Full Throttle NHRA Commercial

This is an example of why I don't do 3d modeling. real world turnaround just isn't feasible yet...

Friday Jan 13th. 4:08 pm I get an email from schumacher racing asking for layouts for two full throttle cars, to be designed for a commercial shoot they'll be doing. The cars are to be the same scheme, but feature names and colors of football teams to be in the superbowl. The catch? it's for a superbowl promo, and they need it approved, painted, decaled within 9 days.

Friday Night - I jam creating rough comps.

Saturday, suprisingly someone in approval dept is working, and chooses one of the schemes. I spend all day saturday designing cars for two of the possible four nfl teams that have a chance to make it to the superbowl.

Sunday - Minor revisions, Colts lose (those bastards), and some teams are eliminated from the running, so I complete the remianing two possible candidates. I make a template on their actual car to make sure this goes without a hitch. I send out sample layouts for color proofs by decal company.

Monday morning - I get final approval, and begin work on actual decal templates/files.

Monday night - Out the door. All four (Steelers, Seattle, Denver & Carolina) artwork files are revised (as needed from color proofing) and shipped out to the decal company.

Tues-Thurs. - Decal wraps are printed, dried, cut. Shipped out to vegas on thursday.

Fri Decals sit idle.

The guys that did the wraps installs were great, and jammed all sunday night (waited for results/last winner) to get them done by monday morning in time for the photo shoot.

I never saw the commercial, but hear it aired on Fox Sports alot, with Best Damn Sports show period. Pittsburgh won their race, and ultimately won the tsuperbowl as well... which can mean only one thing... They'll probably be back for another next year. Hopefully they'll give me more time next year!

Anyways, 24-48 hour turnaround isn't fun, but isn't all that uncommon. Rendering alone in 3d modeling wouldn't fit within my time constraints, and converting art for decals/wraps/paintmasks would take longer than just sticking with 2d vector illos.
SOmeday the computers will get faster, software better, and cheaper to justify 3d modeling. But for now, it's all 2d for me. Which is funny, because I originally went to Pratt for 3d computer graphics lol. Funny how things turn.

Photos by team member Mike Lewis. Used with permission.