Steve at All American Dynamics sent me an e-mail to show me how his new logo compared with the big boys.

He sent me a link to Purdue University’s website. On their website is a page showing the corporate partners for the Industrial Advisory Board. Sandwiched in between the Ford logo and Honeywell logo you’ll see the All American Dynamics logo.

Not only is it impressive to see the logo you designed with these big names, but is also impressive to see someone you know on such a board. Very cool, Steve!

This is the logo I created for All American Dynamics.

Steve Lyman, the Founder and President of All American Dynamics, asked me to come up with a new logo and business card layout for his business. Steve and I know each other from the work I did on the Performance Truck Of The Year print.

The goal was to tie the wording “All American Dynamics” with what they do which is vehicle dynamics. The “All American” lettering speaks for itself, the challenge was finding an element that gave “Dynamics” an automotive feel.

To get that automotive feel I used thick bold lettering along with an silhouette of car on top. To help complete the look I used motion lines stretching the length of the lettering. In the original concept I used a generic sports-type car but after reviewing Steve had a great suggestion and that was to do the silhouette based on his Lotus formula car. The Lotus silhouette was the perfect finishing touch.

I also put together a new business card layout.

It was great working with Steve on this project. His experience includes vehicle development engineer, test driver, vehicle dynamics department manager, vehicle dynamics specialist, and vehicle dynamics executive consultant.

See the All American Dynamics website for a list of services they offer.

These Hot Rod Halloween shirt designs are from the stencils I designed and posted about earlier. While drawing the pumpkins stencils I got the idea that these would also look great on t-shirts.

For those of you who are interested, I got the shirt mockup templates from an article called “Huge Collection of T-Shirt Design Mockup Templates“.

These are some kid-friendly Hot Rod Pumpkin stencils I came up with for Halloween.

I started sketching these one day while sitting in my car having lunch. Later I scanned them into Illustrator and redrew each in vector line art. In some cases I would draw the flame section only on one side and then copy/flip it to create the other side.

I haven’t had the chance to do one, but I did mock them up in Photoshop to help give you an idea of what they would look like.

You are welcome to give these pumpkin stencils a try. To print, just click on the pumpkin image or the link below each. This will open up another browser window where you can print it from your browser. Use your printer’s preferences to reduce or enlarge to get the maximum print size to fit your page.

If you complete one, please send me a image and/or video of how it turned out.

Click and Print Hot Rod Pumpkin Stencil – “Drak”

Click and Print Hot Rod Pumpkin Stencil – “Frankie”

Click and Print Hot Rod Pumpkin Stencil – “Marti”

Click and Print Hot Rod Pumpkin Stencil – “Skully”

This is my latest artwork titled “Vintage Dragster“.

As far as doing artwork this one rates up there as one of the most challenging ones I have done.

What made this one different from the other illustrations was drawing in the details like the spoke wheels, the rail frame, and the exposed engine.

This dragster is owned by John Spradlin. John is no relation, but he does have the same name as my brother. John and I have been emailing back and forth for some time now. Sometimes I would get an email from him about his dragster and at first I would think, “When did my brother get a dragster?” then I would remember it’s from the other John.

Prints of are available in 16×24 size.

Below is detail information John sent me about his dragster.

1967 Speed Products Engineering (SPE) chassis by Roy Fjastad.

Chevy 355C.I. 4-bolt block, Forged Steel Crank, Engle roller cam, Isky roller lifters & 1.6 ratio rockers, Track 1 aluminum heads (2.080 Int valves & 1.6 Exh valves), M/T aluminum rods, Forged pistons (moly zero gap rings), ‘mini’ starter, Milodon oil pan.

PowerGlide trans W/1.76 ratio, Trans Brake, 5000 stall convertor, “Bandit” shifter, Mopar 83/4″ rear axle W/Olds axle ends, 4:10 ratio “PRO” gears, Wilwood disc brakes – .310″ thick discs.

Steering box is a P-S, Butterfly steering wheel was a gift from a long time racing friend.

Rear wheels are American Racing 5-spoke “Magnesium” 8.5″ width 10.5x30x15″ GoodYear slicks, Front wheels are 17″ dia M/C wire spokes W/2.25×17″ Michelin tires.

Body by Tom Hanna

Seat by Tony Nancy

Thanks, John!!!!

Below is a link to an interesting article I came across that shows the process of laying out a car wrap design. The article includes the many different steps and also has links on finding vehicle outlines.  One of the links is for a download of 6000 free car outlines.

Car Vehicle Wrap Design Process & Tutorial

Josh Spradlin of Illuminati Motor Works contacted me recently about redrawing their logo. Illuminati Motor Works is an official contender of the Progressive Automotive X Prize.

Josh designed the logo and had painted it on the wall inside the garage. He needed to get the logo in electronic format so he could use it to get shirts printed or anything else he wanted to put the logo on.

The challenge about the logo was the 3-D overlapping triangle and circle. To get that effect I created the circle and triangle in separate layers. Then I duplicated each element twice per each side, cropping out the overlaying section.

Find out more about Illuminati Motor Works and Progressive Automotive X Prize.

Check out this video of Illuminati Motor Works.

The 1962 Thunderbird Tail Light artwork has now been added to my art gallery. Prints are available in 11×14 and 18×24 sizes.

I was reading on AutomotiveArtists.com’s forum, a post by Lemorris called “The Get Well Greg Experience“.

The “Get Well Experience” is about Greg Tedder. Greg is a artist who’s work in the automotive industry is legendary. I have always been impressed with all the reflections he puts into his artwork.

As it turns out, Greg has been in the hospital going through some not so fun surgeries. To help cheer Greg up while he goes through his hospital stay, artists have been asked to come up with drawings showing Greg’s car, known as “Frogger”.

The idea is to draw his car in any style you wish and it’s not about who can draw his car the best but about the automotive community coming together to show support for Greg during this time.

I chose to draw Greg and his car “Frogger” in the cartoon monster style.

I first looked at the reference images posted in the forum.

I chose the side view to do and using Photoshop, I shorten the car some and made the back wheels of his car look like they were burning rubber.

After getting the car shaped the way I wanted, I brought the image into illustrator and started drawing it in vector line art.

Once the car was finished I then needed to sketch out Greg as a cartoon monster. I printed the car artwork out on an ink-jet printer and then using a pencil I started sketching.

I looked at the images posted and then found another image of him on a site wearing a white hat. Greg has certain distinguishing features like glasses and a beard that help when drawing in this style. I used a digital camera to get the sketch back into the computer so I could start drawing over it with Illustrator.

Everything came together quickly at this point. I used layers in Illustrator to move certain elements around such as putting his arm is on a different layer so that I could draw the shadow of his arm on top of the car.

At the last minute I decided to add a drop shadow behind the whole design to help give it a “decal” type of look. All-in-all I like how the final art turned out and I hope Greg does too! Get well Greg!!!!

This is a new color version of the custom TATA Nano I did earlier.

I posted the custom Nano artwork images in my Flickr account and someone commented that they were planning on buying one and was curious to see how the custom black/orange version would look in sunshine yellow instead of the orange. Sunshine yellow is one of the Nano’s factory colors.

In the majority of my artwork I use many different fades, so changing colors is not so easy. But on the Nano artwork I only used two fades to make up the orange, which made changing the colors easier. That being the case, I did one up for them to see.

What do you like best, the sunshine yellow version or the orange version?