Congratulations to Paul Denton for winning the Batmobile Design Competition!  Paul’s rendering, seen above, captures that “bad ass” feel of the Dark Knight: it’s moody, menacing, and full of drama.  The sketch technique is loose and intriguing, and the vehicle’s design is well-though out… It’s as if the car lurks in the shadows, stalking Batman’s prey.  The smoke emitting from the side exhaust, something that Denton had in his other two sketches, makes it almost seem like the Batmobile is smoking after a night of satisfactory Joker-murder.

It’s awesome, pure and simple.

Congrats to Paul, and THANK YOU to everyone who submitted!  It was an extremely tough decision, which took us right down to the final moments of the selection.  Thanks to Arvind from DrivenMavens for helping us select, and for Dwayne Vance, who is doing something a little special for our international entries (more on that in a later post).

Be sure to check out our International winner here: INTERNATIONAL WINNER

… and the rest of our entries: Set 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Finally, check out our sister site, SideQuesting, and their recent Light Cycle contest here: LIGHT CYCLE DESIGNS

Below you’ll find some of the Honorable Mentions that made our final decision so difficult. Congrats!

HONORABLE MENTION: Peter Cansfield

HONORABLE MENTION: Leonardo Magana

HONORABLE MENTION: Fernando Hernandez

Batman and the Batmobile are copyright DC Comics.  All entries are owned by the respective artists.  All official logos copyright DC Comics, Warner Bros, and other respective companies.

CarDesignFetish knows that you like cool cars.  We also know that you like to sketch cool cars.  What happens when you put the two together?  A really cool design contest, that’s what!

We’re hosting our first ever sketch contest on CDF, and it centers around a classic vehicle: the Batmobile.  Gotham’s masked detective has one of most iconic rides around, filled with gadgets, weapons, and style.  The goal is for you to create/sketch a Batmobile concept, but to do so in 2 hours or less and send them over to us.  Pencil sketches, Photoshop, Painter… whatever you want to use to create it is up to you.  We just want to see a great idea (or two).

The focus is to be creative, but not over-render an image.  Just an hour or two will suffice to get a cool sketch or rendering out there.

CONTEST

We’ll feature each concept on our site and select a winner.  The winner will get copies of pivotal Batman graphic novels Cacophany penned by Kevin Smith and Year One by Frank Miller.  The contest begins TODAY, March 4th, and lasts until Monday, March 14th.  We’re lucky to have Dwayne Vance be a guest judge, as well as Team CDF, as we select the best from the bunch.  Submit as many as you’d like (per the rules below).

Each entry will be evaluated on merits of cool design and sketching basics, so perspective and proportion will be important.  Will it be a classic 60′s Batmobile, a newer Tumbler-style?  Will you take a crack at Tim Burton’s Batmobile, or something completely different?

Good Luck, and have fun!

RULES

Contest starts Today, Friday, March 4th.
Submissions due by Sunday night, March 13th, at 11:59PM EST
Winner announced on Tuesday, March 15th
Format: 11″x17″ JPEG, PNG, TIFF file
Submit as often as you’d like, as there is no limit.
Send sketches to: cardesignfetish@gmail.com
Open internationally, but prize will be awarded to US residents only (for shipping reasons).
All qualifying submissions will be posted in a gallery.
CDF reserves the right to disqualify entrees.

[The contest has no affiliation with DC Comics or Warner Brothers. The Batman and Botmobile properties are copyright and trademarked by DC.  Images courtesy DC/Warner Bros. Concepts and images submitted are owned by the artists.]

Superstar Designer/Artist (and friend of CDF) Dwayne Vance is hosting an online class for rendering vehicles in Photoshop and Painter.  This Thursday, March 3rd at 2PM EST (11PST) Dwayne will be hosting a session talking to the basics of setting up a sketch in perspective, using design language to set up a theme, making and utilizing textures, and creating a visual flow for the viewer.  The session lasts for about 1.5 hours, and will be a TERRIFIC way for people both new to automotive design AND professionals to pick up and learn new techniques at improving our vehicle renderings.  There will also be a question/answer session that follows.

The webinar takes place as a part of the Digital Art Summit and can be found here: CLICK FOR LINK

This is a MUST SEE for all those interested in vehicle design, as we can attest to Dwayne’s awesome abilities and techniques first-hand.

The webinar cost just $47 and will be well worth it.  It will also be available afterward for purchase and download.

For a little more on Dwayne, read the press release below.  We’ll be there on Thursday, and we hope you will as well!

