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Introduction
Hello! My name is Giorgio Baroni, and I'm a Concept Artist from Italy with 15 years of experience in entertainment. Drawing has been my passion since I was a kid. After high school, I entered university to become a product designer, but it lasted only 4 months. There was too much chemistry, math, and physics and not enough drawing for my taste!
After that, I went to a three-year school for illustration, shifting my goal to a different artistic journey. So, for a few years after graduation, I worked with publishers all over Europe and the States as an illustrator of children's books. That's when terms like concept art for games and movies were spreading like wildfire. I remember seeing those awesome images everywhere on DeviantArt. It was love at first sight! So, I made the move once again.
From 2011, I worked as a Concept Artist and Illustrator for any kind of game – cards, miniatures, RPGs, action figures, you name it – from small unknown publishers to big names like Games Workshop, Modiphius, Paizo, CMON, and Horrible Guild. I also had the chance to work for Blur Studio on one episode of the first season of Love, Death & Robots, then Lucasfilm on the new High Republic chapter, Axis Studio (you will be forever missed), Volta Studio, and in the last few years, I've been part of the team at The Coalition working on the next installment of the Gears of War franchise. For almost ten years, I've also been teaching concept art at Event Horizon School here in Italy.
About the FIAT X1/9 Sand Rider Project
The idea of this project started in early January. I'm a big fan of cars, bikes, and everything that has an engine and wheels and can race, so the Dakar Rally is the big event at the start of the year. That was the inspiration for this trilogy (still in the making), in which I decided to go all in with my comfort zone: cars, characters, some kind of technical drawing (my product designer self that comes out once in a while) with enough realism to make it look real but with that missing front bumper that Mad Max would really like.
Blockout
I wanted to portray an unusual vehicle, an Italian car that wasn't made for off-road, and the Fiat X1/9 was a perfect choice: not widespread but well-known by Italian car enthusiasts for its engineering, design, and specs. The main goal here was the design and the backstory, so I started with a very rough 3D model based on the blueprint of the car to nail the proportions and main shapes, to which I then added the custom parts. This way, I didn't have to go crazy and spend too much time with perspective and trying to figure out what goes where; the main focus here was to make a cool image during my downtimes.
Almost every part here is based on real-life counterparts, like tires and the front turbofan rims. Some details, like the seats, steering wheel, and engine meshes, are coming straight from the Kimera Evo37 I modeled as a mod to Assetto Corsa (yes, sim racing is one of my secret passions). Two birds with one stone, as they say; I had a very detailed model already there, and why not? They are very believable for this custom race off-roader!
Tires are one of the few parts that I wanted to work on a bit more in the 3D phase so I could have a detailed tread that I could work on with the lines; otherwise, it would have taken forever to make it look good. Workflow is pretty straightforward: I separated the cylindrical tread part from the rest of the wheel assembly, unwrapped it flat, and applied a displacement modifier after a heavy subdivision to get a very high poly count (much higher than the entire car). I then created the tileable tread texture itself in Photoshop based on the real-life Pirelli Scorpion rally tires, which I then used for the displacement. Here are the results: It's still pretty jagged, but it does its job.
The next step has been widening the front fenders to accommodate the wider tires and wider tracking width, stretching the wheelbase to accommodate the big engine block, and in general, giving it a more menacing look, designing the tubular frame inspired by those on Baja Buggies, fitting all the needed parts to make the engine work, such as radiators, a racing-like fuel cap (with a super simple Boolean in the main body), all the intercooler system, and exhaust that stretches behind the rear axle like in the Lancia Delta S4, and finally adding all the bells and whistles like the spare tire, the spoiler, and the sponsors that are a clear reminder of the Tamiya RC buggy that my dad had when I was a kid.
Also, for the sponsors, I had the goal of doing something vintage or at least making it look like so. The final step of the 3D part was figuring out a decent POV for the final shot: I tried different lenses to play with perspective and deformation, thousands of angles to be able to show enough mechanical parts while keeping the car somehow recognizable without being too bland... I mean, it took a while, and I might do another shot from another angle in the future.
As a base for the final drawing, I kept a very simple render in Blender Cycles; all I needed was that big blocky shape over which I could design and add details and a general idea for the light source.
The linework took the most time; I wanted it to feel hand-drawn on paper, so there were no straight lines; some were a bit wobbly, and some were darker and thicker. Here's a 100% scale of both the linework and the final render. As you can see, both the lines and the brushwork aren't the cleanest, but they look as they should. I figured them out in my head since the beginning, so the goal has been achieved! The working image isn't even that big; the base is 4500 pixels.
I mostly worked following the 3D model, just adding the smoothness and bevels from the real car using real pictures as reference. One example is the door handle: from a 3D box to the real thing, I just needed to know where it was and how big it was. Now, it is time to go into all the little nooks and crannies to make it real, adding some electric wires here and there, hydraulic pipes from the radiator, nuts, and bolts on many elements, marking seams and bevels, welding lines between the frame pipes and on the exhaust system; I tried not to leave anything unfinished.
