As a painter I feel the pictures I paint are pretty good, but they are all slow on the download some barely scratching 20 and some even failing to reach double figures, I’ve been pondering as to why this is for a while admitted I mainly paint for my self but it would be nice if my attempts was appreciated by the community, so i figured a good successful paint has 3 requirements, quality, subject matter and car. As I’ve already suggested I don’t think my quality levels are poor as they always look like the source picture im painting, which brings us to subject matter, the car itself and my original question, what is more important subject matter or the car?
For me, I prefer fantasy paints to race replica ones. i like seeing cartoon characters and stuff like that tearing round the tracks.
Also, for slow downloads I think its the lack of a decent search. On Forza 4 and Horizon 1 you could just do a general search for either Artist or paint if you know what your looking for. In Horizon 2 unless you know the car the paint is on you cant find it so easy.
I guess its just a matter how you publish your stuff. Will say,the forum is vey quiet these days,but a good design will get some love (and downloads) when you post a pic of your work in the paint section.
Another platform are the different groups on facebook,daily high frequented and easy to get attention. Both ways,forum and social media, should create the biggest number of downloads for anybody…
Expand where you put your paints, use places like Facebook groups, twitter. There’s several of us painters on twitter and you never know, you may get a friendly retweet by Turn 10 on their Forza Motorsport twitter profile which is sure to you some exposure to people who appreciate all types of designs.
As said above, there’s a couple facebook groups. One being Forza Racing Network and the other being Forza Showrooms, post some of your work in there and be sure to leave your gamertag.
Another is keeping people interested and updated on what you’re working on. Making a design? Show some of your progress from start to finish so people can see the time and effort you put into making designs.
As for me as much as I like downloads on my designs I really prefer the uses the design gets as it means people are actually interest and enjoy racing those paints. Find cars you see being used a lot. I have a Subaru world rally team design and it has double the uses it has downloads and I’m happy with that.
Last note is if you enjoy your work and you like your own work then continue to paint. Don’t let low downloads discourage you from continuing to paint. You work is sweet!
Whats most important is timing because when you buy a car the most downloaded design show up and thus people download these designs because it is quick and easy. Someone could make an amazing design and it would quickly be lost in all the designs. It used to be you would preview a design before downloading it, now you have to download it, and it was easier to find designs in previous games. Best way to make a successful design is to make a design and when the next car pack comes out immediately start applying it to every car and upload it. Some terrible designs are some of the most downloaded.
and that is why people especially the person who when the new packs comes out paints the car chrome red with gold wheels and then stops playing the game for another month should be banned from uploading designs.
Very annoying to see great work get pushed to the back.
I’d say both can be equally important - another thing to add to the mix is the layout on the car.
A great image or 2 badly laid out on a car, can be a killer. If you get a good mix of layout and images, well then you might be on to a winner. Stick that together with a popular car, one that does well on the leaderboards and you’ve potentially got something that will catch the attention of the forza community.
Good luck, feel free to post pictures of your cars, so we can see what you’ve come up with so far & maybe try and give you some more specific pointers.
Just had a quick look at your latest post & you’re right, from what I can see, some of your images look decent. So I think it might be layouts here that could be more of a problem - take a look at this car;
Yes, it’s from FM2 not Horizon 2 but seemed like it might illustrate what I’m talking about with some relevance to your recent paints. This car was painted by Redesign, later known as Phredesign - one time fantasy section forum member, later T10 employee.
You’ll see hopefully that, let’s just call him Fred - had a decent image of Clint but instead of just sticking that on the side of the car, designed a car which wouldn’t look out of place in a race.
It’s something I struggle with and it may be something some people have that others just don’t. Unfortunately without the ability to gift work to another artist, the collaboration on designs that existed on forza’s on the 360 is no longer possible. So I’ve been lucky to work with a lot of other artists who have taken my images away and come back with a car that stunned me and I was involved lol.
Hopefully some of this ramble makes sense to you - but yes in my opinion, layout is every bit as important as the quality of the images.
