series:

category:

Fast Render F
content: - understand how to paint digitally over a photo to generate ideas - learn how to control and develop your design as you sketch - use large and textured brushes to gradually form the sketch

About the author

Miles graduated from Coventry Universitys Transport Design course in 1999 and has since worked as an automotive and product designer for companies such as Pininfarina, Volvo and SAIC, as well as Movado watches, product design consultancies and as a freelance product designer.

most all of the principles also apply to analogue sketching but the techniques are sometimes different. It is the most commonly used software therefore the commands and tools highlighted refer specifically to Photoshop but are not exclusive to that program. The power of insight means that you will hopefully start your next sketch with new ideas and fresh inspiration that will inject a big advancement into your work. If you are a student or hoping to become a student of automotive design then, in my opinion, the faster you can gain this knowledge the better in order to gain a competitive advantage. Remember the last time you made a big improvement in one drawing and realised you could suddenly work at a higher level than before? Those eureka moments are what its all about. One of the reasons I have produced these as e-books is so that the images are on your screen without the need for scanning. All the images used in this pdf are included as jpegs that you can open in your favourite software and work over if you wish. In fact I highly recommend working over the top of these images if you are trying to duplicate them. You can even make a slideshow out of them to use as a screensaver to remind you of the process. By all means try and re-create the illustration if it inspires you (and I sincerely hope it does). I have received many sketches that people have produced after following my tutorials and they are sometimes very similar, sometimes more of an interpretation in their own work. Either way they express inspiration and usually demonstrate an understanding and advance which has encouraged me to continue producing more tutorials. Above all read and familiarise yourself with the narrative and how it relates to the sketch at each stage, then try to use it in parallel with your own work and have it alongside you as a reference. You need to work hard to improve your sketching and there is no substitute for practice but it is what you learn and apply to your practice that will make the difference. Remember - sketching and rendering is a tool and is only

part of the design process. It is however the first creative visual step and sets the tone for the quality of the finished product. It is also the skill which best illustrates your ability to visualise ideas. It shows whether or not you understand and can evaluate form, which follows function and completes a successful design. At the early stages of your automotive design career especially you will be judged most strongly by your abilities in this area when being selected to study design or work professionally in this highly competitive field. Good luck and happy sketching,

Knowledge is Power - How to use Insight Tutorials

The purpose of these tutorials is to explain not only what is being done but why during the process of a sketch. The aim is that you can either apply these ideas to your own work or modify them to your liking. Everybody works in a different way and it is not my intention here to produce a software user guide with a series of commands that can be followed to produce exactly the same illustration. This would not only be impossible but would not in my opinion achieve the best long-term results. Every part of the process is not explained in every tutorial so that repetition is kept to a minimum and each tutorial can be used to analyse slightly different aspects more deeply, giving maximum value and efficiency. These tutorials focus on explaining honestly the thought and action process I go through using my normal working methods, with high resolution visuals and highlighted areas to eliminate confusion as to what part of the sketch is being described; simply hover the mouse over the highlighted words and a halo will appear over the relevant area on the sketch. This will hopefully give you the power and understanding to improve your own work in your own way by introducing methods, tips and a few tricks that you can apply to digital sketches in whichever way you feel most comfortable. Al-

Miles Waterhouse BA (hons) - Transport Design

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sampling from an existing product photo felt like the right approach. The end result in this case is a loose rendering. It is something to be developed much further. However the level of suggested definition and detail is relatively high for an illustration that took less than two hours to produce. One of the main values of this method is that is allows you to make an idea convincing and realistic in a short amount of time. Sometimes it can be difficult for a designer to know where the sketch finishes and the rendering beings. It is my opinion that now 3D computer modelling and rendering is so accessible and effective, the initial sketching phase has been freed up.

the eyes of the designer, which can be damaging to the development of the product. I highly recommend breaking out the big brushes, throwing caution to the wind and starting to throw some big marks down on paper from the outset whenever you have the freedom to do so. As you can see here in this sketch progression of a retro-futurist Citroen, I first concentrated on making some big brushstrokes to begin with. These very quickly sparked off the basic design. The next step was to recognise the strong aspects, simplify and then detail the proposal and an hour later a defined sketched proposal had emerged. A valuable lesson I was taught at design school is that you only need very few lines to communicate the basic form of a car; five or six in most cases, so keep this in mind from the outset when creating a theme.

