It's a Bird...It's a Plane!...No wait..it IS a Plane! (A MIG-15 to be exact!)

   During my final year of Animation, the class had 3 major modeling projects. Make a Building, make some mechanical and make a character.

   For the Mechanical piece, I decided fairly early on that I'd make a plane. But not just any old boring plane, like a 747 or a Airbus. No, no. I wanted to make a jet fighter, one that was fairly iconic and legendary.

   The MIG-15.

   The first two images below, shows the Migs untextured state. I made two models, one with landing gear and space for the wheels to retract into, and one without all that extra bits for when it's flying. I even had one side of the landing gear rigged so it could fold up into the wings (and it looked pretty darn close too!)

Coming together nicely!

Even added detail to the wheel wells, even though they never got any attention. Oh well, still looks cool!

   After the model making had been done I went to town making her look pretty. I used XSI's Architectural Material as the base and plugged the MIG-15 textures into it. The follow shots show that off, along with some Bokeh shader to make it look a bit more real.

That's a rendered image, not a Photograph!

Nope, still not a photograph!

Guess again! Not a photograph!

Okay okay...oh wait...Still not a photograph!

   With that, I'll leave you with two more photos of my first Airplane/Jet Fighter model.

Still shot from a little fly around animation.

Made this to look like it had come from a "gun camera" from a chasing Jet.
Turned out alright!

    Enjoy and leave your comments below!