Credits
About The Aircraft Used
As you will see, the vast majority of aircraft depicted in this Substack are based on real life aircraft, because… well they really exist.
Some of these aircraft are remixes of aircraft templates that were originally drawn by a fine fellow who uses the nom d'avgeek Norebbo, which I purchased and then created the liveries from my own imagination. Other aircraft were drawn by me entirely from scratch. This is especially true of all Aria-branded aircraft.
All aircraft depicted on JStream are shown in their left side view, because that’s how I roll. If I ever come across an aircraft that merits a top view or front view, I might draw them as well. But so far, that has not happened.
The Aircraft page has an extensive list of the aircraft types that currently appear on JStream.
Norebbo Aircraft Templates
👉 Norebbo Website - ShopNorebbo (Template Purchase Portal)
Most of the aircraft depicted in the JStream articles were licensed from Norebbo, who has drawn dozens of top notch aircraft templates. Most of them are illustrations of planes dating from about 1960 onwards. Norebbo’s aircraft templates are of such great quality that I purchased many of his templates and adapted them to draw my own liveries using them.
Norebbo sells over 160 aircraft templates, starting at $9 per aircraft type depending on the preferred graphic format. His main website also offers online courses teaching how to draw airliner art and how to draw airliner liveries, and he sells airline livery art online as well.
If you ever want to buy your own templates of airliners, Norebbo is the person to buy them from. I highly recommend his work, they are the best and most convenient templates to use that I’ve found.
In-House Made JStream Aircraft Templates
There are several aircraft types that Norebbo never got around to creating, or maybe didn’t want to create at all.
In many such instances, I have created my own homebrewed illustrations of those aircraft. So far I have drawn up about 50 90+ such aircraft. Some illustrations depict aircraft from the early to mid 20th century, while others are more recent in origin. I plan to draw up even more in-house made aircraft templates, which will be added as we go along. I have about 150 such aircraft types on my hit list, so there’s plenty for me to work with.
At some point I may choose to sell or release base versions of the Inkscape SVG template drawings I’ve created for my in-house made aircraft. But not yet. Not yet.
Aria Aircraft Templates
A few other aircraft types you’ll see around JStream are purely fictional, because I can and do like to make stuff up. In story they were “developed” by the fictional Aria Aircraft Company; in real life they are concept aircraft drawn by me.
Many Aria aircraft types are kinda-sorta inspired by real life concept aircraft types that either never made it off the drawing boards but were really cool, or aircraft that did make it into production but for whatever reason the Invisible Hand of Fate decided not to let them flourish. I try to make them sexy looking, because an aircraft manufacturer named Aria should be making sexy aircraft, no?
I have drawn up about 15 of these homebrew Aria aircraft so far, several of which turn up in select JStream articles.
Drawings and Graphics
All liveries are imagined and drawn by me, unless otherwise stated.
Some graphic elements that are used in liveries were licensed from the Noun Project, which offers graphic icons to be used to visualize objects. In order to support the Noun Project’s many artists, I have taken out a license with them.
As mentioned above, all aircraft drawings used were drawn either by me or they were licensed from Norebbo.
Graphic illustrations depicting people and occasionally stuff like airline seats were randomly generated.
Route maps are furnished courtesy of Markus Englund’s Great Circle Map website, which lets me draw up full sized great circle maps.
Online Research Sources
Thanks be to the following resources for providing excellent articles and photos about airlines and the airliners who love them:
Wikipedia - Needs no introduction, but it’s usually my first (but not only) go-to site for research because it usually covers a given topic quite well. I donate to them occasionally.
Airliners.Net - A plethora of info about airlines going back forever. Here’s their aircraft data page.
Modern Airliners - Similar to Airliners.Net, but focuses mainly on airliners dating from the 1950s to the present.
Great Circle Mapper by Karl L. Swartz, the definitive great circle map site which has been around since the 1990s. The site contains tons of useful info about tens of thousands of airfields worldwide. I wish its maps were larger and more modern, but Karl is fastidious about keeping the data on them up to date, which makes this site essential to use.
FlightRadar24 - outstanding aircraft tracking site with several useful aviation databases and statistics; their weekly newsletters offer great insight as well.
JetPhotos - great aircraft photography.
Planespotters - great aircraft photography.
AeroLOPA - aircraft seating chart reference.
SeatGuru - more aircraft seating charts.
SeatMaps - still more aircraft seating charts.
Jane’s All The World’s Aircraft - a digitized version of the legendary reference books. While it’s strictly a textual resource, the site features info on many hundreds of aircraft. Especially useful when researching more arcane aircraft models.
Aircraft Recognition Guide - a very useful resource on spotting the differences between/among variants of the same aircraft, as well has how to avoid confusing one aircraft make/model with another, like say the AASI Jetcruzer with the Beechcraft Starship.
Aviator Joe’s Aircraft Comparison Page - useful for comparing two airliner models against each other.
Historias y Máquinas (Stories and Machines) - Written in Spanish, a site that contains all sorts of stories about various machines, including aircraft, and their roles in the history of the world, especially in colonial regions and in Spain.
EuroControl’s Aircraft Performance Database - useful for collecting facts about an aircraft type’s performance characteristics.
AirFleets.Net - more information about most civil aircraft, including operating histories of individual registered aircraft.
HTML CSS Color Picker - a useful site for researching and selecting colors. Although the site is aimed at website designers, I use it to mix and match colors for aircraft liveries.
ColorPalettes.Net - another very useful color matching resource. Looking for colors that go well with red? You could start here. The site can also help you pick any two colors and get a list of relevant color pallettes there. You can even create a palette by picture by dragging in your own picture in and have it select 5 colors for you.
CAPA’s Aviation Industry Glossary - a comprehensive glossary of airline and aviation industry terms, slang, and acronyms.
Airline Careers’ Flight Attendant Directory - same but more focused on terms used by cabin crew.
FlightsFrom - Very cool tool to list all scheduled nonstop routes to and from nearly any given airport in the world. Wanna find out who flights out of Tulum-TQO? Here’s the list. You can use it also to compare airfares as well.
Simple Flying - A news site focused on aviation types, especially airlines. Extremely informative, especially when you want to learn about the history of an aircraft or airline, or why certain practices came to be the way they are. Wanna find out why a Boeing B-52 has 8 engines? They can explain it to you.
Runway Girl Network - A news site that focuses on trends in the airline passenger experience, onboard amenities, aircraft and aircraft interior design. If an airline is about to make your flight experience worse, Runway Girl often has the intel about it early on.
Logos-World - A great website to research the finer points of logo design, including histories about how a given company’s logo has evolved over the years. Wanna learn how Southwest Airlines’ brand has changed over the past 50+ years? They tell you the story here.