Japanese Secret Projects - my first serious 2D profile art commission

[Skyraider3D]

In July I posted the (3D) cover image I created for Midland Publishing's upcoming book Japanese Secret Projects, here.



Below is a sneakpeek of some of the 2D profile art I did for this book. I took a little bit of a risk by accepting this commission, having never really done any profile art before! Having used Photoshop for well over a decade, I took on the challenge and with some help from Lieuwe and Kelcey I got to grips with profile drawing quickly. Not that I had a choice, having already accepted the commission! Because of a fairly tight deadline, the amount of work was too much for me to take on alone, so Kelcey took on a chunk of the work and did a fantastic job at it. I am sure he'll post his stuff here too at some point.

Since the book is not published yet (due for release in November) I'm only showing two profiles for now. The rest will follow once the book is released.

First up is a Kugisho high-speed aircraft study with DB 601 engine. I more or less discovered this project myself, while digging around in the Japanese online archives. As such it's possibly the first profile art ever done of this aircraft, as I've never seen anything published about it before. Ironically the Japanese Naval Air Force never adopted the DB 601 for their fighters, but the Army did with their Ki-61. The colours are based on an A6M3 "Hamp" found derelict on Buna, New Guinea in 1943.



You can view the actual archive material by searching for A03032272300 on Japan Center for Asian Historical Records(JACAR) National Archives Japan.

NB. The greyscale version is an example of the templates I drew for each profile, before colours and markings were added.




The second profile is a fictional aircraft, which was published in a Japanese magazine called Sora in 1944. Sora magazine had previously fooled Allied intelligence by publishing articles on fictional aircraft (Kelcey has done a few of those!), but this design, the S-31 Kurowashi ("Black Eagle") was so outrageous with its push-pull contra-props, that it failed to attract Allied interest. The colours are based on those of the 2nd Chutai, 62nd Sentai - a Japanese Army Air Force bomber unit.




I will show more of the profile art once the book gets released later this year. Prints will become available then too, on http://www.digitalaviationart.com.

Thanks for looking!



PS. I've finally updated my website yesterday, so if you have a few minutes to kill, please have a peek.

[Clint Mitchell]

As before!

Clint

[gamary]

The Kugisho A/C is the best IMHO. I really love your template, and there are a few things for me to learn here.

Great work as always!

[Ugo Crisponi]

Sooo good!! Being almost half japanese, love Japanese stuff

[Ugo Crisponi]

p.s. perhaps the exhaust of the Kugisho could be a little more bright/visible?

[mjag]

Both look great Ronnie

[BLOWHARD]

Those look good
But maybe a little to consistent in the panel lines? The lines make them look a little mechanical and take away from the dimensional quality, especially having a dark line followed by a light line. A little variation will go a long way for realism.
I realize these are done and in publication but there will always be a next time.
The weathering is pretty sweet!

[JMSmith]

thanks for reposting the link ronnie,

i lost it with my windows crash

how the hell did you find this one, i thought we had found everything on there, and you work is superb as always(creep creep grovel grovel)
(you have some books i would love a copy of)

[d4m1an]

Oh my!! What awesome, awesome work you've done! I certainly can't wait to see more!!!

D

[Skyraider3D]

Thanks very much guys!!


Blowhard, yes you got me on the panel lines. Copy-paste, invert, shift 1x1 pixel... quick and dirty! Guilty as charged, haha! Will keep it in mind for future work, as with you guys I can't get away with this clearly!

John, sorry to heard about your computer crash!
I think that one was in the bunch of reference numbers I once sent. It was one of my earlier finds when that site was still mostly Japanese. I did a Japanese search for Navy Air Depot, using the Japanese text from the "author" entry of the A7M Reppu wind tunnel test reports (you did get those, right?). This was "high-speed study nr.7". I also found nr.6 on high-speed wing sections, but no other ones unfortunately.