7.JG53 109G6 (Teacher Request)

[GhostCDB]

I am not exactly sure if I made the colors correct on this skin, once again. I get the Grau RLM's mixed up and with limited profiles I find it hard to find which color I am supposed to use. For this particular skin I used RLM 76, RLM 11, modified RLM 11, RLM 02, and modified RLM 02. Whenever I use the proper RLM it seems a lot more darker than it should be in-game. The wing patterns was found online, I just deleted the photo on accident and now I am unable to find where I found it originally. Not many profiles on this skin, so if anyone finds a profile that I don't post below please feel free to post it and I will correct the skin where needed.

(I actually finished this skin on Sunday, but the internet has been so great that I decided to use the fast speed to play AH instead of upload photos. I figured since I was just studying today, before I left for chow I could post the work in progress photos)

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Information :

Pilot : Günther 'Hupatz' Seeger

Units: 3/JG-2 (2/40), II/JG-2 (12/42), Stab II/JG-53 (11/42), 6/JG-53, 7/JG-53(2/43), Stfkpt 7/JG-53(3/44)

Known Aircraft: Bf 109F-4 WNr 7075 (85% dam 10/21/41 in JG-2; pilot WIC), Fw 190A-3 WNr 130536 'Yellow 14' (lost 8/19/42 bailed), Bf 109G-6 'White 3+I (Sciacca, Sicily), Bf 109G-6 'White 13' (5/13/44 crash land-combat), Bf 109G-6 'White 1' (5/24/44 wounded-fighter)

WIA 24 May, 1944 during aerial combat with a US fighter. 504 combat missions. All victories in the West. 8 four engine bombers. His first victory, a Morane southwest of Soissons, 8 June, 1940. Nos.2 & 3, both Hurricanes, one SW of Henfield, the other E of Weybridge on 7 September, 1940. His 4th, a Spitfire over the Isle of Wight on 28 November, 1940. His 5th, a Spitfire SE of Calais on 25 June, 1941. His 10th, a Spitfire 15 km N of Calais on 23 July, 1941. Injured in a crash 21 October, 1941 due to engine failure during aerial combat at Blendecques, 2 km south of St. Omer. One known Desert victory, a P-38 on 28 November, 1942. Also in the Desert, he downed a P-40 and two Bostons (A-20's) 30 km southwest of Kairouan on 3 January, 1943. His 48th, a B-17 near Trier on 11 May, 1944. His 50th, a Spitfire 10 km SE of Caen on 2 July, 1944. His 53rd, a P-38 at Jussy, N of Tergnier, on 22 August, 1944. His 54th, a P-47 N of Ramstein on 13 October, 1944. His 55th, an Auster on 7 April, 1945, still in 7/JG-53. His 56th, and last victory, a P-47 on 13 April, 1945. Bowers/Lednicer, 56 victories.


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[Motherland]

All of those midwar shades of grey schemes are 74/75/76. Early war had 65/70/71 and late war aircraft had a hodgepodge of browns and greens mixed in with the regular 75 and 74 uppersurface colors, with 76 or sometimes 65 used on the undersurface.

This chart I made a couple of years ago explains uses of RLM colors kind of, plus groups them, although the actual values of the colors are debatable, particularly how 'blue' RLM 75/74 were.
It should be noted that RLM 21 and 22 were somewhat glossy, but it didn't matter when I made this because we didn't have spec mapping yet.



Looks really good by the way.

[Stampf]

Once again the errors are from using profiles.

In this case...your Gruppe Vert is too wide and is missing it's black outline.

[GhostCDB]

Once again the errors are from using profiles.

In this case...your Gruppe Vert is too wide and is missing it's black outline.

Using profiles is the only way to create a skin, unless you lived during that time period and have extremely vivid memory. If you just so happened to have access to those things then I applaud you but as I am using what I can receive it is harder unless you want to provide me information on aircraft I skin. . . or an even simpler solution you could skin the aircraft yourself and make it as perfect as you wish.

It is not too wide because for that I actually based it off the actual aircraft image, and used the rivets as guidelines as to how wide and how long they should have been. Also in regards to the black outline on the black and white photos on my skin composite it showed it on an image but on another the black outline was not present.

