The Big RD Skinning Competition

[Paul Jeffrey]

It's competition time! Fancy showing off your artistic talents to our readers here at RaceDepartment? Know how to paint a livery and have Assetto Corsa? Want to share some love with RaceDepartment and win a prize? Then we have the competition for you!

RaceDepartment are proud to announce a contest for all the livery painters in our wonderful sim racing community. If you have the skills to design your own liveries and want to share your ideas with our community, then this could be the competition for you! The challenge is to design a skin for any car in Assetto Corsa, all we ask is it looks cool, feels like a racing car and most of all it has a unique and obvious RaceDepartment theme.

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, and you want the world to see your creative genius, then read on for the fine details below...

What is it?
The competition is to design a skin with a unique RaceDepartment theme. We ask you keep it clean (this is a family friendly site after all) and you use your most creative talents.

What do you win?
A full year of free Premium membership at RaceDepartment for you or a friend. That's 12 whole months of online racing and driver academies, plus access to our premium members area of the site. Of course if you are already a Premium member, you can hold on to the gift and use it when your renewal is due.

How long do I have?
The competition will start when this article goes live, and will close on the 28th February. This article will be featured on the front page of the website for the duration of the competition.

What sim is it for?
Assetto Corsa

Which car should I skin?
Any! We have no preference at all so knock yourself out and choose whatever takes your fancy

Why should I bother?
Because its cool, and looking at nice liveries makes me happy Jokes aside, we have loads of readers at RaceDepartment and your liveries will be featured on the front page, for a whole month! That's a lot of exposure for you, and its a great opportunity to let the world see what you can do with a virtual paintbrush. Plus you win a Premium membership if you are picked by our panel of judges as the winner.

What do I have to do?
Simple really. Pick a car in AC (ideally vanilla content but mod cars will be considered too, providing they are "legal" mods), create your skin and post a picture of the finished livery in the comments section of this article.

What picture of the finished livery should I post?
UPDATE 12.02.17 - For final submissions.

Please note the competition closes on Tuesday 28th February 12pm midnight UK. All final entries must adhere to the following process to ensure an equal playing field during the voting phase.

The image that readers will vote against must be 1920x1080 in size and must be contain only unedited images, taken from the skin viewer in game with a white background. The final submission should contain shots from both sides, front, rear and top down. Editing of the images is strictly forbidden!

The final submissions post should contain the words "Final Submission" in bold at the top of the post.

I apologise for the mixed message with regards to how to submit an image. The initial plan was to review final submissions via a panel of RD staff judges, however on further reflection and following a suggestion from our readers we will be putting all final entries into a community poll. The top 5 highest ranking skins will then judged by a panel of RD staff where we will select a winner. All final submissions will be collated into a finals post to go on the front page, where the voting will be opened to the public. The voting will run for 2 weeks and the winner will be selected within 48 hours of voting closure.

Once a decision has been made a winner announcement article will be made separately on the front page. The final top five will be invited to resubmit any "artistic" pictures they wish to have displayed on the winners announcement article.

To reiterate, all final submissions need to have "final submission" at the head of the post and the post must contain unedited images using in game skin viewer against a white backdrop showing both sides, front, rear and top views.

Many thanks and happy painting

UPDATE 2:
Logos for use on the skins here -


Ok that should clear up the technical stuff. As mentioned above I will keep this thread on the front page for the duration of the competition (closes midnight 28/02/17 UK). Once the competition has closed I will post the winners announcement article and include all the submissions on one thread, so people can review the cars without having to wade through all the various comments on the original posts. These images will remain on the front page for everyone to view for a couple of weeks after the close of the competition.

Good luck and happy painting

 

[A.Smiraglia]

published the skin here:
http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/l-huracan-gt3-rd-contest-premium-membership.13773/

 

[SvenUilhoorn]

published the skin here:
http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/l-huracan-gt3-rd-contest-premium-membership.13773/

That looks slick... You could add some pics to your post though

 

[TobiasR]

I look through these pages and for each one I think, this could be the winner. Why can't you guys be livery designers in F1 or LMP?

 

[A.Smiraglia]

That looks slick... You could add some pics to your post though

Thanks, I have added some photos in play ...

 

[playwithwind]

My simplistic car painting for the competition
http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/racedepartment-livery-for-porsche-962c-longtail.13775

 

[Andrew Harper]

My simplistic car painting for the competition

A nice design my friend and it does the job very well Can almost seeing it go round the Nords right now!

The interesting thing is though when you look at famous liveries most of them are very simple. The Marlboro McLarens, the Gulf colour scheme, the Charge Mazda is a simple orange and green scheme, any Castrol sponsored car, and the Falken Porsche although slightly more obscure is also easily recognisable to most petrolheads. In the case of the 70's and 80's I think it was partially dictated by the paint/vinyl technology at the time. Nowadays with full body vinyl wraps the sky is almost the limit

The same thing is now happening to racesuits. Now they've figured out how to screen print safely onto the Nomex the drivers are starting to look as bonkers as some of the cars!

