"Fester's eyesore" =P AKA "Florida Cracker" P38L 475th FG - Revamp

[Knite]

Hello Everyone,

This aircraft was flown by American Ace Joe Forster with the 475th "Satan's Angels". He is one of 10 aces to come from this group with a confirmed 9 kills, as well as 3 "probables". He once flew 900 miles home after losing his left engine with a total mission time of over 8 hours in his aircraft. It has been "suggested" that the skin was in need of some TLC, and my hope is that this update still honors his hard work as one of the United States' best pilots of the war.





As with any skin I've ever submitted, please let me know what you think (preferrably with advice, and not just saying "it sucks" or something similar). I may not always make requested "stylistic" changes, but accuracy and general "looks" is always very important to me, as what's the point in filling up a skin slot with something no one will fly? What do you all think? Should this replace the original?
Thanks!

[pipz]

Looks good 

[The Fugitive]

Sweet !

[SmokinLoon]

Very nice.  I like it. 

The only thing I can think of without seeing a picture is to double check the brightness of the yellow.  In the above pics, the yellow really jumps out.

[oboe]

I think the fuel overflow stains are too dark and overdone - I don't think the stains would be that noticeable.   (A lot of early skins way overdid fuel spill stains and gun muzzle exhaust stains - everybody was doing it).

EDIT: (removing comment about what I thought were gun port shadows - I see now you're doing the black outline of the gun ports - thanks, lyric)

I think the black of the antiglare areas look too dark, esp on the bottom pic.

The boom access hatches should be on the left side of each boom only.  P-38Ls had underwing blisters for fuel pump housing.   Check out the panel lines on one of my P-38Ls real closely - I think its about as accurate as we have (only because Fester didn't do an 'L').  Also check out Cactuskooler's 38L - I think his panel lines are very accurate too.   And examine the treatment of the back of the radiator housing on the booms.   Look closely at one of Fester's 38Js and you'll see what I mean.

The black/yellow kill marker area border doesn't follow the contour of the inner wing fillet well enough on the left side of the cockpit as it does on the right side.

Your spark plug blast tubes are brilliant--much better than mine, as is the rivet detail (I decided dark rivets are they way to go on a natural metal skin - mine are light and way overdone).  There seems to be an extra panel line near the tube though, on the access panel - if you are trying to show a depressed or curved area you may be able to do it with shading alone in not have a panel line through a piece of panel that is supposed to be a solid piece.

One of the things Fester was trying to get us to do is show the deformation of the metal skin along the areas where rivets fasten the skin to the ribs underneath.  You just use a light line on one side of the rivets and a darker line on the other side it and it gives the impression of the aluminum skin depressed slightly along the rivet line.   Cactuskooler's Dizzy Rebel shows this effect very well I think.  

You can also do this glare/shadow deformation shading on the gun bay access panel fastening screws on the nose - I've tried to do all this on my later '38 skins but haven't been totally pleased with the result.

You can put light scratches glare lines along some of the edges of access panels - this might breakup the weathering/grime pattern a bit and reinforce the illusion that the panel sections are different pieces of metal.

This is your baby, <S> for making the effort to improve her.

[lyric1]

Here is the Benchmark to go by.





http://www.aerothentic.com/photos/noseart/p38/p38-florida_cracker.html

I cant be real critical here as I can't skin at all. However your nose art has some colour issues in that they are the wrong colour for the wording it appears to be a blue colour not black. No yellow trim around the complete black portion of the nose. The black portion of the nose appears to be glossy black on the sides where the engine panels appear to be Matt black as well as on top of the nose of the aircraft.

Your yellow is to bright may be a deeper canary yellow?




http://www.roygrinnell.com/florida%20cracker.htm

I think this profile is about as close as it gets with the exception of the Matt anti glare panels Maybe the complete yellow trim was added later on the nose? After looking at both photos I think the yellow is only partially painted on. It appears to be wrapping around the front of the wings & along the bottom of the black portion on the nose & the seems to peter out some spot near the bottom of the radius as it heads back up vertically?




