Earlier this year, I received an email from BMW with an interesting request. The Mini Cooper was first designed 60 years ago, and to commemorate the occasion, BMW wanted to release a book in which people’s personal stories would be illustrated as comics.
They had found me via my Australian Cartoonist Association Artist page and requested a test strip to see if I could produce the style they were after. I produced this short, four panel comic based on the supplied text.
On the strength of that, I got the job, and produced 6 more which would go in the book.
The process was a huge learning curve for me. I am not a car guy. I barely know anything about them, save to drive my kids around in one. I began to learn the difference between specific models, and came up with a method of rendering 3D cars to insert to 2D drawings. At the time, I was developing a shader to do this task. I called it the Manga Shader, and through further development, I turned it into a commercial tool for other Blender artists wishing to create similar comic-style effects for themselves.
I composited the renders into the comics which were laid out in Clip Studio Pro.
Here’s a quick demo of some animation I did to bring one comic to life for my 2020 showreel.
I received a cope of the completed book, which featured several other stories, artwork and photos from Mini Cooper fans from around the country.
Comments
One response to “Mini Cooper 60th Anniversary comics”
Nice work!