Shipbucket

Here is an updated draft with an attempt at a more subtle shading on the forward hull. Feedback appreciated in light of the earlier discussion.
Also this is an assembled version with all the equipment in place and some progress made on the rigging and antennas. Most of the railings still omitted.
This should help avoid confusions regarding the equipment fit

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Soviet Century/Cold War 2020 Alternate Universe: Soviet and other Cold War designs 1990-2020.
My Worklist

It looks overally quite good. The hull shading is a tricky issue, and in most similar cases, we just have to aknowlidge that not everything can be presented on our style. One has to wage in the merit of such shading attempts against what it actually tries to present versus the what it looks like in pixels. This time it looks like the the upper part of the hull bends inward in front of the Moskit set, which it actually does not do, instead the hull underneath does so and the hull side is actually quite straight in that part. Loosin the shading alltogether won't worsen the drawing at all, so in stylistic wise droping it would be my suggestion.

A few actual points however:
- try to achieve as much symmetry in the way of presenting shapes in the Shipbucket style. Always remember the three-pixel rule. For instance, if you add ladders or railings in the main mast, the surfaces adjoined should atleast be three pixels thick. Naturally this follows the rule that always try to avoid overlapsing black pixels. Always. Its the single most paramount aspect that segerates good Shipbucket art from not so good ones.
-The dark grey pixel in the funnel cap is "too" dark, it makes it look solid black three-pixel block, and that doesen't look good.
- All the orekh's should be positioned facing either bow or stern
- If you have objects on close to the pixel break in the main deck, try as best position them so, that their shape doesen't get interupted by the deck stepping up by 1 pixel or more. We are not making accurate building plans, so every artist is really tested in the ability exagerate and alter the details in order to make better looking picture without revealing such moves.

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

Ah well. I give up for now trying to find a way to show the hull shape to my satisfaction. Next version will have an unshaded forward hull, tell me how it looks.
Not sure I follow you completely on this point. From what I understand, I have:
- thickened all mainmast platforms to 3 px instead of 1
- changed the ladders/rails on the forward mainmast and stack to rungs-only ladders
- changed the cable runs on the back of the mainmast to a solid cable trace with black outline
- cleaned up those double black lines I could without compromising the design too much
Removed in favor of a single line. I liked the thickness of the three-pixel version, but it doesn't really make sense to scale. Too bad.
Sure, why not? Is there a rule against rotating equipment facing outwards? The Orekhs tend to point all over the place depending on the situation anyways.
Fixed, I have moved around either the broken unitary shapes or the line breaks.



Other than that, some missing equipment added, remaining pixels from the source drawing removed .
If this looks more satisfactory, I will finish the railings and markings and move on to the specific variants next.

with mainmast i ment the rack atop the telescopic hangar. also the crane midship has that overlapsing pixel issue. Otherwise it starts to look really good

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

OK, got it. I tried to do the stern mast in three-px lines at first, but it gets wonky very quickly. The directing lines are all wobbly, the structure very dense, the mast very thin at the top, and the whole thing is painted black so would have the same color problem as the stack apron.
Here are a few versions of the mast with increasing use of thick lines. I am honestly not convinced that they bring that much, but tell me if another version is more to your liking.

The more integrated mast of the later ships will be done in 3-pixel lines in the first place.
I'll fix the crane, as it's just a matter of being slightly less than 3 px wide.

Quick question for you Golly, now that I have you here: do you have or know where to find detailed pictures of Soviet wings badges? I assume they are service decorations similar to the Excellency 'E' of the USN, but they are more detailed and I don't have color pictures of all of them.

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Soviet Century/Cold War 2020 Alternate Universe: Soviet and other Cold War designs 1990-2020.
My Worklist

I like the one on the far right, but YMMV. They all look pretty darn good.

I like nr. 3 from the left, it have 3px mast without being overkill.

Of the mast I would actually try a one where only the standing platform and the ladder is on three pixels and leave the rest the mast single line.

Of the decorations and such, Sofar I'vent came cross a single good source that presents them, .well actually any source that would show any particular focus on them. The soviet era ship crests are similary shady issue, they exists, but appears only randomly and inconsistently here and there. One cannot really do much but search photos of each particular ship. Russian side of the internet naturally is the rigth place in this instance

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Shipbucket mainsite, aka "The Archive"
New AU project "Aravala"

OK, here's the first complete version, with head of class Sovremenniy (yard n° 861) in its mid-80s configuration and livery.
Following the various points discussed above:
- All hull shading has been removed
- The main mast now has two solid struts front and back as well as the platforms and ladder
- The bridge shows tentative badges and coat of arms. In the absence of color photographs of the ship in the desired period, the badges are based on those seen on the Bespokoyniy in the 2000s, and the CoA is completely improvised


As always, comments are welcome.

IMHO, under-sized missiles on the rails might be more clear about what we're looking at. I know that broaches the usually contentious issue of how to represent over-scale missiles...