Queen Crest Vinyl Group development

[BravoSteelviper]

So as a followup to my Green Day album cover, I wanted to tackle a project that was more line art based, to hopefully integrate easier with the Forza vinyl group editor. So I ended up selecting the “crest” that Freddie Mercury designed for Queen. (I’ll have to use a different name in game, because of course, we can’t use “Queen” in a title or description. sigh)

So… how many layers would it take to create just the central Q section with the crab and the crown? Way more than I would have guessed, as it turns out.

I started out with the crab section, which ended up being probably the trickiest part so far. Lots of little curves.

The rest of the Q “ribbon” part flowed a lot easier. Mostly I would focus on the outside part of the curves, then fill my way back in once the perimeter is defined.

The crown actually wasn’t too terrible. I’ve got some cleanup I’ll have to do eventually, but It’s not a bad start.

So yeah… 465 layers so far just for the crab, Q and the crown. I could have used a LOT less layers if I was going more for a general sketch, but unfortunately I’m not quite artistic enough to recognize which details I can just gloss over and which ones are important. For example… some of the squiggly lines on the crab arm that I almost skipped over… turn out it be part of the chains on the lion, maybe? I don’t know for sure.

Another layer of difficulty I’ve imposed on myself is doing it all with just a single color of layers (black, in this case). That way, when the project is done, people that download the vinyl group would be able to change it to whatever color they want and it’ll look good. If I laid down big swaths of black and then put white over it, for example, then it would get messed up when the color gets changed because it would change ALL the layers. And if you use masking layers they cut ALL the way to the paint color, which would mess up any vinyls beneath this one.

So anyway, that’s what’s cooking at the moment, and will be for a while. I’ll try to circle back and post updates as I progress. Hopefully it won’t take me too long, but I’m anticipating this will exceed the layer count of the Green Day album cover.

[Chea_1]

I admire you talent and “patience”, I lose intrerest just waiting for a race to load

Nice work !!!

[Not_Here_Too]

Pretty amazing ! Can’t wait for the completed work of art.

If layers get to be too many, I wonder… what about deleting a few select ones in areas leaving blank spaces to create a subtle “worn away” effect ? If you get what I mean. Might not save much though.

[BravoSteelviper]

Well, I don’t want to jinx myself, but I don’t think I’ll be in danger of busting over the 3000 layer limit. Looking at the original, the center section is by far the biggest concentration of color. So the rest of the work has more space in it, and hopefully less layers.

Currently working on the outline of the right lion, and it’s going well. Just did the tail and the back of the leg. Currently at 542 layers.

If Freddy Mercury were a nice person, he would have mirrored the lions and the fairies and I could have made them a layer group, copied them, then just flipped them. But that is NOT what happened at all, so everything will be custom.

I did break the lettering off into a separate vinyl group, and that’s already been shared. It only took 130 layers, but I mostly didn’t want it interfering with all the other layers on the more complicated part of the project. Plus it gives me the flexibility to put the lettering in different spots if the crest ends up taking up most of the real estate on a given livery.

[WindsweptDragon]

before you go any further to see what will and wont be visible put it on a car and shrink it down to the size youll be using it at. Once you have it the size you want add a small dot to it thats 1x1 and can only just be seen on the car then reload it into the sticker maker and adjust the size again so you can work on it but anything thats smaller than the dot you added and then enlarged along with the decal you wont need to paint cause itll be too small to see

[BravoSteelviper]

I mean, in this case it’s not necessarily getting designed for a particular vehicle. But that’d be an amazing time saver if I was fitting it in on a particular spot!

Just trying to make it versatile to where you can stick it on a bumper if you want it to be small (and not see any of the epic details) or also be able to put it on a roof or all across a side and hopefully be able to see every little precision curve.

The way that the vinyl groups are effectively vector art makes their scalability pretty neat!

(You’re right though… most of these details will probably be lost in a lot of the applications.)

[WindsweptDragon]

another way to shave layers is sometimes painting the negative space uses less layers than painting the positive ones

[BravoSteelviper]

That’s… really smart. sigh

[Oliver0023]

That looks so cool!!

[El_T10_N4CH0]

So nice. is there a guide or manual on how create those shapes, and images?

[BravoSteelviper]

So the image I just found on the internet. I find that vector/line art is usually the easiest to pattern after, because the tools they use to make it are kinda similar to the tool that Forza gives us.

So straight lines are usually pretty simple. The thing I had the hardest time with was curves. The main shapes I use when defining the outside and inside of curves are these two:

The one on the left I use more for outer curves, the “Nike swoosh” on the right more for inner, but sometimes those swap. I also sometimes use circle and half circle shapes on larger spaces, but if it’s narrow then those two are pretty clutch.

