I don’t even know where I keep gathering the motivational energy to keep going. Debt is strangling me, nobody will hire me or any of my exceedingly skilled friends, and I’m apparently NOT allowed to talk about any of my struggles publicly. I can’t mention the mental struggles, family turmoil, the exceedingly high standards of employers, or the crushing debt that will ruin me. Apparently that makes me unlikable, and thus unemployable? God forbid someone actually fucking says it how it is. My generation is struggling, I’m struggling, and it fucking sucks. I’m not just complaining about it though. I’m actively trying to find work every day. I reach out to a lot of friendly industry folks who will gladly offer advice, but sadly, advice doesn’t pay bills. I work every single day to keep learning and improve my portfolio, and that is exactly what this blog post is about.
All of that negativity gets washed away for a brief moment. I made something that I really liked, I had a fun and educational time doing it, and by the end of this project, I was left with one of my strongest portfolio pieces because of it.
Prepare to get learned, because I need to give a brief history lesson. The word “Malaise” means “a general feeling of discomfort, illness, or uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify.”, and was commonly used to refer to the U.S. recession of the 1970’s. It was also associated with the vehicles of the era, after emissions and safety regulations bogged down vehicle performance until the automotive industry could catch up by the early 80s.
That’s the genuinely interesting part about the era though; seeing how the industry adapted to sweeping regulations. During the late 70’s, we had one really awesome economical change happening; the personal computer boom! We all know computers changed the world, and the auto industry was one of the first to adopt computer technology to manage vehicle systems for better fuel economy.
Buick was one of the first to adopt Turbocharged technology managed by computer engine management in the late 1970s. They were some of the pioneers of these advancements, with other companies following suite later on.
One of these later turbo vehicles was the 1984 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe, which is a very sleek and sporty 80s performance icon.
However, I thought to myself, what if the Turbo Coupe came WAY earlier? What if Ford competed with Buick early on with this new computer controlled turbocharged technology?
Well, I decided to start out by modeling a regular 1977 Ford Thunderbird. I used to own one of these suckers in high school, and they hold a special place in my heart. They are an embodiment of late 70s Malaise era vehicle design. Proper orthographic images were hard to find, so I used a mix of side profiles and various angles, with a combo of measurements to get the result below. I have a habit of wanting to model cars with no proportionally correct reference images, and I don’t have the luxury of having a 3d scanning studio lol.
Below is the completion of the base 1977 Thunderbird, with placeholder wheels. I didn’t model out the factory wheels, because I didn’t plan on using them. It honestly turned out really well, and was more high-poly than any of my recent vehicle models, however it was still hard modeled for eventual game oriented use.
Base Thunderbird rear
So I had the base Tbird finished, and it was on to the modified version. I used reference images of “performance” appearance packages on vehicles of the era. I use performance in quotations, because they really didn’t offer any improved power output at the time. Some inspirations were the 1977 Dodge Aspen R/T and 1977 Pontiac Can-Am.
So what did I do with my custom appearance package? Well, I added a front air-dam, fender flares, a hood bulge, a rear deck spoiler, side-window louvers, dual exhaust, and a set of era-correct Ford De-Tomaso Pantera wheels. It looked really aggressive, and something I’d love to actually see custom made one day.
Alright, so the model was done, but what about renders? Well, I was going to render it out in Maya using various render engines, but nothing really looked good, and it wasn’t pick-up and play.
So I moved to realtime renders in Unreal 4. I’ve used rendering in Unreal 4 before, and I really enjoyed it, however, it just really didn’t run well on my 970m when I tried getting heavy on the lighting. The engine is great, but it had too many extra processes going on to efficiently get this done. Below are a few test renders, and while they weren’t awful, I just had to many technical issues to get it better looking.
So I had these renders, and here’s where the journey gets wholesome. I sent these renders to a big vehicle artist named Walter Kim. He’s working on the new Fast n’ Furious animated series due to his amazing work. Anyway, he actually got back to me in a matter of minutes, and gave some kind words of encouragement, but I knew my work wasn’t even close to his quality, so I HAD to know what I could do. I asked him what he renders his work in, and he said in Blender 2.8’s EEVEE engine. It’s also realtime.
So I figured, what the hell, if he can get his beautiful renders from Blender’s new engine, I may as well try it out. Imitation of the “master painter” is one of the best ways to improve your craft, as cheesy as it sounds. So I found some really awesome EEVEE tutorials by CG Geek. I followed every step; spending hours building my scene, making materials, and creating test renders. Below is where I was about half way through the process. Not too shabby, right? Well I had a lot more to do in terms of material building and lighting.
So here is where the sexiness happened, and a few tweaks as well. I found that the brown was a bit too blended in with the dark environment, so I changed it to a metallic flake forest green. I was following CG Geek’s tutorial on material creation and scene building, but I wanted to add some more pop. So I built some custom paint materials using other tutorials I liked. Below is what I got after two full workdays of scene and material building.
For spending two full days, and learning EEVEE from scratch, I think these turned out really damn good. I’m really happy with it. It’s got a great mood, and captures the nature of the car quite well.
So what is my postmortem with this little portfolio project I did? Well, I think it goes to show that practice brings improvement. I also think finding the right learning resources go a long way. Believe it or not, I actually want to go back and get some more “boring” renders to show off the vehicle more. Some kind of environment that feels more like a studio, and thus focuses all of the attention on the car. I also would like to do a custom decal set to compliment the period correct nature of the vehicle. Oh, and material improvements can definitely be made.
I honestly don’t have anything overly negative to say about this little project I pursued.
I also went back and rendered out my older Dodge Dynasty R/T model in this scene as well. I thought it was a better improvement to my renders of it in Unreal 4. Below are a few renders of it.
Do I think this whole thing will land me a job as a kickass automotive designer? Probably not, but I’ll keep fighting for a better life with every ounce of emotional strength I have left. I’m just running out of energy, and I have my own malaise to break free of. Did I mention that Sheetz wouldn’t even consider me for an entry level graphic design position? Really encouraging stuff. I can’t help but be overwhelmingly cynical with what is being presented to me, but I’m apparently not allowed to be cynical or beg, because that makes me seem undesirable to hire. It’s a vicious cycle. I just have to bottle everything up, and put on a fake smile like my life is just fucking dandy. Well guess what? It’s not. I’m just tired.
