I made a stock car (again)

Back in the NASCAR '11 days, I messed around by making a paint scheme to match my real life car - a boring old gold/beige 2004 Ford Taurus. I liked the funny reactions it got racing online, so I decided to take another crack at it in NASCAR '15 (Victory Edition.)

I started out by setting up the basics of the nose and door lines. I also tries to shade the sides with gradients to give it a more curved street-car look.

Afterwards, I refined the nose, adding similar gradients to give it a more rounded look. I also added minor details like door handles, and a license plate.

Kinda works

Check out my drifting skills

Oops. 

I've still got a bit of work to do, but I think it can work. One weird thing is I had to use the Chevy SS body style, because it was closer to those old mid-2000 Fords were than the current Fusion body style.

Ally Bank Original NASCAR Paint Scheme - Part 1

I was tooling around in the NASCAR '15 paint booth, trying to come up with an original sponsor paint scheme, when I settled in on Ally Bank. I figure since I use them for free online checking & debit services, they have a fairly simple corporate style, and they used to be GMAC (the financial wing of General Motors) -- a longstanding NASCAR sponsor up until the financial meltdown of '08, it would make sense to do some "what if" paint schemes for the company's new brand. The predominant colors are purple and white. They also have a weird lower case "a" symbol which serves as the company logo. So I started off with that in mind:

Nice and simple

After making the custom Ally logo, I slapped it on a solid purple car, and tried to add a bit of flag styling to the side.

Got 'dem 'dega hydraulics

I quickly realized the car would look better with a white splitter and air dam at the front. That also helps in came for determining how high off the ground it is:

It's important to be able to see the splitter in contrast to the shadow on the track when setting up your car.

I decided to continue on with the development of the paint scheme by doing the classic bottom white stripe around the entire car and eliminated the flag stuff, because it just wasn't working. Still, it seemed kinda off.

The people I race online with nicknamed this car "Barney."

Continued in Part 2...