Looking for a "paint" mentor

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for someone that help me with learning to do art in FH3. I don’t want someone to do it for me, I want to learn. I know it’s a complex system and I don’t expect someone to spend days, weeks, etc. working with me. Just someone to answer questions here and there about how to do certain details, recommended techniques for things, and such. I tried hunting YouTube but they’re mostly videos on showcasing.

I have also read the sticky here (which is incredible by the way) on how to use alot of the designs in the editor. I just need some pointers on things a little more specific.

An example would be how to achieve the detailing of the examples below:

Many thanks in advance.

That is 1 of the perks of being in a club. I’m sure someone in the club would be willing to help you out. I’m also available if you have any questions or need help. My methods maybe a little different from the norm, + I do mostly comics & anime, but I’m always willing to help.

Awesome man, I appreciate it! :slight_smile:

The best think you can do is share your work, we can see and guide much better if we can understand how and what you paint :slight_smile:

[AB]

This is a genius request. I didn’t even think to ask something like this. Hope it works out for you. I personally took the annoyance route and just started asking people questions whose artwork I liked. LOL.

I upload a fair amount of my stuff on XB1 and the clubs there. I also keep a OneDrive back up as well. I have a few bits in my storefront but nothing too elaborate.

I was going to take that same approach but I come from a long “legacy” of playing games like Tekken and Dark Souls and took note quickly that asking people questions will result in a lot of trolling or running me in a circle because people didn’t want to divulge “secrets”. They always claimed to welcome questions, but you generally got no actual answers.
When I do ask questions, I post them in the forums instead of asking directly. I refrain from doing this til I’ve done a good amount of research myself so people don’t get the wrong idea that I’m looking for a handout. Also by doing that, I can get varied ideas and opinions. Plus, you never know what resources someone may have and would be willing to share.

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@vValo66

I think that you’ll find that the painting community here is not so much about keeping ‘secrets’ from other painters. There are actually quite a few painters more than willing to offer critiques and suggest tips and techniques. I’ve also learned over the years that there’s no right or wrong way to work … most everyone here has their own unique process.

One thing I’d suggest is telling us a bit about what kinds of paints you’re looking to do or like to work on and also definitely post pics here when you have questions or want some advice. Much easier to see what someone is talking about with a few pics as opposed to just reading about it.

In your original post, were those pics of something specific you were trying to work on like 3D effects or chrome effects? Or were they more of just an example of want you want to do and the level of detail you are trying to achieve?

Have you tried to do any replica designs yet? That’s kind of how I got started since it was easier for me to recreate something that I had pictures of instead of creating designs from scratch. That also allowed me to learn and improve different techniques while recreating liveries that I liked.

If you have any specific questions about specific techniques … ask away. You’ll likely get some good feedback as you’re learning.

Yeah, that’s the impression I’m gathering which is great because I really want to learn how to use the editor to its fullest potential.

I am going to make a note in the future that when I’m struggling to do a piece, I’ll post a picture of what I’ve done so far so people can get an idea of how to point me in the right direction.

In regards to my OP, the pictures I posted fall into both of your question’s categories. I want to learn that style of lettering. Primarily because the techniques involved in such a process I can carry on into future works.

I haven’t tried doing replicas but for my current project, I’m going to take this approach. It’s an emblem I’m making for my garage’s “car club” and I’ve been struggling since yesterday to complete it. One of the components in it is a bit more difficult than I thought to create but I’ll just find some in the store. Then I can build a template from there using those pieces to end up with one of my own.

In short words for my overall goal, I’d like to one day be good enough to create designs that look comparable to tattoo murals such as back and “sleeve” pieces.

I generally do real racing replicas with manufacturer logos. The way I work is to look at the logo and break it down into components using the shapes that are available.
I tend to mainly use the basic shapes such as squares, triangle and circles. It also helps to work large as you have more control lining things up and then shrink it.

For example, the R picture, you can see is a mixture of rectangles and triangles.

Wow, I didn’t think of it that way until I scrolled back up just now to look. There are a lot of basic shapes in that one picture. Making as large as possible makes sense, too. Especially for some of the “shaded” effects.

Looking at the complex shading required in both references that you posted, I’m going to go out on the limb and say that it might be easiest to use masks when creating these. Say you’re working on the blue part of the reflection in either pic – your emphasis is going to be on making sure that the faded edges of the layers line up, not the solid edges. Due to the limited gradient / fade shapes that we have to work with, combined with the limited space in the design, this could leave the outer edges of the V8 rather jagged. If you start your design off with a solid base layer (that covers the whole side of the car and acts as the color of the car), you can then clean up the edges of the V8 with solid layers in the same color as that solid base.

