Hello again.
Concerning the barrel lengths: The French used 45-caliber barrels (same caliber length as early dreadnaughts) for their heavy guns as early as 1983 (
Jauréguiberry's forward main gun reached all the way to the stem, maybe I draw her at some point); these fired relatively lightweight shells. These were only mounted in single turrets, and very far forward in the turret so almost the entire barrel length was visible (as opposed to most foreign ships where much of the aft part of the barrel was hidden inside the turret). As soon as twin turrets came into general use, 40-caliber barrels were used. The secondaries on
Démocratie and
Quinet's guns were 194mm/45 caliber, a quite modern high-velocity gun; maybe it would have been better to draw the tubes one pixel wider, but I aesthetically dislike it when the barrels get too massive.
Concerning the sources: the best sources (including underwater hulls, which I omitted because I could not get them for all ships and wanted an uniform style collection) can be found at
www.3dhistory.de (complete construction plans detailed enough to rebuild the ship; for drawing, even the thumbs are detailed enough). Since it seems to be perfectly allowable to omit the underwater hull, I have no plans of adding it myself. Whoever feels like doing so, is hereby explicitly permitted to do it.
Garlicdesign