For lines, my main shapes used are:

The four in the column there. When they’re small they get really skinny, so sometimes I have to use multiple copies and overlap them to make them thick enough.

Also, the 90 degree corner bend can cover things those can’t, but I use it fairly sparingly:

I would recommend just messing around, and just start super simple. If you look at my creative hub, I left a couple of my “tangram” style piece that I first started out with. BASIC shapes put together to represent things. And then it just went on from there.

Not having the ability to “free hand” seems like a limitation, but it actually has to do with how the art is created/rendered. Because it is defined as basic shapes (with various adjustments made to height/width/rotation/etc.) then they can be scaled down or up to basically any size without impacting details. That’s something normal/raster art can’t really handle, as those types of drawings will look terrible if you make them larger (they get all pixelated).

Find something simple you’d like to do, then do it. Increase complexity from there. At times I’ve felt like this project was maybe “too much”… but then I remember that it’s basically just a 1000 piece puzzle (or whatever the layer count will end up… maybe more than that). I just have to put it together one piece at a time. Except instead of having to find the piece out of a pile… I can just make the piece.

Here’s where I’m at, at the moment:

I’m working on that outline. (or is it an out… lion? ba-dum-tiss) As you can see, the most recent layer I added was that “Nike swoosh”. That one was a dual purpose, as it formed a curve that I needed, and it also seemed about perfect for that lion nose. I think that’s when things really start rolling… when you can look at an image and say, “Oh, there’s a circle, there’s a triangle, there’s a nike swoosh” and you can just piece things together. I’m putting this one on the shelf for the night, as I have another trial livery I want to knock out. But my goal is just to consistently make forward progress… I’ll eventually be done. It’s more like carpentry in that once you do it, it’s done. (Unliking cutting grass or mowing the lawn.)

Edited to add:
Part of the reason I started this thread was because of how humbled/inspired I was by the Rivals crew:

Rivals Challenge - FH5 Edition

We had a rivals challenge thread going for quite some time over on FH4. Feels it’s time to see if there’s interest in something similar here. No prizes, just some friendly competition for those of us who enjoy rivals. Post your time on the thread if you want to take part, and I’ll add you to the results when the event finishes. Feel free to also use this thread for any other rivals related discussions.

Those folks are constantly pushing the envelope, driving and tuning beyond anything that I can imagine. So while I don’t feel like I can drive/tune like that… maybe I can contribute by making cool vinyl groups. Or helping people to see that the biggest limiting factor isn’t the vinyl group editing tool… it’s our imagination. (And patience. And stupid curvy lines.)

[WindsweptDragon]

remember some of the brackets in the fonts are good for curves, use to be that the Lower case L and other fonts scaled better and got less pixelated and blurry than ‘regular’ shapes when shrunk down really small, not really sure if thats still the case

[Oliver0023]

There are quite a few painting tricks here if your interested. I just put alot of the painting guides in one section to make them easy to find. Forza Documentation [History, Guides, and More] - #5 by Oliver0023

[BravoSteelviper]

Thanks for this! Outstanding contribution!

Current status:

Pretty much finished with the out-lion. Need to do the inner details and the crown. You can see a little bit of the wing work where the fairy overlapped. I ended up doing more of that than I originally planned because some of the overlap looked a little weird out of context.

I’ll call this a day on it. Pretty happy with it, and I also knocked out a couple vinyl groups for next week’s trial livery.

[BravoSteelviper]

Well, now it kinda looks like a lion:

Next steps, chains and a little outer section of the “Q” I had been putting off. Then the fairy will be after that. I’ll do the branch last… and then swap over to the left lion after that. This… is gonna takea while. On the bright side, I’m thinking I’ll keep it under the 3k layer limit (but it may end up closer than I would have thought)

[BravoSteelviper]

Chains: check!

Next up, fairy on the right.

[BravoSteelviper]

It’s a fairy!

Next up, branch.

[BravoSteelviper]

It’s a branch! And 1k layers. (completely coincidence, I assure you… I honestly don’t keep very good track of my layer count until I’ve hit a stopping point.)

Next up… left lion.

[Not_Here_Too]

Looking great ! I’m kind of curious if you keep any kind of track of how many hours you’re spending on this Or if like me you just get lost in the details and after a few minutes it’s hours later lol

[BravoSteelviper]

Nah, haven’t been logging time. It’s been a lot on this one. It’s usually in roughly half hour sessions, I would say. They just add up.