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Comac C919 blank illustration templates

By Norebbo •  4 min read

It’s been a while since I’ve last illustrated an aircraft that kept me scratching my head in confusion the entire time, but the Comac C919 did it. Quite frankly, it’s a weird (but neat) airplane which seems to borrow a lot of design elements from other aircraft:

Blank side view templates of the Comac C919

Despite the number of times I found myself giggling as I was creating these templates, I had a lot of fun drawing the Comac C919. I’m admittedly not very familiar with Chinese aircraft, so it was neat to see how they do things compared to their western counterparts.

Comac C919 side view

Side profile illustration of an all-white Comac C919 with and without the landing gear

Comac C919 line drawing blueprint

Comac C919 line drawing

buy the Comac C919 source files

The Chinese are notorious for copying design elements of popular western products and integrating them into their own. From what I can see, it is very obvious that happened with the C919 as well. I mean, it’s just too much of a coincidence that this thing looks a bolted-together concoction of some of the most popular aircraft from Boeing and Airbus.

I’ll give them credit for being scrappy though. Why reinvent the wheel when you know that there’s stuff already out there that is proven to work? Whether or not they can be accused of outright stealing design elements is a topic of another post for sure.

What exactly is the Comac C919?

Launched in 2008 and first flown in 2017, the C919 is a Chinese twin-engine airliner built to compete with the Boeing 737 MAX and the Airbus A320neo. It has proven to be quite popular in the domestic Chinese market, with 1008 commitments and 305 firm orders by March of 2021.

As of that time, there have been no firm orders (or even commitments) by any western airline. However, GE Capital Aviation Services (a US-based leasing firm) has shown some interest by placing 15 firm orders. Time will tell where those aircraft actually end up.

An assortment of really neat facts about the C919

No matter what you think of Comac aircraft (and the C919 specifically), there are some really neat things about it that shouldn’t be overlooked:

What is the next Norebbo aircraft template going to be?

It’s probably going to be the Bombardier Global 7500. FYI, I’m probably going to flip back and forth between business jets and airliners going forward, as there seems to be demand for both. I live to serve, and I want to create aircraft templates that will make everyone happy (if that’s even possible).

Also, the flow of new templates should be faster than what it has been over the past two months or so. I’ve been working on an in-depth airliner art course for the past 4 weeks (details soon!), and that has taken time away from template creation. Sorry about that.

Norebbo

My name is Scott, and I started in the design industry over 20 years ago with a bachelors degree in Industrial Design from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI. I have an extensive background in both 2D and 3D illustration, and these days, I spend a majority of my time creating aircraft templates and airliner art. I’m basically an airplane dork.

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