Virtual Tuning Mania

One of the many trends that came along with the Fast & Furious movies and the Need For Speed Underground series of games is the “art” of tuning and modifying your car to look as stupid and ridiculous as possible!!!

By that I mean the addition of ’shark fin’ like spoilers, ‘dragon’ like body-kits full of air vents and grille and the necessary addition of hundreds of stickers of performance (therefore expensive) part brands that your car will never have. A must ‘mod’ is the neon lights under the car! Look dad, my little Seat has been captured by UFOs! Look how it glows!

So it’s bloody typical: you can have a Honda Civic that values up to 3,000€ at the most and still have another 6,000€ worth of tuner stupidity mounted on it!! The car looks like it can rocket up to 60mph in less than 3 seconds whereas reality brings that figure up to something more than 8 seconds. And you tweak it, tune it, buy this spark plug and that exhaust pipe, tweak it some more and tune it some more till one day the poor bastard falls apart.

Blazkowicz is back!

Great news today! I found out that Raven Software along with the legendary id guys are about to launch Wolfenstein, the 5^th major title (excluding all expansions and special editions) in the epic series for the pc!

The aspect that appealed to me most in Return to Castle Wolfenstein was the wicked -almost– unreal story-line and it’s atmosphere. Don’t forget that RTCW was released way back in 2001 and being powered by id software’s Quake III arena engine worked miracles for it, at least that’s what we were saying back then.

Epic video game! One of my most favorite 1st person shooters of all time! Mixing a tremendous atmosphere with an eerie story-line that involves Nazi warfare, the occult and bioengineered monsters, it captivated my interest for a long time! Oh and how could I forget the elite -full leather clad– commando babes ?

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:

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!

Peugeot design contest 2008

I’ve just received a newsletter in my inbox announcing the Peugeot Design Contest 2008.

It is the 5th edition of the, now annual, contest sponsored exclusively by Peugeot, giving chances to talented (and not talented) designers all over the world to basically show what they’ve got and apart from the cash prizes there’s some chance that one can get a position in some automotive design studio, which is far better than any cash prize…. well not any really

This year’s contest briefs us to “IMAGINE THE PEUGEOT IN THE WORLDWIDE MEGALOPOLIS OF TOMORROW”.

And the candidates should design with the following four aspects in mind: environmental awareness (therefore V10 and V12 gasoline drenching supercars are an instant failure ), social harmony, interactive mobility and economic efficiency. Also one must keep Peugeot branding cues and styling in mind.

The deadline for this one is the 20th of July 2008, so get sketching and/or modeling ASAP!

Good luck!

The contest’s official site is here

Obsessed with Car-Toons!

It appears that I’m heading full speed ahead to be obsessed with Car-Toons, or Chibi-Cars, or whatever you want to call them really! They are cute and real fun to look at!

For some years (…or decades?) I’ve been seeing these cute sketches cropping around and they always get my attention. In fact I could spend more time observing a good car-toon than a good normal car rendering! And I always wanted to do a car-toon sketch! Also recently I’ve watched “Cars”, the movie from Pixar and falled in love with it! It all happened really 3-4 weeks ago when I first saw Brian Knowlton’s (also known as R0tti on deviantart.com) fabulous line-art sketch of a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder! I was hooked! Brian had put so much character and personality in to the car that it could almost speak back to you! Not to mention that it was so sweet to look at!

Logo Design Trends

By surfing around I’ve found this interesting article over at logoorange.com which illustrates and explains the trends for 2007 in logo design.

It is a really interesting read, explaining more towards the visual aspect rather than being a theoretical marketing text.

If you’re involved with logo and/or branding designs it’s deifinitely really worth to check it out.

Also visit logoorange.com for more interesting design related articles.