After about a year of playing and enjoying FH4, I’m finally putting together a thread to try to showcase my design work.
I’ve been painting forever, but stepped up my game back in FM7 and tried harder to push my quality to new levels. I still prefer the FM7 paint booth to the FH4 booth… the snap and flip functions are essential to how I paint. Typically I’ll paint in FM7, import the design in FH4, and then edit in case something doesn’t translate properly onto the FH4 version (it happens sometimes).
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not at the level of most of the legends in here, but I appreciate whatever feedback I can get. I mostly do this just for my own enjoyment… downloads are nice but a couple of my favourite designs are stuck at zero downloads and are not going anywhere. Anyway… let me know what you think, hope you enjoy my work. Thank you.
I prepared this livery for a FM7 race series a while back… I entered it into the weekly design competition on a whim and managed to get picked. It is by far my most successful FM7 design. I imported it into FH4 and cleaned up and updated the logos a little:
I think this design works because it’s so simple and plays off the strength of the logos. Whatever I did before this mainly used stock “manufacturer” logos in the paint booth. Things opened up for me as I built up my catalog… as I’ll show in my following posts.
This was also prepped for a race series in FM7. My logo set was expanding and I committed to making some specific stuff for Porsche. Looking at it now, it’s a little simplistic. But it was a solid step toward bigger and better things.
I was trying to refine my linework and striping with this car. The striping here is very characteristic of what I tend to do when I create my layouts… tying the sides of the car together with the hood/roof and bumpers in a way that sort of makes sense. I’m still re-using most of my logos with this car but I love the way it turned out… even when looking back at it now.
Prepped this one for another FM7 race series. This marked an introduction of some new logos, plus my door/hood number stickers. I copied a simple design from some photos online and am still re-using the same layout for most of what I do, swapping out the manufacturer logo occasionally. The Tag Heuer logo was new for this one as well, plus the Pfaff Tuning logo.
The striping was still kind of generic and unoriginal, but as a whole it seemed to work well. There probably is too much going on with this car, but I was going through a phase where it made sense to throw everything I had onto a car, at least in terms of logos that I made.
I’m posting the following 3 designs together since they’re so similar… at least in terms of design elements. I created these 3 in quick succession… I was using them in-game and wanted to have custom paint on the vehicles that I was driving.
2012 Ferrari F12berlinetta. FH4 Week 12 Race Livery Winner
I made more effort with this one to adjust whatever linework to accentuate and enhance the bodywork of the car. Very subtle change in style, but the resulting design is hugely different.
I later entered this one in the weekly FH4 Livery contest and was selected. At the time of posting, it has several thousand downloads. I love this livery.
This one was a bit of a milestone for me. I completed this one about the time that Porsche unveiled the new 935 customer race car. That car was released with a factory Martini livery that inspired me to create this… starting with the “Martini 50” logo. I also completed work on my Michelin logos and used them here for the first time.
Really proud of this design… wish it got a few more downloads though.
I decided to do another Rothmans/Porsche livery. You can basically stick this livery on any Porsche and it will probably look great. At this point I had a decent amount of logos available so I got to it. By this point my work is becoming pretty formulaic, for better or worse… but I’m refining my process and trying to up the overall quality.
If you look at the Cayman GT4 back to back with this livery, you can see the obvious progression.
This livery is a bit of a tribute to the 2017 Porsche 919 Hybrid… I wasn’t trying to make an exact replica, but using the factory livery as an inspiration to make something my own. I had to make an extra few logos to make it work, but the final result was well worth the effort.
As of this posting, this is by far my most successful design (in terms of downloads). Especially right now with the Porsche month, I’m seeing hundreds of extra downloads every day. Love it.
My first Gulf Livery. Pretty standard stuff… if the logos and colours are correct, it’s going to be good. I did some clean and simple striping to make the colours and logos pop. I’ve been experimenting with gradients to add complexity and some personal touch… as I did in the 918 Spyder.
Really happy with how this one turned out. Having it as a featured item is just icing on the cake.
I was trying to decide on a decent livery for the Carrera GT… I’ve been a huge fan of this car for years but never managed to put together a proper livery for it. I started laying out some linework and then tired it with Rothmans colours… put a little more effort into it and it seemed to work. Polished it off with some added gradients and the final result seemed to work for me. Honestly, the Rothmans/Porsche livery can pretty much go on any Porsche… but I was really trying to make it a more unique and personal design here.
And now for something that isn’t a Porsche. Same general idea… create a unique layout and decorate with logos and gradients. I tried to switch up the colours here, I like the final result, but I’ve had alternate schemes that seemed to also work well.
I wasn’t expecting this one to win the livery contest… I’ve entered stronger designs that never got anywhere, but I’ll definitely accept the selection. The car looks amazing in-game.
Another evolution of the “Porsche Intelligent Design” scheme with an alternate colour base. Added some other striping for complexity and detail and it somehow came together really, really well. I’ve always wanted a unique custom livery for the 959 going back forever, and I’m glad that I finally got it now.
Took me forever to finish this one up. I started the linework and layout a while ago, but abandoned it because I couldn’t get all the details to work together. I decided to go full monochrome with it, and then after making a couple of extra logos and reshaping the front bumper design, it was “finished.” Really impressed with how this turned out… I like that it’s something “different” even though it incorporates so many of the same elements that I’ve used in the past. Such a cool car.
Another Gulf Livery. We were running this car in a FM7 series so I wanted to give it a custom livery. The first thing that popped into my head with Gulf, but it took a while to get everything working. The front detailing was a pain in the ass, but after a couple of revisions it seemed to work out properly. Otherwise, the colours and logos really carry the design, which is pretty standard for a Gulf Livery.
Modified Porsche Intelligent Performance theme again… switched things up to fit the elongated body of this car, but it’s basically a rework of the same ideas. Easier said than done, of course, but it’s nice to use this car in-game without just a solid factory paint. This livery reduces the massive blimp-like appearance of the car (lol, sorry that was a little harsh).
I whipped this together quickly in the FH4 paint booth right when the car was released. Same formula, but it’s a Porsche so obviously it’s going to look right. Changed up the colours a bit, tried a couple of alternates but I like this scheme the best.
This week’s Forzathon weekly spotlight car. Since it’s a Porsche and there’s a bit of meat to this weeks’ challenges, I thought the car needed some visual customization before I had to spend some quality time with it. I did some quick googling and noticed the awesomeness of the 1973 911 RSR Targa Florio livery. No problem, I thought, since I made my own Martini liveries before and might be able to reuse some elements. Wow, I totally underestimated how challenging this would be.
Since it’s a replica, it’s never going to be quite the same as the original due to limitations of the 3D model and the livery editor. I gave it my best shot though. Making this livery gives me a good idea of where I need to go with my work to try to get to the next level, whatever that is. I’ll keep looking at the other threads in this forum for advice and inspiration.
