P-51B "Ding Hao!" - James Howard

[Vraciu]

I have decided to give this one a try.

If someone feels they can do a better job than I can, believe me, I will defer.

It will probably not be available until April as I am about to head overseas and my laptop crashes when I use Spec Mapping.   

[Vraciu]

I solved the biggest challenge for me: nose art.

*fist pump*

This is off my laptop.  It has the BARE BARE BARE minimum to run the viewer--and it often crashes any way.   Sorry the picture sucks but you get the idea.

[Vraciu]

Figured out how to zoom in with this stupid laptop.  LOL

Sorry to spam the board on this...   Seems that traffic is slow of late so hopefully nobody is too bothered by me.

I think the DING HAO! came out pretty nice.   Kill markings look okay also.  Not sure if I will do a balkenkreuz or an X...  Apologies for the low resolution.

[pipz]

Get after this one Vraciu!   

[Vraciu]

Get after this one Vraciu!   

Aye aye, sir.   

[Vraciu]

Coming along SLOWWWWWWWWWLY.

Man, I am having to learn all kinds of new stuff with this non-metal finish.   

[Devil 505]

Looks good.

Here's a tip for you. erase some of the OD green from the leading edge of the wing. Be sure to have your underside gray on the top side of the wing. This will give the proper feathered demarcation between the paint colors. then adjust the demarcation line on the nose to meet up with the wing. Have a look at the reference photo in page 1.

You never want to let the paint stop on a hard edge created by the mating of parts of the bitmap - always simulate the wraparound of a paint color. Check your reference photos to see if the top color(s) wrap around the leading edge or stop just before it.

Here's a 190 I did to demonstrate.

[Vraciu]

Looks good.

Here's a tip for you. erase some of the OD green from the leading edge of the wing. Be sure to have your underside gray on the top side of the wing. This will give the proper feathered demarcation between the paint colors. then adjust the demarcation line on the nose to meet up with the wing. Have a look at the reference photo in page 1.

You never want to let the paint stop on a hard edge created by the mating of parts of the bitmap - always simulate the wraparound of a paint color. Check your reference photos to see if the top color(s) wrap around the leading edge or stop just before it.

Here's a 190 I did to demonstrate. http://s241.photobucket.com/user/DropkickYankees/media/Aces%20High/Jg26%20190%201_zpsrkhrjd7b.png.html

That's awesome.   Love your panel line technique, also.  I wish I could duplicate that.

[Devil 505]

That's awesome.   Love your panel line technique, also.  I wish I could duplicate that.

What specifically do you see that I've done, that you cant figure out/ replicate? The panel lines themselves are pretty basic - black lines faded to 7-9% with white highlights faded to 6-7%.

Here's a tip to save time making highlights: place the highlight layer beneath the layer with the black lines. Copy a section of black lines (single wing, for example) invert the color from black to white and paste onto the highlight layer after shifting the white lines one pixel vertically and horizontally away from the light source (in my case it's rearward and outboard of the black panel line.) Now erase any white line where it is overlapped by the black one.

[Vraciu]

What specifically do you see that I've done, that you cant figure out/ replicate? The panel lines themselves are pretty basic - black lines faded to 7-9% with white highlights faded to 6-7%.

Here's a tip to save time making highlights: place the highlight layer beneath the layer with the black lines. Copy a section of black lines (single wing, for example) invert the color from black to white and paste onto the highlight layer after shifting the white lines one pixel vertically and horizontally away from the light source (in my case it's rearward and outboard of the black panel line.) Now erase any white line where it is overlapped by the black one.

I will try that.   I need to take my time and really be careful with the free selection tool...   Maybe I will try just the nose panels as a start.   

[Vraciu]

http://www.probuiltmodel.com/img/galleries2images/v7kfaebE.jpg

Is the underside of the rudder supposed to be gray all the way aft?


Here's how it is coming so far.

Ignore the AJ*A lettering and panel line errors.   The stars and bars are placeholders.  The number is wrong on the tail.

[Devil 505]

I'd say just follow the demarcation line on the fuselage strait back. There's some gray on the rudder but it ends before the rudder curves up sharply.

[Vraciu]

I'd say just follow the demarcation line on the fuselage strait back. There's some gray on the rudder but it ends before the rudder curves up sharply.

I can't disagree.  Wish I had a better photo, but that's what I will do then.  Thanks. 

[Vraciu]

Looks good.

Here's a tip for you. erase some of the OD green from the leading edge of the wing. Be sure to have your underside gray on the top side of the wing. This will give the proper feathered demarcation between the paint colors. then adjust the demarcation line on the nose to meet up with the wing. Have a look at the reference photo in page 1.

You never want to let the paint stop on a hard edge created by the mating of parts of the bitmap - always simulate the wraparound of a paint color. Check your reference photos to see if the top color(s) wrap around the leading edge or stop just before it.

Okay so I tried everything I could to give the line on the wing a blended edge.  No dice.  The skin stretches the pixels in that area *badly*.     The reference photo has the OD and gray blending exactly at the midpoint of the leading edge.    The skin simply can't be made to do it.   So I did the best I could with what it will allow and here is what it looks like.

I also was able to redo the cowling panels but they wrap funny before they finish going aft (they bend outboard in an L shape).   Just a quirk of the skin.   I can't do much about it.

At this point I just have to do some cleanup on the panel lines and verify the markings are all where they should be.   I have some flap pattern stuff to finish drawing and a white stripe to add to the vertical stab/rudder.  Also need to make the canopy frames OD.

At this point I am trying to decide if I should do a gaussian blur on all the OD paint as it is basically a bunch of random pixels at the moment.   


This is off my laptop running the bare minimum graphics.   Sorry for the lack of anti-aliasing.

[oboe]

Hi Vraciu,



This is a superb reference photo - wartime color is pretty rare, and its also a close-up that shows a lot of detail about the plane/skin.

I understand what you mean about the stretching on the leading edge of the wing - the P-38 is the same way, very difficult to work with and trade-offs must be made.   Have you tried painting the leading edge of the lower wing surface with an olive drab line, feathered into the grey of the rest of the lower wing?   This would move the boundary between upper and lower wing colors down slightly from the midpoint, but it would look so much better to have a feathered boundary between the drab and grey than the hard boundary you have now.  (IMO)

I don't see anything wrong with using some artistic license when the skin cannot support the 100% accurate look.  Take a look at this example:


This artist has the leading edge of the wing entirely drab, and the feathered edge occurs on the lower wing.

The other great thing about this reference photo is the oil stains and smudges it shows; the color variations in the olive drab - from the sun-faded upper cowl to the more brownish drab of the side of the cowl, and even the two-tone grey near the panel with the drilled-holes.   Look at the stains and smudges in the wing root area - what an outstanding example to follow of real world wear and tear.   Bless Howard's photographer!

This looks to be a hard-used aircraft.  You could really spend a lot of time on paint wear/fading, oil smudges & grime, paint chipping along access panels, if you wanted to.  You've picked great subject there.

Couple other things I wanted to mention- and I just discovered this myself when looking over some old P-51 skins I did but never submitted.  The horizontal panel line on the cowling above the exhaust manifold - it should be parallel to the centerline of the manifold - i.e. maintain a constant distance between panel line and the top edge of the manifold - yours looks to have a greater distance at the forward edge of the manifold.  This could be a trick of the view perspective on your picture though - but you might want to check it out. 

Also check the location of your gun camera port - it looks a little low to me, compared to the reference photo.

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