Dat Eagle

[Namactual]

So...... are you saying I should go ahead and get that EDF ordered and on it’s way?! 🤔

It could easily be done, and trust me, I want to soooooo bad. It probably would not take that long either. I need to get this skin done first though. I should probably get put the Guardrail next in line at least as well. There is just not enough time in the day.

Hopefully once summer hits I can use up some of my comp time and plow through my back log of projects. I say this every year, but who knows, maybe it will actually happen this time.

Anyway, back to the Eagle, I was looking at doing the classic Air Force grey paint as a future squadron skin after the VA skin and from the top it looks like it could work...

As you can see from the bottom though, the illusion breaks pretty quick with the stark white contrast. I was thinking I might be able to make a few small "stickers" to at least cover the intakes inlets and the rear fuse plates that could tone down the whiteness without actually doubling my workload painting a skin on the inside of the airframe. I think it will work and it will open up more paint scheme options later.

Another thing I have not considered is most of you build with the FT browns stuff, that could really throw it off.
Yeah, that tears it, I am going to plan on making a sheet of self adhesive label paper you can cut and stick on to cover the back side areas. A sheet with a base coat color at the very least. Once I get done I may even add some details to it.

Back to work for me though. I have to get the panel lines done today at the very least.

 

[kilroy07]

Lately I have had some GREAT success with using a covering iron to "roll" the leading edges and taper the trailing...
Might solve your issues here (AND save you some work/time.)

I should probably start a thread or do an article on the process...
(I'm busy converting the PDF for the corsair to laser cut files today though...)


Before


After

 

[Namactual]

That would work for the edges for sure.
The inside of the intakes and the inside of the fuselage plates will need a bit more though.

Ok, so with only 4gb of RAM at the moment, recording and painting is pretty painful. My cursor lags a bit and it changes into the spinning dots periodically so I can not see my brush cursor. That said, I can work with it. It just goes a lot slower. I will try again when I get the extra RAM installed.

Anyway, here is what I did so far today...

Wow, it's a lot huh?

That is all done from scratch though, so it takes a while. I have the time laps vid uploading as I type and you can see how the process works. It looks like it will be done in about 2 hours. (I hate my internet) I will post it here when it is done. In the mean time, I have a few things I have to do for the robotics team. Be back in a bit.

 

[kilroy07]

Wow, it's a lot huh?

Looks like she's in full afterburner!

 

[Namactual]

Looks like she's in full afterburner!

Aye. I wanted to get the maximum amount of surface out of the nozzle for leverage.

Here is the vid...

I did not really have a plan when I started this, but it is a good example of most of the techniques I use when painting this kind of thing. Again, I am not sure how much I will record until I get my RAM installed. I will try to document what I can though.

If there are any questions about this process, give me a shout and I will answer what I can.

 

[Namactual]

More work done.

I am not sure what I am going to do with the white "void" area around the nozzles. That foam has to be there for strength, but I may cut a small notch out of it so it is not quite so noticable. I will try to find the right color for that area as well. Probably will just be black, but I will experiment later.

 

[kilroy07]

A more neutral grey might work just as well (have blue anyone)?

 

[Namactual]

That notch helped quite a bit. I also filled in the little areas in the nozzles themselves. I can live with this for now, but I will try grey/blue for the remaining void at some point.

 

[foamtest]

Is regards to the inlet issue I would just hit it with some spray paint that is close to the color of the skin, or black would probably look good as well. It would save you the headache of making the stickers.

 

[Namactual]

Stickers would be just a base coat color you could print out on label paper so the colors match. Basically a big sticky sheet with the same RGB value. But yeah, you could paint it just as easily. Either way would work.

The VA skin will not have that issue though as it will have a white base color.

Ahh, the joys of panels lines.
I can't wait until I actually get to the painting part. I already have four skins I want to do.

 

[Namactual]

Just about done with the top...

The nose is done all the way around, and the side intakes are almost complete as well.
It's getting there.

 

[Namactual]

Top is done.

Dats a lot of lines. It is going to look good when it's done though.
I am pretty happy with it so far. I am sure some lines will change once I get my Hasegawa kit for reference, but it gets the idea across.
Also, all of the lines are the same at the moment. Once I am done, some lines will end up lighter than others depending on the type of panel/object outline. Then the fun part begins.

 

[Namactual]

I had a major set back and lost about a days worth of work in regards to shading/painting. Thankfully I did not lose my panel lines, that could have been a deal breaker.

I restarted some of the shading, but switched to adding color for a change of pace.

