Mocking Up Paint Schemes, My Way

I'm not sure anyone will be interested and people with vector apps probably know how to do this anyway. But just incase anyone is interested...

My brother's just starting to get in to bike painting, he's done cars and stuff before but wanted to try something different. Anyway we've decided to use my old C4 as one of the project frames and were thinking about designs. This is just to show a nicer way of mocking up paint schemes using a vector app, although something like photoshop would work too. For this I used Affinity Designer but they all work the same way for this.

Often you'll just create a flat coloured idea of how it would look, something like this



Which is fine but it's nice to see a more realistic view.

Next step to follow...

The first thing is to take a photo. In this case it had mainly been dismantled but a photo of the complete bike would work too, it's just a bit more work to trace things out.



The first thing to do is to trace around the frame. It doesn't matter what colour to start with, you can add your design later. Then do the same with the fork.



In Affinity photo I selected all the bits for the frame, not the fork, and combined them (Add from the toolbar). If you don't and add a gradient it sometimes goes funny.

Next step to follow...

Once that was done I added the basic colours and lettering to both the frame and fork. So it looked pretty much like a normal mockup.



Then need to think about highlights and shadows. To do this we use grey fills and blend modes. For highlights I stuck with Screen mode and for shadows Multiply. For Screen the closer to white the grey is the lighter it will be, black means there will be no effect. For Multiply the closer to black the darker it will be, white means there will be no effect. Doing it this way means you can change the frame colour and the highlights and shadows remain.



You can also make a gradient blend mode, so this was for grey to white.


And adding Screen together with Multiply you get something like this


Next step to follow...

Now it's up to you how long you spend adding the highlights and shadows. I just did mostly by eye but you could use the photo as a reference. I also added a metallic gradient to the forks, lettering etc. And ended up with



For a lugged frame that would be it but as it's carbon frame I added some guassian blurs in places to soften the lines. When adding blurs you tend to need to make the shadow a bit darker or the highlight a bit brighter. So after adding them ended up with this



I wasn't going to make it photorealistic, just realistic enough.

Next step to follow...

Now you have all the highlights and shadows how you want you can alter the design, the frame and fork objects you originally drew, in any way you like and it will still look fine.



I just think it makes it easier to visualise what it would look like rather than a flat, lifeless mockup.

That is awesome ! Thanks for sharing, this is something I did several times, with powerpoint, but just stopped at your first step! What photo edit program did you use ?

Thanks. I used Affinity Designer. I find it easier using vector apps for something like that plus I've more practice with those. So Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Inkscape... would also work. But you can do the same thing in Photoshop, Paintshop Pro etc. and some will probably prefer to use those. However in those you'd probably differently, like masking the frame instead or drawing it but it's basically the same idea.

Re:

I wasn't going to make it photorealistic, just realistic enough.

Click to expand...

You are being modest. That is realistic enough to fool me.

Re: Re:

torqueless":1fdutcpc said:

I wasn't going to make it photorealistic, just realistic enough.

Click to expand...

You are being modest. That is realistic enough to fool me.

Click to expand...

My photorealistic stuff is just that, like a photo. But takes a far longer so I don't do much of it. For this it was enough.

Re:

Looks good, but personally I get it done faster with a sheet of paper and my kid's colouring box of bits

I guess your result is a lot closer to the finished thing though!