Shipbucket

I like your attemp at the reflective skin I think that would look really effective.....

Much better (though tires of the main wheels are still egg-shaped).
As for the reflective skin - so far it looks interesting, and I'd like to see it implemented.
That said, although there are no formal rules for FD scale, I understand that to be extenstion of SB-scale, where generally only "solid" colors are used. Not a problem to me in general, just mentioning it for clarity.

This is a beast of an aircraft and I'm sure the end result is going to be spectacular.

My comments and advice;

We tend to show all doors, undercarriage doors and bomb bay doors, ailerons, flaps, rudders, elevators outlined in black, basically anything that can be opened or moved but small items such as inspection panels etc. I agree at times the black looks odd cosmetically, especially bomb bays for some odd reason. Since you have the rudder etc. in black already it might make sense to make the bomb bay black outline too, but I think a slightly darker grey would suffice quite nicely.

I would redo those leading-edge intakes, I'd draw them as black outlines with a dark grey filling, or a dark grey infill with darker grey outlining. I feel in either case the current grey is too light to show they are deep, dark holes.

You might want to outline the main wheels in black like the nosewheels, they are slightly egg shaped (2 pixel wider than tall), I guess your going for a 'flat-tyre under load' look which is no bad thing. Maybe a 25 x 26 pixel would be better.

Reflective metal skin is going to be bugger to get right, especially when you start dealing with shadows etc. Of the two small examples the one on the left looks better but I still feel its going to be too many different shades. As we discussed with your monitors the effect might just make the B-36 look like a giant hexagonal flying tube rather than a reflective tube. I wonder whether a simpler way would be to repeat a 3-pixel layer of the top-shading colour 3-4 pixels beneath the top shading to give a cylindrical-type shine. A few non-SB style drawings have used that. I've tried a tin portion of your B-36 with it and it looks ok.
Here is a small test:

A parts sheet of the various bombs would be great!

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Yeah, I'd really like to see it with the reflective skin redo.

Craig, I appreciate the hard work on the B-36, the bigger the bird the more of a pain in the ass it is to draw. I know how much of a pain it can be. Anywho, We have hard rules we stick to, and the shading style is one of them. If you want you can make two versions, one standard SB/FD metal, and then a "custom" metal. Your "custom" metal you can use for whatever, but the SB/FD will be the uploaded one.

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"It is better to type nothing and be assumed an ass, than to type something and remove all doubt." - Me

Convair B-36 Peacekeeper
Base version for submission.


Convair B-36 Peacekeeper
Playing with shining metal simulation.

Nighthunter: Yup, quite aware of the overall shading standards, and I agree with them! I still enjoy mucking around to see where artwork might go and hopefully, help somebody else via examples. Sometimes they work, sometimes not.

Now that I've a base drawing I can worry about lettering, etc. Maybe some variants (unless somebody else feels up to it).

CraigH

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Craig this is a truly magnificent job

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Great work!
I think it would be awesome if You would do whole B-36 family.

Looks excellent! A really great job.
The reflective simulation looks good on the screen, zoomed in it looks a bit more complicated, but not as blocky as I feared. There's nothing wrong with experimenting, we've always done that, and the result looks good.

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Hood's Worklist
English Electric Canberra FD
Interwar RN Capital Ships
Super-Darings
Never-Were British Aircraft

Looks exellent, though the windows kinda look wierd...

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