If you ever read the AVSIM feature on McPhat Studios (if not, click and read it) and especially the part where we're called 'Dutch Masters', you would think our team consists only of 'Dutchies'. Where it started out as solely a Dutch outfit , this soon changed and with a couple of Argies (people from Argentina, yes I make up words on the fly), a Canadian, an Icelander, Brit and a couple of Yanks you could even say we've been overrun by foreigners. Masters we still are, but Dutch, you could hardly call us and the next team member I'm introducing doesn't quite balance that out in favour of us cheese eating, wooden shoes wearing, electronic music loving inhabitants of the world :

Luke van de Rest

The name may imply Luke's from 'The motherland', but he's not. He's from the one place on earth where women have sexy accents and people are always enjoying themselves : Australia. Don't ask me where it is exactly I got that mental picture of Australia, but it works out for me like that. It's basically England, but sans all the sour looking people, the hooligans and with a whole lot more sun. Or so I imagine.

Luke's role is to mould, create and shape the exterior 3D model of the DC-9 (dash 30). Initially supplied with the Super 80 source files, he soon decided to start from the ground up, getting rid of all the work previously done. The Super 80 may look good and has awesome performance, it also was a development once made for Flight Simulator 9. Besides, 3D Artists don't like working of somebody else's work/work flow. Or so I've been told.

The main reason for starting with a clean sheet, was that our assignment was to make the model not only up to today's standards, but it also has to last for at least a couple more years. Like the guys and girls at Microsoft proved ; Sometimes it's best to leave the old cornerstones for what they are and build from a fresh and new foundation.

With that being said, we gave Luke a pile of work that kept him occupied for a good few months. Me, asking for renders every other day (who doesn't love renders right?), didn't really speed things up, but it gave us a fair idea of the quality of his work :  He made the model look sweet like apple pie and with (how he likes to call it) the usual McPhat One-Two (as in textures), you guys are in for great looking exterior graphics.

As a closing remark, I'd like you to check out the first ever render of what you may expect not here in this blog, or on our website even, but at our freshly created Facebook fan page.

Don't forget to hit that 'I like' button guys!