G'day!
Thanks for all the kudos. I knew that the one place this pic would be welcome would be CWA. Most of my friends never knew the splendor of Carmageddon, so it's nice to share it with fans. The bonus is you're more inclined to like it!
First of all, to those who offered server space, you're real lifesavers, because I have the final poster art (I made two variations for you to choose from) and it's huge... You see, one is 80mb and the other is 93mb as lossless PNGs. WinRAR had the reverse effect, actually making the files a few kb larger, so they're already compressed as effectively as they're going to get. It's sizes like these that make me think that perhaps a torrent would be better, but I'm open to all suggestions. As mentioned before, I don't have a place to put this, so I'll need someone more FTP- (or torrent-) savvy to help me out. I don't mind seeding/uploading to multiple hosts, either. The more the merrier. For those of you thinking "just use JPG", I could, but it'd kill the reds for when you get it printed, especailly on one of those massive injket printers (inkjet has better clarity over digital). There's nothing like lossy compression to undo those smooth gradients and shading.
I have temporarily hosted an
A4-size, 200dpi lossy JPG of the standard version for you to examine. This is less than 1/4th of the real deal, and won't last very long. The link is
>here<, but remember, this is only temporary until we host the poster versions (or my server dies.)
Second, I've put together a quick making-of slideshow with 8 tumbnail-sized shots of the work in progress along with some wordy explanations. Feel free to read it all at your leisure (below). Also check out the final notes at the end of the post.
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First of all, I started out by downloading Econobrick's Eagle Mk1 car for Carmageddon 2. When you compare what looks like a stock Eagle model to the original game model, you see that Econobrick did a lot of work for me by actually modelling the air dams and intakes and other holes in the bodywork. I positioned the car in Plaything 2 as I wanted it to appear in the final image and print-screened it at 1600x1200.
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Next came the Illustrator work. If you check out the tutorials at dangeruss.net, I followed those steps loosely, and used Illustrator instead of Photoshop paths to make the outlines. Illustrator has superior line control, and I was able to make several layers of vectors which would be converted to paths when the time came.
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Dangeruss also likes to make his rims first, so I set about figuring how the Eagle's awesome wheels would look if they were real. This was vanilla 3D Studio Max, and constitutes the ONLY 3D modelling in the
entire project. The tyre was also branded as a 'Firezone' just for fun. It was also rendered with the standard scanline renderer and 3 light sources. The trick here was positioning the tyres in 3D to match the 2D screen-print, and also turn the front one out for a more dynamic look. 22 minutes rendering time at 12000 pixels wide.
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Now Photoshop comes in. First, I make a 1m*60cm*300dpi canvas, then I load in three sets of paths from illustrator and the wheels. Once everything was lined up, I made a selection for the chassis, filled it with my median red colour and stroked the seams and edges with black at varying thicknesses.
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Now came the shading. Over 130 layers of highlights, lowlights, special effects, gradients, overlays and seat-of-the-pants trial and error. Since Plaything has no 3D lighting, I was just guessing about light sources and shadows. I followed Econobrick's textures from several angles of the Eagle to guesstimate what it should look like. It was never my intention for the car to look real, but 'tooned'. Just as well.
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I layered in the detail. Over and over. I used pressure-simulated path stroking to make the crease and fold highlights, and made a custom flare to pinpoint the fictitious lightsource. This is the real difference between Dangeruss' skill and mine. His work is more accurate, but he also works from photos of
real cars. Of note are the headlights, which aren't 100%. I wanted them to look more real, but without reference, I ended up keeping the tooned look by using mesh gradients in Illustrator to contstruct all of the lights and indicators. Making the car look like it's frowing without a 'crossed eyes' look was a priority.
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After the car was looking pretty good, the environment became the bane of my existence. Using the Plaything 2 bounding box, I extrapolated perspective vanishing points and manufactured the road and sidewalk. The saving grace was the car-centric image, which leaves little room for the backdrop. I had planned to use one of those typical Carmageddon pylon things as a prop, but it was a task and a half doing the curves in perspective. With the scene blocked out, I set about creating massive, at-size textures both seamless and seamed to lay on the road, sidewalk (footpath), grass and pylon. I used Photoshop's perspective transform and distort tools to place them in quasi-3D, then hand shaded them to add depth. The grass was a pain, because the texture looked really flat and fake, so I went back to 3D Studio and made grass. I lied before about the tyres being the only 3D part. Sorry. If you're wondering why I DOF'd the background, it's because I wanted to guarantee focus was on the car and cover up any mistakes I missed!
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The final task was remastering the original (and best) Carmageddon text. This was pure Illustrator with about 4 layers; black, red gradient, city overlay, white line. It was the easiest (and most enjoyable) part of the project--a welcome break from that environment!
I used 2 Photoshop files. One for the Car and another for the Environment. Each file was about 1.2Gb and took 8 minutes to load and save every time I hit the button.
The total time for this project was 2 weeks, and that's working about 6 hours a day on it. Why so much? Because I'm between jobs and I wanted something to keep me busy. This is also the main reason why I'm probably not going to be jumping into another one of these straight away. You see, I can't sell a high-res print of a Carmageddon car (and y'all wouldn't be silly enough to pay) so for the time being it'll be back to the grindstone to pay the bills.
However, I did have fun making this (it
was a learning experience after all) and the next time it should be easier (and I may cheat by asking someone for 3D studio files of the vehicle) and quicker and better. But hey--no promises. This project was originally going to be a 'toon of the 2006 Camaro concept car (sweeet) but it was too tough for me!
Well, that's the story.
Feel free to use this for whatever you like, as long as you don't try to sell it or call it your own.
I'll keep tabs on this thread for any suggestions and so-forth. To C2_Scientist, I wouldn't do the Mark 2 next because it reminds me too much of the Batmobile from the original film. I'd probably choose one of the Hawk's.
Shameless plug: If you want to see some of my 3D vehicle work, check out
Hover Car Racer, which you can find at Amazon in the US, UK and Canada. I didn't write the book, but I illustrated it for a friend. Don't be fooled, though! Hover Car Racer has NO violence!
Cheers, and once again thank you!
--R
Well done!
, definitely another kind of drawing, but it has it's Carma feel for sure 
