If you like your Monty Python, you will get the title.
Anyway, on to business. Of sorts.
Some time back I was approached by a gentleman who is building his own scale airport. He wanted a resident airline to inhabit that airport. That airline is called Air Republica. And boy, does he not skimp on the detail.
He had an old livery that he drew up in 2002 using a wing design he’d penned as a youngster. He wanted to keep the wing, but modernise it. He also wanted me to keep the silver painted fuselage, but modernise the overall livery on top of it.
I know what you are thinking; “it’s a toy airline, so what?”
Well, it may not be a real, flying, airline. But this guy runs a very successful business and treated this like any real world project. This was no easy project. He threw in curve balls, spanners and wrenches into the project like any other client I have worked with.
If anything, this was good practice to keep my creative juices flowing!
He even went as far as to copyright all the work, once completed!
So, on to the project
First off, we needed a revamped logo. We started off on a completely stylised tangent. But gradually, the client wanted it to look more and more like the original, until… well, see for yourself. I think the logo is a good compromise between modernising the wing, but also keeps firm hold of its roots.

Once the logo was finalised, on to the livery.
Designing a livery for such a small scale (1:500) presented interesting challenges. I had to be mindful that not all the details would translate very well or would effectively become lost due to the small canvas.
Subtle detailing was off the cards altogether! Elements had to be bold, brash and obvious.
As it happens, I hit bullseye with the very first design! The client loved it. Aside from a few small tweaks to where the registry, flag, aircraft model number goes, the below illustration is more or less exactly as I first presented it. We also completed the cargo version of the livery at the same time. Yes, this semi-imaginary airline has cargo ops too!

After that, it was on to drawing up a “Paint plan” for a large multinational die-cast model maker so they know how to apply the artwork to 777-300ER and 772LRF models.

At the same time, I design the box art for the box the models would be delivered in:


The models came out sweet!

Air Republica, Big Monkey Cargo and the Air Republica Gold Wing are registered trademarks of Air Republica Group. © Air Republica Group 2013 – All Rights Reserved.