VFA-204 River Rattler Aggressors Inbound

[Bananimal]

So I've managed to finish the 400 CAG bird today. Just a few minor tweaks and she's done.

 

The interesting thing about these VFA-204 birds is the camo patterns, although they look the same at a cursory glance, are quite different. I wound up having to redraw all the camo on the plane and relink the seams for it all. Took three days to accomplish that. The effort is worth it though when you see two of them sitting side-by-side on the ramp. They look very cool.

 

I only have four more of these to go, then I can start on the normal line camo birds. Those will be stunning as well. I can't wait to see what they look like in the sim.

Edited June 18, 2018 by Bananimal

[uscstaylor]

Looking forward to this my friend

[Weegie]

I am wearing out the F5 key here

 

 

Seriously they look fantastic, it's a "must have" skin(s) for sure

 

 

I maybe don't appreciate all the effort, as I'm clueless, but I am very grateful that you are making them, thank you very much

[Bananimal]

I am wearing out the F5 key here

 

 

Seriously they look fantastic, it's a "must have" skin(s) for sure

 

 

I maybe don't appreciate all the effort, as I'm clueless, but I am very grateful that you are making them, thank you very much

 

You're most certainly welcome. I've been the benefactor of the effort of many others in these forums. The least I could do is give back to make the hobby better for everyone. That's what this community is all about. :thumbup:

[Strut]

You're most certainly welcome. I've been the benefactor of the effort of many others in these forums. The least I could do is give back to make the hobby better for everyone. That's what this community is all about. :thumbup:

 

 

Nicely put and very good of you Bananimal, and I am also looking forward to your very well done skins. Thanks.

[Bananimal]

A'ight folks. I've been quiet for the last week and a half. Had to take a break for a few days as these camo skins are super tough to do. But, the results are quite nice.I actually surprise myself sometimes at how good they come out. This is the level of weathering that will be applied to all of the skins when released. Looks rather convincing.

 

This one took me a good 60 hours to get right. Basically, you are getting an entirely different paint job on these skins. They are each unique. As such, and as mentioned previously, the camo has to be redone on each bird. Pretty much painting the plane over again on each of them. Fun!

 

This is number three of the five aggressors I will be releasing. Then I'll be doing the Line camo of each as well. After that, there are two more special camo birds to be done, the CoNA and then the grey line schemes.

[Weegie]

This is fantastic news I've been sitting on my hands, trying not to bother you because I so looking forward to these skins getting released

 

 

They look absolutely amazing from the posted picture

 

 

Thank You

[Lenop]

I have your screenshots as my desktop background, this skin looks awesome, totally amazing! Can't wait to see them in the sim. Keep up the good work

[Bananimal]

Oh, I'm keeping it up alright. Heheheh! :D

 

How about some Fulcrum camo? This is a rare one. One of the two rare camo patterns I will be releasing with the skin pack. I could only find two pictures of it. It's coming along great though. The other side looks even better. I'll be laying out the tail and aft end tomorrow. Saving the wings (most tedious part) for last.

 

If anyone has any pics or diagrams of this scheme, that would help a bunch. I'm not sure if the camo is a wrap around or not. I only have pics from the side and one from the top left.

 

As a side note, the VFA-204 pilots have a real sense of humor. Note the name on the canopy. J.G. Cotton with a call-sign of "Balls." On the 405 aggressor I posted pics of earlier, the pilot's last name is Koch. His call-sign is "Cherry." Hahhahah! These guys. It gets better, I was reading an article on the squadron the other night and there was a story on the stencil being applied to an aircraft. The pilot's last name was Crowe. His call-sign was "Sheryl." I kid you not. LOL! Flying jets with these guys must be a riot.

Edited July 3, 2018 by Bananimal

[Bananimal]

Ok folks, got another update for you on the Fulcrum camo aggressor scheme. She's just about done. I have some minor tweaks to complete such as moving the fuel tank River Rattlers logo to put the snake on the center line of the tank, a decal touch up here and there, etc.

 

This one took the longest. I was only able to find four photos of this aircraft. They helped, but I had to go on a schematic I found of the scheme and what I saw on the aircraft in the photos. The text and markings are accurate on the top of the aircraft. There were no pictures of the bottom so I had to make a best guess when lining up the camo pattern on the schematic with what I knew was there from the photos. I think it came out great. Most certainly a test for patience though.

 

An interesting thing I found out about this bird is that it was originally a Blue Angel. BuNO 161942. It was transferred to VFA-203 and then later from VFA-203 to VFA-204. It arrived at VFA-204 in this scheme around August of 1994. They affectionately named the aircraft "Booger" because of the green paint.

 

One of the things that drove me nuts was the fact that the inboard surface of the right vertical stab was devoid of any green paint from what I could tell. I had one angle in one photo that barely showed the surface and just could not tell. I then found a photo that confirmed this. I thought it was somewhat odd they would paint the plane like that. Faithfully adhering to the photos as best I can is what makes these repaints look convincing. It's part of my secret. I will rinse and repeat steps while skinning until I get the camo to match up with the photos just right before moving on. The patterns that are visible in the photos are almost dead on. It's also worth noting that one of the photos has this bird with a grey nose cone. So you will get two of them. One with the black and one with the grey nose cone.