[GhostCDB]

All of those midwar shades of grey schemes are 74/75/76. Early war had 65/70/71 and late war aircraft had a hodgepodge of browns and greens mixed in with the regular 75 and 74 uppersurface colors, with 76 or sometimes 65 used on the undersurface.

This chart I made a couple of years ago explains uses of RLM colors kind of, plus groups them, although the actual values of the colors are debatable, particularly how 'blue' RLM 75/74 were.
It should be noted that RLM 21 and 22 were somewhat glossy, but it didn't matter when I made this because we didn't have spec mapping yet.



Looks really good by the way.

Thank You, I use a lot of RLM charts but I believe yours will be the most useful as the other charts never really compare the different colors. 

[Stampf]

Looks like you are just copying skins from this site.

http://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Bf-109G/JG53.7-(W3+I)-Seeger.html

Nice reply too, son.

I will refrain from commenting on your work in the future.  Your skin is wrong.  And sub par.

You can not make out that outline in many black and white period photo's.  It's there.  If you saw it in one source...why omit it?

Look at your art position for the staffel. In the original it is far back of your placement...so don't try to sell me on using the original and counting rivets.  The fist is fore of the '3'.  Yours is dead center.

All your panel lines show lots of shadow/dirt except when you get to the fuse band...there it is almost pristine with a almost complete lack of vertical panel line. And considering JG53 is white...the opposite should show true. This compounds the too wide Gruppe Vert band, and lack of outline.

Carry on though...


This guy got it closer by far.



 

[The Fugitive]

And not to be picky, but the rear foot of the "Ace" character is pointed the wrong way.

[Stampf]

And not to be picky, but the rear foot of the "Ace" character is pointed the wrong way.

I'm trying o go easy on him, Fug.

[GhostCDB]

Looks like you are just copying skins from this site.

http://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Bf-109G/JG53.7-(W3+I)-Seeger.html

Nice reply too, son.

I will refrain from commenting on your work in the future.  Your skin is wrong.  And sub par.

You can not make out that outline in many black and white period photo's.  It's there.  If you saw it in one source...why omit it?

Look at your art position for the staffel. In the original it is far back of your placement...so don't try to sell me on using the original and counting rivets.  The fist is fore of the '3'.  Yours is dead center.

All your panel lines show lots of shadow/dirt except when you get to the fuse band...there it is almost pristine with a almost complete lack of vertical panel line. And considering JG53 is white...the opposite should show true. This compounds the too wide Gruppe Vert band, and lack of outline.

Carry on though...


This guy got it closer by far.

(Image removed from quote.)

 

In reply to where I am getting my skins, that is one site. Yes. There are two-three other sites that I use a little more frequently than that one to find different profiles but they weren't of much use for this skin.

Why omit it? Well when I skin, I don't know whether or not I should put something so most of the times a decision is made based off my judgement of what I think. I started flying German A/C ingame maybe a year ago, and am not that informed of the different types of skins and how the planes look or how certain things on the A/C should look. I started the game flying Allied A/C like: P38, Spit9, P51. Therefore I haven't done much reading on the 109 series, if I had time I probably would.

I never asked that you refrain from commenting I just ask that if you are going to suggest a change in something that maybe you do it? I will happily send you my PSD files and let you change what you feel need to be changed. All of the layers are in folders and organized into group, should be a walk in the park. I read devils post on the iron crosses and then cross-referenced it with a post from Simmers Paintshop and came to the conclusion about the iron cross.

In regards to the picture, I didn't too much base the fist off the 3 but instead off the little circle under the cartoon. Also, I fixed the foot right after I posted to screenshots along with the spinner cap as the lines were too wide and too few.

The panel lines were copied almost completely, with a few corrections. But my corrections were no where near where you stated a problem, I simply filled in where I thought some rivets should be and the default skin came from Greebo so I am assuming you are saying his panel lines are wrong also?

If that is closer by far then maybe I should change the underside to Yellow, as it is in the screenshot from IL2. Also should change the color of the topside of the wing on both sides to RLM 76, also change the topside iron cross to a different style.

