079 The Fast and the Shimmering: Canterlot Drift · 9:13am Sep 3rd, 2016
079 The Fast and the Shimmering: Canterlot Drift
And now, for something completely different. Fact: the last year's Need for Speed provides a lot of freedom in terms of visual customization for your four-wheeled whammomobiles. Fact: Sunset Shimmer is best pony. You see where I'm going with that? Check out the results below the break!
I promise it's more than just edgy black and red flames on the sides. Warning - a lot of pictures to load inbound.
If not black and red flames, then what remains, you ask? Well, the ponies in all their pastel glory, obviously! I decided to go for something more complex than tribal patterns stretched to the maximum this time, so I googled some pictures of my favorite character - Sunset Shimmer. I settled for the one below made by SambaNeko of DeviantArt.
The task felt daunting at first, but a friend taught me once that it's perfectly okay to try out new things even when (or maybe especially when) we have no guarantee if we will ultimately succeed. Patience and small steps are the key, after all (cheers, Milky!).
So, my first small step was to take a screenshot of my car I've chosen upon thoughtful consideration (i.e. "Ooh, lookin' good, I'll take it!"). Then I fired up the GIMP, layered the picture over the side door and proceeded to recreate Sunset's heavenly shapes' outline. Once I had the outline on the door, I put a laptop next to the PC and, well, began recreating the shape using the circles, curves and all sorts of stickers I found in-game.
Class, this is art. Scratch that--this is the pinnacle of human capability to create. The only problem it had was that it took forty-eight separate elements to be put together, and there's a limit on how many you can put on the single car (in the end, I used maybe 90% of that limit). Step two was to fix that awful white mess and cut on the total number of stickers.
The red version of the head, for example, took four elements as opposed to, I don't know, eight to ten I used before. Please notice that the hooves are flat. They will become nicely rounded in a minute. The number of elements went down to 20-something at this point.
I made a fascinating discovery: figuring out the anatomy helps. I imagine that's something pretty obvious for the people who draw, I mean starting with some basic shapes to represent the anatomy and then building upon that. Adding colors helped a lot, too - notice the right foreleg and how the different color helps to see the apparent movement of the body. Also, hooves are now rounded up. You know, for heightened cuddling experience.
Mane! I daresay it turned out pretty sweet. I used the same method as before - I created the outline in GIMP and recreated it with solid white shapes to then experiment with little moon-shaped stickers and a variety of arches. I'm especially proud with the part just next to the right cheek where a simple brightness adjustment creates an illusion of depths in what is, still, a two-dimensional picture. Right foreleg gets recolored because at some point I couldn't discern it from the tail layers. Perhaps it was due to the late hour, as well. But I believed that those sacrificed sleep hours wouldn't be in vain.
The background splash was a tricky one. Obviously there weren't the exact elements that the artist chose in her picture, so I had to improvise. It was difficult at first, because I started with two solid circles that looked just terrible due to what they were: two big-ass solid circles. Adding whatever I could find helped: streaks, smudges, blots and so on, all in colors that at least resembled the original.
That's when I was like, "Sweet Celestia, I did it!". I unified the color palette for the car and Sunset's coat, added a nifty guitar and a round yin-yang-y symbol (a little bigger and to the left compared to the original). Notice that the symbol has this sort of gleam to it, like it was the orange-yellow gradient going through it. Unfortunately there is no way to color a sticker with a gradient, so the base is solid yellow, and there's an orange gradient-like, semi-transparent sticker on top of it.
That could have been the end of the day (at about 140 individual stickers), but as my other friend later said, this one looks like a car of a prim and proper girl from uptown. Obviously, Sunset Shimmer is not your prim and proper girl. So let's get badass!
Does it come in black? Of course! Starting from the sandstone yellow you've seen above, I put some red and yellow stickers on the roof and hood (barely seen here, give it a minute) to emulate, naturally, Sunset's wavy hair. The red and yellow on sandstone didn't look too good, so I experimented with adding black stickers around the windows to separate those two, but then I just painted it back to black.
But what about the other side? I was easily over the fifty percent of sticker capacity at that point, so I couldn't just copy it. And to be honest, I didn't want to. There was, however, another thing that I strongly associate with Sunset Shimmer - her very own song.
Because, why not! Please notice that "I"s and "me"s as well as the word "phoenix" in the same cyan blue color (Sunset's divine-tier beautiful eyes).
Outside the garage now, we're hitting the streets! The roof and hood coverings are made entirely of crescent moons layered one upon the other.
The backside during a sweet drift. As for the plate, I chose it red with the style that adds a little "I excel then prevail" in the bottom part. The numbers read "FLWL3S" - felt fitting. I put a blatant advert a little over the plate - I expect it to be super effective because, let's be honest, the back of my car is the only thing you'll be seeing...
And a glamour shot for good measure. But the night is still young, so let's get cruisin'! Heh. I have to say, I'm pretty satisfied with the results. And I thought that calling my characters Iqqel in every major MMO was the most I could marry ponies and gaming!
In conclusion, I learned that art begins as a few simple shapes connected with some lines, and that through - again - smalls steps and patience we can achieve our goals, no matter how intimidating they appear to us.
I should go back to writing now, though, but when I get bored again, SambaNeko thankfully has loads of those silhouettes. Go give her some love, and tell me what pony should I do next!
~ Prane
The hours! They were not in vain!
Best car ever. I would not have the patience or the skill to do this. Respect
4189073
I mean, I could have been writing instead, but those records ain't gonna set themselves!
4189141
Thanks! And from the "after-experience" point of view, I think it's all about patience, not skills, honestly.
4189817 Tru dat.