That way I do not have to completely reinvent the wheel when making a profile.

I have been looking over WOW and I am impressed with the line. It does introduce a wider audience to WWI air combat.

Cheers
Will

kendo said...

this is a fantastic site..