The aim for this tutorial is to concentrate on how and why changes and developments were made to the sketch. The first slide shows how bold and broad brushstrokes can be made over a photograph used as an underlay to spark ideas from the beginning. There are some speedpainting techniques used here. For example, the ideas flow after the sketch has started and the concept is born along with the rendering. The advantages of this are a higher likelihood of original ideas and a potentially exciting voyage into the unknown - youre never sure what youre going to get when you start out with this method. The gradual and evolutionary nature of the process however keeps you in control at all times. The disadvantages are the greater chance you could end up with nothing at the end, especially if you are new to the technique and less able to be flexible with ideas as the sketch evolves. As this tutorial shows on page 5, you often have to be able to take a step back in order to progress along a better route. The ability to be able to scrub out a lot of the work already done (at any stage, somtimes even near what you thought was the end!) is an important one and develops with time as your faith in this technique grows. Where this particular sketch differs from a pure speedpainting is the use of an underlay and a defined idea of what vehicle and brand will be. It begins with a strong foundation and doesnt rely on random forms generated at the start. A lot of my tutorials deal with the design being largely resolved in black and white then coloured later on whereas this sketch develops with colour from the start. The colour is simply sampled from the underlying photo so that there is no time wasted in deciding on a palette. Owing to the fact that this brands products are always the same colour,

Confidence and Efficiency

When you become confident in one area of illustrating your designs try and do it more quickly. It is logical that time saved in an area where you know what you are doing is better spent in another, less certain one. As you become more confident in your sketching you will be able to transfer some of your energies to the later developmental stages which will require much more effort. If you have laboured for days over a sketch there is a greater chance you will either have become bored of it or too attached to it, or both. A sketch can eaily stop being a disposable design communication tool and become a work of art in

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Using the existing Case Quadtrac as a base, a very rough painting is made using colours sampled from the underlay image. The placement of the main features such as the tracks and grille are respected and some modifications are made from the start. To start with, different window graphics and slightly different lines are quickly suggested knowing that they will spark off more ideas, even though

they might not be final design features. The important consideration here is to make the vehicle original as soon as possible because the aim is for an advanced styling concept. It must also look credible however and therefore it is useful to base the foundation on an existing real vehicle. It is also worth noting that I wasnt familiar with this kind of

layout and vehicle which made it vital to closely reference a real product.

hover here to show underlay image

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Now you can see the ideas are starting to flow from the intitial rough painting and fast, energetic broad brush strokes are used to capture the essence of these ideas. Mainly the diagonal line sparked off by the window graphic and more sloping hood/bonnet are emphasised. Also an extra volume to the rear is suggested in order to break further away from the original vehicles proportion and make

new ideas possible. The image has now become even rougher because there was a sudden flow of inspiration which needs to be captured quickly. This often happens and sometimes a sketch needs to take a step backwards in level of finish in order to really move forwards in terms of design and overall quality.

At this stage even the background colours are being sampled and used to help form the outline of the design.

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The design that is beginning to emerge has an aggressive, thrusting feel to it which is accentuated with some dynamic headlamps. The sloping front is exaggerated even further with a quick mask being made of a windscreen that covers the hood, becoming more of a canopy than a functional screen. A little volume is given to the black plastic cover on the inside of the front track be

cause up until now this could be an aperture or wheelarch feature. Its better to start thinking of this as a volume at an early stage so that it can develop and integrate with the rest of the vehicles form. You can see that not much work was done since the last page but the effect is quite dramatic. The progression is

fast in the beginning and slows down towards the end as more decisions are made and more care is required to finish off the proposal.

