Repaint: 349th Bomb Squadron's Once in a While

[alanbradbury]

Here's my repaint of the Shockwave B-17G as the 100th Heavy Bomb Group's B-17G Once in'a While, which was in the 349th Bomb Squadron. She flew quite a lot of missions (over 40 as far as I'm aware), but was eventually forced down at Saarbrucken in late 1944. If anyone wants this repaint, let me know and I can post it on the 'net, but it's more in the way of an experiment with Photoshop plug-ins at the moment.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/ ... aerial.jpg

Also, a big thank you to Shockwave for producing such a superb add-on for FSX, flies like a dream and looks even better. Great job guys!

[Lewis - A2A]

Looks great Alan. I already know people who want it. Post it up at AVSIM the more the merrier.

edit: which plug ins? Any new freeware by chance?

[alanbradbury]

Okay, if people want it, I'll stick it up on AVSIM. I didn't want to do that without posting it here first, particularly with the B-17's files being payware, as I wasn't sure whether Shockwave would be happy about things based on its products going up on the 'Net freely available. I need to make sure it mipmaps properly first, but it should be there in a little while.

Re: plug ins - nothing special. One of my jobs is training people on software, amongst that I train advanced courses on Photoshop and Illustrator, so I'm currently ramming my way through the new CFS3 versions of those programs and checking out what they can and can't do. Specifically in this case with regard to graphics tablets (as I used a tablet to draw the Once in'a While nose art). Also it was an experiment with directly editing DDS files instead of converting them into targas or whatever.

Al

[Lewis - A2A]

Well so long as its just the skin its fine to upload it.

Interesting Job you got there, re: tablets how'd it go?

Its one area ive always been interesting in but Ive never had the chance to use one. I believe they have come down in price recently with some non-brand name example seeming rather cheap. Although of course the size is important.

[alanbradbury]

I've been using one of these just recently:

http://www.trust.com/products/default.a ... item=14070

Far cheaper than a WACOM tablet but I've yet to try it on a Mac, although since they now have intel processors too, I suspect it will probably work on a Mac, just not got around to trying it yet.

I picked this tablet up up for 40 quid in the UK and it's very good for the money, not as many pressure sensitivity levels as a top of the range WACOM tablet, but it's good enough for most stuff and about a tenth of the price of a WACOM one. Works really well in both Photoshop and especially good in Illustrator.

It made drawing the nose art for the Once in a While repaint very much easier than would have been the case with just a mouse, but one thing to be aware of if you use Photoshop a lot is that you pretty much have to use keyboard shortcuts for everything, as it is a pain in the ass switching to the mouse when you are using the pen. Not a big deal for me personally, but if you tend to use the tool palette to select tools and alter brush sizes, rather than the shortcuts, you'd have to alter your working methods a bit with a pen.

Al

[John Pimlott]

Lovely looking job Alan!!

[alanbradbury]

This is now up at avsim.com, file name: b-17g_once_in_a_while.zip

Al

[Marlin]

Thanks Alan. You did a very nice job and also thanks for the history to go with it.