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Description

Elegant and regal, VE+LI is renowned among the other planes for her striking beauty. She maintains polite relations with those around her - although she does have some mutual tension with the Spitfire, who keeps mistaking her for a Bf 109 - and considers the other planes in the main museum hangar to be her closest friends. She does, however, tend to come across as emotionally distant; she struggles a great deal with emotional expression, after all, and so she sticks to what she’s most familiar with: calm confidence.

A couple weeks ago, I made a post about a new character design project in which I draw humanizations for the planes of the Commemorative Air Force’s Southern California Wing and their associated museum. This is the first installment in that series - meet VE+LI, the Messerschmitt Bf 108 Taifun! She’s probably my favorite plane at the museum alongside the Zero, so I drew her first.

Design notes:
-This plane’s beautiful shimmery blue color is what captivated me so much when I first saw her. I struggled to capture the color on camera and ultimately didn’t quite get it, but I tried my best to approximate it based on my memory (and other peoples’ pictures of her). It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty nonetheless.
-Her paint has a distinct shimmer to it, similar to the kind of thing you see on a lot of cars. I made her dress and eyeshadow sparkly as a reference to that.
-Overall, her design is meant to resemble 1930s fashion, as the Bf 108 was introduced in 1935 (although this specific plane was built in 1942). Also, I just really love 30s dresses.
-The half-blue and half-black pattern on her shoes is meant to resemble her front wheels, which have these sort of protective sheath things on the insides (lots of other planes have those too; I’m not sure what they’re called or what their purpose is, though). Those sheaths are painted blue as well, so I designed the shoes to match. Like all the other planes, she also has some flavor of airplane parts on her shoes, in this case propellers.
-I considered giving her black hair, but ultimately I went with a dark blue instead so as to fit her color scheme better while not making her too monochrome.
-She has the Commemorative Air Force logo on her gloves in the form of shiny silver ornaments. Every plane in this series will have that incorporated somewhere, as they all have it on them in real life and besides, it ties them together nicely.
-I considered making her eyes red as that’s one of her accent colors (the others being black and white), but ultimately I went with blue. The amount of red already felt right, so I decided against adding more.
-There’s a sign in her cockpit that says ‘EXPERIMENTAL’ and while I’m not sure why it’s there (I believe the Zero has it too, or at least had it in the past) I decided to add it to her design in the form of a cute choker.
-When I saw her in the museum, her wings were partially detached and folded against her sides, probably to save space as that hangar was a bit crowded. I incorporated this into her design through the transparent sections on her sleeves, which are meant to evoke detached wings.
-The swastika on her armband is missing two of its bendy arm ends, which is convenient because I really don’t like drawing swastikas. This is reflective of the way it looked when I saw her; presumably someone painted over those so as to not have a full swastika on a plane that might be flying around over town. A different museum plane, the “screaming” Fi 156 Storch , has a full one as it’s currently a static exhibit (although they’re currently trying to restore it to flying condition ).
-I made her hair super glossy to emphasize her beautiful shininess!

For more information on the CAF SoCal Wing, you can visit their website here as well as the Wings Over Camarillo air show website here .

Description

Elegant and regal, VE+LI is renowned among the other planes for her striking beauty. She maintains polite relations with those around her - although she does have some mutual tension with the Spitfire, who keeps mistaking her for a Bf 109 - and considers the other planes in the main museum hangar to be her closest friends. She does, however, tend to come across as emotionally distant; she struggles a great deal with emotional expression, after all, and so she sticks to what she’s most familiar with: calm confidence.

A couple weeks ago, I made a post about a new character design project in which I draw humanizations for the planes of the Commemorative Air Force’s Southern California Wing and their associated museum. This is the first installment in that series - meet VE+LI, the Messerschmitt Bf 108 Taifun! She’s probably my favorite plane at the museum alongside the Zero, so I drew her first.

Design notes:
-This plane’s beautiful shimmery blue color is what captivated me so much when I first saw her. I struggled to capture the color on camera and ultimately didn’t quite get it, but I tried my best to approximate it based on my memory (and other peoples’ pictures of her). It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty nonetheless.
-Her paint has a distinct shimmer to it, similar to the kind of thing you see on a lot of cars. I made her dress and eyeshadow sparkly as a reference to that.
-Overall, her design is meant to resemble 1930s fashion, as the Bf 108 was introduced in 1935 (although this specific plane was built in 1942). Also, I just really love 30s dresses.
-The half-blue and half-black pattern on her shoes is meant to resemble her front wheels, which have these sort of protective sheath things on the insides (lots of other planes have those too; I’m not sure what they’re called or what their purpose is, though). Those sheaths are painted blue as well, so I designed the shoes to match. Like all the other planes, she also has some flavor of airplane parts on her shoes, in this case propellers.
-I considered giving her black hair, but ultimately I went with a dark blue instead so as to fit her color scheme better while not making her too monochrome.
-She has the Commemorative Air Force logo on her gloves in the form of shiny silver ornaments. Every plane in this series will have that incorporated somewhere, as they all have it on them in real life and besides, it ties them together nicely.
-I considered making her eyes red as that’s one of her accent colors (the others being black and white), but ultimately I went with blue. The amount of red already felt right, so I decided against adding more.
-There’s a sign in her cockpit that says ‘EXPERIMENTAL’ and while I’m not sure why it’s there (I believe the Zero has it too, or at least had it in the past) I decided to add it to her design in the form of a cute choker.
-When I saw her in the museum, her wings were partially detached and folded against her sides, probably to save space as that hangar was a bit crowded. I incorporated this into her design through the transparent sections on her sleeves, which are meant to evoke detached wings.
-The swastika on her armband is missing two of its bendy arm ends, which is convenient because I really don’t like drawing swastikas. This is reflective of the way it looked when I saw her; presumably someone painted over those so as to not have a full swastika on a plane that might be flying around over town. A different museum plane, the “screaming” Fi 156 Storch , has a full one as it’s currently a static exhibit (although they’re currently trying to restore it to flying condition ).
-I made her hair super glossy to emphasize her beautiful shininess!

For more information on the CAF SoCal Wing, you can visit their website here as well as the Wings Over Camarillo air show website here .