240SX: Stages of Development

[KustmAce]

He's not really manipulating any graphics, so I guess it stays. That and Im too lazy to move it right now. Mike, if you feel differently, be my guest.

Looks good though!

[jajimo]

Eek! I'll try to answer all the questions in one post =)

I drew it using the Brush tool, size 1 at a resolution of 1280x1024 in I believe either 72 or 100dpi (I'm at school right now, so don't have access to the original). Generally when I do more professional work (such as the coloring I do for an online comic) I try to work in 200-300dpi... this way, no one knows that it looks jaggy when I convert it to 72dpi for web posting! Oh, and I almost forgot, I use the "Shift" key for the outlines... this can cause it to be too "straight" I suppose, but that's where Calculus finally comes into play in my profession =P I knew I took it for 2 years for a reason! Anyway, what I do is I start out with a point, hold down shift, and click another point at a distance (dl) away, this gives me a line. For curves, I decrease the distance (dl) between each point in order to make it concave or convex, and as the scale of the image is decreased for the final production (going from 300dpi to 72dpi) the difference between these jaggy curves and actual curves fades away. =) Not the most efficient technique, but I like it!

As far as a close up of the wheel (which one?) I'd be happy to do it, but since the original is only 1280x1024, I'm not sure how big it will actually be. The wheels always suck for me because of the line-drawing technique I use (described above) so they always have particularly "straight" looking parts to them.

I may look into using the Bezier Pen, because it seems VERY similar to what I'm doing, except it should eliminate some of the "straightness" of my current images.

I liked that color of blue you posted better, I may try to play with it when I get home to see what I can do =)

Oh, and proportions, you gotta have a reference pic, and that doesn't even guarantee that it comes out perfectly. For example, the wheels. I always have problems with the wheels. These ones turned out pretty well, but if you see my S15 drawing from my Cardomain site, you can see the wheels are kind of strange looking =/ Having experience in 3D design has made proportions MUCH easier for me, you just have to be able to visualize the object in it's simplest terms. For example, a wheel is actually a cylinder. From there, to make the lip, you'd inverse-bevel it slightly, and then do it again with different values to give you the sort of shape you want. The spokes of the wheel exist in a plane, so if you can visualize the plane then you can draw the spokes. Of course, having that reference pic will save you from having to do any of this =P

[bonzelite]

jajimo, are you using the wacom tablet pen? and are you tracing directly the proportions from the reference pic? or eyeballing? i don't care which and it doesn't make a difference ideologically speaking. i want to know the technique.

[jajimo]

Originally Posted by bonzelite

jajimo, are you using the wacom tablet pen? and are you tracing directly the proportions from the reference pic? or eyeballing? i don't care which and it doesn't make a difference ideologically speaking. i want to know the technique.

I wish I had a Wacom Tablet Pen! No, I'm using a regular optical mouse and Func Pad (very useful though). I use both tracing and eyeballing, because tracing can be useful to get good proportions on difficult objects (such as the spoiler) but generally it's hard to get a picture with the resolution I draw at, so then I have to blow it up, which causes distortion. The fact that the pictures also have extremely dark areas or areas of low-contrast makes tracing difficult also, so you have to use eyeballing as well. My technique may not work for you, and the key is developing what you're comfortable with. Otherwise, you'll be forcing yourself to adhere to something that may not work for you =)

[bonzelite]

jajimo, i understand. you must have extreme patience!

[lemorris]

I love the bezier tool. The tricky pat is picking the next point, but once you get used to it you can fly.

I have a wacom tablet but I hardly use it. Sometimes when I'm working in Painter but not that much really. Once again preference I guess.

[jajimo]

Actually, the reason I chose to go to 2D is my lack of patience (relatively). 3D requires much more effort and work (especially when you're as picky as I am), and even after hours of slaving away, you're still left with a blockish object that is barely recognizable as a vehicle. The really bad ass people can turn out a beautiful 3D car in no time at all, but unfortunately, I'm not one of them (probably due to my insistance on using Spline modelling). Drawing 2D instead of modelling in 3D shows you the rewards of your effort much faster in my opion, and you don't have to worry about the placement of lights and fitting of texture maps either =) Sketching or hand drawing though, that requires a lot of patience. The greatest thing about using the computer as a direct medium is the ability to undo several steps and switch between tools relatively quickly. Oh, and no smudge marks here... god I hate smudge marks =P



Here's a closeup of the front wheel (hoping that's what you wanted, I zoomed in to about 200%). You can see it is neither perfectly proportional, nor even perfectly round... the center of the wheel bothers me the most, but I don't have enough balls to go back and attempt to redo it. It looks good enough when zoomed out =P This is the culmination of several redos, I've erased various parts of the wheel and redone them over and over to get as close as possible, and even then, it's not perfect. I am fairly satisfied with the way the shading turned out, however =)

[lemorris]

I like it. You have an interesting approach.

In the future you might want to build your lineart in Illuistrator then save it as a PSD file and color from there.

You can dup your line layer move it to the top and set it's properties to multiply. This drops all the white...hell you know all of this.

In any case it's cool. I'd like to see more.

[jajimo]

I'll have to try that out =) Thanks for the tips! I think I'm going to work on an EVO VIII... the Turbo Dreams drift mix has gotten me all worked up =) I suggest everyone download it if they get the chance.

[jajimo]

^^^ Really horribly distorted due to JPEG conversion. Will try to solve this.

So I was thinking to myself... "real cars don't have outlines... why should mine? It'll save some time by skipping a step too!" Ha, right. This is 4 and a half hours of work, and we're only talking about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way completed. By skipping the line art step, I've required myself to put all the detail in with the color, which means selecting different tones of red to give the desired effect for each part of the car. Do I think it looks bad ass? Oh yeah. Will it take me about 4 times longer than my previous ones? Almost definitely.

I have learned some things by doing this though:

1) Gradients suck ass.
2) The rubber stamp tool is good for covering up mistakes.
3) Red isn't as cool of a color as I had originally thought.
4) Gradients really suck ass because they'll cause you to waste time doing something that you could have done with a larger blurred-brush at 50% opacity.
5) The Mitsubishi Lancer Evo is a far-too detailed car.
6) Jpeg conversion can really screw up an image.