Creating a car livery

[Martini]

Hi!

I'm buying a new single seater with a friend and we have to choose a livery. Since it's wintage (although it's new) and many colours are already taken, we thought we'd take inspiration from the JPS Lotus 72:





Our car looks like this :



Or this, this or  this.


So, the paint would be black.

On the nose cone, there are scoops extracting the air from the radiator, I'd like to have a gold trim around those three.
A golden nose.
A golden triangle/trapezium on the side (of the nose cone, still).
A golden circle around the maker's emblem (Crosslé).
The numbers will be the number Pi.

The "Classic Racing School" lettering will remain in gold.
The wheels will be completely black with a golden trim around. Or with the same amount of black and the whole polished aluminium in gold (better, just not sure it's doable).

The side will display this:




Bonus, it would be even better with the headrest (which can be seen here) in dark brown (like Havana)


Before asking for your help, I made a mock-up:




Please don't laugh too hard 
It gives a decent idea of what we want but looks terrible and I'm more or less ashamed to send it to the car company.


I don't know if it's out of the line to ask that here but I'd very much appreciate if someone could have a look and maybe propose something a little bit more refined 


Thanks guys

[Ofnuts]

I think it's good enough for the painter... If you want to make it look better:

• use the path tool to make clean/smooth selection (nose paint) and clean lines (sides)(using Edit>Stroke path).
  
• paint in hard-light mode (or better, on a layer in hard-light mode) to keep a bit of the reflections.
  

Awfully sexy car. Looks almost as good as a motorcycle.

[Martini]

(09-19-2017, 06:59 AM)Ofnuts Wrote:

• use the path tool to make clean/smooth selection (nose paint) and clean lines (sides)(using Edit>Stroke path).
  
• paint in hard-light mode (or better, on a layer in hard-light mode) to keep a bit of the reflections.
  

Me no speaky that language.


Seriously, I don't get it, this has been the first time I used Gimp for something else then deleting a power line on a landscape so... I really suck... Could you show me on the car ?
(I could upload my gimp file but I wonder if it wouldn't be better to start from scratch  )

[Ofnuts]

(09-19-2017, 08:50 AM)Martini Wrote:

(09-19-2017, 06:59 AM)Ofnuts Wrote:

• use the path tool to make clean/smooth selection (nose paint) and clean lines (sides)(using Edit>Stroke path).
  
• paint in hard-light mode (or better, on a layer in hard-light mode) to keep a bit of the reflections.
  

Me no speaky that language.


Seriously, I don't get it, this has been the first time I used Gimp for something else then deleting a power line on a landscape so... I really suck... Could you show me on the car ?
(I could upload my gimp file but I wonder if it wouldn't be better to start from scratch  )

You did a pretty good job with the black paint. Attached an example that shows:

1) the clean lines you get when using paths (see the Path dialog)
2) Painting on a layer which is in "Overlay" mode, so that the paint inherits some structure from the initial layer.

(example is a compressed XCF file, Gimp reads it natively, no need to uncompress first).

[Martini]

1) Cool, the lines are both smoother and sharper:




2) Didn't work out well for me. The lipstick has to be the shittiest looking part, just before the wheels.

[Ofnuts]

(09-19-2017, 12:59 PM)Martini Wrote: 1) Cool, the lines are both smoother and sharper:

2) Didn't work out well for me. The lipstick has to be the shittiest looking part, just before the wheels.

The lipstick is hard to do properly because the pure white in the original picture obliterated all the texture. What you have to do is extrapolate the color gradients on the original hood to cover the lipstick area, then apply the lipstick (not too hard to do if the lipstick is on another layer).

[Martini]

(09-19-2017, 07:29 PM)Ofnuts Wrote: What you have to do is extrapolate the color gradients on the original hood to cover the lipstick area

Hahahaha, like I know what you're talking about

[rich2005]

You need to keep the shading, to give the impression of depth and shape.

Paint the yellow nose on a new layer in overlay mode, that keeps most of it. Then it becomes more artistic than technical, clone in any missing shadow, as ofnuts says, extend any obvious highlights.

   

[Martini]

That's waaayyyyy beyong my skill set.


I made the side, though