My assignment on this was three-fold: photographing the reference material; designing the corporate jet graphics for the fictional airline, "Jet Link"; and painting textures onto the 3-D geometry of the Jet Link 737, the Delta 767 and the TWA MD80.

In obtaining the reference material, LAX gave me full access to photograph my textures. This enabled me to shoot up high from rooftops, and down low at ground level, to capture the close-ups and unique angles that I wanted. In designing the corporate graphics, I was asked to convey a strong corporate airline image -- vs. a fun vacation airline image. As well, I had to take into consideration how this would look during a scene in which a near mid-air collision would occur. With that in mind, I decided on a red and gray color scheme reminiscent of the corporate jet graphics for Delta Airlines or American Airlines. This bold and contrast-y design would also catch people's eye when the jet flew by them as a blur. To paint this, I used StudioPaint, Maya, and Photoshop. The final elements were rendered in Bluesky's Studio ++ Raytracer renderer.

Managing the textures during the rendering process was a bit of a challenge. The model that I painted had over a 150 parts, and the renderer was unable to handle trim surfaces. However the amazing team at VIFX was able set up scripts to handle the processing from Studio Paint, to Maya, to Studio ++ Raytracer renderer.