Designing and Mocking up a Wrapped Vehicle

1. Introduction: high skill share you have been driving down the road. You look and see someone's face. They're not you from the side of a bus. Where you been to a car show? You see a car that looks like it's on fire or gold. That's a car or vehicle rap. Hi, I'm just Inaki. I'm a graphic designer here in Florida and I do vehicle wraps for a living. I'm actually production graphic designer at a sign shop. Local moment, pop. But what I'm gonna teach you today is actually useful. Whether you're a production designer, artistic designer, freelancer, we just want to show off some of your designs in a real life situation. Now, this class will use Adobe Photo Shop and Adobe Illustrator to Market Vehicle. I suggest you be at least an intermediate level on each of those programs and familiar with a pencil and smart objects. You do not need to have vehicle for this project. You can take a picture of anything that you see or you can use Picture up the Internet. These files won't be print ready. You need to get with your printer or the end user to figure out how you're actually gonna export these. But this class will be valuable to prove out and show how vehicle wraps could be done. For a small business, large been is where your own brand 2. Photography: the key to a good vehicle. Right? Markup is good photography. You could take the photo yourself or grab one of the Internet. If you have actions, the vehicle. It's better this way. I actually use my cell phone, take funds, the vehicles I used to use a big DSLR and wide angle lens. But in the end, you're only mocking up the vehicle, not sitting up for print right now. If you have access to the vehicle, get out your cell phone, get a good shot of the side, the back, the front, uh, or hood. You only really need one side, unless that has distinctive features on the other side. We'll get into that later when we actually do the mock ups. 3. Measuring: measuring is critical. If you're trying to export your graphics out for print, I suggest you get a tape measure and measure some key points of the vehicle. I personally take a photo of vehicle printed out and got make measurements directly on it on the print. 4. Scaling the Image: So the first thing I'm gonna do is open up my file and scale it for print. If you're not actually gonna print this and you're just mocking these vehicles up, skip to the next lesson and I'll start you at a different level. So I actually like to open my files and scale them to 10% of actual scale at 720 d. P. I. This allows me to blow up the graphic to full size, but still keep a manageable file size when working with it going by my measurements, the ground, the window. At this level, I need to be 48 inches long and I have a height of 27 a half inches on this door. If I check my measurement tool, you'll see that I have in about 10.5 inches. I want that to be 4.8 inches wide, so let's go to your image size and play around with the numbers. See the overall graphics 45 inches, and I know the car length is 168. We're gonna get this down to a bounce saying 20. Let's see how bad I did this time. Oh, look at that. Ford, 46 inches or so, Give or take, you can see that it's actually 4.7, scaled down 10%. I think this is a good working point. If we were actually gonna print this graphic, I'd like to be a little bit more accurate to check my secondary. Yeah, it's about 26.97 I'm looking for 27 a half. Since this photo was taken at an angle, it's acceptable margin air on the over wall. The length is 1 57 I'm looking for 1 68 so about 10 inches short. 27. Let's scale this just a little bit differently. 2 22 51. No, let's try one more time. 21. I think that's the lucky number. Perfect. I'm just a hair above 48 inches. And since the rap, we're gonna be designing this, Gonna fill it the entire car. I think we're in a good shape. Now, keep in mind, accurate measurements are necessary for print. You're gonna want to talk to your printer or the in person about finally getting this ready for print and what they were gonna require from you. Full size graphics, half size graphics 5. Setting Up: Right now, my picture overall length is 21 inches wide by 11 and 110.8 inches tall. That's not really gonna matter unless we're printing a full size graphic for the rap. If you're just mocking, mess it up for the Web. It does not matter if you scale the picture correctly in the last lesson. Now, setting up for print vehicle wraps are tricky. We're gonna be covering or covering up the entire paint, minus the handle on the brake lights antenna. We can cover the mirrors that's undone on a case by case basis, but things you want to clean up or any kind of dirt on your photo. So I want to use the clone tool with spot healing brush tool. Get rid of that Z. We're not gonna be using that bill. She is gone now. I don't see any glaring defects if you're mocking up, say, a semi truck or a rap or bus that already has rapper graphics on their or numbers. Feel free to clone them out like there's a little bit of dirt or it could be a reflection. Hear anything you have that's a color or any kind of texture is going to show through on your rap, so keep that in mind. First thing you want to do when you're setting up your template eyes traced the outline of your