I am sure you’ve noticed my inactivity in the recent months, this is due to the fact that I’ve been quite busy at work and not only there… therefore I didn’t have much time to spend on the blog. But no worries, things are looking absolutely great and the financial crisis doesn’t bother me at all or reflect on my mood in a way :)))) There is a lot more to come….and I am catching up with it!

I’ve been thinking and organizing this FAQ page for a long time and it’s finally here. It is designed especially for the young and talented ones (of course, girls are always welcome!) passionate about chasing a career in car/transportation design. I’ve been receiving a lot of e-mails with different questions, on the base of which I designed the page, I hope you’ll find important information on how to start, design schools, preparing a portfolio, getting into the industry and so on. Professional designers also feel Welcome to contribute with their comments to the page!

best,
miro

Hello to everyone!

Time to get back to posting! Finally!

According to the statistics of this web blog I found out that many visitors are interested into Tutorials and “how to” make the things. Also, quite a lot of you contacted me asking for some help on how to improve their skills. Therefore I decided to share even more of my knowledge and experience with making a DVD.

However, before doing it (although I’ve started working on that already) I though it’s a good idea to ask the visitors what they should be most interested to find in the DVD. Is it that you’re more interested into sketching and how to build the line drawing or more into rendering. Maybe both.
In any case I have decided to put no less than 2-3 VIDEO tutorials on the DVD (not only 1 like the ones you find in the internet). In addition to this I will iclude some detailed step-by-step tutorials you haven’t seen yet and bunch of tips that I am sure will be pretty useful to all interested…

I am opened to any advice/request on what to include in the DVD. I’ll be most grateful if you give me a hand with this in order to create DVD that helps most! Feel free to contact me or post your needs at will.

Cheers,
Miro

Hi all!

Here is one tutorial that I made on a special request from Allan McDonald, owner of the website: http://designertechniques.com/. Click on post to read the full tutorial.

01 – To begin this tutorial, I obviously started by making a quick pen sketch, which took around 5-10 minutes on the paper. As there were other sketches on the A4 page, after scanning it I took few moments to clean the image I intend to work on and render. There are a few perspective things that can be fixed on this sketch (for example the rear wheel), but In this case I was looking more for productivity and didn’t pay much of attention to those details.

02 – Now we can start with colouring the sketch. With the big brush I spray onto a new layer (on top of the sketch work) forming the basic coat of the car. I usually use a brush with 100% black colour and an opacity level of between 10-20%. I am also going to concentrate on the front of the car only – mainly the area around hood and the wheel arches. This is the area where I am going to build the surfaces and pay more attention. After this, I quickly block in the interior as well. As can be seen, from the beginning I have established the direction of the light source, from right to left. Notice the large highlight on the windscreen.

03 – Well, now I just continue with adding the shadings. I have sprayed a few more brush strokes to darken the body side of the car (the place that doesn’t get illuminated from the light source). Then with the white colour I build the highlights generated from the light on the left (hood, wheel arches…). 

04 – I now continue by applying more shadows & highlights to the rendering. This is the time when you have to pay a little more attention to developing the shapes that describe your design best. Because the shadow always follows the shape it is very crucial that your shadows follow the design you have in mind.

05 – 5-10mins later we’re pretty much done. I have finished with applying the main volumes of the car. I now work into the image, completing the small bits that need the attention and finally – with a very fine brush – the details such as grooves, surface edges, highlights, spokes etc.

06 – Just before I finished the rendering I decided to add a bit of colour to the image, mainly where the focus of our design is. This well placed ambient light can contribute much to the whole rendering and the general feeling of a lightsource too. The last couple of touches are too finish a few more details – the headlights, the badge..few accents etc. The whole thing took me just above an hour.

07 – This last image shows how I applied the light to the rendering – the key areas. Be careful with the light you add to your rendering. Sometimes it enhances the whole rendering and can bring a very pleasant feeling to it. However, if not applied properly it can make your rendering look weird and unnatural. My advice is to take your time and practise it until you acquire a decent level with it – then present it. It may be a good idea to try lighting the same image in different ways…this will help you understand how lighting works in different situations. Good luck!

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