P-51 Mustangs

[gamary]

Those are very good looking. How do you do the nose art? Scanned drawing? Directly on the computer?

As far as "add-ons" to the Mustang are concerned, it's almost limitless:
* Rockets
* Napalm tanks
* Fixed tailwheel (postwar)
* Various canopies
* Different nose air intake grids (louvered, different hole pattern)
* Miscellaneous antennaes, etc.

[Vacajun]

Wow!! Stunning work! Jarink, your metal work is the best these old eyes have seen. Congratulations! You and gamary are the Mustang Masters.

Are more in the works? "Flying Undertaker?"

One last picky, picky, comment (education for me): Should the radiator door lines be reshaped?

[Jarink]

I do nose art in several different ways; it all depends on the nature of the art. The simplest is just plain text. I'll try and find a closely matched font and adjust as necessary. Sometimes, I'll create it from scratch using bezier paths and stroke them (I'm not very good at freehand drawing, especially with a mouse!) Noseart that has a picture is obviously more difficult. Usually, I'll try and find a good picture showing the art from as close to a 90? angle as possible. I'll then use the perspective tool to try and reshape it as best I can. Then, it's usually a matter of tracing different picture elements as separate layers. This is what I did to make "My Achin Back", which I scanned from "The Mighty Eighth in Color".


Simple stuff like the circle on "My Achin Back" I usually just draw myself.

When the nose art is a copy of some well-known pinup art (like "Fighting Lady"), I'll sometimes take a large-scale copy of the original art, modify it and resize to fit the profile.

Vacajun,
According to that drawing, it sure looks like they should be reshaped. The photos I was using as a guide didn't really show it all that well. It makes sense that the bottom edge should be rounded to fit the shape of the fuselage, though. I'll make the adjustment.
Thanks for the tip!

[Jarink]

It was a busy day at work, so I only have a small update. I wasn't satisfied with the canopy glass, so I started fooling around trying to make it more, well, glassy looking. I stumbled upon a nice effect here. Even though this wasn't exactly what I had intended, I still like it a lot!

Old canopy

New canopy

[Jarink]

I've been able to work a little bit into this the past few days. Our power went out yesterday, which didn't help matters. Even though I had just saved my template, it got corrupted when the power blinked out. Lost about 2 hours of work.

Still, the major addition is a 108-gallon drop tank. No weathering for there; they were strictly one use tanks. From what I've read, if they carried them on a mission and it was aborted, they'd still drop the tanks before landing as the fuel ate away enough at the glue (these were made primarily out of paper) to make it unsafe.

3 from the 20th Fighter Group.

[BLOWHARD]

REALLY GREAT STUFF!

[Jarink]

Some more 20th FG. I'm only going to post small versions for now; I'm working on setting something up on my Google pages to better display these profiles.






I have a few more then it's on to another group!

[GiantFlyingRobots]

These are really nice, anybody that uses a mouse for this type of work has my admiration. Where are you getting your reference material from? I too have a Mustang project on the go, and I'm looking for some of the more interesting and slightly obscure schemes that are out there.

[Jarink]

For the 20th FG profiles, most of the photographic references have come from 8th Air Force Fighter Group - Littlefriends.co.uk. Great stuff there for Eighth Air Force fighter groups.

I also have dredged up various supplementary info from various places on the web and some books I own.

Two very good web resources, especially the forums:
www.ww2aircraft.net
ArmyAirForces.com

[Serval]

Some really good looking profiles you got there.
The drop tanks also stand out from the fuselage nicely. That is something that is hard to do I think.