Après Moi Le Déluge

Two Spitfire MkXIVe escort Lancaster B (QR-M), MkIII No. 61 Squadron PA474 “Mickey the Moocher” across foreign borders.

I wanted to create an aerial shot which conveys a sense of darkness and the impending doom pilots faced when flying missions in the Second World War.

I started by finding a nice background image, then sourced a decent model of a Lancaster Bomber. I didn’t like the texture maps that came with the acquired model, so I used a combination of 3DCoat and PLG UV plugins (within Lightwave) to create the base UV maps.

Swapping between 3DC and Photoshop allowed me to create better, more detailed maps; Introducing decal and insignia, along with dust, grime and dirt effects.

I had to recreate the insignia for ‘Mickey the Moocher’ in Adobe Illustrator, as the ones found on the net were of lesser quality.

The final image was set up in Lightwave Layout, along with Bill Simon’s (Foundation 3D) spitfire model. I rendered out each individual aircraft as png files and imported them into Photoshop (along with the background image) for final adjustments including bloom, noise, light boosters and depth of field.

Tap and slide the slider below to see the before and after renders.