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SleeperAgent1 In reply to Montague-5741-GWR [2016-12-21 20:56:40 +0000 UTC]

Nah Awdry was never that great of a drawer to be honest, though it is a shame he didn't make more sketches after the early period. I did a bit of restoration and tidying but beside alter Patrick's face a bit it's all Edgar Hodges so I can't take much credit  I can't seem to find it on Google as it's a rare book but you can see the original here if you are on SiF.   

sodor.proboards.com/thread/55/…

I'm tediously working on some layout models and a track plan but i've got a few Culdee Fell Railway edits planned for next year and i'm sure i'll get a few more restored Hodges up here as well. Anyway cheers    

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Montague-5741-GWR In reply to SleeperAgent1 [2016-12-21 21:05:20 +0000 UTC]

Cheers,

And you're right, I'm sorry, I meant:  It looked like it was a restored and enlarged image from the original book, then I thought it was what the illustrator meant to draw.

XD

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SleeperAgent1 In reply to ToyFreddEnt [2016-07-01 07:05:20 +0000 UTC]

The Hodges illustration was an odd concoction as instead of Catherine with her nervous face the coach had a happy one while the engine still had the mischievous Lord Harry face from the 'Danger Points' illustration. To remedy the oddness I set the scene later on by giving him a happy face as the reformed Patrick and as the palette was quite bright and cheery I added I nice, slightly clouded background. Beside that I did a bit of tidying up here and there but generally speaking it was an easy edit. 

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ToyFreddEnt In reply to SleeperAgent1 [2016-07-01 07:32:05 +0000 UTC]

Ah, I see; I haven't seen the Hodges illustration myself, I'll have to look it up at some point. But yeah, it must have been quite strange to see Catherine smiling in a situation like that of the original illustration by Gunvor and Peter Edwards.
Needless to say, though, I do quite like the idea of an illustration showing a reformed Patrick and his coach (I'm assuming that the coach in your illustration there is now one of the other coaches since Culdee now has Catherine back) taking passengers up the mountain (and a large sum of passengers at that).

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SleeperAgent1 In reply to ToyFreddEnt [2016-07-01 08:38:41 +0000 UTC]

Well the Hodges illustration can be seen in the link above, just scroll down the page a wee. I'm wanting to do the Duck and Mike one below it next, but it's going to be a lot more tricky.
I'm not really a Snowdon Mountain Railway expert but Catherine is a 56 seater saloon ( possibly built by Lancaster and rebuilt at Kirk Machan ) and I assume the one above is too, though the windows are slightly different to anything I can find in photos. IoS mentions that the last of the original coaching stock was withdrawn by the 1920s and that there were 9 Saloon coaches in operation when it was written so thats the best I can say without major digging. The Culdee Fell Railway only had one book so a lot of the characters never really got that much exposure which is part of why I wanted to turn the original illustration into a competed 'future story' type image  I don't normally do OCs but I think the coach deserves a name, any suggestions?   

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ToyFreddEnt In reply to SleeperAgent1 [2016-07-01 09:13:44 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, I had a gander at the image myself after I saw the provided link; it must have been a very time consuming process to replace the text and red background with the blue sky seen in your illustration here. Well, that's what I'm assuming anyway. And yeah, the Duck and Mike one might be a wee bit tricky since you'd have to erase the children (one of which covers Mike's wheels) from the picture as well as compensate for the fact that Duck's funnel protrudes into the 'Danger Points' re-illustration above it.
As per the name of the coach, I do think that perhaps the name 'Mary' would suffice since it seems like the kind of name Awdry would have given; that and I think that 'Mary' is quite a nice name, and would suit the coach very well.

And I myself might have to do a spot of reading upon the sort of coaches seen on both the Snowdon and Culdee Fell Mountain railways; for it could well have been a case of "built by Lancaster and rebuilt at Kirk Machan" as you say. Similar, I'm guessing, to the Percy and James situations; although, they can't have been modified on Sodor since they had been depicted in the same way even before arriving on Sodor.....perhaps the pair were a wee experiment by the GWR and the L&YR respectively.

