Attack Helicopter Challenge

Finally, I can deliver my promised notes and comments on each entry. I had this like 75% complete for a while but couldn't finish as I've been super busy with work.

Kattsun’s Titanian Flatworm
Why, why would you do this, he can’t even pick his nose anymore. 10/10.

Toxic Loki’s ACH-101
A conservative design, it doesn’t stand out as crazy or radical. Its short like a real Tiger, I would’ve taken the chance to make it a bit more stylish. The glazing and canopy look a bit flat, looks like its painted on the outside insted of hinting depth. Is the main rotor big enough? Looks weird that the blades on the sides are higher than the rear one, like they’re not on the same plane. The one camo’d variant looks attractive.

Idunevenknow’s Sarine Attack Helicopter
A quirky one! Choosing this layout is definitely brave. The open door looks weird, like it should be thicker. Can the main gear retract into that small opening? Looks like any way it twists and turns the wheel is going to be left outside.

Corp’s Model 659
Very nice, first for “odd while still being reasonable”. Great depiction of volume, shapes are readily apparent. Interesting but believable design. 4 views total in all drawings show the shapes of this vehicle very well, top tier entry.

Hood’s PD.8
Incredibly esoteric! What a weird contraption. Would it really fly with only 200hp? The blades are so thin. The drawing is overall excellent The gunner looks very uncomfortable though.

Garlicdesign’s H9Z-1
Very attractive entry from master Garlic. It looks very futuristic and wouldn’t be amiss on a videogame. The schemes are gorgeous and the ordnance delicate. The depiction of the canopy is a bit simple compared to what others are doing but this is very minor.

WesleyWestland’s WH-44
The cabin interior is interesting, the high contrast makes it pop out well. Rest of the helicopter is smooth and well rounded but it seems to need something. Definitely lacking antennas and countermeasures, also labels and markings that often populate aircraft.

Kiwi Imperialist’s H20A1
Interesting and believable! Dynamic components are very good, lots of nice details. The wings look a bit weird from the front, maybe they have too much dihedral. Very good overall.

JCSTCap’s M/81
A very attractive beast, on all 3 versions! Beautiful shape, details and schemes. On the front view the drooped blades seem a bit too straight, I would’ve tried curving them a bit. Excellent entry.

Mauser’s Alpha
The canopy framing doesn’t seem to match on both views. From the front the canopy looks rounded, as if it had a flat windshield and curved glazing. But from the side it looks as if it had one or two longitudinal large frames running front to back, which would make some glazing visible from the front. Rather confusing.

Schlemm138’s AH-60Z
This entry somehow manages to look very very right but also very slightly wrong. I’m not a fan of the real H-60 so its not my brain reacting to butchering it. Believable and very pragmatical.

Albert 1099’s HESA Sayyid
Beautiful and delicate camouflage schemes, they show the shapes very well. The ordnance too. I feel its a bit small for the role, but I guess its fine for a Cobra replacement. Are blades wide enough on the side view?

APDAF’s Nakhimov Na-23
The lack of attractive schemes or even markings doesn’t help this at all. More time and effort is required.

chillburashka’s TRC-Savaş
Damn this is yuuge. Blades look weird from the front, as if they were bigger than the spinner, side view shows only 2 opposed blades, and the spinners are not conical. The windows don’t match on all 3 views.

Wolftheriot’s MIH-56
A Havock kind of thing with interesting long proportions. Gear doors should be completely outlined in black since they’re a separate extending body. Surprisingly delicate detail.
The in-flight depiction shows a boring tailrotor, but a frozen main rotor, which is very odd.

BillKerman1234’s AV-55A2
Very good for a first FD drawing. The small markings are convincing. Its still underdetailed and a lot of things could be added. Armament fitting looks a little cramped.

