Well, at last we are closing to the part that bring us here: to repaint a model!

On this part we are going to select the plane that we want to repaint, and how.

Usually many of us select a picture of a real plane and "just" start to do the best transformation of this picture into the virtual world (me included). But a few of us do a fantasy painting, a kind of "how will I paint this real plane if I were a rich man?"

It depends of the imagination skills of everyone and our artistic orientation. Doing fantasy models allows us to commit mistakes without problem. If you don't put the national markings in a fantasy military plane, it does not matter. In the other hand, you need to have decoration skills!

By the way, if you think that the included white, blue and red 727 (right) is a fantasy plane, it's not. It's one of the Braniff planes painted by Alexander Calder. To paint a real plane requires you to find pictures of both sides of the real thing, and sometimes up and down ones to see the wings. This plane had up, down, left and right wings totally different. But we will talk about it on the next part.

The repainter who wants to make a "real" plane, must take care of the details. He has no invention needs, but must know about weathering, shadows and sometimes he has to figure a missing part if it is not displayed on any picture.

Newer or vintage planes? Well, I do both. Each one has pros and cons. The newer planes have plenty of documentation, sometimes you just need do to a trip to the nearest airport to find the real one. But many times they are already done. That's why I always do a search on the web before start a project. For example, I was thinking to do an MD-11 from Citybird. I searched, and found one already repainted that was really good. So I downloaded it and started to search another to do.

I'll want to propose something: If you are member of a virtual airline, do first the planes of your airline. If not, do the planes of your country's airlines. Take a look: how many planes can you see in your nearest airport that are not made for Flight Simulator? About 18% of my repaints are Spanish planes, and 8% are Venezuelan ones, my two countries. Another 8% belongs to South American ones. If you don't live in USA, help the rest of us to know your country. Of course, the finished files will have less downloads, but we are not doing that for money, but for joy.

On the other hand, the older planes have less repaints. That's for two reasons: there is less documentation, and there are less models to paint over. Where can you find a freeware model of a B-26 with less than 20 MB, or a Lancastrian? Or an O-400, passenger version? If you want to do vintage planes, and find a model with permission to repaint and release as "ready to fly", it's a gift! Tell me! About the documentation, I have two or three tricks to find it, but I'll tell you on the next part.

The vintage planes, just because there are difficult to find, have the charm of old things. Not just to fly it, but to see how the old things were done. Of course, there are some planes that are new and old at the same time: the museum machines, especially the flying ones. One of my repaints is the P-51D that flew in the movies "The Empire Of The Sun" and "Memphis Belle". It's an old or a new one? Or one PBY-5A Catalina that was converted to a water bomber and was being sold on the Internet the last time I checked it.

Of course, you are not obligated to paint your planes in the standard, always the same airline colors. Sometimes, especially on an anniversary, or Christmas time, the airlines change the decoration of their planes. It happens too with the military ones: almost every air festival or Tiger Meet the planes wear special decorations that never repeat again. And sometimes, when an airline rents a plane to another, the resulting painting is a mix of both decorations.

Really, it does not matter what kind of repaint you want to do as long as you must have done your selection by now, and you must be eager to start to put colors on the screen of your computer. We are almost there, because the next part is to find drawings, pictures and history of the real plane.

Alejandro Hurtado
dracosist@cantv.net

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