The spinners are clearly metal finish not white.



Your skin is a million times better than anything I can do so I can only be critical of what is clearly obvious in terms of markings & colour. Sorry if I come off to harsh.

[Plazus]

Lyric, in the color picture you provided, the spinner appears to be painted white. In the black and white photo, the spinner appears to be metal finish. Perhaps when Joe Forster scored more victories, he painted his spinner tip white?

[Plazus]

Knite,

I love your bare metal finish effects, especially with the shadowing and reflection is concerned. However, remember that many people will be in cockpit mode as they fly this skin. I would make the panel lines a bit more visible, particularly around the engines and areas visible from the cockpit. Another thing to check are the panel lines as they meet where the wing root and engine connects. Take a look at Cactus' or Fester's skin from the cockpit and look left or right. You will see some panel lines that run from the wing to engine. These lines are either not present, or visible from the screenshots you provided us with.

Basically bring out the panel lines a tad bit more, and add some subtle detail around the cockpit so as to improve the immersion factor as you are sitting inside the cockpit. All of the other comments above are great as well!

Best of luck!

 

[clerick]

Knite,

I love your bare metal finish effects, especially with the shadowing and reflection is concerned. However, remember that many people will be in cockpit mode as they fly this skin. I would make the panel lines a bit more visible, particularly around the engines and areas visible from the cockpit. Another thing to check are the panel lines as they meet where the wing root and engine connects. Take a look at Cactus' or Fester's skin from the cockpit and look left or right. You will see some panel lines that run from the wing to engine. These lines are either not present, or visible from the screenshots you provided us with.

Basically bring out the panel lines a tad bit more, and add some subtle detail around the cockpit so as to improve the immersion factor as you are sitting inside the cockpit. All of the other comments above are great as well!

Best of luck!

 

+1 to this.  I also agree that the yellow knob needs to be turned down a smidge. In the pictures it appears to be more of a mustard yellow than a true, bright Yellow.  Nice job otherwise.   

[Krusty]

My major complaint, aside from the yellow, is one that a number of folks seem to have problems with at some point or another.

Your seams don't blend.

There are points where 2 different parts of the bitmap border each other. I call them seams. For example the tops of your booms have a HARD and noticable shift in color along their spines because the colors left and right do not mesh properly.

You have to work both the left and right side repeatedly, alternating or just choosing one. Adjust, preview, repeat. Keep working until the transition is nearly flawless.

Other than that, it doesn't seem all that refined around the black nose markings. For example, the real yellow outline and the black fill-in were "cut out" to match the curve of the wing root, but not to touch the wing root. On yours the black does not match this curve/shape and it is actually covered up by the wing attaching to the fuselage.

This will change the proportions of the room you have to work with, making you need to shrink down your kill flags and such to fit the smaller space when you are done. Also the leading edge of the black on top of the nose extends a bit too far forward as compared to the stuff Lyric posted.

Then we have the gun barrel outlines. I don't want to be mean, but I will be honest: They look bad. Very bad. It's not your FAULT they look bad, though. It's the nature of the skin, the number of pixels you have to work with, and the way they wrap around the nose. In such a case you have a decision to make: You either leave them OUT, knowing that this is inaccurate, but knowing that you cannot get them to look good, or you leave them IN, knowing that they detract from the quality of your finished skin. Skinner's decision.



Aside from that, I think I agree with the other comments about weathering and the panel lines. I'm not a huge fan of over-defined panel lines, but I think yours are too underdefined for this particular plane.

[Knite]

Thanks everyone for the help! Completely appreciated =) Obviously actual work done will have to wait until I'm home from work, and with the amount of suggestions may be a couple of days before new screenies, but since I'm reading the thread, I figured I'd throw a few responses out there first ;-)

#1. Squadron colors, nose art, gun port "black". I promise, I'll change the yellow. hahaha. I've been struggling getting a yellow I liked that also showed up well against the metal. Looks like I got more tweaking to do. The coloration of the front of the spinners (Metal or White?) as well as the text (green? Black? Blue?) are very curious to me. I have 2 pictures in color of FC where the text looked black on yellow, and one where it looked kinda... greenish (maybe blue) on yellow, and it's been difficult to tell what is the definite colors. I DO know that the coloration is NOT the original "black on red" that I had on my original skin that was pulled from an illustration. The black around the gun ports does definitely look terrible. I'll probably re-do them a couple of more times and if I can't get an effect that I like, maybe I should just get rid of it entirely? The white/metal spinners, I am just not sure. I may just make them a "lighter shade" of metal to split the difference. Opnions?

