Intersection Replicas Forums

Some may not be familiar with the process required to reproduce the decals on a car. American Diecast, for instance, requires customers to send in their own artwork, so most of the time they probably only have to scale the artwork to fit on their cars. I believe if the artwork is not provided, customers are charged a fee of $50/hour to have their great artists do the work. Unfortunately, at $50/hour a complex scheme like this one would quickly become very expensive, because the process is quite time consuming. I don't charge an artwork fee, mainly because i've become pretty proficient at reproducing graphics, and it's something that I enjoy doing anyway.

I'll try to show how the process works, and how the artwork progresses.

I use Corel Draw to do all my artwork.

I usually do the number first, unfortunately I did this work yesterday, so i wont' be able to show the steps required to create it. Total time for this was about 1 1/2 hours, though i was half watching "Bull Duhram", and half doing this artwork, so pure labor time was probably something like 45 minutes.



It's important to note that colors aren't important at this stage (colors change on Corel Artwork with a click of a button). I'm mainly concerned with the quality of the line art, and that the decal is clean. Orange areas on the number will be fluorescent on the real car.. the purple outline will be purple foil on the real car.

After the number, I get a good clean image of the side of the car. It doesn't have to be a perfect side shot to work (it makes it easier though!), but the graphics can be adjusted if an angled shot is all that's available.



First i need to 'block out' the areas that are going to be black, and have the honeycomb design. I use a bunch of triangles, and adjust them to match the curves.


With a click of the mouse, i fill these areas a color that stands out, to see how it all looks thus far.


Next I will need to adjust this to fit my body design, which i'll show in the next images.

After some poking and prodding.. twisting and stretching we now have the basic black areas scaled where they should be. Body sizes between the real car and the replica can vary.. so it'll never be perfect.. but I get it as close as i can.

Next step is to tackle the honeycomb fill.

First i have to make the honeycomb line art.. garish colors so it's easy to see the relative sizes.. I make is way bigger then it will actually be so i have plenty of room to work.



With some tools and cutting parts out, the end result is a honeycomb shape that's just the edge lines.. as you can see it's now see-though.. this will allow me to do the special fades at the edges on the real car, which we'll see later.

Looking closer at the real car images, i flubbed a little on the orientation of how it was on the car.. so to get the required coverage i had to take two pieces weld them together.

More tools, and we have the honeycomb. In comparison with the real car, it looks to be about 2 1/2 to 3 honeycombs tall throughout the stripe, angled back slightly.. so i'd say it's a pretty close match.. next on to the colors.

There's a lot of little things that had to be done to get to this stage. There's a number of subtle shading items, outlines, cutouts, and other things required, but the end result is pretty close. Since a good portion of the rear area will be covered in decals, it doesn't have to be perfect.



Tomorrow i'll move on to the sponsor decals.

Looks like you got it figured out.......BTW, Bull Durham is a classic!!

Mike,

Thanks for taking the time to show this to us. It looks great!

Scott

Sure thing Scott.

I thought you might enjoy not just seeing the car itself being built for your replica, but the process of reproducing the decals as well.

hiplainsdrifter wrote:Mike,

Thanks for taking the time to show this to us. It looks great!

Scott

Well, after a number of hours, we're getting farther along.

The little contingency sponsors are the ones that kill you as far as time goes.. luckily as time progresses i build a larger and larger database of them, so the hope is that i'll have to do the artwork for less and less of them.

Next up are the nose,hood, and roof decals.

My new shop is just about setup, so i've started doing some work again.

The Moyer car is a Victory Circle chassis, so I did some adjustments to the Rocket design i have already.. the frame itself is still a Rocket, since a completely new chassis design from scratch would take years to draw up...

I adjusted the rear bars to match the Victory Circle design.. it should look really authentic when it's complete.

There are a few body and suspension mounts left to add, as well as the front body and nose support.

I've finished the fabrication of the roof for the Moyer car. I did some adjustments to the sail panels to match his design, as well as made sure and copy the 3-rib design of his roof.. as opposed to the other roofs i've done with only 2 support ribs.

No photos yet, i'll post them when it's primed and painted.

Mike,

It looks good!!! I'm going to save all of these photos, so please keep posting them.

By the way, thanks for going the extra mile to make this replica as accurate as possible. Details are what set you apart and taking the time to change the chassis, the sail panels and the roof to match what Billy did to this car is something that I really appreciate.

Scott

It's a real pleasure to be able to add these kinds of details, which has a lot to do with why the Masterpiece Series exists in the first place.

I wanted to have a product designed for customers who like the little details.

I like being able to take my time, and add the little variations.

I'm looking forward to putting these cars next to the Chub Frank car and my hope is that the differences will be obvious.. and they won't look like 4 diecast cars with different paint jobs on them.

hiplainsdrifter wrote:Mike,

It looks good!!! I'm going to save all of these photos, so please keep posting them.

By the way, thanks for going the extra mile to make this replica as accurate as possible. Details are what set you apart and taking the time to change the chassis, the sail panels and the roof to match what Billy did to this car is something that I really appreciate.

Scott

Mike,

You nailed it, details, details, details!!! I'm more than happy to wait for you to add more details!!!!

This will be my most prized replica and the more accurate it is, the better.

Thanks,

Scott