Hellcat Skinning Project
Grim Reaper (VF10)
Art Flores & WILZ Clydew
 |
|
About
the
Hellcat20 Project:
Wilz, a Warbirds player
and friend, needed help with a project he was
working on ... a skin with the "Grim Reaper" for the F6F5. He was
having trouble with the number on the tail and fuselage. Also part of
the star decal was not fitting properly on one side of the plane. He
complained about stuff moving around.
Well, I looked at the work he did and looked at the default skin and tried to find what was going on. I found out that parts of the plane use the same skin only reversed, so you will see on my Photoshop file a reversed "20" for the right side. And then there is the "weird" stuff like the area of the landing gear cover that is squashed and the large section of wing underside that is skinned with a 2x2 section of paint. That's 2x2 pixels! I liked the red circle with the skeleton and I have always had a soft spot for the Cat ever since the pre-iMac boxed game "Hellcats Over the Pacific" captured my attention about a dozen years ago (1994 - $37.50), including an authentic reproduction of the Pilot's Handbook. So about 20 or 30 hours ago, I got started skinning and painting. Then I did 20 more hours painting and skinning. At the very bottom of this page you'll see pretty much the final version with links to more screenshots and reference material. Wilz and the PDC will decide if the redball version is an option or not. |
 |
|
Anyway, what Wilz and I
want is this neat, new Hellcat to be available to the PDC
community
and to all users of Warbirds. Why? Well, there is only one
default
skin available for the F6F5. We need more skins for this great plane
(plus the pilot is
really ugly). If you agree, leave comments on the Furball website.
So, if it takes a bunch of you readers to light a fire
under the PDC, then go get the Matchlight Charcoal and I'll get the
zippo.
In the meantime, Wilz has been working on the F4U and he'll probably be doing the F4F Wildcat. |
Which version do you like best?
version A "redball" or version B without
 |
Thanks
to
Wilz, we
started this F6F assignment. We tried working on the
F6F and started running into problems. The left side of the
fuse is actually
back a little farther than it should be. There are
migration issues with the right side to the left. Part of the
left fuselage is used by the right side, left and right are same skin.
Other parts are mirror images, therefore the number "20" has to be
reversed. The latest bluebird is
1024x1024. Next chance you get, check out the default Hellcat and look
at the amazing lack of detail
in the original plane skin. The amount
of time required to make a really good planeskin and pilot is not
possible when the plane has got to be there overnight. If each skin
took 20 or 30 hours like mine do, we'd never have any game at all. Look
at the handsome
pilot
below!
below ... WIP (work in progress). Click to enlarge:
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
|
These next
photos show
the more complete "b" model. Details that have been added:
|
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 See the "dark" guns barrels. At right, there seems to be no way to paint the large areas next to the landing gear. Oh well! Think the small "20" was easy to do? Think again! Should I lighten the underside of the fuselage? I guess so. |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
"So that's where the left
flap goes!" Compare this
picture with the one above it and you can see how I worked on
the underside skin. It was a pain trying to find where the light purple
area by the gear is. So far as I can tell, you can't detail it. |
