Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Custom Skins => Topic started by: Greebo on April 12, 2009, 06:06:19 AM
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This Il-2 is based on the second aircraft in the photo below. It is painted in the early bright green/black scheme which is incidentally a pretty good match for the MA terrain. Although there are quite a few photos of similar planes I could have used, this was the only one which had a unit to go with it. Strictly speaking this is an early 2 seat Il-2M without the later swept wings, but I think HTC will let that go.
The nearer Il-2 is in some ways more interesting as it has a slogan and some mission or kill stars. However I didn't like the camo layout as much, with the front fuselage painted black and the rear green. There have been a few very inaccurate profiles of this nearer plane published. You really have to take a lot of VVS profiles for what they are, wild guesses by the artist.
(http://www.gfg06.dial.pipex.com/photos/8thGSHaPIL-2.jpg)
(http://www.gfg06.dial.pipex.com/screenshots3/8th_GShAP_Il-2M3_SC1.jpg)
(http://www.gfg06.dial.pipex.com/screenshots3/8th_GShAP_Il-2M3_SC2.jpg)
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Gorgeous! I love the weathering on the upper wing surface :aok
ReDhAwK
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Excellent as usual.
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Looks great Greebo! Your work is absolutely much appreciated, sir!
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bump
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bump
:huh
Great work as usual Greebo.
I have to get around to making an La5FN/7 and Il-2 template, I've been itching to do a VVS plane for a while now and now some of the models are finally updated.
Curious, on your last Il-2 skin there was some Russian on the side, did you hand draw that or use your keyboard? I know how to set my keyboard to Cyrillic however I'd have to sit and peck until I found the right letters.
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very cool great work sir :salute
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The patriotic slogans and artwork are the best bit about VVS skins. I never use a font for anything like that, it just does not look right.
Ideally if I have a photo I will try to resize, rotate and deskew the part of that photo containing the text, noseart or markings until it matches the skin. I import the edited photo as a layer in the skin and try to match features like a filler cap or a hinge line on the photo to the same part on the skin, resizing the photo until the scale is exactly right. Then I make a new layer and use a line tool to draw the text by hand, tracing over the photo. Best bet is to use a false colour like red when doing this.
For complex multi coloured noseart I will sometimes make a whole new multi-layer image 2 or 4 times oversize. When done, I make a copy of this, merge the layers, shrink it and import it into the skin.
The worst thing about VVS skins is the lack of good quality information compared to Western or even Japanese aircraft. Photos are less likely to have an accompanying squadron identification as the VVS had no formal squadron marking system like Western air forces. You often find the same few photos cropping up in 3 or 4 different books too.
These photos are often of too poor quality to get a lot of information about camo demarcations etc. Individual Soviet factories often went their own way on camo schemes, unlike say the RAF who strictly controlled the layout. There is a lot of quite heated debate in Soviet warplane forums about the correct colours for VVS planes too, no one seems to really know. As a result profiles are less accurate for VVS skins than for any other air force. You can often find 2 or 3 completely different looking profiles all based on the same photo.
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Looks great, Greebo :aok