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The canopy windscreen seemed one step too far for an industrial vehicle and another idea of a top forward sloping screen is begun with a couple of brush-strokes.

Again, only a few brushstrokes added on this page but such important ones in the development of the concept that they needed to be highlighted.

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The headlamps are also felt to be too stylised to be credible on this type of vehicle. The grille area has some light cast on it in the form of airbrushed white and this is then erased strategically to form a rib pattern on the panel. The top forward screen idea contrasts dramatically with the sloping hood and is also practical and believable so is developed further into a wraparound screen and side

glass with a quick mask and black airbrush. The rearmost volume is reduced by brushing over it with white. The textured brushes are great for keeping the form open to interpretation so that good decisions can be made before real definition happens. The fuzzy edges and out-of-focus effect helps to remind you that youre nowhere near the end. A footwell for the steps up to the cab is begun with a

quickly masked black shadow.

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The bodywork is relatively uninteresting up until now so work is begun on adding more form and features. The front needs a stronger more industrial feel and a bar is added which wraps over the grille and takes a separate bodyside surface and links it with the other side. This bar incorporates a single floodlamp. The bodywork is taken round the back of the glasshouse to begin to define the

back of the vehicle and work is done on picking out the edge a little more with some white brushwork. Bodywork surfaces are being played around with using a thin light coloured brush. This is a bit like creating an under-lay after youre started rendering. The reason I use a light tone of the bodywork colour is that the surface

boundaries look like they could be highlights or light lines and dont distract too much.

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A large and highly functional looking single headlamp unit is added. It is felt that the narrow frontal area of the vehicle doesnt benefit graphically from two separate headlamps. The single unit allows for a cleaner and more purposeful design. A relatively large brush is still being used for these details while they are still being experimented with. The volume of the bodywork needs bringing

out more using light so a gentle sweep of white airbrush is applied leading from the glasshouse graphic down to the front grille. This not only integrates the two volumes but will allow further sculpting into the bodywork with body coloured brushwork.

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A concept illustration such as this needs to be surprising and unexpected but still simple and easy to understand. The bodywork on a vehicle like this needs to express strength and utility and the challenge here is to do this in a stylish way. A simple arc is masked off and filled with body colour to create an upwards facing elliptical surface in a way that is unusual, muscular and simple. It suggests it is formed around a very large engine and puts the focus

on the power of the vehicle. The top hood surface follows this new surface down and exposes more of the top floodlamp housing which now protrudes from lower down. The far track is brought forward to give a stronger stance and some more detail is lightly applied to the near track. When sculpting with colour in this way it helps if you imagine literally carving from a solid block. Imagine surfaces continuing beyond their visible boundaries. You

should understand how the boundary would change if the intersecting surfaces are altered.

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The new surface is perfect to house an elliptical detail that echoes its outline; a bit like a partial offset. The location of a combined vent and badge feature is planned for this but the first priority is to make its outline graphic work with the whole design. Consequently an elliptical mask is placed in the centre of the surface at the peak of the curve and brushed over with black. It becomes apparent that the

near track isnt really jumping out at the viewer in the way it should considering the dramatic viewpoint and perspective so white overlaid brushwork is applied to the track to increase contrast.

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This is the point at which some sharpening of the whole image begins. The outline is cleaned up especially around the glasshouse. Where the bodywork already blends into the white background some contrasting bodywork coloured reflections are added to pick out the edge. Black outlines show the edge of the wraparound glass and a concave bodywork surface is added to the rear which

contrasts with the bulging, convex hood surface treatment. This now gives a defined design which can have door shutlines drawn onto it, sharpening up the sketch even further. The inner track panel is given a more definite shape and its outline is hardened up to both contrast with the curvaceous bodywork and work with the triangular track. Page 13

The blue sky colour left over from the initial sampled colour sketch isnt really helping the image and so is covered with white. The design now jumps off the page more. The first fine details are thought about with some splitlines breaking up the inner track panel. Some spray pipes are sketched on around the base of the grille. The fine details are begun at the point nearest the viewer which as always

will be the focal point and therefore be more detailed that the rest of the illustration. Vague detailing is applied to the main headlamp which is supposed to be frosted and wont expose much detail - however there is enough to show there are two lamps inside covered by a single lens. Extra floodlamps above the cab are outlined.