[Motherland]

Using profiles is the only way to create a skin, unless you lived during that time period and have extremely vivid memory. If you just so happened to have access to those things then I applaud you but as I am using what I can receive it is harder unless you want to provide me information on aircraft I skin. . . or an even simpler solution you could skin the aircraft yourself and make it as perfect as you wish.

It is not too wide because for that I actually based it off the actual aircraft image, and used the rivets as guidelines as to how wide and how long they should have been. Also in regards to the black outline on the black and white photos on my skin composite it showed it on an image but on another the black outline was not present.

Profiles are actually really sketchy. They're done by people who just like to paint pictures of planes as a hobby and often times aren't reliable, even if they're printed in books (I've seen a lot of really really bad profiles in books). That's to say, there's no more weight necessarily behind a profile than a skin or a model (and you shouldn't use either of those as references, either- in fact, I don't think HTC accepts them). A lot of profiles are even based on other profiles, judging on the fact that you see the same mistakes popping up again and again  on profiles of a certain plane. Again, they're just people who like to make pictures of planes, it's not like some kind of historical repository of facts or something.

The profile you posted in particular exemplifies why you should stay away from profiles, because it shows only one shade of gray on the upper surfaces and mottling, which is simply wrong- that's just not how Luftwaffe aircraft were painted.



This is an extremely typical 109 from the 74/75/76 era [like late 1941ish (I forget when exactly 65/70/71 was phased out, it was by the time the 109F was in widespread service though) to mid 1944, when other colors started to be mixed in]. The camouflage schemes- beside mottling- were very consistent. You will notice that there is both 75 and 74 incorporated into the mottling, however, which a LOT of profilers fail to include. There are variations in where exactly the 74 and 75 trade off from each other, but they're not exactly drastic, just a foot or so each way usually, or sometimes they were reversed. Unfortunately a lot of the time it's difficult to see the demarcation between the colors as they're fairly similar, and the photography of the time was just poor, plus wear on the paint and lighting conditions etc., so people who fail to do the research (i.e., a lot of profilers) and realize how these patterns were actually applied just assume it's all one color of dark grey. If there is no mix of 74/75 on the upper fuselage surface, it's a pretty sure sign that the profile is faulty and poorly researched.

The best way to go by leaps in bounds is to only use photographs and get better at interpreting them. One thing that I think all skinners should do that a lot of skinners don't is just sit and study pictures of the plane they want to skin for.... a long time. Instead of just basing their skins off of other people's skins. That's why you see a lot of overdone panel lines and other silly things persist through the skinning community here. (I've fallen to that practice before)
That's not to say that you shouldn't study the techniques of people who are good at recreating the things you find in photographs.

If you don't have the resources to skin a certain plane (i.e. you only have a single profile, or several conflicting ones), there's nothing wrong with just not skinning it. There are a ton of skins in this game already, especially for some of the popular planes like the 109s. A few really good accurate skins trump a bunch of underresearched, sub par ones (I've definitely fallen to that practice before). Just put more work into perfecting the ones you're working on.

I would like to say that I'm very impressed with the overall look and aesthetic of your skin, plus the way you applied the mottling looks impressively convincing, even if the colors are off. The things you need to work on I think are the details, tedium and minutiae which are fairly easily fixed with some research and trial and error, such as colors and marking details and mapping issues. You have a good hand for skinning though.

[Stampf]

Profiles are actually really sketchy. They're done by people who just like to paint pictures of planes as a hobby and often times aren't reliable, even if they're printed in books (I've seen a lot of really really bad profiles in books). That's to say, there's no more weight necessarily behind a profile than a skin or a model (and you shouldn't use either of those as references, either- in fact, I don't think HTC accepts them). A lot of profiles are even based on other profiles, based on the fact that you see the same mistakes popping up again and again  on profiles of a certain plane. Again, they're just people who like to make pictures of planes, it's not like some kind of historical repository of facts or something.

The profile you posted in particular exemplifies why you should stay away from profiles, because it shows only one shade of gray on the upper surfaces and mottling, which is simply wrong- that's just not how Luftwaffe aircraft were painted.

(Image removed from quote.)

