It's that time again where I pester you with my Car Art stuff!

"RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars" (rallydarkstrike) 09/27/2020 at 08:00 • Filed to: None

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I started a new, second design series awhile back that I’m calling ‘Night Cruise’ to go along with my car gauge cluster series. I’ve now done two in the ‘Night Cruise Series’ so far!

I can’t remember if I posted the first in the series here, but I can’t seem to find any record of posting about it on my profile that I can recall. The first was a design I did back in mid-August as an homage to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ‘Super Seicento’ - his beloved little FIAT Seicento Sporting that he’s modded up, re-engined, totaled in an accident in Germany, dragged home, re-shelled, modded some more and taken on a multitude of cool adventures (like driving it all the way to Poland and back twice [...ish]).

The second one in the series is not really an homage in anything in particular, but started when I saw a FIAT 127 in a beautiful factory shade of light blue. It was a Mk. 1 FIAT 127, so 1971-1977. I decided I wanted to do a ‘Night Cruise’ design on it because I thought the color would look very nice with the black I use for the series, and I think I was right...the contrast looks very awesome to me! Personally, I think this one came out a lot better than my first design as I added a few more details to this one. :D

I only just started AND completed the above second FIAT 127 one this morning as I had some free time to kill, so !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

Now to figure out what to do as #3 sometime...

OH! I also re- added textless versions of all my gauge cluster designs to my RedBubble too as a few fellow Oppos and some folks on Twitter had mentioned some people may not like them with the text. :)

sony1492 > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 09/27/2020 at 12:00

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I like this series, just picked up the 127

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 09/27/2020 at 14:17

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What program do you use to make these again? They're very impressive!

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > sony1492 09/27/2020 at 15:28

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Oh, thanks friend! I mostly do it for fun, but a little money for gas from selling things here and there is always welcome! :)

The 127, I think, is actually my favorite of any design I’ve done so far...think I might forgo the gauge series for awhile and do some more ‘Night Cruise’ ones....now...what car to do next, haha!

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 09/27/2020 at 15:35

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Thanks! :)

I predominantly use Inkscape on my Linux laptop (which is awesome and free) as it’s a vector graphics program...that means you can scale whatever you do to ANY size without it getting all pixel-y - I tend to make files 4000x4000 pixels and then work within that.

I, on occasion, also use other image editing software in conjunction with Inkscape - namely GIMP (also free), Krita (also free) and an old copy of Photoshop CS4 (circa 2008) I have on my Windows desktop.

There are Mac/Linux/Windows versions of all those free programs, so anybody can pick ‘em up and start learning for no cost...just takes the will to learn how the software works! I have the bonus of not being a Photoshop guru (at all...), but at least being very familiar with that from using it for so long ...and those skills helped me transfer to the other programs fairly easily, though Inkscape is quite different, so it took some getting used to!

sony1492 > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 09/27/2020 at 16:16

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An NSU perhaps

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 09/27/2020 at 16:21

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I’ve done some work with Adobe Illustrator so I imagine it is similar to that. Those vector based graphics programs can be difficult to learn but so capable. 

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > sony1492 09/27/2020 at 17:18

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Oh, good call!!! I completely forgot about NSU...a RO80 would work really well for this, I think! :)

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 09/27/2020 at 18:08

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Weirdly, I’ve never used Illustrator, but I imagine it’s somewhat similar to Photoshop! :)

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars 09/27/2020 at 18:10

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It’s a vector based design software but it isn’t exactly the same as Adobe Photoshop. I made this vector image (now a twice compressed jpeg) for school recently so that should give you some idea of what you do with it.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 09/27/2020 at 21:02

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Ah, gotcha! :)