hello there folks... ive been wondering for a while now , What techniques do people use when designing fabricating...

i completely rendering eeverything im going to make on a page then transfare that onto the skin itself via basic photoshop skills.

but how do you do it ?? do you spend minutes , hours weeks or even ( if your really enjoying making/improving a skin.. ) months ??

i spend currently 12+ hours ( spread over several days to ensure i dont rush anything )

but on average id say about 4-6 on a basic one...

but i know sometimes it can be shorter or longer but when its a work of love ( i.e making a replica of a classic Real car ) you dont count the time...


thanks for reading and/or disguising...

For me it is either

I will think of a design in my head and think about it, see some shape or pattern somewhere and mentally log it for a skin o r browse the skin section of this forum or master skinnerz garages for inspiration.

Sketch ideas on paper, just shapes and similar before making it in photoshop.

Search google for race cars for inspiration or for a replica.

Or finally, pick a main sponsor and make a design around the sponsor name or logo.

Im better in making replicas then finding my own ideas. But sometimes I just google some race cars or surfing around deviantart.com. Today I have a real bookmark collection for skin inspiration but unfortunately I have no time making them. Sometimes some skin requesters have also good ideas.

I sometimes get the ideas when im daydreaming. lol.

But alot of the times, as soon as i think of something that is good enough, i sketch it down. something else that i do, is just freeplay. By that, i mean load up the default skin, then just start messing about. it helps if you have a tablet though. It can help give you ideas, and sometimes even makes it possible for some good skins to come out of it.

The time i spend on the skins varys. If its one that i have thought of, its usually just a few hours. Maybe about 5-6 spread over a day or two. But if im making a replica, it takes me quite long, as i like to have it perfect. But im always adjusting my skins, i.e im driving along, and notice something out of line, or i notice a missing decal etc.

Quote from Nathan_French_14 :

...it helps if you have a tablet though.

<--- also wants a tablet

Quote from Anathema :

<--- also wants a tablet

Tablets are great imo. I mean, i know its easy enough to do smooth curves with a mouse, but its so much easier, and less frustrating with a tablet. I really recommend it if you have any spare cash

tablets are good but nothing beats a pen and paper... well maybe a laptop with cs3

When I was designing the Adaptive skins it worked like this.

1) Logo, firstly I designed the logo as a rough draft on paper (paper is always easier for me to do scratch ideas), once I was happy with the general idea of the logo, I drew it in Ai as a black and white logo, then spent some time deciding on colours.
Because I am colour blind, I "threw" the colours out to both my GF, and my co-manager, and we decided on the main colours, this would then transfer to the skin.

2) The skin, I had the logo, the colours, and a basic idea, clean, crisp, so I again sketched out the idea's on paper.
Once I was happy with the design, I made sure it would translate well enough to all cars, so the design was as "generic" to all car shapes as possible.
Then I did one skin, made a seperate layer for each main part of the skin, once one car was done, it was easy to transfer each layer (with a little bit of re-sizing and shifting about) to other cars.

All in all I reckon all cars (including logo design and skin idea) was about 30 hours work.

I have a tablet, but haven't used it at all in skinning (so far).
I just start with some basic shapes with the shape- or pentool and go from there.
Picking up the colours (and mainsponsor) early on is really important as that tends to set some basic rules towards the design.
The tools I've mentioned are the perfect way when you need to fiddle about with complex designs over and around the car. Moving, reshaping etc won't hurt the quality at all.
But then again I've made hundreds of skins and this is just a style I've developed to suit my work. Some other skinner may have developed his/her own style that is just as good for him/her.

Replicas are easy, just try to copy it as well as you can. Otherwise, i just start with a blank skin and fool around with it. When I'm more or less happy with it, I'll keep trying to better it, add decals and voilà

I saw an interesting method on Msz.. link

Yeah, Robbymac is a great skinner and has good methods for developing his skins, if you continue to page 2 of that thread you will see he then 'paints' onto the CMX Viewer screenshots to gauge the colour scheme and design as a whole.

I print out white templates of master skinnerz skin kits and just draw on them. if I like what i see then I put them into photoshop
I jsut wish I could photshop as well as I draw

Having just started this game as well as never having used Photoshop before I have not really developed a method. I tend to suck at being original so I tend to look around on Flickr, Ebay, and Google Images until I find something that strikes me. I try to pick something that would be recognizable. Once I find something I like, I hit up these boards to make sure it has not been done 100 times already then I am off! From there I loose myself in the painting and learning process until I am happy with it. My last one took me about 12 hours but that also included learning curves and futzing around with the damn wheel arches that never worked out.

I too plan to get a tablet here soon for this.

Comes to me when i wake up.

i'm like "wow that dream was awesome... I COULD MAKE A SKIN ABOUT IT!"

or somthing like that

I`ve used tablets in the past, but they are no good for creating skins, i think.
A vector based program, such as CorelDraw or Illustrator, is way more easy to create precise curves with a bezier tool. Its like the path tool in Photoshop.
I draw the whole skin in Illustrator, with a locked template of the xxx_default skin, and when its finished i just copy and paste it in a new file in PS. With CorelDraw you better export it as a JPG.
Sometimes I do the final touches in PS, such as shadows, color correction, etc.

This way the final job is much more neat, IMHO.

I attach some samples.

I'm not fond of ressurecting dead threads, but figured I'd add that (after a year (or more) 'hiatus' from LFS) I've recently finished that WIP thread over on master skinnerz.

Nice one Rob!

For me, I mainly specialize in replicating helmets, and I'll just got straight to it. When I have to do original helmets, I may sketch 'em up a bit on paper beforehand, but each one is different. As for cars, I just go ahead and try stuff out. I'm usually a fast worker when it comes to skins (really, everything graphic-design-related), but sometimes some original projects can take a long while.

I'm pretty much the same as teazR. I get a theme going first, be that a sponsor's logo or a design element and build from there. Sometimes though I draw something on a printed CMX viewer image like Robby showed.

I have a tablet but just like teaz-r havent used it for skinning I uslay make drawing on a printed skinfile with just the black mast on it and maybe wire frame.

Then i'l ad sponsors in the midle if I feel like it or at the end or i start with one head sponsor and ad thing around it.