I frequently got my ‘feelings’ bruised while working at Hendrick Motorsports as the graphic artist. Scrolling the web, comments like “Hendrick needs to fire the graphic designer,” along with “It’s like they are not even trying.”
Over time I began to process the criticism differently by not taking any of it personally.
There are so many talented graphic artists, many of them on Instagram and reddit that have taken to creating NASCAR paint schemes.The armchair sim-painters online don’t have the same constraints when creating their fantasy versions online.
One of the processes I developed over the years was creating a 3d workspace that mimicked the standard artboards used in motorsports (especially NASCAR) which in a sense allows rapid prototyping of liveries.
Essentially the ‘skin’ is laid out in vector (Adobe Illustrator) and explored to a .jpg which is mapped in 3ds Max. This allows for the realtime ability to see how a design looks.
Above was a 7 angle view. Over the years I wish I had saved every variation however it would have been in the thousands. A little tweak here. A little tweak there. Change the number. Shift the logo.
While the process was new over at Hendrick Motorsports, I had been doing it for years.