Design and Render Vehicles

Some quick basics to getting set up to use Painter. 10min

1.Set up a quick drawing pallet for yourself. Some basic Perspective Principles.
2. Creating wheels for your vehicle. How to make your wheels in the correct perspective using the major and minor axis principle. 10 min
3. Using wheels as your proportioning scale. Using a side view to measure out your 3/4 perspective view. 5 min
4. Draw car using Painter and talk about different design languages. How to use those design languages to create you final design. 15 min
5. Make textures by using markers, pencils, paint strokes, 5min
6. Talk about rendering process using Photoshop. Talk about reflections and different surface treatments on vehicles. Man made surface vs natural surfaces. How to use different rendering techniques in Photoshop and Painter. Render vehicle drawing. Using vignette techniques to make eye flow through the design. 25 min
7. Using textures to add further interest to your vehicles and design. 5 min

Question and answer time. 15min

About Dwayne:

Dwayne graduated from Art Center College of Design with a BS Degree in Transportation Design. He began his design career with Troy Lee Designs in Corona, California, as a designer of high-end motocross protective gear. Dwayne then became a Senior Designer for Mattel, Hot Wheels division. While at Hot Wheels he designed and developed several cars and led teams for entire toy lines. He eventually returned to Troy Lee Designs where he continued to design cutting-edge motocross gear including the SE2 helmet and other protective equipment.

Dwayne now has his own company, “Future Elements – High energy art and design-” they do work for companies such as Mattel’s Hot Wheels, Batman and entertainment divisions, Hasbro’s Transformers and Star Wars division, Texaco, Oakley, Warner Bros, Mazda, Chumba racing, Upper Deck, Blackstar Paintball, Arctic Cat snowmobiles, Corel Painter, Jada toys, Fly Racing, Troy Lee Designs, Flying Lizard Racing, EA Games, Activision, DC Comics and a few others.

Dwayne’s designs have been widely published in magazines and books including “How to draw Hot Wheels the Hot Wheels Way” and “35 years of Hot Wheels”, Official Corel Painter magazine, Imagine FX, Car Culture Deluxe, 2d Artist magazine, Digital Painting Techniques and Secrets of Corel Painter Experts.

He self published a book along with 12 other hot rod artist called “The Hot Rod Art Book: Masters of chicken Scratch” and now The Hot Rod Art Book: Masters of Chicken Scratch Vol 2. Dwyane’s art work is featured at the Peterson Automobile Museum in Los Angeles, California. He has a series of  prints and artwork based on Hot Rod and Muscle car art that are created in mixed media’s.

You can find the artwork for sale on www.mastersofchickenscratch.com

February is over, and that means more awesome sketches were released in the month.  Point your eyeballs here for great digital work from Volkswagen, pencil sketches from Renault, sketches over photos by Lexus and Hyundai, classy Ssangyong work, and concept work from Scott Robertson.  Visit the gallery below.

[Via Autoblog, Drawthrough Jr, and CarBodyDesign]

Cars that share the general traits of a baby’s face trigger the ‘Isn’t it cute’ response in consumers.

The Fiat 500 is the latest in a long line of “cute cars.”  So what is it about cars that make them cute?  Mostly proportions control the feeling of a car.  Most cute cars are compact cars that are a little taller than wider with softer graphic forms.  The VW Beetle and Mini are other great examples of cute cars.  If you are a people / car watcher then check out the guys that drive these vehicles.  I bet the color of the car is darker, the rims a little bigger, the sills a bit lower.  All of these attributes help disguise the cuteness and catch you off guard.  I fall victim to this driving a VW GTI.  I don’t think a GTI is a cute car but a base level Golf is a cute car to me.  It is an interesting phenomena and as more cars get smaller you we see more attempts at the costumes to through off the cuteness.  Who said cute cars are bad anyway?

Check out the article after the jump which talks about the psychology of car features and how they play tricks on us.

Linda Miesler and Helmut Leder decided to put evolutionary theory to the test in the product design world. At the 7th International Design and Emotion Conference in Chicago, Miesler, a doctoral student, presented the lessons that she and Leder, a psychology professor, learned about baby faces and responses to designed objects.

There’s a body of research indicating that humans think human baby faces are cute and respond positively to them — this is where the evolutionary theory comes in. It’s good for us to respond positively to our young. Baby faces share certain attributes — relatively large eyes, and smallish noses and mouths, for example. Humans smile at and have positive emotional reactions to objects they feel are cute.

Another whole set of studies has shown that humans perceive the front end of a car as a human face. The headlights are eyes, the grill a nose, and the air intake a mouth. We infer attributes for the car, such as gender, based on the face that we see.

