Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Chapter 02
Refining the Street Race Car Concept by Dwayne Vance
Chapter 03
Refining the Construction Vehicle Concept: by Tham Hoi Mun
Chapter 04
Final Street Race Car Design by Dwayne Vance
Chapter 05
Final Construction Vehicle Design by Tham Hoi Mun
Introduction
My design brief for this project is to design a
sleek race car, so Im instantly thinking of long
sleek shapes that are aerodynamic and fast
looking. My next thought is when the car will be
built in the future or from the past? Since this
is an open project I will probably let my shapes
dictate whether it is set in the future or the past,
and I will draw forms that represent both.
In this tutorial Ill give a few different approaches
that I like to use to generate ideas quickly. I use
three different programs to start my ideation:
Alchemy, a freeware programme, Painter and
Photoshop.
At this point I just let my mind wander and
Im trying to come up with unique shapes and
patterns. I treat this phase as if looking at the
clouds in the sky and coming up with shapes
and interesting forms; trying to be unique but still
keeping a really cool look.
At this stage, dont worry about being perfect,
just draw and let your hand flow. It really can
be a lot of fun and takes the pressure off you to
create something perfect at first.
I start with Painter and make lots of scribbled
drawings; Im not trying to be precise with these
sketches, just letting my hand flow. The only
thing I think about is that it needs to look fast,
so my lines are long and aggressive. I will refine
them as I go along. As you can see (Fig.01), I
have several rough squiggles. I was keeping my
lines quick and loose, trying not to draw what I
already know; trying to come up with new lines
and unexpected shapes.
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Chapter 1
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Chapter 1
Dwayne Vance
For more from this artist visit
http://www.futureelements.net
or contact
vancedwa@sbcglobal.net
www.2dartistmag.com
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Chapter 1
Construction Vehicle
Early Concepts & Ideations
In this tutorial were going to be designing a
futuristic construction vehicle. Since were going
to be designing it for entertainment purposes,
we have to be constantly aware of how people
are reacting to our designs. Whether the
audience finds it nice or ugly, cool or not-socool, every design decision made should always
support the context, story or purpose.
When designing vehicles, the second most
important thing, apart from cool visuals, is
functionality. All good designs are followed by
practical and believable functions. Most of the
time concept art is meant to provide a better
understanding for the next person down the
pipeline, so its important not to create any sort
of confusion in your designs.
I start off by creating a huge set of thumbnails
(Fig.01a c), and then make some rather small
rough concepts, experimenting with shapes
and silhouettes. Depending on your personal
preferences, you could just start by creating
different silhouettes before getting into too much
detail or form, but for me, depending on the
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Chapter 1
involved.
which fit the best. Slash out the ones that arent
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Or contact:
thamhoimun@gmail.com
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Chapter 1
Intorduction
Welcome back to the second part of the Vehicle
Painting Tutorial Series this chapter Ill be
refining my concept.
Getting Started
Okay, so I went through and picked out the
rough sketches that I felt had some good
potential. This next stage is more of a thinking
stage and figuring out what makes your rough
ideation look good; what the design and
proportions look like. So I take my roughs, which
give me a decent idea of what the car might look
like, and I start to sketch over them. This is one
stage that can be a lot faster if you are working
digitally.
In my drawings, I cut stuff out and move them
and scale them to get different proportions and
such. The following three final designs were
sketched in the same way, using Painter 11 in
which I made a non photo blue pencil.
So in the first phase I take the ideation sketch
and fade back the layer so it is lighter and gives
a good underlay (Fig.01). This way I can see my
new line sketch as I lay it down.
I decide that the engine is too far forward and
I want to make the car look longer, so I cut the
engine out and move into a position where I
think it looks better (Fig.02). I then start laying
down some line work to start cleaning up the
design (Fig.03).
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Chapter 2
Vehicle Painting Series Chapter 2: Refining the Street Race Car Concept
I really figure that the engine will be a showcase
piece on this vehicle after all, the bigger
the engine, the faster it looks! So I go to my
reference stash from all the previous hot rod
shows I have attended (Fig.04 05), and pull
up some engine references. Using references, I
feel, is very important; it helps you put in details
you might not have thought of you were drawing
entirely from your mind especially if youve
never drawn it before.
I dont stick to the exact design and I add some
modern features to the engine, as if it could be
in the future or an alternate dimension (Fig.06).
