Ow, my eyes hurt now! (Evo Progress)

[jajimo]

So after watching the Turbo Dreams drift mix I decided to see what I could do about a Red Evo like the one at the beginning (doing donuts in the parking lot). Well, I also decided to try a different, more detail technique than I had used on any of my previous drawings: this time no outlines, just pure color. I thought it'd save time by skipping a step. I couldn't have been more wrong. I'm about 8 hours into it right now and I'm having to take breaks every once and a while because my eyes hurt so bad from staring at the screen (not as young as I used to be). There is a ton of more detail in this drawing (well... more like a digital painting now) so it's going to take me quite a while to finish it up.

The headlights... ugh... don't ask what the hell happened with those. They look okay at this zoom (less than 50%) but up close they look like absolute shit. I decided on blackhousing headlamps because I figured they'd require a lot less detail than chrome ones, but still, headlights are a pain!! I've spent about 2 hours on the headlights alone.

Cardomain seems to be distorting my JPEGs when I upload them (and converting them to about 20kb from their original 150kb+) so I will be looking for a new hosting server on Monday.



Damn, that seriously looks fucking ghetto with all that distortion. Damn you Cardomain, damn you to hell. Oh, and that was painted/drawn using the brush tool. There's no image manipulation here.

[metal]

Dude...that is sick O_O Keep us up to date with it! =D

[KustmAce]

Thats amazing! What program is that? Photoshop?

[jajimo]

Yep, Photoshop, RGB image at 2395 x 1493 pixels in 180 pixels/inch originally. The orange reflectors of the headlights turned out best in my opinion, but when you look at them up close, they're really just a few different shades of orange in alternating lines =P

[KustmAce]

sweet...i wish i had PS

Oh well

[Ra_15]

Looks great so far!
I should be getting PS soon. I can only hope one day I'll be as good as you!

Can't wait to see it finished. I've been looking on the graphic. manip. forum, and it seems you can do loads with the brush.

Good luck!

Ross.

[Ran]

Originally Posted by KustmAce

sweet...i wish i had PS

Oh well

PM me and your wish might come true

[bonzelite]

Originally Posted by jajimo

So after watching the Turbo Dreams drift mix I decided



Damn, that seriously looks fucking ghetto with all that distortion. Damn you Cardomain, damn you to hell. Oh, and that was painted/drawn using the brush tool. There's no image manipulation here.

i still don't understand how with photoshop you get lines and curves so perfect. it seems more like an adobe illustrator task. but you use photoshop. damn.

[mike@af]

Amazing! I wish I could photoshop that well.

[jajimo]

Heh, trust me, they are FAR from perfect lines and curves =) Take the door handles for example, they're really not much more than some blobs of color that have been arranged to look like a door handle when zoomed out. These pics are about 25% of the original size that I draw in. Basically I just do a quick curve that isn't perfect, then I zoom in to edit it (around 200-300%), deleting sections and redrawing it to create a more "curvy" line. With this new style, it's less necessary if the colors are similar to each other, because it won't really show up that much when zoomed out, but today I've been working on some higher-contrast areas and it is turning out to be a bitch. I actually learned some of my technique from watching the guys at Penny-Arcade draw their strips (they made a short AVI once) and basically, they just get really damn close to perfect things. Anyway, I did some more work on it. +4 more hours to total time.

I cheated on the interior, it's almost all one color lol =P I just didn't feel like putting that much effort into it. Once this car is done, I'm probably NEVER going to do this style again... it looks cool, but it just requires too much effort.



I'm really hesitant about the wheels, I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to pull them off with the same quality as the rest of the car...

Oh and the nice thing about working in high-resolution files... think about it like this... when you draw 4 pixels, they only look like 1 pixel at production size, so you have some room to screw up =P

[ImolaEK]

Wow that is awesome! I can't wait to learn how to use Photoshop!

[jajimo]

Woohoo! Done (kind of)! I still have to go back through and touch up most of the car before I can print it for my portfolio.



I was really intimidated by the complexity of the BBS rims, but I really wanted to put them on there (instead of going with like Volk GramLights or something simple). It took me a few tries, but I finally hammered out a technique that seems to work pretty well. It's not foolproof, but considering how my other wheels have looked in the past, I think it's pretty good. Here's a short, almost-step-by-step example of how to do it.



The Setup:
Get a good circle of the base color that you're going to want the wheel to be. Having the tire drawn already helps you work with the perspective since you have something to reference right there.

1) Outline the upper plane of the spokes (so if you were to have the wheel in front of you, you lay your hand down on the top, and it is touching the upper plane of the spokes). Also outline where the sides of the spokes stop (I did it in black). Use whichever technique of outlining works best for you (cell method, tracing, freehand, etc).

2) Fill in the parts you outlined (which represent the sides of the spokes, not the top!) and the black outlines also (where the brakes would be, but they're too complicated for me to draw). You should have a semi-3D image now.

3) Create an oval of a color darker than your base at the center of the wheel. Now add highlights and shadows to give it the bevel-in look. Generally, highlights in the middle, shadows on the top and bottom.

4) Create cone or oval shaped holes using an even darker tone of your base color.

5) Select one of these holes and add highlights and shadows (similar to step 3, highlights in middle, shadows on top and bottom).

6) Repeat Step 5 for the second hole (or however other many holes you have visible).

7) Apply major highlights (white) to the spokes of your wheel. Don't worry too much about how it looks for now, just establish their position.

8) Apply minor highlights (between white and your base color). These should be close to your major highlights and represent areas that have a decent amount of light, but not as much as your major highlights.

9) Soften both your major and minor highlights using a blurred brush of atleast one size larger than your original and in the color of the highlight you are working on. Also take this time to edit the shape of your highlights.

10) Finally, add in highlights and shadows to your outer lip. This will give the spokes a more recessed look, and add a more circular perspective to the wheel. Generally, shadows at top and bottom with a highlight mid way up, all of them following the contour of the lip.

Hope this has helped! I'll post a larger version (wallpaper maybe?) next week once I get the hosting situation delt with =)

Props to omnicron for suggestion & infofeast for hosting!

[castback]

that looks great man!!! how about a pen tool tut. lol. good job

[omicron]

Suggestion, don't use cardomain as a image host, that's just plain wrong. If you want to host your images in full quality, step over to http://www.infofeast.com/hostingapp/?page=signup
info feast is a great place to host, you get 12mb hosting. I havn't seen it go down once. Please upload it with real quality, looks cool.

Also, the pen tool is a great way to get your lines near perfect. I think photoshop beats up most other programs with the quality you can get. It's not the most user friendly program in the world, but once you got it down, you most likely wouldn't go without it. (ex-paintshop pro user )

[mike@af]

Excellent job! Thanks for the wheel tut also, I may try it out some time!