f15_history.html

History of the F-15 Illustrations

The F-15 was one of the first complex illustrations to incorporate drawing layers, where parts of the illustration could be turned on and off. Deneba artist Dave Rumfelt gives us some insights into the project's creation:

F-15 Eagle (Top View) The F-15 Eagle top view illustration was created for Canvas 2.1 advertising and packaging. Though the illustration techniques look similar to later illustrations like the F40 and Harley-Davidson, these drawings were created before the all-important Canvas Blend and Combine tools were invented. Actually this drawing inspired the creation of those tools.

Since these tools were not available at the time, I had to create the blended colors on the wings, tail wings and canopy by hand. I made one object for the first color and edited it to the shape of the leading edge of the wing.

After applying the desired color to this object I then duplicated it and moved it to overlap the original object. This new objects shape was edited to fit the outline of the wing. This process was repeated all the way to the trailing edge of the wing.

Fortunately this only needed to be done for one wing. When the wing was done I simply grouped the wing and duplicated it, flipped it and placed it on the other side of the fuselage. Then with a little bit of creative editing I was able to use the blends for one of the tail wings. That wing was duplicated and flipped. The canopy was easier to do because of the simplicity of its shape. I simply copied the original object and placed it on top of the original. Option-Shift re-size made the new object slightly smaller and a new color was assigned to this object. This process was continued until the desired effect was complete.

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F-15 Eagle (3/4 View) One of the features of this drawing is the layers. All of the various components are on their own layers so that you can select the kind of view you want. If you want to see the whole jet with the gear down sitting on a runway you just turn off the layers with the cut-aways on it and turn on the landing gears layer. Canvas implemented these layers far before most competing illustration programs, and it gave illustrators and artists tremendous flexibility when creating and editing complex drawings.

Many different reference pictures were used to get as much detail into this picture as possible. The toughest part was the twin Pratt and Whitney engines. The reference materials were sparse and what I did have were at strange angles. Some of the wires and tubes were guessed at. I can't say how long this illustration took to complete because it was something I dinked around on in my spare moments between projects and it kept growing in complexity. A small portion of the nose/cockpit area did end up in a screen shot on the back of one of our Canvas boxes.

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