Behind The Scenes: Airplane Hangar (Patreon)

I wanted to continue my flying enthusiast series, that started with a ground school classroom and decided to move into the hangar. Not enough experience yet for take off you know?

So I needed an airplane and a hangar. Pretty straightforward right? Not so fast young Skywalker. There are multiple ways how to approach this. Are you looking for a mint condition modern airplane in a pristine bright hangar, or would you rather tinker around in a dusty old barn with a feeble crop-duster biplane?

I admit, the latter is a little bit too far from the original ground school render, so I decided on some classic personal aircraft that most of the PPL pilots use.

Visit the full Pinboard here

If you do some research, you'll find out that the most produced airplane in the history is Cessna 172. And by a huge margin. There were actually more 172s produced, than German BF-109s used in WW2. If you meet some pilot, he probably trained on a Cessna 152/172.

But there is a strong contender for a few years now and that's a Cirrus SR 22/22. Modern low-wing airplane with great aerodynamics and high-end avionics. Now, you might ask why I'm torturing you with the details about aviation? Simple, there is a huge difference in a work produced by an insider and work produced by a person ignorant to the topics. Let's say your next assignment needs you to do aviation themed illustration.

People, who see that work online will know. Same as you know if you see someone using a computer in a movie and they are doing complete nonsense on the screen. It matters.

I decided on the 172, simply because it's a classic, a VW Beetle of the aviation world. Recognizable and bringing up memories with pilots. I sketched it up according to some image reference, so that I can learn the shapes and distinct parts before modeling begins.

And I went with a really homely style of hangar, with a little bit of a garage vibe. The proportions matter here, so I went with a cutout with a slightly slanted wall to suggest the hangar has an oval shape and is quite larger, than what you see in the diorama.

The rest was just about filling in some details. I went back to the reference board and search for some more inspiration. You obviously need some fuel barrels and some old equipment (don't forget the spark plugs lying around). And what hangar would it be without some old propeller resting in the corner?

You can watch the process video on Youtube