Car painting

[Edgars Erix]

I have a question for our excellent car makers.
What is the best way to paint tubes, holes, plates etc so that they look realistic and dimensional on the flat surface of the carshape? I can't get them look properly
What editors do you use? Any tips? [-o<

[mwi]

well, i give a try:

as
example i use my renault r26 without any advertisement


tubes:
this is a very easy one. let us take a look at the bodywork:

as you see the blue becomes more darker the closer we comes to the bottom. a "special trick" is the bright stripe on top of the site. this gives an effect like the sun is shining on the bodywork.

holes:
for this we take a closer look to the airscoop:

here we have the same effect. a 1px wide bright stripe gives a more plastic / round look

plates:
this is a tricky one: let take us a look at the bargeboards:

at first you see, that they becomes more darker from top to bottom. the second fact you shouldn't ignore is that they makes some shadows. so you have to make the outer edge a little bit darker (at first very thin (1px) and the more it goes to the bottom the brighter the shadow has to become...)

general:
well, it is always very usefull if you have some pictures that shows which shadows the aerodynamic produces and how the sun is reflected on the car.
as editor i use the normal ms paint. only for advertisment i use photoshop.

i hope this helps a little bit, even if my descriptions are not that detailed.

cya
mwi

[Edgars Erix]

Thanx for the advice!
Actually this is the way I am trying to do. It just seams that I have to practice more
Generally it means that you have to paint the whole car by using almost only the pen ...

[mwi]

...
Generally it means that you have to paint the whole car by using almost only the pen ...

yes
ok, it's maybe a little bit crazy, but that's the way how i get the best results.

cya
mwi

[V12-Power]

I can only second what MWi said. It's exactly what I'm doing, too.

At first I make some kind of basic layout and then I refine it step by step.

And your right, it needs a lot of practice. But if you have learned it once, it's like cycling. You'll never unlearn it.

[Edgars Erix]

OK! I have to trust in your experience!
I've just hoped that there are some other ways to do it faster
Now it means that it will take a much longer time to publish my 1951 carset.
The "not that nice" version is ready, which is similar to the 1950 carset, but now I will try to finetune all cars.
So - wish me luck!

[HF]

So - wish me luck!

I do!

[Edgars Erix]

So - wish me luck!

I do!

Do you still remember about the site for my race reviews?
:-"

[HF]

So - wish me luck!

I do!

Do you still remember about the site for my race reviews?
:-"

Yes, just in time I wrote my post "I do!" :-" :-"
My problem is with the style of the site.... I didn't forget I. From time to time I worked on it but my life went on......

[Edgars Erix]

Yes, just in time I wrote my post "I do!" :-" :-"
My problem is with the style of the site.... I didn't forget I. From time to time I worked on it but my life went on......

Be sure, I can understand it!
Also in my life the GP2 is surely not the only thing to do

[mwi]

OK! I have to trust in your experience!
I've just hoped that there are some other ways to do it faster
Now it means that it will take a much longer time to publish my 1951 carset.

nobody is perfect from the beginning i need more than five years to arrive such a level of quality. (and i'm sure that there is enough space to improve. but maybe you take a look at older carsets from me (at grandprix2.de under the name wolfpack) this is what i called embarrassing nowadays...)
but if it helps you and if you want to, i can show and comment some steps how i make the renault r27.

The "not that nice" version is ready, which is similar to the 1950 carset, but now I will try to finetune all cars.
So - wish me luck!

of course i wish

cya
mwi

[TdK]

- I use exactly the same way to paint cars, and with the same programs. The back of the cars (Suspension, exhaust, tubes, are mostly down-sized real-life pictures, but with lot off changes and adjustments to Gp2 shape(s), because most of the colours work out strange in Gp2, or the real shape gets distorted on the Gp2 car.

Indeed you paint most of the stuff on the car pixel for pixel, mostly first doing the basic (underlay) colors, and then you add the advertisement. (Always save the advertisement less version on a save place....!!! When layouts are changed, it's much easier to adjust yourself to it!)

At the beginning of the season i figured out to make the cars completly in Photoshop, but it worked out very messy. So, Photoshop only for advertisement stuff.

[Greyhead]

Yeah, drawing pixel-by-pixel is a bloody pain, but it's definitely the best way. And you can make templates for certain things (for example in my WTCC car set, several teams use the same car) so you can make a "base bitmap" then just change the colours or whatever, to speed things along.

[HF]

Well, I don't use [cracked] Photoshops or any programs like that My programs are IrfanView, GIMP, MS Paint, MS Paint.NET and sometimes the Siemens Foto Editor I got with my mobile.

That causes the big differences in the quality of my own cars. There are cars which look prity well in my eyes and some which are completly crap but my best trys. If I would have spend more time on my cars I think I could have done better work

I often work with increasing parts I painted on a 200% layout. This makes it much easier with the intersections (right word for german "Übergänge" in this case?) of two different colours.

Painting px by px is the thing I am learning at the moment but I'm often not so paitent like I need to be

[mwi]

renault r27
part 1: the bodywork:

like always we begin with a complete new white car


well, i really don't know why but the first thing i ever do is to paint the bodywork / sidepods.
1.) the very first thing we have to do now is to ake a closer look how the renaults sidepod looks like and paint the basicly colorschema:


2.) the first shadows. as i said before the closer we comes to the bottom the darker the colors have to be. also important: we have to antialize the black parts and the orange dot. also important: the backgroundcolor is not white, it's a very bright grey.


3.) the r27 have a very strange plate at the sidepod. anyway, we paint them with white and gives them a shadow. as you can see in real there's not only a shadow under these plates. (sounds strange but is a fact ) i also begin with the second plate.


4.) with the next step i'm very fast, sorry. but otherwise the only thing to do is to paint the plates in the orange area (with shadows etc.) and there's another hard fact: gp2 doesn't like orange! there are still to less different oranges. i hope i find a good way to manage this problem, but the chance for changes is big.


5.) this is the last step for today: we just have to antialize between the white and the orange area.


et voilà the first big step to make a nice renault r27 is done (of course,the sidepods aren't ready, but this is all we can do for them at the moment )


if you want more of this please write. otherwise i quit with this.

cya
mwi