Early '90s Clip Art Flies Into the Future (June 19, 2020)

ChrisReid

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
LOAF recently made an amazing connection through an unlikely source. As an avid follower of the 1994 Corel Gallery Clipart Bot, he saw the June 9 "Falcan.bmf" and immediately zeroed in on its relationship to Wing Commander. This early '90s file obviously forms the basis of Hunter's movie nose art. Do kids these days even know what clip art is? Do they still make new clip art?






Each of the pilots in the film got a unique emblem based on their callsign. Here's the full spread! You all knew that Rosie's callsign was Sister Sassy, right?





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Original update published on June 19, 2020
 
Small followup to this: I found the missile! It's ASAT.BMF in the same 1994 vintage clip art collection.

I don't believe Hunter's nose art actually appears in the movie so it was most likely created during post production by David Ladyman and the crew at IMGS for the guide. The wing logo, Blair, Angel and Maniac would all be from the art department in Luxembourg... and I'm not sure about the others. I did look through the Corel collection and didn't find any other obvious matching elements (palm tree, chess pieces, etc.)

(We should also note that none of this is some funny gotcha... this is what clip art is for. It's just neat to see where this stuff came from.)
 

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(Actually - I can confirm Knight and Rosie were both done by the movie art department. Rosie's nose art is visible on her fighter in the finished film and I actually have a copy of Knight's from set material... although his has been changed somewhat presumably to avoid apparent continuity errors... the original version reads "LT. KNIGHT - C.S.A.F. PILOT 1ST CLASS" around the circle... the Handbook drops the LT. and replaces the lower part with grids of card backs... and oddly adds the two Aces in the center...)

 
Bandit LOAF said:
(Actually - I can confirm Knight and Rosie were both done by the movie art department. Rosie's nose art is visible on her fighter in the finished film and I actually have a copy of Knight's from set material... although his has been changed somewhat presumably to avoid apparent continuity errors... the original version reads "LT. KNIGHT - C.S.A.F. PILOT 1ST CLASS" around the circle... the Handbook drops the LT. and replaces the lower part with grids of card backs... and oddly adds the two Aces in the center...)

Click to expand...

I don't think I've looked at the nose art in any great detail really before. It's interesting that Blair's nose art is a two headed dragon over a cross. It's kind of symbolic of his internal strugle between his Pilgrim heritage and his more "human" side. There's also several multiheaded beasts in greek mythology that these could be playing off of.

Angel's is a little odd too especially when you zoom right in with the religious icon style pose, halo, a star on the left arm sleeve, a low cut or unzipped top, gun under the right arm, an ammo belt, and galaxies in the background. The gattling gun barrel doesn't seem to have an actual gun attached and just disappears with hair seen through the arm opening. The entire image seems to have been painted on paper too and badly cut out before superimposing on the shield background. The pose isn't deliberate enough for the composition and what the heck is up with including the ground?
Overall you do get a sense of Angel's sense of self: an Angel at a glance but winking that it's a bit of a front.
 
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