vehicle, the entire outlined minus the background. I like to use the pencil. Feel free to use the last or tool. The pencil has more accurate lines. You can see where you're working on, especially in foot Illustrator Photo Shop CC. Now the other reason I'm using the pen tool. It creates paths around the outside of the object, which you can see in your paths layer. This way we can share share or paths for later use, or for clipping or from making a mask, which I'll show you when we actually set up the Maskell air. Now you don't to be is accurate as I'm being right now, but you do want to get rid of the entire background. If you have trailer hitches or sitting on top of a ramp, you can crop that out or keep it with the rap weaken mass that out in the next step, or keep it for texture and flavor. Show real world situations where a vehicle is there now we have the whole vehicle outlined . Gonna make a pass old out side. That way it saves its Have used the pen tool. It doesn't overwrite your path. If you control, click this or command. Click this on. If you're on a Mac, go back to your layer and make a mask. Now, you vehicle separated from the background and we can work with it. Go ahead and duplicate this layer. I like to hide my original either. So no, I'm working with and delete the mass you just work with. I'm gonna turn this back on CNC on doing so. We have a vehicle that's completely masked out. Problem is, we're only gonna wrap the paint. Were not wrapping the tires, the windows, A graphics. We still need a mask out these babies. So I'm gonna make a secondary set of paths. And one by one, I'm gonna add them to a different layer mask. So you want to get anything in this pat area that's not going to be painted or covered? Normally, installers don't do the inside of wheel wells and they're just gonna get scuffed up destroyed anyway. Film If you be a little messy, don't worry. We can actually remove any kind of over print or over cut outs with the original outside path you'll see in the next area when I take out the next tire. How I do this Just an alternate. Let me show you what you can do. You can actually brush out your mask, so keeping see, like a hardline tool. Select your mask layer and just start painting in the details. Let me show you the difference. So I'm gonna undo that so you can I can work with it on a pencil. Using a brush is handy when you get things like door handles or smaller objects where it's a little tedious to use a pencil. Actually, any rubber you have is gonna get not covered by your mask. So keep that in mind. Let me show you what I mean by the rubber. Don't on my I'm now any parts that you have overfill or you just didn't clip out correctly. You can actually select your original working layer, right click select inverse or at It's like It's like 10 verse are starting Select select members and go ahead and fill that with black again and get rid of all your over print. Finally, make another copy of your layer. We don't wanna mess. What we have so far I like to do is an adjustment tool called black. And like, uh, go ahead and adjust it. So it's maximum black. We want to get shadows and highlights in there. You can play around with this. I typically don't. But you could see what it does to like the Red General pops it out. We're not messing with that at all. Go ahead and merge that layer down. Now we have a black and white layer with some graphics on it. You can't really help. So you see, we have our layer with real objects on it and a black and white layer change of black and white layer to multiply and then group all your objects together. You can make it a group of them here or control G command G. I like to lend us the template layer. Go ahead and make a new layer called design. And there you go. Now you start ready to great Geographic 6. Making the Mask: Now that we have a graphic set up, we need to make a mask. So nothing shows beyond the border of the actual car itself and only shows inside of the template. Easiest way to do that. To make a selection based on your clipping mask on the outside of the car, go ahead and make a new layer above everything else. Select in verse. I like to use a Grady int Uh, black, white grey doesn't really matter. Yours can cover this up. Then you could start working on your layers. You close your template layer. You can lock that if you want. Go ahead. Make a new design layer. Now, anything you show on the car color wise will show through as a graphic already noticed. One problem with my template layer the door handle is actually not marked off, so you can unlock your mass Claire for the rial objects and go ahead and just paint that back him. You can use a soft edge brush, hard edge brush or the pen tool. It's little details like this that make a car stand out when you're doing vehicle rap mock ups trucks that have liners in the bed. Anything you can mock up or mark out, we'll make it look really fantastic to your client. Look at that. Now you can paint directly in the vehicle. You can put text on a vehicle. It's gonna grab some graphics right quick. Anything you put on here will show through. But I like to work with smart objects from illustrator. If you followed along from the first lesson when you actually scale this to actual size. So anything you create