Name the NZ idea 1

Over the last few posts we’ve been discussing one scene in the animated music video for Chas Williams’s song “Something about this place,” the scene pictured in the above image.

Above: The music vid.

Starting second from the right was a stylised atom, meant to represent the work by Kiwi Ernest Rutherford. Next to appear was the formula one racing car in the colour known as Mclaren Yellow.

You Guessed it, world famous racing Team Mclaren and the Mclaren Automotive company who produce all those exclusive, expensive and highly fancy sports cars was founded by a Kiwi!

mcclaren-2small

If you can guess the rest  before the next post I’ll do your caricature for free, considering you’d really have earned it.

Bruce Mclaren was an Auckland lad who got right into the workshop as a youngster.

If any father has introduced his son to a hobby and watched it turn into an obsession then a profession, such a person wouldn’t be surprised that it was Bruce’s own dad who got him hooked.

It’s a good story, recounted in brief here: cars.mclaren.com/Bruce-McLaren.

Bruce became the youngest ever Grand Prix winner, a record which wasn’t broken for another 40 years… well after his death.

He is also documented as a fair dinmkum engineering genius: Bruce is one of only two grand prix drivers to have ever won in a car built under their own brand. Mclaren Automotive has gone on to be the most successful formula one manufacturer ever. (not to mention their significant Indy 500 and Can Am successes!)

At age 32, Bruce perished in a test “flight” at more than 270Km/h. What happened to the team in the days following was an inspiring and  frankly heroic adventure.

I hate to think how his Dad felt though.

mcclaren-1small

The drawing of the car was, as in the last pic, executed using a whacking great tablet screen but with digital equivalents of real media in “Painter 2017.”

This car was drawn firstly in black chalk, I prefer this to the software’s grainy pencils because when merged with the layer below it there’s no white ghosting around the outline. The particular source photo I worked from was of one of his team mate’s cars because Bruce’s car didn’t appear photographed from the angle I wanted. The car’s hardware and markings were “transposed” over to more closely represent Bruce’s #5 vehicle. (He also drove #1, a legitimate form of automotive bragging?)

Because Painter’s watercolour ALSO has a white halo when flattened with another non-transparent layer, I get around it this way: Using a white ink pen I usually “colour in” the area behind the chalk drawing. This is easier if you’ve filled the background in some shade of grey, the outlines can still be seen and the uncoloured areas are clearly indicated. THEN, having locked the transparency on the white layer I paint directly on it using the simple digital watercolour brush. It sticks within the lines and there’s no ghosting if you have to flatten the car to a discreet layer.

The “simple digital watercolour brush” and the “dull grainy chalk” have been with Painter since I started using it in 2006, those brushes just haven’t grown old!

 

Sharing is fun...