Did you know that?

Yeap it’s officialy quiz night here at Vagpod. No, wait! don’t get your drinks yet! Actually yesterday evening I was reading a book about graphic design and I came across some interesting historical facts which I’ll share with you. Now go and get the booze

:

• The term Graphic Design was introduced in the USA by Dwight Wiggins in 1927.
• The famous London Tube map, (more or less) as we see it today, was designed by Frank Beck around 1908.
• Guttenburg created the first printing press by adapting a wine press in 1440-1450.
• The typewriter was invented in 1865.

New Car-Toons

Hell yeah! My Car-tooning mania still goes on and strong!

My latest work is the 2007 Mini Cooper S. I’ve done this on my holidays last August, as I was drinking coffee on a beach cafe and a gorgeous red mini was parked near by. I decided to sketch it on a napkin. Later on it was all Photoshop long hours of work.

Much earlier than the mini, I’ve sketched a Nissan 350Z which was an on/off job for me due to heavy workload. But I’ve got it done finally, and this is the final product. The original sketch was done in May ‘08 but the actual illustration took me over 4-5 months to complete.

I hope you like them both

On the works now is a 1976 Toyota Celica ST, which is actually a commission for a friend that owns one and regularly races it on historic rally races. Stay tuned

save

The return of the Scirocco?? NOT!

Okay just to set things right:

This is a true SCIROCCO! (the mkII model of the series)

and this is NOT a Scirocco:

Unfortunately Volkswagen has named their new hatch as Scirocco But does it have any relation to the one and only and true Scirocco? I guess not!

A Ducati for your pocket

It seems that the trend nowadays is motoring and large companies in general that have nothing to do with computer products to collaborate with companies that produce electronic and computer products. We already have seen the Ferrari-Acer 4000 laptop and the Sony Ericsson K800i Ferrari Edition, not to mention the Prada – LG KE850 mobile phone.

Perhaps it coincides with Sandisk’s decision to sponsor the Ducati racing team, but the Italian firm already gave the green light on Sandisk to put Ducati’s logo on a specially designed 4GB USB disk.

The design is extraordinary and very stylish, the product reminds of a racing motorcycle’s fuel tank and when the USB adapter is inside it reminds the exhaust as it comes out from the back of the bike’s tail.

In terms of capacity, 4GB is today’s standard and with 20 MB/sec speed … it is not mentioned anywhere if the 20MB/sec is the writing or reading speed, they are different on ALL USB sticks. Definitely IF 20MB/sec is the writing speed it is very fast!

So you got a package of exquisite design that produces superb looks, a standard capacity that is enough for the average user and the Ducati logo on!

What’s the price for such an gadget of desire? It retails about $124.99 = (80.25 euros)! Yeap you’ve read that one right! Other 4GB sticks with approximately the same performance retail at 16.00 euros ($24.92). Also for around 60.00 euros you can get the OCZ ATV 16GB USB stick with superb writng speed (all prices are at the time I’m writing this). I’m mentioning the OCZ product because it is the one I’m using on an everyday basis and in my experience it is really fast, plus it can carry 16GB of data, we’re talking about whole graphics project folders here! And all that for half the price of the Sandisk-Ducati.

So you gotta pay that nice piece of plastic a bit too high if you want it with a Ducati logo on!

Making reference material useful

How many times don’t you find your self keeping all over the place photos, advertisements, paper clippings and such things, with the excuse that they could be reference materials on future projects?

I know I do and this only helps me to cram my desk with piles of paper bits that never ever get used in the end.

The same applies when saving photos and images from the web on your computer. First you can never find them when you really need them and second, you never remember that you have them!

Lately I found this article with some helpful tips:

My first website :)

Today is officially the launch of the first website I ever made for commercial purposes. Still very basic in design, the site doesn’t do much except from presenting the digital printing shop I’m working for, but it is a huge step forward from what I’ve created so far, which was fairly basic.

The graphics were all done and sliced in Photoshop and while I’ve attempted to keep the Photoshop exported html,

Autobianchis in Japan ???

In all honesty, what car you would least expect to be imported in Japan? What European car you would give a zero percent possibility to catch on a Japanese street?

You would never ever think that Autobianchi’s A112 got imported in Japan, would you? No, I guess not! Well think again, cause the photos

Ford Escort mkII RS2000 toon

For quite some time now I wanted to do an illustration of a Ford Escort mkII RS2000. Now I’ve always said that the mkII Escort is one of my favorite cars of all time. It is also one of my future projects; to buy restore and race one.

So falling in to the car-toon obsession that I’m happily experiencing these days, I’ve decided to have a go at making a toon illustration of my fave car. So my number two toon is the Ford Escort mkII RS2000 (pictures above, on the left).

I have planned to make two flavours on that car, the first one that you now see is a modern drift version, whereas a classic Rally version is on the works. Inspiration for the drifting version comes from Colin McRae’s (RIP) mkII and the fabulous mkII owned and raced by Nikos Politis that I have photographed on a local Rally race two years ago (seen on the right).

The whole illustration lasted around 12 hours from sketch to finish and about 18-20 preliminary sketches were drawn in order to establish the best action “posture” for the car. “Inking” and coloring was fully done in Photoshop.

Long live the mkIIs!