Soode’s GHK-38 Wolverine
Easily winning material, and an absolute monster of a design. Cockpit has a very cool look, high contrast and subdued colour. Are blades not supposed to bend a bit in flight? Excellent usage of markings.

dalamace’s HUAX-72 Raven DRIP
There’s a lot going on here for sure. The shape hints at an ugly big mean bastard, though the black boom breaks up the shape a bit jarringly in my opinion. Shame we didn’t get more views to appreciate it better. I find it very viable if a bit overglazed for an attack asset.

TheGrumpyKestrel’s WA.40 Dugite
Beautifully drawn, delicate highlighting and tasteful details. Handsome too. My only complaint is that all of the rotors seem too small for the size of the craft. A comparison of blade and disk area might be due.

heuhen’s Buckopter
Wait why does it have wings.

Ro-Po Max’s AH-2A Aguja
Very intricate shading and details as we’ve come to expect. Also sad we didn’t get another view but oh well. I wonder if its a little small for the role? Without a bit of fluff its hard to tell.

Yqueleden’s H-8C Breitsax
This one looks like it could be the big baddie’s mount in Jungle Strike or Chopper Attack, very menacing. The fuselage looks a little tight for pilots, gear and ordnance, and the detail suffers here too due to lack of space. The camouflages are attractive and sensible. Personally I’m not a fan of how the cockpit is represented, it looks painted on instead of hinting at transparency. If this needed a redoing I’d make it overall a bit bigger.

Mist’s HA.2 Atilax
Conventional but very attractive, the scheme and markings are key in accenting this helicopter’s proportions. Would’ve loved more views or variants. I wonder if the rotors are a bit short. The loadout selection is lovely.

Waritem’s A-39
Wow. What an entry. Putting the Gun in Gunship. The interesting and complicated camo makes it hard to discern the shapes but the green over white option makes them evident. A bit more work on the shading (ie: the forward facing spinners should have a large highlighted portion) would go a long way to making it pop out more. Designwise its very creative but I believe it.

asqwerty3342’s AH-88A2
Basically the gunship from Patlabor, sadly it inherits all of the problems from the source material. Namely, it would drop forwards and hit its nose on the ground when it lands, and the gun is silly oversized but has no space for its own action at the base. The drawing itself is good and only a few steps away from the state of the art in FD scale. Better shape definition from the shading is necessary to reach that, since the shapes are very complex. One example of this are the wings, which point upward, so should be highlighted throughout most of their surface.

Jjx indoweeb’s Drathaar
Wow, this fucks. My only complaint is that on the front view I don’t think the blades are well represented, the oncoming and outgoing blades should have their tips shaped differently, and the oncoming one should be completely highlighted. VERY minor nitpicks on an otherwise superb entry.

Charguizard’s Wizard
Ok so of the many things I’ve wanted to do, I had to pick up gunshipping the Westminster. Ridiculous, I know, but its such a pretty and underrated helicopter. My process involved reading up on Yefim Gordon’s history of the Mi-24 and see what changed from the Mi-8 to get to it. Turns out, a lot. I ditched the CH-54’s rotor for a new, smaller one, flipped the tail rotor to the other side for increased authority and canted the fuselage for better attitude at speed. I wanted to backtrack to a proper Westminster Gunship (Woomera) but it would’ve been drawing a whole new helicopter and I ran out of time. This is not part of any of my regular AU settings and 100% a meme entry but I had fun and like the result. If I did it again I’d make a slightly more distinguishable canopy (this one was based on the Lynx gunship proposals) and figure how to put wing endplate mounts for Taildog missiles.

Victoria’s Bo 125
An unmanned vehicle is brave and different, but I think its appropriate. With featureless vehicles like drones its important to use every last resource to represent shape and detail. In this regard I think this one falls short. Whereas the panels and fixtures are there, more highlighting is necessary to represent the delicate shapes, and more contrast would’ve helped it stand out. Once more I’m wondering if there’s enough blade area for the application.

Once more congratulations to everyone for an excellent challenge.

Shipbucket

Who is online