This week I wanted to do some nose art for the Spitfire asset. As much as I love the pin-up model style, I know I wouldn't be able to re-create it. So, I did the next best thing. I added my dog, Benson, to the project and going to use him for nose art. This is my first attempt, as I'm not happy with it. I played around with a lot of filters within Photoshop to get the style I was looking for - It didn't work.
Nevertheless, my dog is in my project and I will go back to it and rework it.
I also thought it was wise to understand the history of nose art. This isn't going to be an essay but I shall do a quick summary.
The first reported use of nose art was back in 1913 on an Italian boat plane which had a sea monster on the fuselage. It was then commonplace for Italian pilots to do this. During WW1, this became a decorative thing to do and help make the 'ace' units stand out. Example of this was Germany's, Baron Von Richthofen and his Flying Circus - named as they were agile and also had brightly colored planes.
WW2 is considered the golden age as this is when most of the iconic designs were created (such as the shark design). Once again, different units had nose art to make them stand out.
Cartoons and other popular characters were used. The pin-up models (easily the most iconic) and these were used to remind them of home (also something to look at). The American pin-ups are different than the European ones as the American ones had far less clothing and more 'racier'. These also served as morale boosters - given that they were fighting a war, you can't blame them to find anything to help boost morale.
This week, I laid out the cockpit UV's into the UV set. I also spent a couple of days this week, exporting every single bit (high, low poly models and cages for both sections) out for both spitfire outer sections and cockpit to bake and then bake them.
I also tried to make panels for the Spitfire in Maya - they didn't look right. So I then tried to put the high poly main section of the Spitfire in Zbrush to see if I could sculpt in the panels - this didn't work either. Annoyingly, Zbrush kept crashing and so did Substance when I tried to bake. Fortunately, it was sorted by the end of the week and was able to begin texturing
I think Substance Painter is the way forward regarding the panels. Will do this next week when I texture. Results below:
Maya attempt at Panels
Zbrush attempt at panels
Texturing in Painter. Only base color and no grime or extra detail. Also, I created the RAF graphics you see below. I decided to do these in Photoshop and then import them into Painter so I can control the uniformity of them.
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