I also love things with lots of mechanical detail;
it gives a sense of being engineered and it could
function if it had to. You may also notice I made
the engine big, but I later shoved it back into the
body more to really kick the wheels out in front!
I tighten up my wheels with some ellipse guides
(Fig.07). One thing that I do manually is use
my ellipse templates on my Wacom 21 UX. It
takes too long to draw up a circle and stroke the
path, so I just put my ellipse templates right on
my monitor and draw as if I was using regular
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Chapter 2
Dwayne Vance
For more from this artist visit
http://www.futureelements.net
or contact
vancedwa@sbcglobal.net
www.2dartistmag.com
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Chapter 2
Introduction
In the third part of the Vehicle Painting tutorial
series my second chapter I will be refining
the concept explored in thumbnails in the first
chapter of this series (February 2009 Issue
#038).
From my thumbnails, Ive chosen a design to be
illustration.
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Chapter 3
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Chapter 3
shapes.
Material Rendering
Here are the two materials that Im using for
the vehicle (Fig.09). The first one is a chrome
metal, used on hydraulics. Being hydraulics,
the surface needs to be smooth, and thus a
polished chrome metal, not a brushed one,
would be the best choice. The smooth, polished
surface of chrome is highly reflective and it
could almost reflect everything around it like a
mirror. As where the reflection of the sky makes
the ocean blue, the same goes for metal. It
reflects whatever colour or material is around it,
so its really like rendering the reflected colours
more than rendering a specific colour for the
metal. This metal also has very high specular/
hotspot, so the tonal changes are more obvious
like having a really dark line right next to the
brightest part of the metal. This contrast will
instantly create a very polished, smooth surface,
as opposed to a soft blend of tonal values like
the yellow material.
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Chapter 3
of the metal.
The diagram on the right of Fig.09 shows the
grains of the two different metals. The first one
is the polished metal which has finer grains, and
thus provides a more stable surface for light
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Chapter 3
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Chapter 4
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Chapter 4
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Chapter 4
Photoshop.
(Fig.13).
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Chapter 4
car (Fig.15).
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Chapter 4
(Fig.17).
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Chapter 4
Rendering Material
In the material rendering demo shown in
Fig.08a, I show the similarities and differences
of each material. Chrome always reflects its
surrounding environment, just like a mirror. The
green shiny paint is similar to the chrome but
it is using all green hues. Then if you render
dull metal, the sky, horizon and ground all
blend a little. Just compare the shiny chrome
to the dull metal. Ive also done the tyre, or
rubber material. You can see that its not shiny
because the sky, horizon and ground all blend
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Chapter 4
Dwayne Vance
For more from this artist visit:
http://www.futureelements.net
Or contact:
dwayne@futureelements.net
www.2dartistmag.com
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Chapter 5
changed.
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Chapter 5
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Chapter 5
Decals up close
I have a library of vehicle decals and after
market stickers. I like these because they
somehow give the audience a hint of what the
vehicle is about and where it comes from, but
in this tutorial I have decided to create a decal
for this magazine. Here I load the decal which I
want to use, which is currently black on a white
background, but I will invert it to white so that
there are multiple ways of applying it to the
vehicle (Fig.06a).
Here, since the decal is on a separate layer
from the white background (Layer 1) I just
hold down Ctrl and press I, and it will invert
the colour to white for me. Once thats done I
want to transform the shape so that the decal
fits well on the perspective of the vehicle. I use
the arrow, right-click on the decal, and select
the Distort transformation tool. This allows me
to manipulate all four corners of the image
separately (Fig.06b).
So once its placed on the vehicle, now is just a case of blending that
solid white decal to the vehicles tone. Since its on the darker side of
the vehicle, I simply decrease the opacity down to about 28% (Layer
11). Then I just make it look more believable by using the Eraser to add
weathering and scratches on the decal, and its done (Fig.06c).
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Chapter 5
Final Thoughts
We are visual communicators. We communicate
through our designs. A visual communicators
job does not end with the artwork. The final
product of a certain design goes beyond our
jurisdiction because it will be handed down
to other people further down the pipeline, so
therefore a good, readable, believable design is
essential.
waiting for inspiration to hit us and spending two
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Chapter 5
: volume 4
Introduction
Chapter 1: Day to Night Chapter 2: Sunshine to Snow Chapter 3: Storm Chapter 4: Fire and Smoke Chapter 5: Tips and Tricks