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SleeperAgent1 In reply to ToyFreddEnt [2016-07-01 09:22:57 +0000 UTC]

I need to go out and work now but i'll reply properly when I get back for lunch. Mary is actually the name of a person in my village who I do painting and gardening jobs for and she lives on the old railway crossing house that was built for the Talyllyn triangle junction where the Hereford, Hay and Brecon Branch met the Brecon and Merthyr Railway. I'll take it as a sign and have changed the title  

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ToyFreddEnt In reply to SleeperAgent1 [2016-07-01 09:29:06 +0000 UTC]

Alrighty then, have fun and stay safe at work. And how nice to hear that there's a Mary near you.
And thank you kindly for taking on my name suggestion.

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SleeperAgent1 In reply to ToyFreddEnt [2016-07-01 13:05:39 +0000 UTC]

Ok back for lunch. Yeah I like the Mary suggestion and the name sounds old worldy, thanks for that. 

Going back to the post above taking out the lettering was actually a doddle as the background was plain, its when its on top of detail that things get tricky and if its nigh impossible to work around I either leave the image altogether in favour of something else or occasionally crop a section out. Duck's chimney will be easy enough as i'll just crop it out, plum some extra sky by stacking more sky at the top and layering on top. Duck's buffer beam area can mostly be restored by just mirroring the left side but Mike is the hard part and I think I will cop out by including either the Fat or Thin Controller over the boy-will see how it goes  

The original Snowdon coaches were rebuilt from the frames up but IoS suggests they replaced entirely. Outside the Skarloey/Talyllyn and Corris i'm not really that well versed in the narrow gauge stuff i'm afraid so can't say much more about them for now.

James and Percy are both separate topics and I can't really go into them here much but bar his cab windows ( possibly ) and a possible tender swap before he was sold I don't have any probs with how James is depicted ( well the Fright/shunter livery is nonsensical but if you just add some white lining to the red its fine ).
Percy I don't see having anything to do with GWR. This and the Trojan aspect is a Chinese whisper that has been going around the Thomas and Friend community for a while but its not actually stated anywhere. Umm if you want want to go into this more it might be best to PM me on SiF.     

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SleeperAgent1 In reply to SleeperAgent1 [2016-07-01 16:41:12 +0000 UTC]

There are two main techniques I use for omitting something from a picture.
I) I screenshot an area, say a piece of sky from the master image and after cropping whatever I don't want out I layer it on top of the main image i'm editing ( I use Word for layering ). If the snapshot is too small I usually have to add a couple of repeats and if the ratio gap is substantial I will then screenshot a cluster of these small pieces so I can then just insert larger cropped images at a time. You can just blow something up and I do this for say filling in the smokebox area that is behind the slightly transparent face i'm adding over it, but if you do blow something up to any real extent it changes the texture. After i've covered over said area I will usually blend it on Pixelmator.
II) I just use the Repair button on Pixelmator. This can do weird things but it an extremely handy function and you can combine it with some of the other tools on there such as Drag, Blur, Sharpen etc. For getting rid of the large lettering I would normally use the first technique but as I was going to recolour the background and add a bit of cloud it didn't matter   
All this is a little tricky to explain via text but if you ever want a bit of help with something in the future I might be able to go into how I do what a bit better.

No worries about the James and Percy bit and i'm not the type to be easily offended or anything, its just that they are specialist subjects that can't be covered properly in a sentence or two. James I have more or less worked out but Avonside Works are not that well covered in book form. I did actually make my own plan for Percy a while back but I want another go at it after i've acquired a B3 Class scale drawing, as that would greatly augment the other drawings I do possess. Of corse everyone has their own take on Percy's backstory and what he looks like and and i'm no different       
As I say I am happy enough to go into more detail in PM or something if you wish to ask about one of the engines or are after a plan etc.

Cheers

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ToyFreddEnt In reply to SleeperAgent1 [2016-07-14 12:02:53 +0000 UTC]

So sorry for the late reply to this, somehow it just didn't come up in my watch feed; ah well, better late than never.