 

[playwithwind]

A nice design my friend and it does the job very well Can almost seeing it go round the Nords right now!

Thank you for this high praise! I'm very glad you enjoy it! Simplicity was the style I was always fond of. The praise and the kind support of you and many other community members give me a lot of encouragement to keep it this way in the future

 

[A.Smiraglia]

Thanks Ddn Tube for video over the top!

 

[Daniel Trapp]

So many amazing Skin designers here, I´m impressed by all the awesome work you guys submit, keep doing what you´re doing guys.

 

[Bazooka_Joe]

I was thinking of participating in this competition but my work would simply look pathetic compared to such great pieces of design already posted in this thread.

This is definitely one of my favourite threads to scroll through over and over again. Wonderful work chaps - keep them coming!

 

[PaulH]

Thanks Ddn Tube for video over the top!

WOW! All entries should be made like this!! Awesome work!

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

I was thinking of participating in this competition but my work would simply look pathetic compared to such great pieces of design already posted in this thread

Have faith in yourself mate! Don't let the quality of the other designs put you off mate, it's not always about the most complicated design.. something visually striking can be made without the need to use crazy skills (say's the man who can't paint a car ).

Go on, have a go

 

[Benutzername]

Have faith in yourself mate! Don't let the quality of the other designs put you off mate, it's not always about the most complicated design.. something visually striking can be made without the need to use crazy skills (say's the man who can't paint a car ).

Go on, have a go

Now you basically have to give it a try aswell. I know you want it
Stuff you learned will stick with you, allowing you to do it whenever you feel to do it.

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

I must admit I really, really, really fancy learning about how to paint cars. I've got this idea in my head to design a team livery and get every car in all my sims (that support custom skins) painted up in that design.

Then when I go online I can look cool while getting lapped

One day soon I'll make the effort to get involved in that side of things, just need to find a way to stretch out the days a couple of hours or so to give me some time

 

[Benutzername]

I must admit I really, really, really fancy learning about how to paint cars. I've got this idea in my head to design a team livery and get every car in all my sims (that support custom skins) painted up in that design.

Then when I go online I can look cool while getting lapped

One day soon I'll make the effort to get involved in that side of things, just need to find a way to stretch out the days a couple of hours or so to give me some time

10 minutes per day on that topic per day. If you really want something thats the way i do it. Even if you basically have no free time, 10 minutes are always somewhere. It'll stack up

 

[Keith_G]

Really, Really impressed!! You guys are doing a great job and I envy the skills. Love all of them - KG

 

[Ghoults]

To learn about skinning cars the first thing I'd do is to download gimp (or krita, paint.net, photoshop) and watch some basic tutorials about how to use it. It is good idea to learn to do the things the right way from the start. Use the native file format for saving (xcf in gimp, psd in photoshop). Use layers, work in 4k (or 8k if you have really good computer) and downscale from there to 2k for the final dds file when you are finished. Experiment with all the things you can find.

Try to learn the undestructive method for colors and shapes. Don't draw things on top of each other on a single layer but try to put everything on separate layers. That way it is super easy to get rid of or edit stuff later. If you draw on one single layer you can only go back with the undo button.

Then as for actual skinning I'd just start with relatively simple replica for some car. Spend the time making the decals look good, make the lines match and learn how the game wants your textures. Then after that create another replica but create it for another car than the original. Then I'd start with more demanding creative projects.

In the end it is all about doing it because it is fun. Winning skinning competitions on your first try is very difficult. But creating a good skin is not difficult. And it is very nice feeling to one day come across a youtube video or online race where someone is using your skin (skin that you uploaded to rd).

 

[Alex72]

Great entries guys. So much talent.

 

[Torcano]

Don't know how I missed this thread altogether till now, LOL. But damn the entries so far have been nothing short of brilliant. Job well done by everyone involved! But it seems there is still enough time for me to shake off the rust and give it a shot. I'm yet to install Photoshop on the new PC though, oh if only there was a cure for my chronic laziness.

 

[Andrew Harper]

Don't know how I missed this thread altogether till now, LOL. But damn the entries so far have been nothing short of brilliant. Job well done by everyone involved! But it seems there is still enough time for me to shake off the rust and give it a shot. I'm yet to install Photoshop on the new PC though, oh if only there was a cure for my chronic laziness.

I kind of know how you feel. There were a few "real world" competitions leading up to Christmas for this type of competition and I found out about all of them too late!

Would have been interesting to have a stab at them.

There was a Facebook competition to design the new livery for the Ginetta G55 race car (which was then to be unveiled at the Autosport Show) You had to use the corporate colours, no modifications to the logo were allowed and it had to be transferrable to other cars in the racecar range but there were some very nice entries. Here's the winner...

I kicked myself afterwards as I probably would've done something similar!