Pre-build illustrations, did you ?

I was wondering if all (or most) of the "right" cars had prebuild artists renderings, or at very least photoshop'd to start with ? Some of the cars I see that the proportions and stances are so right seem like they'd be impossible to have had them come out so good just by chance or vision / imagination. I realize a lot of it is going off of another car that you know what was used, then change it a little.

I know things take turns as you build them and sometimes they come out way different and way better than your original idea in your head. But I find myself having lots of ideas but can't draw WAF, is photoshop the answer ?

It takes WAY too much time, energy & mainly money, to start on untested combinations only to have to start selling things off because the direction changed and now those new $1200.00 wheels aren't going to look right, or change axles & hairpins or radius rods, or decide the frame needs kicked up more, then stand back and look. Or worse yet needing something you can't find, or chopping something that now you realize needs unchopped a little...

Even just rough mock-up takes too much time when you're a one man band. I know a certain amount of this is unavoidable, but I just wondered what kind of planning a lot of you do, or have done ? I guess I need to get into the photoshop as a first step. I still draw things out even though they aren't very good because I always know what I mean, and chop up photo's & tape them together, but that gets old...

Thanks,

Brian

 

i usually do rough sketches to establish ride height and chop, wheel/tire combo. if i get really industrious, ill load it into pshop for rendering.

on my old 29 coupe i had incorporated a 32 header panel & WS... the sketch looked like B***'s coupe... although, his coupe is executed in a very tasteful manner... not to mention its on the road, haha.

 

A drawing (or a photoshop) is good for concept, but you will still need actual mockup with real parts to determine how things sit and fit. Even if a guy had all measurements in a CAD program, there are too many variables (spring heights, drooping fenders, tire squish) to know exactly how it will turn out.

If you had all the exact same parts as another car, I bet it would still sit slightly different on your exact copy.

 

Jeff Norwell did the pic in my avitar before I built it. The only difference is the color of wheels. He had them Indigo blue and I painted them frost beige.

 

The previous five cars I built didn't have a drawing but I knew what I wanted before I even got the projects. Same too with my new project, but I'm hoping to win the Thom Taylor auction and get a cool rendering of the Forty before it gets built, never know, it may change some of my ideas.

 

As someone who does preliminary renderings, I'm obviously gonna say "hell yeah, get one!"... If you're just feeling out some ideas, and are a bit uncertain on some mods, they are invaluable. If you're getting sponsorship, they're required... It's a lot easier to erase a bad line than to replace a panel (if you're really impatient and like cutting stuff up), and they look cool on the wall, as well.
Trick is to share YOUR vision with the artist, and have a set look and feel picked out, and to mutually communicate ideas. Sometimes you'll both spark an idea that puts the car over the top... that one detail that maybe one of you would never have thought of.
I'd say, overall, having a rendering done really depends on the scope of the project... and highly recommend getting one as my kids will need shoes soon.

 

do a photoshop request line everyone else here does, most time you figure thing out easier, quicker and free.

Post what you thinking, I'll do it up in photoshop in about 1hr

 

I've always found it easiest to just do everything over two or three times to get it right.

 

A lot of times that is right.
That's why companies have departments called "research and DEVELOPMENT".
If it was as easy as drawing it up and going into production, that R&D area wouldn't need to be part of the budget.

 

Hehe...I'm perty good at that route too, although sooner or later you realize you only have a certain amount of life & energy left.

 

On one of the cars we recently painted, me and a friend colored in a black and white copy of a picture with his daughter's crayons. Seriously. Helped to keep straight which panels were which colors (two tone). And it was funny.

 

If you can't draw you can always take a photo, blow it up a bit on a copier utill it fills up a sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper, and then get yourself a piece of tracing paper and draw over it. If you want to lower the car, then you just trace the top, scoot it down, and trace the wheels. If you screw up, just get yourself another piece of paper. Now, I'm not saying it'll replace an artist (seeing as how I'm an artist and all) but if that's all you can do, then at least you'll be on your way.

