Watch Klavs Paint a Shuttle

One of Klavs' most recent creations is a Confederation shuttle design. It's clearly inspired by the iconic Wing Commander IV shuttle, but more curvy and with a cockpit that is more integrated into the fuselage. You can see an early version of the model in this update from one year ago. As a bonus feature, Klavs has also posted a high-speed video (102MB) of him working on the shuttle's textures.

Most of the Wing Commander ships are textured with simple procedural panels and occlusion (Howard Day does this much better and more professionally than I do. I have a more comprehensive UV unwrapping technique for my professional stuff.) Then I bake those into a texture map and paint in modo, rotating the ship as if the model was an actual model ship. This works pretty well with the more cartoony look I'm going for with the WC ships, versus the more detailed stuff I do in my other work.

I basically just think about how the maintenance and air crews would see the ship, add placards, warning labels, markings, etc with contemporary warplanes in mind. Finally, I try and add extra splashes of color here and there where I can, to avoid 'grey ship syndrome'