Mini Cooper 60th Anniversary comics

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.