This is just a light modification so I won’t let it have a major page on my blog. 😀 Here’s how the car looked after the mod.
Yep, I modified the back with several paint jobs to make it look like it sports a small diffuser and spoiler as well as the tail lights look like evo 9’s.
I’ve been crazy about the silly light box but even though there are tutorials about its simple construction, I cannot put my money into it. I do have the camera and the light but not the peripherals to concentrate the light to the subject. 😀 However, I received a brighter lamp and tested this kind of photoshoot using scratch papers. 😀 The result is a semi-dark or a bit underexposed despite setting the camera to Aperture-priority and then setting the exposure to +1. The resulting photos were bluish since it’s dark time already and the only thing lighting up the subjects is the bright study lamp. Despite these instances, I brought up another paper facing the camera side to focus the light to the center. After shooting the pictures, I edited them using Adobe Photoshop, adjusting the color balance, brightness and contrast. Here are the results:
Looks nice, for me. 😀
Gallery:
I’ve been out of the groove of Q-steer since hell weeks came. But I’m back. I’m starting to get the other cars I need such as the first Nissan Skyline R34 Bayside Blue. Well, an upcoming chassis is coming and it now bears the Choro-Q name. 😀 Cheers.
Plan for tomorrow is to make a temporary circuit using the largest illustration board that can be purchased from National Bookstore. Also, I’ll need to buy more boards and white cartolina so that I can test that silly home-made white box for photography.
E3 2009 – Sony has just announced the new PSP Go! Together with the re-unveiling of the long gone game that’s suppose to go along with the release of the first PSP, the Gran Turismo. 😀 Now, the PSP Go! boasts new features such as….umm…bluetooth. a rearrangement of analog stick to the middle, 16GB internal flash memory, no UMD, external Micro Memory Stick slot….. and that’s it.
Let me talk about Gran Turismo then! I’ve been a big fan of the Gran Turismo series despite the lack of the Sony game consoles. 😀 I do have one console which is the PSP and it’s kind of dying but I don’t think it’ll die. 😀 The Gran Turismo for PSP was announced together with the release of the first PSP system back in 2004. It was then stopped for a time because of Polyphony’s focus on the PS3 system and GT5. Now, with the release of a new PSP system, Polyphony kept their words in the rumors and now they have this beautiful game to be released together with the new PSP Go!.
There will be, according to Polyphony, more than 800 cars in the game, 35 tracks with 60 layout variations…
I do hope they have the Nurburgring here. 😀
this is the view when playing the game. 😀 I saw a footage of the gameplay and it was sooo GT4-ish or GT-5-ish in handling physics. 😀 So nice. Not bad for a limited characteristic game console, the PSP. They were able to squeeze out proper graphics for this game. 😀
For you fans, it’ll be released on October 1. Together with the new PSP Go! 😀 Yep, this year. I can’t wait!!!
Photos courtesy of IGN
Gran Turismo PSP E3 Trailer here
Yup, I have them all~! Here’s the new set of model cars recently released by Shell. 😀 Continue reading ‘Shell-Ferrari Model Cars with real Engine sounds’
The header is already an example. 😀 😀
By the way, I now have a new header and I made it! The previous one was made by my brother, credits to him. I still have the old header. I want to retain it but it says “2008” and I cannot see the PSD file around so I have to change it since it’s 2009 already.
I’m fiddling with Adobe Photoshop for a while now and I’ve learned a lot from the basics that my brother taught me before. Now I am making designs that are quite difficult to understand (for me) from the tutorials present in the intarwebz. My favorite now are silhouettes. 😀 (as you can see from the header). But it is not a simple silhouette like black shadows, the typical ones. I was fascinated by the silhouette design used for the game “Burnout Paradise”. 😀 Now, I’m making several ones, similar to Burnout’s design. It may not be exactly the same as I am using captured images while the design in Burnout seemed to be made directly from the computer. (Weird, I can’t seem to put it in better words.) Anyhoo, here are the designs I made so far:
This is only a small modification so I won’t be posting this together with the other tutorials. This is just painting the diffusers of the cars I have and only two popped out with obvious diffusers namely the Evo X and Impreza.