DM I would really like to say thank you for being the only person on these here boards to ever give me any form of constructive critique and suggestions on how I can improve my designs, it has been very informative (I’ve always known I need to think more about the whole car and not just the pictures, I just don’t know how to do it very well…yet)
That aside the main reason for this thread was the original question what is more important subject matter or car because no one will download what they don’t know or like but if it’s a great subject no one will look for it on bad car
Blame the search function or lack of.
Finding good designs is like a lottery no one can win, unless its been featured by T10 or you know every painter and what cars they’ve done.
To the most part its difficult to tell whether its car or design that wins the downloads. There are always going to be the popular cars that most would go for but at the same time there are the leaderboard defined cars, so its really down to you to decide if you go with high downloads, high use cars that cover the leaderboards or different to the normal and unique.
I agree wit ABGRAPHICS, it does seem the more popular cars are the ones that get the most downloads, regardless of quality. I can tell you from personal experience, the paint I am the most proud of of mine is the least downloaded and used where a paint I did on a whim has gotten at least 4-5 times as many. You really need to paint what you like or you will get nothing but frustrated. Do share here though where they will get appreciated and you will find in most cases you get great support and feedback. If downloads are important entering the weekly contests and getting featured will help, but it will only help to the point of that particular car model so don’t stress it.
Glad I could be of some help FFA, I’ve had a lot of help & feedback on my designs over the years.
I’ve had a break from forza games & the forums generally and can’t quite believe how quiet they are these days, such a shame - it’s certainly nothing personal the lack of feedback you’re getting - it seems just to be the norm at present as the traffic on here has slowed dramatically over the years.
No doubt some buzz will return to the forums for a time when FM6 is near/ just released, hopefully some of that can be maintained and built back to the one time healthy community we once had. I know I’m going off on a tangent here and don’t want to de-rail your thread in anyway, so I’ll shut up now lol.
ABGraphics is one of the artists I was referring to that could take my pigs ear images & come back to me with something that looked remarkably like a silk purse once he’d worked his magic on a layout. So looking at his work might give you some more inspiration.
@AB I’m good lad, if you fancy a trip down memory lane on the 360 would be more than happy to have a crack at some more Hed Kandi stuff, plenty of images still to tackle lol. If you have a particular theme or image you wanted to incorporate, just drop me a PM.
from what some of the painters i know say it basically has to do with timing. Even if the design isnt as good, if there is a car pack out. be one of the first to throw either a replica or nice original design on it and you will do pretty well. the search function is pretty bad so that and building a name for urself and marketing yourself somewhere so people know what you have out there. if its good then people will take the time to find it.
You say that but I put a imo pretty good assassin’s creed paint on the BMW on release of the top gear pack and again currently 21 dls it’s incredibly frustrating.
On the forum subject would it because horizon is a more casual drivers game unlike fms series which is a more hard core for the racers type of game
It is frustrating when you put a heap of effort into a design and it doesn’t fly. I’ve only had one design be reasonably successful (Reaper for the Bugatti which is approaching 20k downloads & has 30k+ uses) but the rest are really slow burners (Comet chaser has 2k downloads and the rest 200 or so). It really depends on what your motivations are - when I set out (as I’m still a newbie with just 6 liveries and a seventh on the way when I finally sort out the front end for the umpteenth time), it was to get downloads and uses but as I’ve got more into it, I’ve found myself spending more time on my designs and worrying less about the stats once they are published. For me it is more the challenge of putting something out there that you can take pride in (however good it is ). Mind you, I now spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about the smallest detail
As the guys have said - the forums are a good place to get some good feedback from people who actually appreciate the effort that goes into the designs.
Btw - your assassins creed image is truly excellent as is the parkour sequence on the side but (and I apologise if I’m not qualified to really comment) I agree with DM in that the layout is as important as the imagery itself and if the imagery becomes isolated then the balance of a design may put some people off from downloading it. I find it a challenge myself to integrate reasonable imagery into a more complete design and something that I’m trying to improve each time(with varying results!).
Hope you were placed in the livery competition with the Iron Maiden design by the way - not to my tastes necessarily but good work all the same.
