Proper Black Hawk shading

[Ironpriest]

Hey guys,

I know that i have posted some of my tries to hand shade my Black Hawk, and they pretty much ******* s*ck...
But now i have forced myself to do it again, properly!
This is only my third Profile, and my first freehand so it might still seem sloppy. But please! for the love of god, comment and discuss! This is something i want to continue doing, so i must gather tips and tricks.

Well here it is:


I havn't really decided on which model yet, but itl either be a basic A model or a 160th SOAR one, used in the Mogadishu incedent. aka "black hawk down" but some of their "addons" are a little hard for a neewwwb like me.

Well i hope you like, and again, please comment ^^
BP, eager to learn rotor-head profiler!

[Ironpriest]

anyone?

[gamary]

The shading that runs down the middle of the fuselage gives it a boxy shape which seems wrong IMHO. You should feather it and give it a rounder look. It looks OK on the nose, forward of the glass panel, but wrong aft of that.

[GrubbyFingers]

Hi IP.

What size are you working at? It looks like you might be either working too small or be using too large brushes. Try working bigger. It may take longer and slow your machine down some, but the end result is always better.

If you are doing your shading in just one or two passes, it will end up very heavy handed.
Try working with a much smaller brush set at a very low opacity, even 2 or 3% for shading, and have the shading layer mode set to Darken or Multiply.

I build up my shading and highlighting very slowly and Iam constantly tweaking it as more details go in. I tend to work backward compared to others here as well. I usually put in a bunch of details and attachments before I tackle the main shading. This gives me more of an idea about the shape of the body and where light and shade is going to be falling. It's hard for me to tell precisely where I should be shading without these details to refer to.

Just keep practicing!

I hope this helps.

Grubby.

[Jarink]

The shading is too even on the fuselage. Blackhawks are like a box with the sides being slightly rounded. I'd make the highlighting narrower to the top and the shadowing progressively more pronounced as you get closer to the bottom.

[Ironpriest]

thanks for the help guys!
I will make my next profile alot bigger next time. Compared to some of yours, mine are 2-3 times smaller.

Ill see if i can modfiy the shading one last time.
once again thanks,
BP