163rd Fighter Squadron 'Blacksnakes' skin for the DCS A-10C Warthog 3D-model

Yesterday, Tom Weiss from the United States asked me for exchanging banners on both of our websites. I agreed. But the more interesting point is: Thomas is a simmer and also a skin maker, including DCS A-10C Warthog. Here are pictures of his latest skin for A-10Cs from the 163rd Fighter Squadron, 122nd Fighter Wing (Indiana Air National Guard), Fort Wayne.





The nose section - five blocks with over 20 contact points to align.



Source


On his website, Thomas wrote:

A-10C of the 163rd Fighter Wing "Blacksnakes" is a skin that present a whole series of new challenges to make as it covers most of the nose of area in the A-10C template in a rather irregular fashion with the head of a snake. Initially I had only as a source a photo of the first USAF A-10 aircraft where they tried out this new nose markings but later on I found some other photos after they had adopted it and applied to other aircraft in the Squadron, these allowed me to get a better sense on how to apply it to the DCS A-10C model.

One thing I've learned after so many skins is to start a new project without any hurry in finishing it - because it is a question of trial and error to apply the markings correctly, specially in the nose area where a whole lot of weird things tend to happen because of the curvature, not to mention where some errors made in the making of the model show up and can't be simply ignored, you have to work around them.

It took me three sets of drawings to get the eyes and the mouth right - of course it cannot be the same as in real life because the model has some subtle differences from the real thing that make it impossible to make it exactly the same thing.

But nevertheless I tried to make it look as close as possible similar to the real one.

I must admit it has a more 'happy' face than a 'threatening' one.

And I still need to finish the snake mouth area ...

The weathering uses the template I made originally for the Swampfoxes - which has evolved with each skin so that it does not look the same - I have a Europe skin to make and then I'll make some more worn out skins - for this I'll need to make another template.

I'll try to release it in a few days time.

BTW: For his latest A-10C skin, Tom used the pictures posted by me on: 163rd Fighter Squadron 'Blacksnakes' A-10C update Please visit Tom's website.

For some more skins made by Tom Weiss see also:
Arkansas...
A-10C Ferris camo with a Hog nose
A-10C Europe 1 skin