This is going to be the first skin I do. It is a mash up for the first 4 F-15 prototypes. (not done yet obviously)

I think I am going to focus on the details for a while before I get back to the shading and paint. The setback has taken the wind out of my sails a bit. In fact, I think I am going to call it a day and pick this up tomorrow.

 

[Namactual]

More progress with shading...

I misaligned the intake shading on the side of the cockpit area as a result it is way too dark and way too high. Easy fix, but it looks wonky at the moment.

Here is a gif of the shading slowly pulling the illusion of 3d out of a flat plate...

It looks better with every pass, but still a ways to go.

 

[Namactual]

I started on the finer details...

This is where it starts coming together. The decals along with sharper contrast of shadows make it pop. I still have to work on the contrast more, but that will be the last pass I do.

 

[kilroy07]

This is where it starts coming together.

“Starts” He says as the rest of us think it already looks amazing!

 

[Namactual]

“Starts” He says as the rest of us think it already looks amazing!

Thanks brother. I am not saying it looks bad per se, but the quality gets better exponentially with every pass. It's crazy, most of the work I have done so far is just a foundation that ends up getting painted over, but without the foundation I could never get to this point. My pencil sketches work the same way. The last pass is where the magic happens.

Update...

The top view above is a little higher res to show more detail. Still a ways to go, but I hope to have this done and start the build by the weekend.

 

[Namactual]

I think I am done...

With the top anyway. I have most of the work done on the bottom, but there are no details/decals. Probably another day or two. Again, this is a mash up of the first F-15 prototypes, but I also added some T-38 Air Force trainer here and there. I think I may replace the "219" on the nose with "U.S. AIR FORCE" like the T-38's as well. What do you guys think?

Side note:
In preparation of building this weekend, I fired up my Epson Stylus Photo 2200 printer two days ago. After trying to unclog the print head for an hour and wasting probably half of the ink doing so I decided it's time for a new printer. My plan is to buy a wide format printer for full sized prints at some point, but for now I am happy with legal/letter sizes and label paper. I just bought a HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw for $220 and the print quality is great. It's not the "Photo" quality of the Epson, but good enough for my uses. I did some test prints of my Rhino skins and compared it to the Epson prints from before and color reproduction is almost identical. As an added bonus, it does not "soak" the lighter weight paper like the InkJet does.

I despise Inkjets. I go far too long between prints to mess with the upkeep. I should have done this ages ago. The head cleaning ink costs alone would have paid for this.

 

[Wildthing]

I think I am done...
View attachment 128592 View attachment 128593 View attachment 128594
With the top anyway. I have most of the work done on the bottom, but there are no details/decals. Probably another day or two. Again, this is a mash up of the first F-15 prototypes, but I also added some T-38 Air Force trainer here and there. I think I may replace the "219" on the nose with "U.S. AIR FORCE" like the T-38's as well. What do you guys think?

Side note:
In preparation of building this weekend, I fired up my Epson Stylus Photo 2200 printer two days ago. After trying to unclog the print head for an hour and wasting probably half of the ink doing so I decided it's time for a new printer. My plan is to buy a wide format printer for full sized prints at some point, but for now I am happy with legal/letter sizes and label paper. I just bought a HP Color LaserJet Pro M254dw for $220 and the print quality is great. It's not the "Photo" quality of the Epson, but good enough for my uses. I did some test prints of my Rhino skins and compared it to the Epson prints from before and color reproduction is almost identical. As an added bonus, it does not "soak" the lighter weight paper like the InkJet does.

I despise Inkjets. I go far too long between prints to mess with the upkeep. I should have done this ages ago. The head cleaning ink costs alone would have paid for this.

I think I bought my Canon color laser printer 4 or 5 years ago, so glad I got rid of the inkjet

 

[Namactual]

so glad I got rid of the inkjet

Same.

Update: I did some test prints and this is going to look 10 times better than the Rhino.

I made an animated vid so you could pause it at any angle. I had to drop the render quality though. If I rendered the animation at the same detail as the static pictures it would have taken over 8 hours to render.It is best watched at 1080p to see the detail.

I think I may shrink the warning labels just a bit before I build it, but that is minor. There are a lot of other things I would like to change, but without my reference kit I will never be happy. I will fix those issues on the next skin.

Once I prove the new changes and skin is good to go, I plan to format the plans and get those uploaded.

The next skin will be the custom Veteran Airshow skin. After the VA skin I plan on two secret one off custom skins and finally a real squadron skin. I am pretty sure that will be the 493rd Fighter Squadron.
The Grim Reapers.

When those are done it's on to the Raptor.
No rest for the wicked.