an illustrator or photo shop to that exact size will paste directly in here at 10% scale. So I've already done some mock ups. 7. Dark Vehicles: go ahead and pay. Sure. Smart object directly in the photo shop. Make sure you're in your design folders so you don't overwrite anything you've done before . I like to use smart objects because I always go back to illustrator and adjust them or scale them or even change them out. In this case, I picked a color out. I want to have the specific color on the car. Now this color came out great. You could see the shadows and highlights the car and looks like it's almost on there. But what if this were saying black color me? Proof this out. I'll show you. You lose everything of the vehicle. You can't see any of the graphics. The highlights. Uh, it's kind of worth us as a template. In this case, you're gonna wanna go back to your template layer, make a copy of your black and white layer, Turn off that good an image adjustments, invert, and then change your mode to screen. Now, this is gonna blow it out a little bit. Looks a little too crumb for me. You could change your Pacey down just enough that you get the highlights, But you could still see, It's a darker car that works for me. I'm actually gonna stick with the red for now. Clear that layer style. I'm gonna start pasting and some more graphics from the other brand standards. 8. Placing Your Objects: Now that you have a base, you can start patient and graphics from your brand standards Millis, traitor or grab photos off the Internet for this project. I've actually made a couple of fake brands to mock up on the side of the car. You can use pictures, vectors, logos, textures, something you've created something from the Web. Something from a client doesn't really matter. In this case, we're going to be using the vaguely pagan Asian hot sauce brand I made up kind of looks similar to something you might have seen in the grocery store. Grand scale. A smart object. Here we go and start pasting. It's more objects, including, say, like the name. Well, that is not gonna work because it's the same color. You can change layer styles at drop shadows, anything you want to do, and it's still going to show up on the car. This case I'm gonna change us toe white. This is why you make sure you're always locked. You know, I'm not sure that's gonna work for May. Somebody tried grabbing the actual logo off there. There we go. Now that's coming along as a vehicle route. Same thing here. You're gonna want to change the color either an illustrated directly or its go ahead and putting overlay on it. - Feel free to follow the lines of the car. You know what? That's not working for me. It's just getting that over, making this bird a little bit bigger. There we go. This is kind of something you would see in a promotional situation or at a car show. 9. Print Notes: now another one of those lessons about print. Keep in mind if you're actually gonna send this to print, you need to give your printer or the persons could be laying the car out a little bit of bleed A little bit of extra. In the case of up here, it's fine. They will purchase the entire sheet of red. Same thing here. Unless you do something on the hood. Then you're gonna want to get the exact measurements for their If you transfer temple there , you see that Have more than enough lead for the chicken going below on graphics were you have pictures. You need to make sure that you have little bit more say 4 to 5 inches below the door area so they can wrap around underneath. 10. Second Side: now we needed to design the other side. Says some to make this a symmetrical layout. Not weird. It's very simple. First, I will save my file as this is the driver's side. I've already saved it once was going to save it briefly. So could image image rotation flip cameras Horizontal. Unless you have a weird file size are weird. Layout should be the same on both sides. Take your graphic. Go ahead and do the same thing at it. Transform Flip Horizontal Perfect. Same thing for the logo at it. Transform horizontal. Perfect. Now, if you're being really facetious, this is the actual logo. But we can flip the chicken to go the other way. We can add other graphics. Each side could be different. Keep him on. If you're doing something like a van for a vehicle, they might have a driver's side door. You might have extra windows, so that's something you have to look at on a case by case basis. 11. Closing: Once you have a couple of iterations down, don't forget you can do this on any vehicle. You have a picture of, for example, to a whole fleet of vehicles, same technique, same layout, pick up truck turning mask off trailer, even boats and special occasions. Because this was a little different turn. You had a mask out the entire trailer bed. In this case, I try to prove it out the way it would be seen, and that's our class. Hopefully you've learned something new. Now, keep in mind, this technique is not just you for vehicle wraps, you could do for buildings, trailers, anywhere you need to show a foot areas like mock up of vinyl or graphics or paint on a object in the real world. Uh, I want to see what you can do with your own vehicle. So feel free to follow along with the class project and look forward to senior products. Thanks