Thank you so very much for sharing with me the process which you go through in order to create (or recreate, should I say) these illustrations; it's always fascinating to learn about the various techniques people use as it can be applied to one's own creations in some form or another as some kind of homage or the like. I myself have never heard of Pixelmator, perhaps I shall have to look it up at some point or another and see what's what in terms of how it works and all the rest of it because it seems like a pretty good program to get into.

Thank you so kindly for understanding; I probably shall PM you on SiF at some point to discuss this. And though I wasn't particularly looking for plans of the pair of them, I certainly wouldn't turn them down if they were on offer, so to speak, as I think engine plans would most probably help me get a better understanding of the two engines and how they were built. But, again, I shall save all this for the PM a wee bit later on down the track.

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SleeperAgent1 In reply to ToyFreddEnt [2016-07-20 17:57:30 +0000 UTC]

Sorry I missed this message till now as well!

No probs about the explanation. As I say with just text its a bit difficult to fully explain but everything I learned was through personal experimentation. I probably should watch a few tutorials ( if they exist on Youtube ) as I still don't fully understand Pixelmator and I suspect other programs such as Gimp would be better for recolouring but I can't really recommend one program over the other as I've only tried that one i'm afraid.
Excluding a few TV series characters I have plans for most British ( real ) engines but the L&YR's 657 Class would need some work to turn into a proper James scale plan. I'm actually going to the NRM this November and i'm hoping to acquire two plans concerning James and Percy if I can find them in the archives, as well as a couple of photos across the board   
Umm yeah no rush as I've got a two large PMs currently on the go on SiF but if you're ever after anything I can probably oblige.

Cheers
Sleeper   

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ToyFreddEnt In reply to SleeperAgent1 [2016-07-21 11:39:21 +0000 UTC]

It's quite alright Sleeper.

It's funny that you should mention Gimp as I, myself, use it as you may well have seen from the face edits that I've done over the past month or so; it seems, then, that I too can't recommend one program over another since I've not used Pixelmator. Ah well, perhaps I may try it one day.
I, myself, have wanted to go to the NRM ever since before I visited the UK for a 6 week holiday back in August of 2014; needless to say though, it shall be interesting to see plans concerning James and Percy...once again, though, I'll save it for a PM at a later date.

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ToyFreddEnt In reply to SleeperAgent1 [2016-07-01 13:18:21 +0000 UTC]

Welcome back good sir; and you're most very welcome.

I honestly would have thought that the removal of the background and text on that image would have been the most difficult part of this image; ah well, the more you know. As for the Mike and Duck image, I do think that the inclusion of the the Fat Controller or the Small Controller would probably be your best bet considering that, if you were to omit whichever controller you decide to include, you'd have to draw his entire wheel-set, running gear, etc.
But, as you said, we'll see how it goes.

I understand that we can't delve too far into the subject of James and Percy here and now, perhaps it would be wise to save it for an image involving either one of the two or I could simply shoot a PM to you on SiF; because, really, this isn't quite the place for it and I'm ever so sorry for bringing it up here when it is irrelevant to the situation.

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SleeperAgent1 In reply to TheDanishCheeseKing [2016-07-01 06:54:31 +0000 UTC]

You might of seen the original image here. 

sodor.proboards.com/thread/55/…

I managed to find a copy on eBay and it arrived in the post yesterday, though I used the front cover side with the 25p icon on it as it was in better nick.

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TheDanishCheeseKing In reply to SleeperAgent1 [2016-07-01 12:53:04 +0000 UTC]

I have found the image i thought of.

ttte.wikia.com/wiki/File:Dange…

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SleeperAgent1 In reply to TheDanishCheeseKing [2016-07-01 13:11:39 +0000 UTC]

Ah my bad, thought you were referring to the mostly unknown Hodges one. In the first two annuals that he illustrated he reuses several RWS illustrations, though sometimes he does some weird things to them like placing Thomas at Arlesburgh. The same is also true for a few of the colourless drawings contained within the activity books, though these are usually just inspired by the events. 

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