You inspired me Donatas!

[Troy P]

Donatas' foamies are really nice and it shows in his work how much fun he has with them. I love to do nice paint schemes on my planes and have spent countless hours over the years with an iron & heat gun, or a pile of spray cans and a roll of masking tape. The one thing I never really did was to get 'artsy' and do something unconventional. It was either scale detailing with emblems and logos, or it was basic graphics with nice lines and colors.

The great thing about building foamies is they are easy to finish and the materials are cheap and easy to work with. They are also a nice flat surface to work on without too many compound curves. Basically, they are a great canvas!

So when I started on my DW Foamies Yak 54 I wanted to do something a bit more wild and fun. I'm not entirely sure where the inspiration came from but I decided on a Tiger Stripes theme. When I went out looking for good samples of tiger stripes, I came across a bunch of cool face shots of tigers and it occurred to me how cool one would look on a wing. Long story short, I found a nice graphic-style image I could use as a base and go from there.

The surprising thing in all of this so far has not been the details or masking work, it was finding a can of Orange foam safe paint. My trusty True Value hardware store that always has Krylon Shortcuts and H2O in stock didn't have anything close. I finally found some Glow Orange made by Plasticote at Walmart and figured at least it'll be bright!

I planned out how I would spray the Orange on using the printed image as a masking stencil. I figured that since this is a very stylized, graphic image I could take whatever 'artistic' liberties I needed to get it done and imperfections add character. There isn't anything real mysterious to the process beyond the photos I took along the way. I still have a ways to go with more of the details and fuselage but I am started and the hard part, as it seems, is done. I'll keep adding some pics as it is finished. Enjoy!

[airborneSGT]

Dude its a Detroit Tigers foamie! Rock on Just get that old school D in it and splash in some blue.

[Bushman]

Very nice I like I like
Alex
www.zerogmodel.com

[ilovemetro]

	Quote: Originally Posted by airborneSGT
	Dude its a Detroit Tigers foamie! Rock on Just get that old school D in it and splash in some blue.

thats a great idea! i might have to do that lol.

[wizard]

Nice work. Please continue with the photos of the progress on the rest of the plane. I can't wait to see the finished result.

[Troy P]

	Quote: Originally Posted by wizard
	I can't wait to see the finished result.

Thanks! Me too...

[Vic3D]

It's very nice! (borat)

[Troy P]

I squeezed in about an hour's worth of work tonight adding lots 'o stripes. Last night I also went back into the checkers and added some highlights and shadows to simulate waviness. Since I don't have an airbrush set up for this project, I just used some lighter shade gray markers and a white paint pen. With a little finesse and a finger, I blended it to soften it up. With a camera flash it gives more contrast than reality but you get the idea.

Still need some more time to finish the horizontal portion of the fuselage, adding some color to the bottom, and paint a canopy on there. I am also going to add some teeth to this tiger... The white area on the wing is reserved for some writing and logos. Still need to play around in photoshop to make a good "Yak 54" decal.

[wizard]

Looking good. Fantastic job, especially for using markers and rattle cans.

[Troy P]

Thanks guys! The positive reinforcement keeps me focused on details and doing it right.

I have added the stripes to the horizontal fuselage piece to match up with the rest of the fuse. The cool thing about tiger stripes is that the more random you do it the better it looks. I struggle to not duplicate lines I have already done... a habit or natural tendency to make things even. You almost can't screw it up. I have seen (and done many years ago) tiger stripes that were more consistent and even in size/shape and the effect is still cool (think Tony the Tiger). I just thought I'd see if I could get closer to nature on this one.

I have painted on a canopy with some Silver Krylon Shortcuts. It makes for a nice smoked canopy look and is a neutral color to keep the focus on the rest of the plane. You can see the basic outline in earlier pics with my 1/4" masking tape. I added a few more canopy lines for scale appearance. After I sprayed on the Silver, and before I pulled the tape off, I went around with a fine point black marker to give me lines to fill in later. I went back in with my Black Marker and a ruler to draw a border where the tape was.

My last few items of detail will be to finish up the bottom in a high visibility scheme to contrast the top and some logo stuff. I have a feeling those Stripes will give me Vertigo so when I am torque rolling on the deck so I want to have a noticeably different scheme on the bottom.

[ilovemetro]

That is so sweet!!!

[MetHerInBaghdad]

That is friggin' cool. I love love LOVE what you have done.

Donatas has inspired a lot of us to do designs we would have never tried before, and now you have upped the level for all of us with this design.

Sweetness.

[JZiering]

Looks great!

[Troy P]

I played around in Photoshop last night for a Yak 54 logo. I searched around some free-font sites to find a font I liked and then edited the 'Y' to have a tiger's tail. I will print it out on paper, cut it out, and apply with elmers white glue. That works great on my GTP cars so will do the same here. If I still worked at a graphic design house I'd use one of the thermal printers on vinyl but this just takes a few minutes of careful scissor work. I hope I sized it right so I can do this once tonight!

[Troy P]

Well you know what they say about best laid plans... I planned to use my print out and simply cut and paste. When I put the print next to my plane and the bright orange, I couldn't deal with the color differences. BUT, not all is lost. I simply cut out the letters with a sharp razor and decided to do a quick paint mask stencil. Once I got the 'Yak' cut out I sprayed a light mist of 3M77 spray glue on the back to provide some tackiness to the stencil. I positioned it where I wanted it and smoothed it down. I couldn't forget about the center from the 'A' so that was stuck down too. I used the cut out 'A' to locate it.

Man, I can't wait to get a motor and servos for this thing and go flying!!