Oberpfaffenhofen, Dec 10, 2018 (Issuewire.com) - A blue jay feather is an inspiration behind the latest design from Didier Wolffs Happy Design Studio. The project is the first collaboration between the award-winning French designer and leading international coatings specialist Mankiewicz.
French artist and designer Didier Wolff has unveiled his latest aircraft livery design creation, following its completion at the RUAG Aviation aircraft paint shop in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. Named Blue Jay after the colorful and iconic bird of North America, the three-dimensional canvas for Wolffs unique design was an Embraer Legacy 600 business jet. The project is the result of Wolffs first ever collaboration with Mankiewicz a global leader in aircraft coatings.
Wolff and his Happy Design Studio have earned an unrivaled reputation for creating one-of-a-kind aircraft liveries for clients all over the world. He often takes design inspiration from the world around him and this latest project was no exception. Wolffs muse this time was blue jay feather he discovered at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, I was struck by the beautiful symmetry of the feather and how the play of light influenced the color, he explains.
To recreate this symmetry on the aircraft, Wolff used the dark grey fuselage of the aircraft as the basis for his design. On to this, he painted 337 colored stripes, each of which was 2.5 centimeters thick and oriented at an angle of minus 23 degrees. These stripes joined with another 337 lines of identical width, originating from the root of the wings at an angle of plus 23 degrees. The finished effect forms a perfectly balanced gradient of chevrons transitioning from a steel white tone to blue, before fading to the background color just before the engines. Wolffs design borrows from the so-called optical grey technique to lend a raw personality to the aircraft: an effect further emphasized by the swirling strips of blue around the engine air intakes, intended to simulate suction and thrust.
Recreating natures symmetry on the manmade three-dimensional canvas of an aircraft also presented a number of challenges to Wolff and the entire project team. The front of a Legacy 600 aircraft is characterized by the sloping shape of its cockpit canopy. In order to trim this detail, Didier Wolff designed an almost-black form to create a contrast, similar to the necklace of plumage that the Jay appears to wear. This feature traverses the lines of gradient covering the fuselage at an angle of 45 degrees and locks gracefully with the design. Such an exacting requirement demanded millimeter precision and several methods were combined to achieve the effect. These included an innovative laser system developed by RUAG and mounted on a "traveling" pad that moved in parallel to the axis of the aircraft, This system took hundreds of measurements and made it possible to guarantee the accuracy of the alignment with the highest precision, Wolff explains.
The process of painting the aircraft took ten painters two weeks to complete, with the entire project demanding 2,300 working hours and more than 2.4 kilometers of tape. The work was carried out at the RUAG Aviation paint shop in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. To create the paint to realize Wolffs vision, Manckiewitcz tailored a very carefully selected graded spectrum of colors that could be perceived as in nature, without jarring the eye of the viewer: a graded balance of colors such as birds use to impress, conceal or seduce.
About Didier Wolff and Happy Design
Didier Wolff is an award-winning artist and designer with a passion for aircraft and a lifelong love for working in large formats. He considers aircraft the ultimate 3D canvasses for his innovative designs. Since founding his Happy Design Studio in 2009, he has become one of the worlds most sought-after aircraft custom livery designers. He has worked on numerous livery projects ranging in size from small single-engine aircraft to airships and business jets. In 2018, Didier Wolff and his Happy Design Studio were awarded gold in the 2018 European Product Design Awards. To learn more, please visit www.happydesign.net
Watch how Didier created Blue Jay here
Click on this link to view the full gallery of Blue Jay photos
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Source :Happy Design Studio
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