Also, there were a few elements that weren't in the 3D model, such as the fuel tank (which is visible next to the rear tire encased in the frame). The mounting bracket for the rear suspension was extremely rough in 3D but had to be designed as realistically as possible. The wider front fenders had me scratching my head since the beginning; I wanted them, but I still didn't like how they looked; they were still missing something, but I couldn't figure it out, so I tried to make them the best possible and forgot about them.
Other tiny details to still add realism are the emergency cutoff handle on the side of the hood, the streamlined race mirrors, the towing hooks at the bottom of the side frame, and the latch on the hood. A tiny detail that I really wanted (so the hood opens hinging at the front like badass race cars), but, to be honest, I have no idea if it's doable or not since this car has flip-up headlights, and I didn't bother to check if they are attached to the frame or anywhere else. Such a tiny detail that could potentially glitch the entire system, but I wanted it, and no one will ever question that, right?
Then, it was time for the sponsors. I wasn't 100% positive about having lines also on those to make them feel a bit lighter and more part of the 'foreground' in terms of details, but eventually, most of them have it except for the tiny Abarth logo on the pillar (the yellow, red, and blue scorpion), which would have been a mess with black outlines. I added just a few, like in the old times when sponsors weren't ruling the motorsports world using every square centimeter as an advertising board. And for those who don't know, nowadays, race cars use the main sponsor's colors with very few exceptions, like Ferrari, which still keeps the iconic red or yellow.
The girl came in last, as I took forever to figure out a pose and placement that could enhance the composition, so putting her over the roof with her eyes at the tip of a big triangle seemed the best solution in terms of composition, and it gave some sort of interaction with the viewer while she looks at the horizon, ready for a long day at the wheel. Or at least this is what I feel looking at her. Other ideas were to have her standing on the left or on the right, but that would break the silhouette and make everything too stretched, leaning on the car in the middle (awful) or sitting on the bonnet (even worse).
For the whole project, I didn't have a crazy ref board or anything except a few images of the car itself and a couple of others that you can see here. As I said, the idea behind this was to do something that I know and like and to not take even a little step outside of my comfort zone. So, all the images were just so as not to forget anything or misrepresent some details. In my defense (for the eagle-eyed out there), I know the helmet in the ref is for bikes, but I was about to model it for another mod in another game, so I already had a few pictures for that. But honestly, I prefer Bell helmets, so that's why the logo on the car's door — let's call it an Easter Egg.
Coloring
The next step is coloring: to keep up with the hand-drawn look, I went with kind of painterly flat colors. The paint bucket was out of discussion; too flat and cold, so I opted for the old trusty round brush. Everything is made with that except for the dust and dirt splatters that have been done with a couple of custom brushes to give it a more gritty feel and create some variation.
To wrap it up, I added a few more layers. The first is on Multiply for the shadows, and the second one is set on Screen for the lights. Same as above, all with the round brush with a pretty saturated dark blue for the shades and an off-white for the lights. I kept working on them using the Cycles render as a very loose base; still, with the end result in mind, I added some personal touch to guide the eye where it matters and away from the weaker and less interesting areas. This is a method that I often use when doing much more painterly stuff; it's extremely effective and allows laying down consistent shadow base tones throughout the entire range of colors used in the image.
Here, you can see these two layers on a flat base color (which I used as a mask for all of them except the lines) to which I added another one for the metals, white set to Overlay and with a very light soft brush here and there to make those speculars pop. This stage is when the volume comes out, giving the flat colors underneath a lot of depth.
The final step was to add some color correction so it could look like one of those vintage pictures shot on film. Nothing major, as you can see in the GIF below. And after that, I could finally call it good!
Summary
Thank you for reading until the end; I hope you found it interesting and maybe learned something new, or maybe not. I always find it fascinating knowing and learning from other artists, no matter the subject, because there's that problem-solving element that one might tackle in a completely different way than me, or someone pays attention to things that I don't even see, and vice versa. I didn't have great expectations for this image, or any expectations at all, and it quickly became one of the most liked and commented on my social profiles. It even became a walkthrough here on 80 Level!
So this might be my one piece of advice for beginners: when working for yourself, try to really work for yourself and forget about the algorithm or the trends; if your work is worth the visibility, it will be visible, no matter the subject! Here, my goal was to improve linework and this flat coloring technique so it's clear that it looks imperfect on purpose and not due to a lack of skill. I know it might sound weird, but it matters to me, so another piece of advice is that even when in the comfort zone, we should always try to push the limits one way or another so we can improve our linework, brushing technique, color matching, anatomy, hard surface, perspective (without cheating, of course, lol). Whatever we feel like improving that day while drawing something we love.