Thanks again everybody!
I have a new one. Everyone remembers this guy for his famous DR1. Did you know he had a DVII also?
Fokker D.VII 365/18
Ltn Josef Jacobs
JAFU, Jasta 7
June 1918

Download. http://www.mediafire.com/?ttjqmme2dq5

No love for the Allies?

>sniff<

I kid, nice looking skins MusicMan!

What, you didn't see the Kitty-In-The-Ring skins?

The jaunty tilt of the hat is quite inspired, but the "kitty?"

Not so much...

Latest skin looks a little too clean, MM. That very dark black appears to have stripped all the detail from the texture.

I do love the new skin's but, they are starting to have an artificial look to them for some reason. They do not seem to match the look of the original planes have in the presentation.

The yellow striped DIIIa is right on in looks.

IMHO.

Just for the record, I can't do anything in skin artwork.

Originaly I had it weathered and textured different. For some reason when I converted it to DDS and be in game it looked too grainy. Just wasn't right. Udets came out great cause it was red but doing this in black caused some problems. I ended up starting with a clean slate with smooth textures. Beleive me, I went back and forth on this one. One idea I played with a little is the alpha channel. With some more testing I can help it out some.
I wasn't going to upload this one yet but put it up as is. Just pretend that Jacob just got done painting it and it's still wet. LOL!
I like doing German skins cause there is so many options. I'll probably udate this one but after that I'm waiting for the DR1 to come out.
Keep the suggestions and ideas comming. That's what it's all about. Cheers!

I agree with the others.

...and to be quite frank, I do not like critisising others' work (even constuctivly) when it's a whole lot better than I can do - since I can't do it at all...

...but is there a way to just make black a really dark grey or something?

like before with the bumblebee Pfalz, when the black is so...well, black, that the skin loses much of the texture details, the whole aircraft loses alot of its appeal. (in my humble opinion)

Nice work though Musicman!

p.s. I would venture a guess that there is no luv for the Entente machines as they're so much more "conservative" in their paint schemes.

Black is very hard to do mostly because it should not be black but shades of grey...All black takes away detail and looks like a void rather than an object. I did a few black planes for wwi sims and they were really tough and never did look quite right.

The black on the original plane was faded to shades of grey for sure and the whites were probably cream colored after a few days in the sun. Try streaking the grey or varying its shades on the plane so it looks weathered.

Good to see someone doing these planes,,your Fokker was the best and looks just right.

Some details of a painting that may help you weather a black airplane.



WW-1 Art

Here is a rule I always followed,,,never use the full tint of a color,,,always desaturate the color,,a full color will look too vivid and fake on a pc screen.

An easy way to desaturate any color including black is to reduce the contrast of that color until it looks natural..I used Paint Shop Pro and went into color tool and clicked contrast down until it looked about right.

With most colors on planes I misted over the finished panel with spray tool using a very light mist of a shade or two off from the base color. I set the tool to mostly transparent so very little color was in the mist..Mist it in varying degrees and even use streaks of mist. Also the spray tool can be set to a fine splatter look that makes a subtle texture.

I've been working on it. Thanks for the input.
Faded, weathered, dirty, textured. See how this one is.
Download. http://www.mediafire.com/?tlytidzjm2z

Much nicer, good one.

Thanks man. I think this one will do for now.

That's not weathering!

Fokker Triplanes and early D.VII's were painted using a great big brush and a tin of olive paint. The paint was drawn over the finished surface until the brush was dry, then it was re-dipped in the paint and started again. This gives the streaky camouflage on the aircraft. Field repaints were done with thin washes of colour over the top (to keep the weight down) so the original paint often showed through. The picture above shows the streaky olive-on-natural-linen camouflage showing through the overpainted black.

Now, Jacob's D.VII, No 365/18, was from the early batch with streaky camouflage on the fuselage so it's fine. The wings would have been lozenge fabric no matter what the fuselage. There is a suggestion that they were initially left unpainted, before the whole aircraft was painted black.

The fact that I know this stuff may qualify me as a nerd.

Cheers,

RD.

Yes, you got it! Very nice.

..... and yes RD, I know that. Just trying to give and idea here. Cheers.

I thought you'd have known, smart lady!

Cheers,

RD.

Oooh, Masaq discovered nasty glitch in skins.

If the name of the skin is too long it will show fine in the selection windows but in game will be the bog standard all white no skin look. Shortening the name fixed it.

I don't know the character count that causes this, btw.

You guys are too much fun!
Yes long names will mess up your ingame with white skins. I try to keep mine short and sweet. All have been tested before I ship em out.
Other problems can be spaces or caps.

Your blacks look great now,,,good job.