Sorry if this has been asked and answered elsewhere, but I didn’t notice anything specific to my question after a couple searches. Anyway…
How exactly are the categories broken down when it comes to the livery contests? Basically, is the race livery category specific solely to real-world livery recreations or at least race liveries made up of real-world teams/sponsors/etc, with anything else not based on real-world race paints relegated to the Fantasy Livery category?
Long story short, I’ve got a livery lined up to post for the next contest but I’m not sure what the appropriate category is. It’s on the Lola and is an original race livery using companies/sponsors from a fictional source. I’d hate to have put all the work into it only to post it to the wrong category and have it dq’d lol
From my observation, the Race category has a mixture of replicas of real cars and race/drift like original liveries and Fantasy is everything else. Have a look through the past competitions to get an idea. I don’t think it’s cast in stone.
I honestly don’t think they really take that into account and think they leave the choice of category up to the painter. I don’t believe there’s a really concrete set of rules they go by where they would say “this car is officially disqualified because it has/doesn’t have X on it”. I think the contests are just loosely judged based on artistic skill and creativity used in making the design.
I’ve seen winning entries in the race category without any proper race number boards or series decals. I’ve also seen winning entries in the fantasy category that did have all the proper number boards, series decals and sponsor logos of a true racing livery.
I can also tell you that in my experience, replica paints of real-world cars don’t seem win very often … unless they’re very well-done complex designs. And even then, not very often. The judges seem to value creativity and originality more than precision and accuracy in replication.
For info, of 26 entries of mine since January, 15 have won, and they have all been accurate replicas, mostly of rally cars (apart from one which was utilising some assets from a replica in a different way). The ones that didn’t win were replicas of press cars (which tend to be less complex, and therefore less likely to win) or replicas of cars in other games (in which case I think I can understand why they didn’t win!). It’s not always immediately apparent whether a race design is an accurate replica or one loosely based on a real car or a good original design that could be mistaken for a real livery.
Curiously the most popular livery so far was the David Higgins #75 rally livery but on the #199 car which I did in the first place because I’d missed the Forzathon when the #75 car was first available (I did pick it up later), so my requirement presumably matched what other people wanted!
I would probably be more selective in the requests I take if I was to concentrate on competition wins, but I find at this early stage of my painting career, even the apparently simpler designs teach new skills, whether it be battling model glitches or finding more efficient ways to model cursive script, or dealing with negative space designs or matching metallic paints (and dealing with impatient requesters!)
The competitions are a good way to increase downloads and gain a few more credits, but ultimately painting is something you should do for your own satisfaction and hope that others like it too.
Painting is a broad church with all sorts of types of paints, and painters are a friendly and encouraging group and welcome newcomers, especially when those newcomers can work out how to post pictures to the forums …
RallyzX360 … then you’ve had much more luck than I have with replicas. So maybe it’s just me. Of the 30-odd times I’ve entered livery contests, I’ve entered 8 replicas … which to my eye and guys in my club were all very accurate replicas. I did win with two of those eight entries … but the common opinion among my club-mates was that all of them should have been given more consideration from the judges.