Lots of good advice in here, props to all concerned :+1:t5:
Had a rummage in my Photobucket cos this reminded me of when I first started in FM2 & was taking on as many forum requests as I could to try to learn how to use the editor. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the source picture & the pics don’t have the high resolution we’re used to but I think you can still see I was after a similar effect to the one you posted.

This was a request in FM3 & the way I decided to approach it was to create the font with solid shapes first then deal with the shading after…

So the first part was quite straight forward but I remember really struggling with the highlighting/shading part. I started off with what I thought would be the obvious choice of using the fading triangular & square gradient shapes but ran into problems with the straight edges those shapes have. I couldn’t seem to get them to butt together properly & they were too prominent for the effect to work.

I ended up copying the solid black square/triangle that I wanted to highlight then stamped that shape on top & changed the colour to white. After that it was just a case of playing with the transparency & adding a few gradient circles for the internal angles. Did the same with the other parts that I wanted to shade in red & the job’s a good 'un!

As has been said before there’s not really a right or a wrong way to do things. That worked for me, for that particular project, it’d be interesting to see how other people would tackle it… never too old to learn & all that :wink:

With respect to creating or replicating text in logos, here are some ideas I have and how I go about things.

(1) In almost all cases, unless there’s a font in the editor that matches the text you’re working on exactly, always best to create your own text.

(2) Keep in mind how the completed work is going to be used … obviously if the logo/decal is going to be really small or in an inconspicuous place, you can get away with less accuracy and it won’t be noticeable.

(3) Also, depending on how the final work will be used, I have three different processes for creating text.
(a) If the text needs to stand alone, then you will need to take care to work closely with the edges to make sure they’re all aligned properly, use the same skew, etc.
(b) If the text or logo is going on a background that you can duplicate in the actual logo itself and the text or logo is more complicated, sometimes it’s much easier to recreate the background in the decal itself and then you have a lot more leeway to overlap layers of different shapes to create more complex designs.
(c) If the text will be a cutout or mask, I always create the actual text first as if it was a stand alone and then create the mask around it. To me, much easier to do it this way than to just try and create the mask by itself.

(4) I always work in white because it’s easier to see and use the gridlines in the editor. Color is usually added as the last step for me. Sometimes I will use a neon green or orange when working with multiple layers to be able to see the layers on top better.

(5) Another thing that I always use when recreating logos or text … I open an image of the logo in Photoshop and use that as a reference. The gridlines in Photoshop match the gridlines in the editor … so it’s very handy to get sizes, orientations, angles, etc. more accurate. The color picker in Photoshop also can be used to accurately match colors to the original logo.

(6) I actually only use a handful of the basic shapes in the editor to create text. Obviously, the square, circle and two triangles. The half-circle and quarter-circle and the ‘half-ring’ as i call it (bottom row of Primitives tab, third from right). Those are basically all the shapes I ever use to create any text,

theres some painting bits hidden away in some of my videos Messing around in FM5 paint - 1 / 6 - YouTube

Id say think about what your painting and where it will go on the car, for example if you were going to make the v8 logo and put it as the main image on the side of the car then you may want to take all the time making it as it appears in your image, however if it was going to go behind the rear window a lot of the detail for your image would be lost so I would consider making it as a masked metallic logo and if it was going to be smaller still and go on a sill or something I would consider just making the basic shape out of just white

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about as my (3)(b) method of creating text/logos. The actual AKKA logo just has the two distinct swirls behind the text without any specific background. But since the logo was going on a car with a generic white base paint and in an area without anything else on the car, I added white background vinyls to the logo and when placed on the car, the white background of the logo disappears into the white base coat of the car. Obviously this technique will only work with base paint colors … won’t work with the special paints in the paint booth.

The trick here is that the ‘swirls’ are not stand alone swirls (they would be very difficult to do using only actual shapes from the editor) … but they are multiple layers of circles that have different skews and rotations on top of each other. And then a couple of white rectangles added in to cut off part of the orange swirl and cut off part of the grey swirl as background for the ‘technologies’ text. This method is much easier than trying to create those swirl shapes on their own and only uses six actual shapes (helping to keep layer count down).