I was looking at these cars when I noticed that the whole car is red or blue for the scooby. I wanted to put some detail on the cars. I wished to start on the panel lines but I dont have a fine marker, 0.1 mm point to be exact. So I went to another part and I noticed the diffusers. I took both cars and took some shots before they were modified:
So, you can see the diffuser at the pictures. For those who don’t know, diffusers are seen under the car’s bumper to improve the air flow underneath the car, thus making it improve the aerodynamics. Though it’s not used as an aerodynamic component for Q-steer. 😀 So to get them look like diffusers which is usually dark and not shiny, I used these:
A Black plastic paint can from Tamiya and Flat Finish from Mr. Hobby! The black paint, of course, will color the diffuser black and the Flat Finish will make the diffuser not shiny or have a matte surface.
But before I get happy spraying stuff, I needed to cover the parts that do not need painting. I used one of the hidden hobby masking tapes at the house and I find them more effective than conventional masking tapes that you can buy in bookstores.
It’s not enough to just cover the places around the diffuser or else it will have the whole body a different color. It is also not ideal to use masking tape all over so what I did:
I taped the cars with small pieces of paper. 😀 After checking the predictions of not painting other parts of the body, I started spraying some paint. Really scary, though. You can’t tell if the paint only goes to the parts you want it to go. After drying the paint for a few moments, I sprayed the Flat Coating and this is how it turned out:
Tada! Now the diffusers look realistic! Heheheh~! There you go!
This post remains here since it’s not going to be long. I just want to clear things that this is not a tutorial since the process of converting this body is simple the same as the basic one I posted before. I just want to post this since this is a good body to match one of my Q-steer which is the Lancer Evolution X.
This is how the car looked like before I converted it for Q-steer use. I didn’t had the chance to perform the conversion immediately since I have a lot of requirements to finish back at school.
First, I need to get rid of the screw area of the body by cutting it off, just like my Evo 7. However, the screw area is really tough that when I forced a small part to be removed, the whole half of the screw area went off. I was scared because I thought the hood will be affected but good thing it was not affected. 😀
Second move was to make sure the rear lock would fit nicely so I filed the lock at the rear. Eventually, I got bored and used a Swiss knife to trim the part.
Last but not the least, I had to open up a space for the front mount. 😀 It was tiring since I’m using a partially damaged knife, used for Gundam models. 😀 but with a bit of effort, tada!
I posted the conversion gallery for this particular body and the link can be found at the Hangar section. Cheers~!
Yes, I started the project last night and it was a nightmare. Before I started, though, I backed up the project by buying my first 32g tube of Tamiya Putty white. Just in case I screw up with the body. So I started doing the very basic step which is trimming. I also have the idea in my mind that the front spoiler of the body is not on the body itself but rather on the Choro-Q chassis. So I have t unmount the front spoiler permanently. There are other problems:
1. THE VERY BIG ONE : The terminals used for the motor soldered on the IC were hitting the window area of the body.
2. It seems that the whole body will not make it to the front mount. In short, the body is short.
SOLUTION TO:
1. I have to dig up some space on the area of that window and to get rid of punching a hole, I also have to sand the terminals of the motor. The only worry I have is that the terminals might not work as I might detach the soldered lead from the terminals.
2. This is due to (1). It took me the whole three hours from 9pm to 12am just to get the body lined-up properly
PROBLEM 3: Even if I made the body lined-up properly with the wheels fitting the wheel wells just fine, the front mount of the chassis might be too long for the body
SOLUTION TO (3) – I trimmed the lower part of the front according to the shape of the chassis mount. It fits well now. The only problem I have is how am I going to mount the spoiler without breaking it when I remove and mount the body.
I’ll post some pictures soon.
I am still thinking about how am I going to mount this complicated body onto the Q-steer chassis, For one thing, see that front spoiler/ front skirt? That’s not with the body but with the Choro-Q chassis and there’s also a lot of space in front which means it might not hit the Q-steer chassis front mount since the body’s front side is too far from it.
So I think it’s time to fiddle with body molding or creating and modifying body shape using the same method as the one in real cars. Yup, but I’m not going to use the materials used for cars, it’s too heavy and might destroy the light plastic material. I can buy the epoxy in hardware stores but those are for hard plastics. Eventually I found these:
Tamiiya’s Epoxy Putty and Putty White. The epoxy putty it the one I’m going to use for creating the mount for the RX-7 and the White Putty is for finishing touches. I can also make my own bodykits which can be snapped on but that’s kind of too much for now. I’ll see how the project goes and then I’ll modify my own bodykits. (I will get another RX-7 and make it look like Keisuke’s RX-7!! hahahahah!)
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