I received a call from Scott Rehn, the Announcer and Event Promoter from Championship Offroad Racing. He's working with El Camino High School in Oceanside, CA, one of two schools selected to be featured in an upcoming episode of Drag Race High on the Speed Channel. It's a reality show, and camera crews record students in auto shop class as each school builds a high performance drag racer from an old muscle car. When the cars are finished, professional NHRA drivers race them down the quarter mile for bragging rights on the national stage.
Scott contacted me because he found this illustration of a 1967 Chevelle SS 396 on my portfolio website.
As luck would have it, El Camino High's car is based off a 1970 Chevelle SS. Scott liked the style of the illustration and asked if I could make a few changes to customize it for the school and the show. Read on...
Though Chevelle enthusiasts may disagree with me, the body styles don't differ much between the '67 and '70 model years, especially when rendered in semi-cartoon style. I did have to change the grille from the older four-headlamp setup to the twin headlamp grille that came later. Also, I changed the orientation of the shaker hood to match the one on El Camino's car. Then we added the school's name in the background and squeezed the giant head of a cougar - the school's mascot - into the driver's side window, sort of Big Daddy Roth style. We also threw in a few other goodies designed to poke fun at their rival school.
Here's what we came up with:
The torn edges came from a page of a very old book that good old Bittbox scanned in and offered up for free on his web site. I converted the scan to greyscale, maxed out the contrast, and used the image as a layer mask. Bada bing, bada boom.
With any luck, some of the kids will be wearing this emblem on their shirts while the crews are filming. What a hoot.
Now back to the drawing board.
Scott contacted me because he found this illustration of a 1967 Chevelle SS 396 on my portfolio website.
As luck would have it, El Camino High's car is based off a 1970 Chevelle SS. Scott liked the style of the illustration and asked if I could make a few changes to customize it for the school and the show. Read on...
Though Chevelle enthusiasts may disagree with me, the body styles don't differ much between the '67 and '70 model years, especially when rendered in semi-cartoon style. I did have to change the grille from the older four-headlamp setup to the twin headlamp grille that came later. Also, I changed the orientation of the shaker hood to match the one on El Camino's car. Then we added the school's name in the background and squeezed the giant head of a cougar - the school's mascot - into the driver's side window, sort of Big Daddy Roth style. We also threw in a few other goodies designed to poke fun at their rival school.
Here's what we came up with:
The torn edges came from a page of a very old book that good old Bittbox scanned in and offered up for free on his web site. I converted the scan to greyscale, maxed out the contrast, and used the image as a layer mask. Bada bing, bada boom.
With any luck, some of the kids will be wearing this emblem on their shirts while the crews are filming. What a hoot.
Now back to the drawing board.