 

I do concept illustrations in Photoshop - mainly for a local builder. I come out and take photos of the car at it's starting point and then Photoshop it according to their instructions.

Here's a "before" photo & "after" photo-illustration of a car they recently finished (which won a major award at the Sac Autorama this past winter). I wish I had a photo of the finished car to show just how darn close it is to this illustration.

I watched the car come together, but still never really realized it until I saw the car on the show floor with a large, framed print of my illustration sitting in front of it, but they nailed it down to the last detail and made my illustration look like it was a photo taken of the finished car. It really blew me away. They said the illustration was a great help in narrowing down their focus and allowing them not to waste time during a short turn-around project (the customer really wanted it done in time for the show) & to keep the customer from second-guessing every detail. They do great work.

I've done a bunch of other concepts for them - most of which are more radically modified than this sample, but those cars are still under construction & still top secret

 

I made my own freehand ****, not the best but I thought I stayed pretty well in perspective. Have not quite decided which I'll do yet.

 

Anyway...what I meant to mention was that when I built my own car, I never really went through the concept process and instead just relied on standing in the garage each night and staring at it to make sure I was getting the lines to look right which resulted in 50fraud's version of "doing it 2 or 3 times to get it right."

I also built it in such a disarray of poorly thought out stages that I never had the wheels or suspension all together to where I could mock it up to determine important things like ride height/stance and whether the wheels would even clear the fenders when I was done and I was really having nightmares that when I finally got all the pieces together it would be a total abortion, but by absolute pure luck everything came together more or less ok. Looking back on it, I really wonder why I never bothered to do a concept or mock up (I mean, I make a living doing Photoshop, so why not?). It would have saved a lot of effort and fiddling around and worrying. Go figure...?

 

I'm going to be building a 1936 Ford 2-Door Sedan soon, and will be using the drawing below as a guideline, with the exception of changing the headlights back to the stock 36' headlights and changing the wheels/tires.



I don't know about you guys, but for me it really helps me get through the build when I know what the finished product will look like before-hand. For example, if I were to cut the pillar/posts off of each side of the door/body without the drawing, once I did it, I would be thinking "Oh my God, what did I just do?" But with the drawing, I know it will look good, so i don't second guess myself. Basically, without having a drawing before hand, I would go paranoid.

 

I have to agree with what's being said here on a few notes... some projects don't require the full "sit down and design" sessions, especially in a case where you know precisely what you want. When I'm working with a builder, they might ask "hey, my customer wants to know what it'll look like with these wheels, frenched lights, and maybe something cool with the trim?"... it comes in handy sometimes when you can't just cut something up 2 or 3 times without spending extra cash on parts, or the h***le of tracking down replacements...
Then again, it helps to have a design rooted in reality, and knowing what your skill set and limitations are.
I've seen builders do amazing stuff with an idea that's "all in their head", and I admire that. IMO, the pre-build illo's are great when you either just can't picture it, or have to explain it to someone who can't. All depends on your cir***stances and whether you want/need one.

 

I can weld, but I can't draw worth ****. I started my pickup without any Foose-like renderings, but I knew in my head exactly what I wanted, having thought about it for two years or so. From there it was just a bunch of measuring different stuff and figuring out what worked as far as springs, frame rake, etc. I think I've only junked one part so far, a dash I made that didn't come out like I wanted.

 

I think the illustrations are most important when there are many, many people involved in the build and everyone is giving opinions and requests and repeatedly asking about this & that detail & everyone is trying to understand what everyone else is thinking.

Instead, after you get the concept nailed down, you can just pull out the illustration and go "here's what we're building"

 

pre build sketches and renderings can be very usefull
paper and pencil can save thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours

I did this one of my current ride even while still in the hunting and gathering stage

I think I did fairly well executing the build to evoke the original desired effect

 

I did a half-***ed job in paint shop pro, to give me an idea of how big a hood scoop, etc. Then I printed it out, used colored pencils (now, that's old school) to try different colors, graphics, etc. I'm pretty sure the yellow one is closest to what it'll look like, if I ever paint it.
But you never know... oops, I put two of the yellow one on, and can't figger out haw to delete one of them.

