Second part of my AoA campaign entry, Revell's 1:72 Fokker DR-1 in the Red Barons markings. It goes with the Sopwith Camel as a Snoopy vs. The Red Baron display. The decals that came with this kit did not depict Richtofen's plane so I printed my own. I haven't quite finished it, but here it is so far.

very nice Tim,gotta love manfreds plane! Oh and don't forget to paint the leather ring around the cockpit!

Way ahead of ya, bro.

Did you paint the inside of the cockpit red also, or is it masked ?

It's red in the pic. It's brown now.

I don't know much about planes with one wing let alone two or three but you mentioned you made your own decals. Could you tell me how you did it so I may make some for myself. . By the way the red paintjob is almost as good as your pink panzer

Normally I use decal paper that I get from http://www.micro-mark.com, however I didn't have any so I just used regular paper and cut it real close and glued it down this time.

NOTE: You need the proper decal paper for your printer, it comes in Laser or InkJet type. If you have an inkjet then you also need decal fixative spray although I use a thin coat of gloss coat and it works just fine. The paper also comes in clear and white varieties, it comes in white because most printers don't print white.

I found the Iron Cross online which was lucky and I didn't have to draw it. To get good results on a decal it needs to have a fairly large DPI (Dots Per Inch) resolution so as I was resizing the image to the correct size I increased the DPI to 1500 to get as smooth a line as possible out of my printer. 1000 will do for most purposes, but I like to make sure I have enough.

In Photoshop, I chose the Image->Image Size option. It allows you to change the way the values are represented in the diminsions window and I chose Millimeter, then selected 7 mm for the rudder decal, at the same time I chose to up the DPI from 72 to 1500 and chose the 'Bicubic' option as it gives the best results when resizing. Then I just Cut&Pasted several different sizes into one image and printed them out.

It's important to remember when working with graphics where appearance is critical, that you get much better results reducing than by increasing. This goes for color depth, physical size, and pixel resolution. So always work large and reduce at the end if you have to. Also the fewer transformations you do, the better results you get. For instance I didn't reduce the Iron Cross to 13mm, then reduce that to 8mm. I probably would have gotten just as good results this time, but not always and especially if you have several colors to deal with in your image. I reduced from original size to 13mm, then restored the file to original size and reduced that to 8mm, restored and reduced to 7mm.

thanks for that. I may try and do some Aussie decals using this method as I have copies of most of the Tach marks.

Tim

Very Nice. Something to keep my Roland C-11 company. Would like to see the completed item.

actually,it does,just in a 1918 color scheme,two different planes,but same pilot.
also that should be red too,there is really no interior color for the side panels wich are the same fabric showing on the outside,the only real "interior" color is an Raf interior green on the flight stick and metal tube construction.