Monday, May 13, 2013

Getting the Imperial Eagle Wing onto Your Vendetta / Valkyrie

Yes I ran a squadron of vendettas on some of my lists, their frequent appearance demand that I add some spice to their otherwise dull appearance ( for I "painted" them in... ahem, black) so having some free time on hand I finally decide it is time to get my butt on working on their "winged" look.

While process seems straight forward enough I have no doubt some of you can benefit from my experience while working on it, not to mention the free template.
First, trace a wing.


Then scan the tracing result.
Working in Adobe Illustrator, digitize the tracing. 

The Imperial logo is something I have traced a long while back, now it comes in handy.

Remove excess components.

Do a mirror replication.

Print the result onto sticker and cut them out carefully, use the nuts and bolts
on the wing as cue on making sure both wings are parallel in height
... last thing you want is a pair of off balance wings.
After careful masking spray the color you want for the wings

How painfully you mask your wings will determine the quality of the final result.
Stickers quality will also come into play, it is up to you to experiment.
The final result on the bird, by using only cheap spray and run the mill sticker,
it is a result I can live with... the only question left is how much time will I be
willing to invest on the endless touch up/weathering.

Now it goes without saying of course you can achieve much much better result by using professional usage masking film and/or airbrush but the whole point of this is to provide folks who are without such hardware to pimp their war birds with common items  :D


You can download the template >>HERE<<