Miesler and Leder, as detailed in their paper “The Cute Look: Baby-Schema Effects in Product Design,” had people look at images of cars that had been altered so that their “faces” were more baby-like and also the original head-on photos of the same cars. In the modified images, the headlights had been made 20 percent larger, the grill 20 percent smaller and the air intake 20 percent narrower but 20 percent higher — babies lips are not as wide laterally as an adults, but fuller. Some of the cars involved were compact and some were mid-size. Cross-sections of the compact cars were rounder than the larger cars, which also has a potential cuteness ramification — comfortably padded babies rank higher on the cuteness meter than scrawny ones.

The altered images of the cars were seen as cuter than the altered ones, and compact cars were cuter than midsized ones.

Although not everyone wants a cute car, at least some car shoppers do, and designers now have some empirical support for making certain models look at us with baby faces. Not all brands are congruent with cuteness. Somehow, a Hummer with a baby face doesn’t seem like a very good idea — better to apply these findings to cell phones than vehicles designed by the Defense Department.

[article courtesy of Miller-McCune]

The iPad is an incredibly versatile tool.  For Designers, it can become essential, though sifting through the ocean of apps may be daunting.  As many a Designer received an iPad this holiday season, I felt it apt time to compile a list of apps (and tools) to turn the iPad into the perfect portable Industrial Design, with an exhaustive software suite and few extras thrown in for fun.

Load up iTunes, get the gift cards ready, and begin downloading… NOW.

Accessories

Ten One Design Pogo Sketch Stylus

Out of all accessories, this is the most essential.  We need a stylus to sketch, and Ten One’s Pogo line is the best of the bunch, providing a comfortable feel and a being nearly lag-free.  Must buy! ($8)

Alternatives: Ten One’s Pogo Stylus (smaller size)

Apple’s iPad Case ($40)

It’s not perfect, but it’s still the best one available at a decent price.  Protect your iPad, because you WILL drop it.

Alternatives: Incase Convertible Magazine Jacket, Quirky Cloak

Sketching

Sketchbook Pro ($3/Holiday Sale)

As we noted earlier this year, this is not only the best sketching/rendering/art app on the iPad, but it’s actually one of the best sketching tools PERIOD.  Multiple layers, endless brushes, customization, import/export options… the list goes on and on.  Everyone, even non-designers, should own this app.

Alternatives: ArtStudio, Layers Pro, Adobe Ideas, Brushes

Vector Imaging

iDraw ($8.99)

This extremely versatile vector-based illustration program surprised me.  Not only can I create vector-based concepts and designs, but I was able to import images and add text, resulting in a great presentation/layout-creation tool.  The pieces can be exported in a variety of formats, from vector-based PDF to PNG.

Alternative: Freeform

Image Manipulation

Photogene ($3.99)

Often, we’ll need to take a sketch or photograph and modify it in preparation for further usage.  This can include functions from simple rotation and cropping all the way to color adjustment and retouching.  Photogene is as complete as they get for the iPad, providing several filters on top of the already extensive manipulation services.

Alternatives: Adobe Photoshop Express, PhotoPad

Note-Taking

Sound Note ($4.99)

Taking notes during meetings can be an arduous task, albeit an important one.  With the iPad, note-taking apps are plentiful.  Sound Note provides not only some basic hand-writing recognition and keyboard note-taking, but sketching and synced audio recording.  After a meeting is over, simply tap the written note and the recorded audio plays from the timestamp when the note/text was written.  Incredibly useful!

Alternatives: Audio Note, Penultimate

Project & Task Management

SG Project ($9.99)

Project management tools are necessary to make sure that our work is being done on time, and that we are receiving the support we need. SG Project allows for timeline management, multiple workflows, multiple employees, and more.  It’s basically a portable version of Microsoft Project.

Alternatives: Nozbe Todo

Presentation

Keynote ($9.99)

It’s important to showcase our work, and Powerpoint-style programs are an easy way to create detailed presentations of our projects.  For the iPad, Apple’s own Keynote is the best of the bunch, with animation, image addition, a plethora of themes, and the ability to import PPT files rounding it out.

CAD Viewers

on-Hand Viewer XL ($1.99)

Though there are not any deep CAD manipulation tools available for the iPad yet, there are a few excellent viewers.  on-Hand Viewer XL provides the ability to load a CAD model (CATIA, IGS, STL, etc) in its native format for viewing and markup.  Rotate, zoom, cu sections and grab images for quick notes and sharing.

Alternatives: iRhino 3D, AutoCad WS, vueCAD,

File-Sharing

DropBox (Free)

DropBox is the quintessential method for sharing large files with teams and clients.  The free iPad app allows for uploading of images and files to the cloud for access at any time.  Create a secure folder and manage what your clients can and can’t access.