Edit: One other time-saving tip I used on this logo. Since there were parts that were an exact mirror image in this logo (backwards ‘K’) … I created the KA on the right side of the logo first. Then saved the logo and exited the vinyl editor. Applied that vinyl to a car. Went to the other side and used ‘Insert all from right/left side’ option. Then used Save Layer Group on the newly copied logo. Exited there and went back to the vinyl editor. You now have an exact mirrored copy of the KA text to use in your original decal. Just import and position it and you’re done. Much quicker and much less work than actually creating the other backwards ‘K’ and ‘A’ on the left.

this technique is awesome for some things- for instance:

the triple one logo I made- I did one side of the background and then pasted it the way you suggest and used that to mirror it. Way easier than trying to copy it piece by piece.

…I also used that method to do a backwards ‘police’ on the front of a police car. Then I realized I could go negative on the size and make the latters backwards that way, but you gotta try stuff lol

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Sorry it took me a bit to respond to this. I was waiting for an opportune time so I could sit down and write my entire response.

I was going to quote people but that might take up a post or two just for the quotes lol. There’s so much helpful and insightful information here. I have copied it all to a note on my phone so I can refer to it as I’m progressing through my learning.

I don’t have pics as I am unable to access my game at the moment but I’ll just do a description and hopefully, it may help in some way:

Current Project: Insignia for my garage’s “car club”

The border will be a gear (like a machinery-style cog)
The center will have 3 components:
Skull in the middle (like skeletal version of Carnage from Marvel comics)
In its mouth will be the side view of an engine block (this is the component that I’m currently struggling to create properly but it’s a WIP)
Lastly, will be the 5 letters:
“FF” and “DTX”. The first two will be on the sides of skull and the last three will be on the forehead of the skull.

In regards to the “logo” comment, this will used for multiple applications in variable sizes. I know how extensive it will be and so some detailing may not be possible (or come out after application) but I’m going to attempt to be as detailed as possible.

I don’t know what “masks” are but I’m going to take a wild guess that they are pieces that cover an entire region of the car (i.e. left, right, top, or hood). As I stated previously, I will like to one day be capable of making murals for masks that look like tattoo pieces. That’s later down the road . For now, I’m going to focus on combining pieces to make liveries. At least until I get a better understanding of the editor and its pieces.

Thank you everyone so very much for your time and input. It is appreciated more than I can put into words. Just know that everything is thoroughly noted and will be used in my journey to make great Forza artwork :slight_smile:

And last but not least lol…

If I have any further questions, I won’t be afraid to ask :slight_smile:

I’ve seen them called different names … masks, cutouts, negative vinyls … but they all mean the same thing really. Cutout is probably a more appropriate name. They are used to ‘frame’ an area and let the paint/vinyl underneath show through. In Forza, they’re most commonly used because we can’t apply any of the special paint colors from the paint booth to vinyls. So you can get the same effect by putting the special color base coat underneath and then creating cutout logos/decals to let the special colors show through.

In the example below, the top Brian Crower logo is just the normal logo. The one beneath it is the cutout version. Then you can see a usage example of the cutout version on a Camaro I painted. The Camaro has a chrome base coat and most all of the logos are cutouts allowing the chrome to show through.

Ah, I see. It’s similar to a stencil but never removed from the paper (metaphorically)…? Kind of like using two stripe vinyls, coloring and reshaping them to have a “gap” in the striping so the car’s paint comes through? Not thought of as a stripe vinyl (I’ll use the color white for example here) but more of a white/chrome vinyl. Utilizing the car’s body color and the vinyl to make one cohesive design vs a chrome car with a white vinyl.

Am I understanding this correctly?

Although, the one on the car looks like the top one, solid and not like the “hollow” cutout on the bottom. I mean I can see from the picture, that it’s presumed to be chrome like the Mobil logo on the front. I just don’t understand how you got the car’s color to come though the cutout. Did you insert both and then removed the top one? Was the vinyl placed before painting the car then removed? Wouldn’t adding a layer there to mask the chrome just cover it up?

P.S. It would be cool if we could use the car colors for the vinyls, too.

**Edit: Nevermind, I just put it together lol. Create the two parts above and then place them on the car. Then paint the car and remove the vinyl(s) which leaves the car’s body paint exposed…like a stencil, I guess. I’m sorry if I sound like I’m repeating myself. Just thinking it through.

It doesn’t work like a stencil would in real life where you would not get any paint on areas that the stencil covers. When you paint the cars in Forza, it paints the entire surface no matter whether there are vinyls applied or not. So in our examples, you have to leave the cutout decals in place … so that the paint underneath can be seen.

Try just putting some of the base vinyls that don’t cover some areas (like the rings) on a car and then apply different color paints or special paints and you’ll see the paint show up in the uncovered areas of the vinyls.