This is an extremely typical 109 from the 74/75/76 era [like late 1941ish (I forget when exactly 65/70/71 was phased out, it was by the time the 109F was in widespread service though) to mid 1944, when other colors started to be mixed in]. The camouflage schemes- beside mottling- were very consistent. You will notice that there is both 75 and 74 incorporated into the mottling, however, which a LOT of profilers fail to include. There are variations in where exactly the 74 and 75 trade off from each other, but they're not exactly drastic, just a foot or so each way usually, or sometimes they were reversed. Unfortunately a lot of the time it's difficult to see the demarcation between the colors as they're fairly similar, and the photography of the time was just poor, plus wear on the paint and lighting conditions etc., so people who fail to do the research (i.e., a lot of profilers) and realize how these patterns were actually applied just assume it's all one color of dark grey. If there is no mix of 74/75 on the upper fuselage surface, it's a pretty sure sign that the profile is faulty and poorly researched.

The best way to go by leaps in bounds is to only use photographs and get better at interpreting them. One thing that I think all skinners should do that a lot of skinners don't is just sit and study pictures of the plane they want to skin for.... a long time. Instead of just basing their skins off of other people's skins. That's why you see a lot of overdone panel lines and other silly things persist through the skinning community here. (I've fallen to that practice before)
That's not to say that you shouldn't study the techniques of people who are good at recreating the things you find in photographs.

If you don't have the resources to skin a certain plane (i.e. you only have a single profile, which raises some alarms), there's nothing wrong with just not skinning it. There are a ton of skins in this game already, especially for some of the popular planes like the 109s. A few really good accurate skins trump a bunch of underresearched, sub par ones (I've definitely fallen to that practice before). Just put more work into perfecting the ones you're working on.

Thank you, Evan.

I just hate too see the available slots filled with cartoon renditions of the irons.


You are missed by the way.

[Motherland]

Thank you, Evan.

I just hate too see the available slots filled with cartoon renditions of the irons.


You are missed by the way.

I apparently miss this game, and you guys especially, too, considering I'm researching/refreshing and writing long posts instead of attacking the mound of homework I've got in front me.
Maybe someday.

[Stampf]

I apparently miss this game, and you guys especially, too, considering I'm researching/refreshing and writing long posts instead of attacking the mound of homework I've got in front me.
Maybe someday.

We're doing what we do still, just look at the FSO logs bro.     Do your work...we'll be here...You know you have a ride with me when you are ready.

 

[Devil 505]

I would like to say that I'm very impressed with the overall look and aesthetic of your skin, plus the way you applied the mottling looks impressively convincing, even if the colors are off. The things you need to work on I think are the details, tedium and minutiae which are fairly easily fixed with some research and trial and error, such as colors and marking details and mapping issues. You have a good hand for skinning though.

Sums up my opinion perfectly.

[VonMessa]

In reply to where I am getting my skins, that is one site. Yes. There are two-three other sites that I use a little more frequently than that one to find different profiles but they weren't of much use for this skin.

Why omit it? Well when I skin, I don't know whether or not I should put something so most of the times a decision is made based off my judgement of what I think. I started flying German A/C ingame maybe a year ago, and am not that informed of the different types of skins and how the planes look or how certain things on the A/C should look. I started the game flying Allied A/C like: P38, Spit9, P51. Therefore I haven't done much reading on the 109 series, if I had time I probably would.

I never asked that you refrain from commenting I just ask that if you are going to suggest a change in something that maybe you do it? I will happily send you my PSD files and let you change what you feel need to be changed. All of the layers are in folders and organized into group, should be a walk in the park. I read devils post on the iron crosses and then cross-referenced it with a post from Simmers Paintshop and came to the conclusion about the iron cross.

In regards to the picture, I didn't too much base the fist off the 3 but instead off the little circle under the cartoon. Also, I fixed the foot right after I posted to screenshots along with the spinner cap as the lines were too wide and too few.

The panel lines were copied almost completely, with a few corrections. But my corrections were no where near where you stated a problem, I simply filled in where I thought some rivets should be and the default skin came from Greebo so I am assuming you are saying his panel lines are wrong also?

If that is closer by far then maybe I should change the underside to Yellow, as it is in the screenshot from IL2. Also should change the color of the topside of the wing on both sides to RLM 76, also change the topside iron cross to a different style.

It would certainly not be the first time this has happened.  It is especially evident when it happens on control surfaces.