McDonnell Douglas MD-82 / MD-83 / MD-88 blank illustration templates

Next up in my series of blank side view airliner templates is this McDonnell Douglas MD-80. Technically, this is also an MD-82, MD-83, and MD-88 because they all look the same from the outside – the only differences between them are technical and under the skin. So that means I just created three templates for the time it took to do one! 🙂

Seriously though, I researched all three aircraft rather thoroughly while doing this illustration, but I’d appreciate clarification from the experts out there as to whether or not they truly are identical. From all that I could gather, there are no obvious external differences.

You might also notice that just like my Embraer 120 Brasialia template, I decided to spend a bit more time on this and accentuate the shadows more than I normally do for these types of illustrations. Stronger shadows help to make the aircraft look more realistic, but I purposefully left off the gloss and reflections.

That kind of stuff just gets in the way when adding color to these things if you aren’t working with the layered source files, and it’s always best to apply the bling after everything else is done. I can still remember my college viscom (visual communications) professor getting excited when he added the white gauche highlights to his demo renderings in class. I get that same feeling today when doing the same thing!

I’d also like to point out that I’m not completely finished with this MD-80 set. One particular aircraft that is pretty high on my to-do list is an American Airlines MD-83 in the bare metal livery. I can’t use the all-white template attached to this post, so that means that I’m going to have to create a bare metal version (just like I did for the DC-10 and 767-200).

Those take a long time to create though, so I didn’t include it as part of this basic template set. But it is coming, and I’ll add it as an addendum to this post when complete.

I may also create another minor version of these with the cone tip at the rear of the fuselage (under the vertical stabilizer). These illustrations feature the more common “screwdriver” tail, but to make this set complete I’ll need to do the other version as well.