“Our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.” — M. Scott Peck
Well, I quit my day job. There are several reasons for it but I won't go into all that here. I'm at a new shop now, and I will be working almost exclusively on vehicles. I have a bunch of stuff ready to post, and you will be seeing it soon! Here's a preview.....
9 to 5
I'm pretty lucky that my regular job allows me to be creative sometimes too. While not every project is exciting, every so often one comes into our shop that allows us to have a little fun and make something pretty cool.
Making signs has been my career for nearly 20 years. I started as a billboard installer and worked my way up to head designer at one shop, then moved to a new shop where I am now running the graphics department. I mainly do production work but I also assist the designer with structural drawings and build plans for our fabrication shop. I also am responsible for running our large format printers and CNC routing equipment as well as producing vinyl graphics.
This is where I work......
This is the view from my desk. I'm really proud of this room, we have only been in here a few months. This used to be just a catch-all storage area that didn't serve any real practical use. I am very thankful that the company owners took my suggestions and let me fit this room out to create a functional and pleasant space to work in. It also tripled our deparment's square footage, so that didn't suck either.
I will post something about the room conversion soon....it was very thoroughly documented. The before and after alone is something to see!
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| Before - a big mess.... |
But before we dive down that rabbit hole, I thought I'd share a couple of fun projects I've worked on this year.
Hallowagen
My boss is also a big fan of Volkswagens and has several beetles and other models. For Halloween this year he was attending a car show that had a category for cars decorated for Halloween. He asked
my assistant and I to come up with something fun for his black 60's bug.
We only had a day to come up with a design and execute it, so we tried to keep it simple. We found some fire elements and jack o lantern images that worked really well with the lines of the car, sized them and printed them out on removable white wrap vinyl (3M 1080). We printed graphics for the hood, decklid, front fenders and windows.
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| Decklid graphic |
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| Headlight accents |
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| Hood graphics |
The window graphics were printed on perforated white vinyl. This allows us to cover the window and still allow the driver to see out. We used a couple of these "zombies behind glass" images to do the rear glass and rear passenger windows.
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| Rear window graphics |
The graphics were applied with a heat gun and felt squeegees, and then trimmed with a sharp #11 knife to fit within the body panels.
We had to remove the license plate mount and light to apply the decklid graphic. Once it was applied we just bolted it right back on. It only takes a few minutes to remove so it's not a huge task do again later.
The zombie graphics were applied to the rear windshield and passenger windows. It was a last minute add-on but we all thought it was the perfect final detail. It also gave us an opportunity to use some cooler colors to offset all the bright oranges and yellows.
This was a fun Saturday! I haven't heard yet if our design won but we will see.
2017 Camaro SS
This is the most recent car stripe job I've done. My boss's son saw the work I did on his Ranchero pro street car and asked if I'd be willing to help him dress up his new Camaro. He's already done some modifications to it, including NOS and Lambo-style doors. It looks pretty good with the SS stripes, but he wanted something a little different.
We sat down a few weeks ago and he told me what he was looking for. I did a couple simple layouts and sketches and we came up with a pretty solid idea of what he wanted. It's a bit of a fluid process creating a totally custom graphic as it can change at anytime if either one of us came up with an idea. It even happened on the day we applied the new vinyl, we made some changes on the fly (for the better).
Once we had the design planned out, he looked through our catalogs to find a vinyl color for the new decals. Fortunately I had just received the new 3M 1080 series wrap vinyl sample book, which has some really cool stuff in it. He picked Gloss Flip Psychedelic.
The picture really doesn't do it justice....this stuff is really impressive. Under subdued lighting is looks basically metallic gray, but in bright sun it reflects the entire color spectrum. It is most definitely not subtle.
Originally
the owner and I had just planned on doing graphics on the quarter
panels and rear of the car, but we decided to add an element to the hood
as well.
We knew we couldn't knock out the whole thing in one day, as our shop is pretty busy so we decided to pick a Saturday and get the front end done first. The quarter panels and back end would be done a little later.
The first thing we had to do was strip off the existing SS stripes. Fortunately they peeled very easily with a little heat. Once they were gone we wiped the whole car down with alcohol to remove any skin oils or grime. Once the car was clean, we started measuring out and marking the car with white China Markers to lay out the basic design.
We are using a product called Knifeless Tape to cut the graphics for this car. It's a tape with a Teflon string embedded in it that is applied to the car in the shape of the design before vinyl is applied. Then you apply your vinyl on top of it. The string is then pulled from underneath the vinyl, cutting the design from underneath on the car without using any metal blades on the paint. It's very useful stuff, I've used it on several other project cars I've worked on.
The hood element we decided on surrounds the hood vents, with a couple of stripes running back toward the fenders and down the sides of the car, accenting the fender badges. The front and rear graphics are joined by wrapping the rocker panels.
The first weekend was spent finishing the hood and fenders.
Weekend #2 was a little different. The owner wanted a hexagonal design element, so we came up with a dimensional honeycomb graphic that was easy to repeat and make into a larger design. We created a template for the overall shape as well, so we could make sure the two sides matched. We cut the quarter panel graphics oversize so we had a little wiggle room on placement.
The honeycomb graphics were applied with transfer tape and trimmed to fit the panels with knifeless tape that was laid down first. We then trimmed out small imperfections with #11 blades.
We also added a neat little element inside the door jambs. It really added a lot to the overall design.
We had a lot of fun with this one. It's probably the most complex set of graphics I've done and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.
In full sunlight, the colors really pop!
Ranchero Pro Street
My boss is a big Ford guy, and he loves Falcons and their variants in particular. He asked me to come up with a design to break up the lines a bit on this Pro Street Ranchero he got last year. It looked great as it was, but we all agreed that all the yellow was a little overwhelming.
Again it's a great looking car, but it needed something.
My boss asked for a more vintage style stripe look, using a matte black vinyl that accents the body lines. We found some "Falcon" and "Ranchero" scripts that we liked and integrated those into the stripes as well.
I started by applying knifeless tape to the body lines where we decided to cut the graphics.
This made it easy and safe to cut the graphics without damage to the paint. Once all the tape was in place, I started applying large strips of matte black vinyl to the fenders, doors, quarter panels and tailgate.
The vinyl was applied dry with felt squeegees. It was a warm day and the vinyl conformed nicely to the panels.
The rear graphics had the cut out script elements pre-cut into the stripes, so they had to be taped with transfer tape to be applied. I used a heat gun to help the vinyl wrap around the rear corners and tail light openings.
It only took a few hours to do the whole car, and maybe another hour to reinstall the tail lights and do a little cleanup. And now its not so overwhelming to look at!
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