 

So far, this one is my favorite. It's really a mean looking aircraft. I love the unique decaling around the nose of the aircraft. The "Rescue"arrow, the black band on the windscreen frame, etc. Pretty much all the decals on the aircraft were hand created with the exception of the default text and roundels. The snake on the tail was from the image shared to me in this thread. It most certainly came in handy. Thanks a ton for those! They will be used on the upcoming birds I'm doing. I lifted the AF on the tail from a photo, but really had to doctor it up a bit to smooth it out. The entire tank decal was hand made as well. There just aren't any good photos that are usable for these things, so create them I will. :-)

Edited July 9, 2018 by Bananimal

[ST0RM]

Outstanding work on both.

I'm pretty sure we all appreciate the time and effort you've put in.

[Bananimal]

Thanks Storm. Not sure what you mean by "both" as I have five separate aircraft painted so far. Only have four more to go to release. :D:

 

Here's a few shots of "Booger" with the grey nose cone. This one looks good too. Fuel tanks have been reworked and corrected, The end result there is that the scheme appears more balanced. Note the deletion of the black canopy frame stripe as well.

Edited July 10, 2018 by Bananimal

[DonJosh]

your shots looking like real fotos and your work is stunning!

[Bananimal]

Thanks Don. My work is not even half the work. You can thank ED and Belsimtech for the aircraft looking so realistic. I'm simply laying out color and decals. I will agree that I have an extreme eye for detail though. :-P

Edited July 10, 2018 by Bananimal

[DonJosh]

than its time to release your work, i need your work on my hornet to convince me to 100% :P

[Ala12Rv-watermanpc]

Really awesome work!, cant wait to get the skins!

[Sport]

Look very good. It’s too bad the USN doesn’t use these sort of schemes in active combat!

[ST0RM]

Thanks Storm. Not sure what you mean by "both" as I have five separate aircraft painted so far.

 

My mistake. I wasnt noting all the variances of the grey camo birds.

[TigersharkBAS]

Well, just hit a major snag on the CAG bird I'm painting.

 

I'm having to recreate the air brake panel by scratch because there is no photo I can find other than the one in the image below which is so skewed there's no chance to lift it off of the photo. So, as I lay the first trial layer onto the model and view it in the model viewer, I get this. Aaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Show stopper for sure.

 

Why? Just why? :(

 

The good news is, I'm not so sure that the real panel has fleur-di-lis on the corners and I may be able to move the gold line more toward the edge of the panel where hopefully it's not mis-mapped. The bad news is, the other CAG birds I was planning on doing cannot be done because of this. This is the kind of stuff that wastes hours of time.

 

Dude...I feel your pain....there are all kind of strange stretching and texture issues you discover after giving skinning a go.

[Bananimal]

The two worst I've run across so far was the air brake and then the black stripe on the windshield canopy I did on the Booger repaint. There's a spot on the right hand side at the bottom that stretches and the only option is to skew it one pixel in Photoshop. If you skew it two pixels, it's too much.

[Bananimal]

Ok peeps. Here's the next in the series I will be releasing. It is the second special camo I was speaking to earlier in this thread. It's a two-tone Su-27 wrap-around scheme.

 

Initially, I thought this one would be the easiest because all that I had to do (in my mind) was remove the light grey layer from my previous three-tone version of number 413. Once I did that in less than 2 minutes, it was clear to me some rework had to be done. This one had significant deviations from the three-tone scheme and thus required a 95% repaint too. You'd think I'd know better by now.

 

I've got the scheme as close as I could get it sans the bottom of the aircraft. No pictures of it from that angle, so it was left to my interpretation of what seemed feasible given the camo on the top of the aircraft and what camo I could see on the flaps and under-surface of the wings with the pics I did have.

 

So, at this point all there is left to do is two Su-27 three-tone schemes with the AF and Snake on the tail like this one and the Aggressors will be done. I'm thinking I'm going to cheat on these and apply these to the same one's I already have done. That way I can get this pack shipped and move on to the Camo line birds. Painting this many camo birds back to back is very labor intensive. I may even do the same with the camo birds because all they have is a grey nose and black trim on the tails. Other than that they are the same. We'll see. (Correction, they are not the same, therefore I will do them last.)

Edited July 15, 2018 by Bananimal

[Bananimal]

So how close is it to the real thing?

[DonJosh]

too close ;)

[USSInchon]

Thanks for doing these mate, VFA-204 is very close to my heart, I spent 3 years working them in the pattern at NBG.

 

 

[Bananimal]

Glad you will enjoy them. I'll be doing the grey schemes you posted here after I wrap up three more camo aggressors. Working on one right now. Once the greys with respective CAG birds are done, I'm going to move to the line camo they are using today.