The detailing at this stage is not made up of serious propositions and is made in the spirit of the sketch. It is designed to compliment or emphasise the existing form rather than conform to strict manufacturing constraints. It is important however because it helps describe the form and can inspire real detail ideas later on.

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This type of vehicle is relatively uncommon and in these instances showing a human figure really helps to understand scale and size. A driver is illustrated to achieve a sense of scale and as a bonus adds depth and reality to the sketch. The technique for doing this is to use an overlay layer with a black or white brush used lightly to pick out highlights and lowlights. The overlay layer means

that the previous details on the glass are not hidden and the illusion of transparency is maintained.

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Further realism is given to the cab with masked out and overlaid sillhouettes of the far window openings. A roof aperture is also created which is casting light on the drivers face and in reality would provide a lighter and airier feeling cab. The manufacturers logo is sampled from a real photo and pasted onto the elliptical graphic on the bodywork. Before it is pasted on, a vent or inset area

is quickly brushed on to bring up the detail level on this feature because it is close to the viewer.

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The rear is worked into with a flat white brush to pick out an outline and remove a lot of visual weight. There is nothing packaged in this area and the weight and power of the vehicle is thrown forward even more if this reaward volume is removed. The nearest track definitely needs a certain amount of detail to be convincing and this is applied quite roughly with a low-contrasting grey. The high

contrast track with white highlights is reassessed as the realism of the sketch increases. In reality this whole assembly would be very dark and low contrast so from now on it will be the detail of this area that brings it into focus rather than contrast. Consideration for the overall values of the rendering will

give it the feeling of being realistic regardless of how loose it is. If you take a photo and blur it or add filters, it will still look like a real photo underneath because the basic tonal values will remain the same.

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Light from the bright white background is wrapped around the edge of the bodywork front and rear in the form of reflections. The background is cleaned up further and at the rear is blended into the foreground. The door shutlines are seen as too unconventional and placed wrongly so are covered with some solid bodywork colour so that they can be re-applied.

To achieve the wrapped light effect, take a medium size airbrush and lightly apply background colour along the outline. Remember that this is a form of glare so make sure it fades away gradually. Pick an area for the centre of the glare that will benefit from it. For instance here I place the brightest point on the radius where the windscreen surface meets the hood. Page 18

The door shutlines are re-applied suggesting a more conventional and feasible aperture which leads down onto access steps which are quickly brushed in to get an idea from placement in relation to the door. As well as improving the door shutlines the rearmost dished surface is cleaned up and sharpened. The top line of the glasshouse is also cleaned up and straightened to emphasise the

smooth wrap of the windscreen. Some loose ends on the front floodlamp are removed to give a clean sillhouette.

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The final main feature is an access ladder which gives the desired level of functional appearance. It was felt that hidden steps are too refined and the ladder is important visually because it is utilitarian looking and sits in the un-styled, functional lower area of the vehicle around the drivetrain, tracks and chassis. A low level doorhandle goes in which is large and practical although directional and

styled to fit the bodywork. The finished vehicle would be unlikely to have a styled handle like this but at the concept stage it makes the whole proposal easier to digest if it integrates with the rest of the design. At this point the sketch was considered to communicate the idea at the right level of detail and impact and it wasnt

worth refining further until it was presented for possible selection. I hope this tutorial has been valuable to you and clearly communicated the decision making process I went through when producing this sketch, together with a few hints to help you re-create work in a similar style. Page 20