No, I didn't mixed the languajes, nor started to talk spanglish: the title must be in Spanish. It happens that this is a Spanish song (I have a milky cow) and it is the most appropiate song I found for this article.

By the first half of the year 2003 I was a plastic models aircraft fan. I had just finished an Italieri Ju-52/3m in the Milka colors, when I found a web site with a FS2000 Pierino Primavesi model. It was heavy to fly, but easy to paint. Why heavy? Because before FS2004 the Flight Simulator lacked of the posibility to change the cargo/passenger weight. So Pierino made the plane with an imaginary center fuel tank, with the same maximum weight of the virtual cargo. You had to empty manually the tank to adjust the gross weight, and of course, you couldn't use this tank on flight.

So I painted it, and released it to just one web site. It has been downloaded 250 times, not a great success, but it gave me the desire to make better and better repaints. Four years later, I've released 99 files, 137 textures in total and I feel very proud of it. So, why don't I improve my first repaint? After all, what is best to celebrate my 100th upload than to release again my first one?

The first step was, of course, to find a Ju-52/3m model with permission to repaint. And the one I found was... a Pierino Primavesi file, FS2004 version! It couldn't be another way. Of course, the texture arrangement was different. The original one had mirroring problems, so the cow on the tail can be seen only from one direction, looking inverted from the other. As I mentioned this topic in a previous release, I'll don't say more about it.

Before starting to work with the fsOC team, I used an old Photostyler to make my repaints. It was good, but I was having problems with some difficult dirty textures. So I bought Photoshop CS3, enrolled in a computer academy, took lessons for three weekends in the company of a woman friend of mine, and started to paint. The difference in available tools is great, and the use of layers helps a lot. It means that if you are unsure about what will be the better solution for a detail, you can do two solutions, compare them or even mix them, easily. It means that you can put a logo over the tail, resize, weather it, a dozen of changes, and when you test the final result, you still can move the original logo up or down without having to redo all the dirt.

The original plane has no white textures, so I had to do mine. In this case, I'd better say "grey textures" due to the amount of corrugated skin of the plane. Why these white textures? As I wrote in another article, it's more difficult to do the first repaint but easier the next ones. I'm including these grey textures as a gift to another repainters.

Being an upgrade of my repaint, I had no need to make the research about the original planes, don't you? But I did again in case I had forgotten something. And I did, after all four years is a lot of time in a career or hobby. This time I discovered that there were TWO Ju-52/3m in Milka colors. Can somebody tell me why the Milka Company ended the patrocinium of this planes?

After finishing the "grey textures", and just in this particular case, I had to do another "blue textures". Why? Well, do you see the original plane? The cowls are blue, same as the cockpit's external frame. I did it while I was remembering an old woman I meet by the time I was making my first repaint: she worked in an Italian factory, painting real bombers in the WWII, pregnant and being paid with just a cup of rice each day. And do you think that this repainting hobby is a tough task? I have enough first hand histories of Spanish civil war and WWII to fill too many pages.

After finishing the blue textures I found another problem: the Flight Simulator tends to interpret the corrugated skin as a metalic one, and blurs the result. The solution: to remove the mips (yes, there is another article where I explain that).

Now comes the usual details: cutting the cow from the pictures, taking care that both cows have the "Milka" name in the right direction (it's not just a matter of making the cow to walk in the opposite direction), to find the right picture with the Milka logo...

Or not? After all, we take the logos from the pictures because we can't scan the original logo. But... what if we can? A quick internet scan and we find a beautiful chocolate bar. OK, not so beautiful, it's just a virtual chocolate bar and I'm not hungry, but it has the perfect logo in the perfect colors. We just need to cut, resize and rotate. If we were looking for an airline logo, its web page will be a wonderful place to start searching.

By the way, looking at this plane you can see one of the reasons that made the Americans win the war. This is a three-engine, you see? And each engine has a two propeller blades. And looking better, each blade is very elegant and thin. What has this to do with winning a war? Well, just a word: power. A thin two blades propeller means few, just enough horsepower. Look at a picture of the contemporaneous DC-3: Two engines, each with three masive blades. Strong enough to handle the amount of power that each engine delivers. You don't need to have a corrugated, very light structure, you can use a heavier, streamlined one. The English used wood and fabric. Again, light but hard to build. There were hundreds of phantom factories all around England, carpenters making wood pieces to be delivered in the main factory.

Now, going back to our virtual plane, remember that the difference between a good repaint and a normal repaint is the care of the details. The more you look at the pictures and drawings, the more you'll find this little (or big) detail that will make the difference. Once finished, I moved the plane to the Innsbruck airport, one that was sometimes visited by the real ones. Just smile for the picture...and voila! Another plane is ready to fly.

And what now? After one hundred uploads? Maybe another fsOC plane? I hope, but this project is in a stop by the moment. It's strange to have six textures ready to release, but, as I said, I hope than they will be flying soon. Another Ju-52? A Mustang? Another 737, a wingled one? A BSG colonial raider? It will be fine, a BSG raider deserting to the colonial fleet... what about a pack of raiders deserting? Hey, Sci-fi channel! Do you heard me? BSG fans, help me!

But, do you know? All this stuff about repaint is just a creation matter, a wish matter. Remember: we are here just for fun and joy, and that's all what we must care. So, do you want to be a repainter?

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Part 2
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Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12