Will damage be shown on it as the battle progresses? Both metal and wood have some interesting ways of being damaged, perhaps you could choose based on which you like best. With wood, you could end up with a sort of skeletal look with rips in the canvas. With metal, you can have rivets flying off in all directions and chunks of wing falling off/out.

Also, if the player is flying up, shouldn't the boss be flying down, facing the player? Or is the player attacking it from behind?

The lighting in the environment seems to be firmly from the left, but the lighting on the plane is inconsistent with this, and it's casting a shadow directly below itself.

I guess it is intended to look as if player is chasing it (i.e. that huge plane carries Hitler/Putin/Stalin, take it down). It would look ridiculous,  had it been facing towards the player, , because airplanes cannot fly backwards.

The boss doesn't need to move much - if at all - It's more you moving around the boss to attack the different turrets and weakpoints to take it down - also this version is for a mobile game, so the boss is not all in view - you fly left and right to see the full expanse of it. :-)

This is just the base/blocking - so lots of detail to add yet - it is indeed a bit barren at moment!

Starting to get a metal panel / rivits details into the boss. Still haven't decided on turret placement or design. And I need to add engine exhausts or some type of exposed metal around the engine housing, to suggest its a weak point to be targeted.

The area around the tail is probably the most complete so far. I'm a little worried that the metal paneling looks a little 'circuit board'y' ?

Not sure if your reply was supposed to have images in it? they haven't shown if so! :-)

Here's some further progress in-situ. I've got more panel detailing, but need to make the flaps a little more contrasty like you say.

Still need to add in all the turrets/defences too, but coming together nicely so far I think.

Why do their flat planes have such curved shading?

That cockpit looks flat and amateurish, especially glass with all that dithering, which suggests rougher texture. The cockpit frame has strange light direction, implying it is highlighted from the bottom. Consider doing something Contra style:

I too find the cockpit design confusing, besides the funny shading.

Why does this plane have a glass nose? Why not place the cockpit a bit further behind the nose, like every airplane in existence? And also, typically on these double wing planes the cockpit is connected to the bottom wing. Does it really need to come through the top one? How does it look from the side? And would the edges in the wing have such strong corners, instead of a more rounded aerodynamic shapes going towards a sharp point in the back?

Looking at it more, I'm also not sure how the engines are. Are they embedded in the flat wings? Are they underneath it? By googling "propeller on wings" I found some interesting images, usually they are placed much further in the front of the wings and have a very specific box shape.

Of course your plane doesn't need to be realistic, but by understanding the properties of real planes you might be able to make a design that feels more logical

Nice to see that you have a reference, those pictures are worth  more than any critique we'll ever give you! And that Lancaster Bomber sure has an interesting design!

Based on that kind of nose, I would suggest this, because your current one still makes me think more of a zeppelin than of a mean machine:



I understand that you might not have so much space.. but don't be limited to the frame, the plane can move ingame perhaps and I love bosses that are so big that they don't even fit on the screen!

Thanks for all the advice and thoughts! - I tested out a few things, but I'm pretty happy with how this has come out now. Might still try and get a better reflection on the glass, but think I'll leave this boss for now and start moving onto some other game assets!

@snv: Find me one more biplane that isn't that one which has the tail connected like that :p

@Daniel:
Super work on the cockpit, nice! Now I'd kind off wish for a retake on the engines in the same style, this shading and detail without dithering works great!

I did end up doing the engines in a similar way. Now just have to wait for my game partner to get back from holiday and start coding all this stuff!