#2. Anti-Glare / Black issues. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about the "glare" on the anti-glare panels, as the original aircraft appeared to have a lot of "matte black" area where our standard skin "shinyness" does not. Always been a problem with this skin, but nothing I can really do a lot about it. HOWEVER, I will try to lighten the black up some more (it's actually way lighter than I started off with on this re-make), and will definitely adjust the curvature near the wing roots.

#3. Misc - Consider the fuel stains "faded". The "extra panel line" that the spark plug blast tube sits "in" is definitely me using some artistic license to show the concave curvature of the metal there. I'll grab another screenie of that section specifically to show. It's one of those things where I had in my mind what I want to convey, but never realized that someone not thinking that way may not interpret it in the same fashion.

#4. Seams. Yes, the ones on the top stink. I guess I just never realized how bad until it was pointed out. Consider it taken a look at =)

#5. Panel lines/rivets. Ok, I'll make them darker, and look at the rivet shading. Believe it or not, it's so "light" because one of the reasons I think the previous version of this skin had serious "detractors" was because the earlier skin the lines and rivets were too.... "impactful"? I.e. too deep and glaring. I wanted to try to get as far away from that as possible but it appears I may have gone too far the other direction.

If I did not directly respond to a comment made in this long post, it hasn't been ignored. Just trying to get a quick response out in appreciation. I'll post again once I can start taking care of a few of the things mentioned. 

[Krusty]

You're doing a BMF plane. I will offer this word of advice:

The materials file screws up colors. Do NOT go by the color on your bitmap. Check it in-game. I had to blow the heck out of the saturation and brightness on my B-17G skin, and to a lesser extent on my P-47D25 skin, because the end result in-game was not what I had on the bitmap.

So make the bitmap look UGLY if you have to, as long as it works in-game. This relates to the color choices and the yellow specifically. I found that AH doesn't like certain yellow shades. I've done a number of yellow-nosed planes and still struggle with the right shade. They often turn up more faded and pale neon than the actual bitmap. You can counter this by going for a different shade of yellow. Make it more orange tinted, as a test. Try shifting the shade of yellow to all different areas (maybe add a bit of red to it?) until you find one that works better in-game.

EDIT: This also messed up my BMF efforts as well, requiring me to really enhance a lot of stuff well past the believability point on the bitmap, only to have it barely register in-game. This MAY be why some of your panel lines and such are so subdued. To counter this, just do like I mention above and don't go by what the bitmap looks like, go by what the game displays. That's the result you want to check.

[oboe]

Regarding the yellow, my rule of thumb is to go for egg yolk over lemon.

NOTE: What happened to the Simmer's Paintshop webpage?  I just tried to go there to put a link to the USAAF color swatches and the page is blocked by ads and surveys.   It's HORRIBLE.

The panel line by the blast tube - I figured that's what you were trying to do, but I think you might be able to do it with shading alone, without introducing a panel line there.

[lyric1]

Lyric, in the color picture you provided, the spinner appears to be painted white. In the black and white photo, the spinner appears to be metal finish. Perhaps when Joe Forster scored more victories, he painted his spinner tip white?

It is bare metal it is just a brighter finish than the rest of the aircraft & how the light is catching it.

[cactuskooler]

This photo, which I think might be colorized, shows the anti-glare areas as being OD rather than black. The profile and painting Lyric posted shows it the same way. I'm no expert with 475th Lightnings so I can't say for sure one way or another. Might be worth looking into.



And the front of the spinners definitely looks bare to me.