 

I used my basic phot editor to convert a picture similar to what I wanted into a line drawing with a function called edge detection and then converted it to a negative. That gave me a tracing with high detail that I opened in Paint so I could cut and paste pieces around to change proportions. Blah, Blah, Blah...

 

nope, just made it up as i went along.

 

I've posted renderings I did for the buildup of my 1959 El Camino before in another thread, so they are nothing new... you can see the best selection at my website http://www.xframechevy.com/index.asp?L=300. I would say that this method of pre-visualizing a car build is pretty extreme, and very time/cost prohibitive. I did the 3D Cad modeling myself for fun, so the cost was just my time (a LOT of it). While the model is not 100% accurate, it is accurate enough to get an idea of how things will look down to the inch. My measurements on the model are close enough that I can see the difference visually between running 14" wheels on the car vs. 15". Plus, being a 3D model I can rotate it to any angle, or even do a movie of it with a camera walk-around. This modeling exersise has helped me to make a decision on several aspects of this cars build, saving a lot of guess work. But, like I said... this is not a very practical method due to the time involved... heck, in the time I spent doing this I could have actually made some serious progress on my REAL car! Oh well, it was a lot of fun and I intend to do other cars in 3D when I get time.

 

:-O that was on a computer?! looks like a picture! sweet job...and future ride

 

That's what I do, but I draw it in Sharpie black, scan it into the computer, then I can save the image in PhotoSuite and play with colors all damn day... like this

 

If it's just for you, sometimes you can get away with what's in your head but, when it comes to communicating ideas to your customers, nothing does the job like a picture. If you can't sketch, photoshop. If you can't photoshop, do like was suggested and make copies of pics and get out the scissors and tape. That's what I did until I could get a grip on Photoshop.
Take some front, rear and side photos and try it out.
If you play with the enlarege and reduce function you can even have some fun in the 3/4 perspective. I did that with a he****. Started with sedan pics and used some reduced 3/4 pics to stretch it and it came out pretty cool.
The customer can't really see what's in your head. I've described things to people time and time again but not been able to get them to "See it" until they could actually see it. Then, that little light came on over their head.

Give it a try.

 

Yeah, what he said

Your drawing is the level of ability I aspire to...

What was said above is true about having to be able to show people what things will come out like, I've tried to explain things to people just to get the "uh, huh, yeah" and their eyes glaze over, which means they didn't even remotely understand. 99% of people who aren't deep into hot rods and customs & haven't seen thousands of cars can't get it without an actual picture.

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Edit.

I've had some offers of help with photshop, I appreciate it. I'm just asking about this because I've got piles o' stuff that could be made into cars, I could fool with with the Photoshop with it. It's nothing specific right now, unless it'd be to turn this 29 Leatherback below into a phaeton or tub, etc.

I'm almost burned out on my 34 bodies, but, as I said, I can't afford to spend a week or 2 on building something un-*****in'.

 

I used to do a ton of illustrations, body mod layouts and paint schemes. I say used to, cause my job, family and hot rod seriously diminished my time on the drafting table. That said pre-build illustrations are key to visualizing a seriously modified build, they are not needed on a resto mod or other cosmetic builds. For those use photoshop to change paint and wheels n tires.

I did a full layout of my A-sedan to understand the wheelbase, packaging space, weight n balance, stance, center of gravity and suspension mount points. Attached is my in first iteration, I am up to the 5th redesign and finally happy with it. All of these cost me only a few hours and no metal was sacrificed. Now I need start on the paint scheme, cause my inital thought of flat black with zinc chromate accents, frankly, ****s....

Good luck

 

I have done lot of pre-build illustrations but as much as after-build illustrations. Some examples in my website: www.jannekutja.com