I'm about to get back into the decal design business. I've done it before, on a small scale, but one project I labored on for years, only to not see it come to fruition (at least yet), pretty much drained my enthusiasm -- as did another, in a non-aviation realm, that ended up being done sooner (and less thoroughly) by someone else. Between those two, it's been difficult to find the enthusiasm I once had for sitting in front of Illustrator for hours on end, the way I once did.
But a few months ago, some wheels started to turn in my head, and a friend of mine who's done some rough artwork for some schemes I'm interested in has pledged his support. In fact, he sent me some of his artwork the other day, and it's going to make things a lot easier. His efforts have saved me some of the intricacies, so now it's just more a matter of sizing those elements to the subject kit.
On the other hand, I'm left with designing the stripes for this project. They're not simple stripes, either; they conform to the fuselage, and are along the bottom half. They stay straight around the nose, which looks great in three dimensions...but must be drawn in two dimensions. Interesting curves, with no room for error. Around back, they not only curve up to meet the tail, but they also wrap around the aft end of the fuselage. And there's two stripes per side. Yes, it'll be easy to draw the top stripe and bottom stripe and then reverse them, but that first step, she's a lulu.
Long ago I developed a method for this kind of thing: Cover the appropriate area of the model with masking tape and press it down so it wraps around all the contours. Draw the design or dimensions you need. Remove the tape, making slits if necessary to preserve things. Press the tape onto a piece of paper. Scan the piece of paper as an image file. Import image file into Illustrator, and draw it off the scanned image. The sketch you scan in will be rough, but you can refine it as needed. Once you have something suitable, print it out, cut the design out, and tape it into place on the model. If it looks right, you're good. If it doesn't, or if it doesn't fit, you know where to make adjustments. Easy enough. But, man, the getting there is something else.
Fortunately, this one will be relatively easy. But other projects down the road? Heh. Stay tuned.