I call my racing team “Flying Pickle Racing.” The whole thing started as a joke, as I had a green Dodge Viper Mk1 LM racecar in Forza Motorsport 2 that a friend said looked like a flying pickle. At first I jokingly made some 3D-effect pickle-bump decals and put them all over the Viper, then it became a whole thing… and now I have a whole fleet of Flying Pickle Racing cars, with essentially a standard base color, pattern of colored, stripes, and sponsors - to include our real life family businesses.
Anyway, I had a space to fill on the front of my Sierra UTV, and on a whim I decided to make a little mascot after 10 years of not having one. Now I’m trying to decide which design I like better. I made the more detailed one (above) first with wings that I snagged from a CO State Police emblem that I made in FM4, and changed their color from gold to white. Thing is, that version has 333 layers. The simpler version (below) is a quick mod I did later which uses standard shapes for the wings, no shading, no bumps, and only has 25 layers.
I think I’m going to call the mascot Jack, in honor of my great grandfather Johan “Jack” Krupp, since he was a pretty cool guy by most accounts. He was born into the German Krupp steel family in 1890-something, and had it pretty good for a while. After WW1, as the “National Socialists” came to power in Germany he recognized that the were a-holes of the highest order and “that Hitler fellow was a bad egg.” He could see the writing on the wall (before the writing was actually on the wall) and didn’t want to have anything to do with their shenanigans. So he absconded with enough money to live comfortably for the rest of his life while engaging in his favorite hobbies, and hopped the Atlantic to the USA. He was fond of racing of all kinds: horses, hounds, motorcycles, planes, and cars. He would spend money and time with the fillies by day; and he was rich and dapper, so he notoriously spent money and time with the fillies at night.
Picture for the curious, circa 1920-ish
He never married my great grandma (Granny), though she always carried a torch for him. He had one child, my paternal grandmother, Portia. At first Grandpa Jack disapproved of her choice of husband as below her station - Grandpa Carlos was a hillbilly from the mountains of WV, they met through the USO in WW2 - but when my dad was born he was the apple of Grandpa Jack’s eye. Since Jack was a painter, to fill his time he started up a sign painting business, and also had a couple kennels for racing and hunting doggos. I never got to meet him, but according to everybody (even Granny) he was a bloody legend.
