FD AU 3

[Kilomuse]

I've gotta say, the cat on that badge is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time

[Wikipedia & Universe]

I've gotta say, the cat on that badge is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time

Thanks, I guess? What do you find funny about it? It is the national animal, so...

If you like it, check out the full size.

Anyway, I have some more liveries in the works for an A320/A321neo. In the meantime, here's an Airbus A318 of the low-cost carrier Wikiwings...


... and a McDonnell-Douglas MD-90 of the growing mainline carrier Echo.

[BB1987]

Sure you know how to come up with distinctive liveries at relative ease. I've spent the last month pondering about the piantscheme of one of my AU airlines liveries and still got nothing

[Hood]

Your certainly must have some patience drawings these complicated liveries. They do look good though.

[Blackbuck]

That Wikiwings livery really is awesome. Loving the stripes!

[reytuerto]

Hi Wikipedia & Universe:
The color schemes of your airliners are very nice; the ondulating gray stripes must be a complicate task, specially with the natural degrade of the fuselage. May I ask the meaning of the cat (a chartreux?) in the badge of your AU nation? Cheers!

[RaspingLeech]

F-3 Shinshin in JASDF markings:

[Wikipedia & Universe]

Sure you know how to come up with distinctive liveries at relative ease. I've spent the last month pondering about the piantscheme of one of my AU airlines liveries and still got nothing

Oh, believe me, I struggle sometimes. I generally go into a project with at least a broad idea of what I want the target to be, but I can run in circles at times trying to implement it. My Ethereal Airlines livery, for example, ended up looking completely different from when I started. I knew I wanted deep ocean, transitioning to atmosphere, transitioning to space, but with a greener hue (fun fact: it was this song and album art that originally inspired me to create the airline). I took some inspiration from United's old "Rising Blue" livery, then scrapped space because it made it too complicated (I wound up with seven different colors), then compressed the transitional colors to the center, then played around with different shades of blues and greens for hours before eventually hitting what I have now. As another example, look at this hot mess which is my sandbox for the Rotubir Airlines livery, which I'll probably de discarding in favor of a much simpler livery.

Your certainly must have some patience drawings these complicated liveries. They do look good though.

That Wikiwings livery really is awesome. Loving the stripes!

Hi Wikipedia & Universe:
The color schemes of your airliners are very nice; the ondulating gray stripes must be a complicate task, specially with the natural degrade of the fuselage.

Thanks. I've gotten a lot of practice and learned a number of "tricks" along the way to help with the more complicated designs. One is to create a base pattern for the livery and make several copies of it, recoloring each copy in different brightnesses in accordance with the shading pattern. I make sure they're all aligned exactly and overlay false color aircraft on top of each, using a reference point to make sure the vertical alignment is the same before changing the background color to whatever color I want to fill in. Here's an example of what I mean. I then color-erase all the unwanted false colors until only the livery shades are left (see here), laying each copy on top of the other until I have a completely shaded plane. If I want something such as the winglets or engines to be painted differently, I always have a copy of those so I can color and shade them accordingly. Another thing I can do, and this might be unique to Kolourpaint (though later versions of MSPaint may have added it as well), is I can select an entire area and change the brightness of all the colors at once by bumping the "Value" up and down. That's likely the approach I'll take for the shading copies the next time I do a livery with a gradient (e.g. Poppi). In combination with the technique in the linked image, that should shave hours off the process.

May I ask the meaning of the cat (a chartreux?) in the badge of your AU nation? Cheers!

It's a Maine Coon, actually. The breed is very common throughout the country, both as a housepet and and some cases in the wild (particularly in forests), and it played a prominent symbolic role in the movement that overthrew the tyrannical government of the Holy Union of Britannica, which preceded the FRWU. (Yes, I know, "overthrowing Britannica." The story goes there. ) Basically, there was a movement of people in the 90s who started establishing small settlements on the outskirts of cities to distance themselves from the prying eyes of the regime, and the regime responded by levying huge fees on the settlements to pressure the inhabitants into abandoning them. In one village outside the capital that refused to pay, a government official showed up with some soldiers and grabbed the popular village cat, a Maine Coon, hoisting it in the air and threatening to slaughter it. The cat wriggled free and escaped, severely scratching the official's face in the process, and the soldiers could not find it after it ran off. As a reprisal for this official's humiliation, the High Dean (i.e. dictator) personally ordered an army unit to massacre the village the next day, and the survivors used the story of the cat as a symbol of revolution and defiance. They created the "Unbroken" flag featuring the cat's silhouette, which was in widespread use by pro-democracy movements by the time the regime fell in October 1999. A modified version of this flag now serves as Wikipedia and Universe's Naval Jack.

Anyway...

Here are some more narrowbody examples from Ethereal Airlines. The first is a Boeing 737 MAX-7, which is the drawing shown in the image links to the shading technique examples.


Below are Airbus A320neo and A321neo. Note that the A321 bears an advertisement for Night Nation Run, a running music festival sponsored by the Ethereal Airlines. Promotions and partnerships with various electronic music bands and festivals around the world are a unique part of the airline's branding and business model.

[eswube]

Great looking drawings.

[RaspingLeech]

I redid my ASF-X Shinden II images since the length I was using was incorrect (17m, while the official length is 19.5m):




I also fixed the JASDF livery, since it has a white underside:


And finally, I added two more liveries. JASDF experimental livery:


And according to fictional history of the aircraft, Japan exported it to the United Kingdom as the F-3C-RN Magnificent Lightning II. Since it never actually appears in any of the games in RAF markings, I used the RAF-operated F-35 as inspiration: