Ink
As to the perfect: I will say sorry for mis-reading IrishOne's post, but the rest of the back-patting posts shared the same sentiment. I will leave it be and try to stay on topic.
Now to the heart of the matter, you taking offense at my and Fencer's comments?
I think you have the entirely wrong attitude for it so far. I said "it's not all that great" and you can look up the quotes. I never said it sucks and you seem to be reading from Slash's comment. I'm not posting out of arrogance nor do I think Fencer lying about anything in this thread.
Fencer didn't lie. Where did he come close? He posted all of 2-3 comments in this thread. It's not like there's much chance. You seem to be thinking something else when you replied to his comment and you said "I never said I took credit for the weathering" -- and I think this is your misunderstanding. He never mentioned weathering specifically. He's talking about just using the default and painting the tail markings on top.
Just to make sure we're on the same terminology: Weathering is final subtle details on a finished skin. Exhaust stains. Dirt kicked up from wheels. Oil leaks. Paint chips. Gun gas streaks.
You are saying you "took" or "kept" this or whatever you want to call it, you kept the default weathering. Only, you can't "keep" the weathering, because it's part of a flat 2D bitmap. The finished package is the final skin. You do anything at all on the skin when you use it as a template, and the weathering is covered up. The only way to keep the weathering is to not put anything over it. To use effects to tweak it, or to use translucent layers that let it show through.
The end result is you're not making the bitmap, it's all just the same default. You're modifying and tweaking it.
Maybe to use an analogy you can relate to more?
Say I took your painting that was the equivelant of 50+ hours of work, hung it in a shadow box with a red light shining on it and called it my own artwork? Clearly some effort went into it, but the main focus is the painting, which I did very little to.
How about this... You're new to skinning and limited on time. Normally I advocate that ALL new skinners MUST learn to do their own panel lines and rivets, etc. It can seem daunting and the first time can take a little time, but it's mostly mental and not due to effort. In your case, I'll share with you my Ki-84 file.
I think you're doing it the way you chose to do it because you don't want to do panel lines or rivets or any of the finer details. You have this feeling it will take too much time and you may or may not be right. If I gave you a photoshop file (.PSD) with layers would that free you up a bit to fill in your own work a bit more? Kind of like giving you a paint by numbers and you get to choose all the colors etc but the lines are there. Saves you some time. What do you think?
P.S. in-progress screen shots and the feedback you get along the way are 100000 times more valuable than after-the-fact screenshots where you are reluctant to change anything. Only posting "DONE" screenshots won't be very helpful to you, the person creating it. I would encourage you to keep posting more. People understand they are works in progress, but new skinners also have to understand they aren't picasso right off the bat, too