Alternatives: FTP One the Go Pro, AirSharing HD

Meetings

WebEx (Free)

Hosting and attending virtual meetings is no longer a future prospect.  With portable devices, it can be nearly impossible to miss a meeting.  WebEx has been one of the premiere online meeting apps for years, and since it has made its way onto the iPad it has revolutionized meetings on the go.  From VOIP to screen-sharing, notation, and video, the app has it all.

Alternatives: GoTo Meeting, Fuze Meeting

If you have are using any apps for the iPad that are worthwhile to Designers, let us know in the comments!

Buy it at the CDf store now!!

Polishing a Turd is a common expression in design school.  This happens when you try and do a hot rendering over a horrible drawing.  You can’t cover up a bad structure with a pretty covering.  I think everyone will agree the Jeep Compass is a turd of a design.  Well Jeep has been doing some polishing.  This new refresh is a much needed improvment, but there is still a ways to go…

The new front end is worlds better and I am confident that when or if there is a new Compass in the future, this will be an attractive direction.  Even with the polishing and new cladding there is one area that would make this vehicle immensely better.  The stance of the Compass has always been horrible.  The sucked in wheels make the car look unstable and cheap.  There are new more detailed wheels that look like they are even a tad bigger then before, but it is not enough.  Take a look below.  By pushing the wheels out to the body greatly enhances the presence of the vehicle.  So who knows, go buy some wider aftermarket wheels and this Compass just may turn a few  heads.

[Images courtesy of Autoblog]

Mazda recently introduced a new design language to take over the old one which never really worked out in production.  The Shinari has a clean upscale look with sophisticated surfacing and new interpretations of aluminum trim placement.  The Kodo (soul of motion or should we just say zoom, zoom) design language wipes the smile off its face in exchange for a more traditional grill opening.

Hit the jump for more…

The aluminum trim work nicely ties in the headlights and grill surround.  It even slices through the headlight and reveals itself behind the front wheel.  Very sweet detail.  The forms of the body have a graceful flow which contradicts the hard angles of the graphic pieces.  Giving some more lead in for these areas would have refined the details nicely.

This 4 door coupe fits nicely with all the other new 4 doors entering the market.  Perhaps even too close when compared with the Tesla and Fiskar model.

The Fiskar Karma has the same diamond shaped blips in the lower fascia.  While I do not care for the diamond graphic on the Fiskar I do appreciate its subtly in form.  The Mazda exaggerated this area to far and it begins to look amatuer.

Overall the car is nothing ground breaking, but for Mazda it is a huge step in their quest to appear as a more upscale brand.  The use of aluminum trim and not chrome is refreshing and unique.  I can easily see the Kodo design language translate into the next Mazda 6.

At this years Ward’s Auto Interior Conference held in Dearborn the other day J Mays was the key note speaker and brought a little something special to our shores.  The Ford Start Concept was on hand for the first time in the states after its debut at the Beijing Auto Show a few weeks ago.  This concept would definitely give Mini and the Fiat 500 a run for their money.  Look past the fuzzy cell phone pics and hit the jump for some fetish thoughts.

The exterior of the car provides a solid presence despite its diminutive size.  The surfaces are clean and simple emphasizing a more upscale and sophisticated look.  J Mays was presented as the designer who created the original Audi TT and the new VW Beetle.  I can definitely see those influences in this design.  J Mays even referred to the Start as charming which can also be used with the Beetle.  I see this car as being J’s new interpretation of the Beetle and TT, but for Ford.  It stands for everything the Beetle and TT were.  Simple, efficient and to the point.

A new take on familiar lines.

The lighting on the Start is very simple and minimal showing what you can do with some simple LED’s.  The wheels are also very cool.  They make me think of how a steel wheel can be redesigned to actually look aesthetically pleasing.  The design language of the wheel is also transferred to the engine bay in the sea of plastic covering the 1 liter eco boost.

J Mays talked about the interior having only three areas of criteria.  Be driver oriented, no clutter and a three spoke steering wheel.  These items all portray the new “Fun to Drive” mantra at Ford.  Every vehicle from now on must be Fun to Drive.  I like the sound of that.  The three spoke steering wheel and analog gauges speak to the racer in us with functional and easy to use interface.  No crazy 3-d graphics here.  Mays’ talked about this fitting in with the Kinetic design language, but I am unsure how.  I do like the Kinetic language but it is kind of busy and this concept clearly is not.

Could this be the next generation interpretation of Kinetic Design.  It would work well to follow the customer who is buying a Fiesta now.  As the consumer matures so does the product.  This could drive a returning customer.  Overall the Start is a charming small car that will  get you from point A to point B in a “Fun” fashion.