Anyone out there grow up in the 80s? (Where are you Fencepost?) All you 30 something year old guys out there outta know what this is. Every boy wanted one of these back then! I will post the progress of this one as I work on it. I should get some real headway this weekend since I'll have some time. Let me know what you think.

This is just what I call the base. It was drawn with the path tool, then made to selection. I then saved the selection to channel, it helps later on to have the exact same selection handy. With the selection still active, I went with the airbrush tool and colored the bottom portions of the bars with a darker version of the same color ON A NEW LAYER. Then I brushed in some white lines ON A NEW LAYER for the highlights, then blurred that layer by 2 pixels.

Looks like a "chopper" frame (maybe a "Stingray").

Greg

Ooops! That was the 60's!

BMX?

look, this avatar is my mom, aint she hot
LOL

Its a bike frame!

OK I've gotten a little done, I guess you can see where this is going. I think this one is gonna be pretty good. I think the wheels might be tough.

This is starting to look amazing just like the lightsaber did. I've got one question though about the highlights, are you brushing in the brightest spot and using the smudge tool, or are you adding the highlight before you wrap the image to the shape??

Are you talking about an object map? It didn't use it for this. I just created the shape w/ the path tool, filled it w/ blue, then brushed the bottom portions w/ a darker value of that blue. Then lightly brushed those highlights in w/ the airbrush tool. My airbrush was set to fade out. I blurred it by 1 pixel after that.

Wow..thats some really talented airbrushing then. Now that i know how you're doing it, it seems alot harder when I just tried >.<

OK this is where I'm at now.......

The sprocket was pretty tricky, although I need to smooth it out some, I'm hoping that when the chain is added, it will take away some of the focus from the teeth of the sprocket. :w:

Are you using a tablet? If so, I can understand a previous comment of yours about airbrushing, because then you can use pressure settings, etc. Unfortunately I just have my mouse, so I have to get creative with my lighting, shadows, etc. :w:

I wish I had a tablet!!!!! I'm trying to convince my wife to get me one for my birthday. Maybe she's afraid I'll spend even MORE time on the computer : I just use my airbrush with the selection still active. The selection works like a stencil. For the highlight, I just moved my selection over and highlighted. (selections can be moved by holding down the ALT key while dragging the selection. Tht's my "trick". Not much huh?

I also do that with the selection active. If I'm really brave I don't use a selection at all...it adds some dynamic depth to the image.

Yeah, you can always get your selection back, invert, then clear to clean up the edges. I use that method too. I guess I just like the super, too perfect to be real, look that computers do. It almost looks like a 3DS Max model or something.

OK here is some more progress....that's right folks, I ripped a vintage GT decal from E-Bay and fixed it to fit on my bike. What do you all think so far?

PS: I also changed the pedals to white because that's what I liked when I was a kid :l:

O_O Thats...well, frankly thats just awsome |=) I looks like something that you can make in blender! I have a tablet, and i could NEVER do that! It looks so real!

thats good!/10

Hey thanks Poot, I tried the Blender thing a while back and I was pulling my hair out trying to understand it! I would go through several tuts on the web and would swear that those guys were skipping steps. I'm talking about being majorly lost!
I may try it again sometime.

OK now I'm really getting somewhere! I know the grips need some help, but I'll get to that soon. The wheels are scaring me a little. I know it's going to be a challenge. Anyway.....this is it so far!

C + C appreciated.

looks great! you've definitely got talent!

Lol I can't even draw mr. game and watch with the path tool. You must be good at this :w:. Or maybe I just really stink... nah its both :l:

Hey thanks, guys. But really the whole reason for this topic was for everyone to see that with a little (or lot) of patience you can do this type of work too. It does help to be able to draw, but you don't have to be able to draw to do this stuff. Really, if you can write in cursive, you could do this. I mean the path tool is just placing dots on certain points on the image.

OK more progress... I know,Iknow, there's not much, I just had to post. I made the chain by creating my own brush to represent one chain link, I then just stroked the path of the chain with the pencil tool with that brush. I know it needs some work, I'll get to it. Anyway this is it so far....

Believe it or not, but this thing is already at 1.50 MGs! I'm gonna have to merge some layers.

dude, this is awesome.
i know i could never make anything like that.

Thanks Squirrel, but I think you could with a little practice. Believe me, I haven't even been using GIMP very long, but I've learned some pretty creative ways of doing things. I love it!!!!!!!!!

Almost done.....the tires were done by creating a base, then duplicating that layer, then filling my dup with a pattern I made, then applying a bump map to the original base from the pattern layer. Still procrastinating on those mag wheels :a: