Monday 27 October 2014

BMW M1 Group 4 for GT Legends



This is the great BMW M1 Gr4 mod created by Ron123, Sidstalker et al for GTR2, then converted by me for GTL. I changed the lines to make it compatible with GTLegends, made the .bik files and added the icons. Ron later gave a hand again fixing some issues with the mirrors.
You can find my 1982 Vila Real winner skin in the pack as well.
 
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Saturday 23 August 2014

And now for something completely different: a 917 with flippers.

And now for something completely different: a 917 with flippers.

How did this come into life, you ask? Well, rather logically, actually.
I came to me in a dream a short while ago and then I had to draw it. What you are looking at is a mixture between a Porsche 917, a Pliosaur and a Whale-shark.

Firstly, I must point out that I'm a Paleontology student, passionate about my work, as well as Nature on a whole and classic racing cars - to witness the moment when my unconsciousness mixes them all is rather interesting. I think this came up because in the night before I saw the news that a 917 had just been sold for some 1.7 Million dollars, and I though "well, that's one dream car that I'll never own". Later I dreamt that I was watching a News program and it came up that "New undiscovered 917 specimen was just found swimming at great depth." (as if they had just found a new individual/population of a very rare living-fossil species until then unknown to inhabit that part of the ocean, like a Coelacanth). To my unconscious mind it meant "Good, maybe the prices will drop down if they find more unknown to exist individuals/chassis.". To my woken up mind it meant "Wow, did I just mixture quite logically to of my greatest passions?"

It really makes sense: the 917 is such an organic looking machine, mistaking it for an animal (and of course, it had to be a legendary prehistoric great predator, since it is a classic racing beast) is an easy step, particularly since I deal so much with Mesozoic animals. And since it is such a rare living-fossil species of a car, the only way to find more is if there is an unknown population living in an unexplored part of the world. I really love the way my dreaming mind mixed these two so different worlds together!

About the drawings, the above drawing is exactly how it came to me in the dream, like as if in a video report recorded in a deep sea dive. The bellow picture was made from a 917 picture to what I imagine this animal would look like, later added colour in the computer as a quick experiment. Notice that the above drawing has a spoiler like the prototypes and the beginning of the production of the car, before they were "tamed" with more stabilizing rear-ends (another analogy, since this "animal" never had contact with humans and still needs to be tamed). I gave it small eyes in the middle of dark patches in the shape of the headlights like Killer-whales or Pandas, a mouth like a Whale-shark (they do look very alike), with similar barbs dividing the side openings and tried to make the small openings around pose as sensory organs. Gave it gills where the doors should be, turned the top vent into a big scute followed by smaller ones and the tail was pretty straight-forward (I mean, it is called a tail in motorsport for a reason! and it could have been in any of the shapes the car sported throw its career). Why six flippers? That's the most Pliosaur-like feature, who had only 4, but I remember clearly in the dream that it had 6. Maybe I associated with the V12 engine, which I think is quite poetic!
The colour was just a quick dashing, also tried to make the flippers blacker like the tires, in all it is just a rough sketch, possibly in the future I'll try to draw a more detailed and life-like piece.

Should I develop it? Did I got it all right on how a Mesozoic 917 living in the oceans should look like? Do you have any creation similar to this one?

Friday 27 June 2014

Maximum Mini: Digitally detailed Mini Marcoses

Jeroen Booij, the world's biggest specialist on Mini derivatives and writer of the great book "Maximum Mini" (with a second book coming this summer), just published on his blog a post about the selection of Mini Marcos that I painted a short time ago. I must say that I painted almost all of them thanks to information that I found in his blog, and if he approves my work, there's no better compliment that can be given me now!
Thanks again to Jeroen for his tireless research and for his appreciation on my work.

Here's what he said:

"Maximum Mini: Digitally detailed Mini Marcoses: A chap under the nom de plume of Boxman dropped me a line recently, about the Mini Marcoses he created for a computer game called GT Legends. "I hope you appreciate my work, that was done with a lot of support from your work." I do. As a matter of fact I was impressed by the detailed job he'd done on these great little cars. Have a look below.


Finest hour Mini Marcos - the 1966 Le Mans car built by Jean-Claude Hrubon
Picture courtesy Boxman

Works Mini Marcos - the 1967 Le Mans car, which survives in Africa
Picture courtesy Boxman
Heroic Mini Marcos - the 1967 Targa Florio racer believed to survive in Sweden
Picture courtesy Boxman
Local Mini Marcos - the 1966 ART (Algemeen Racing Team) car at Zandvoort
Picture courtesy Boxman

GT40 Mini Marcos - the German Gulf-liveried car, at the Nurburgring
Picture courtesy Boxman
Heritage Mini Marcos - the 2012 Le Mans Classic car driven by Remy Julienne
Picture courtesy Boxman
"

Tuesday 24 June 2014

[GTL Skin] Posche 917K David Piper Vila Real 1971


 


This is the Porsche 917K chassis #917010 as it raced in the 1971 Circuito Internacional de Vila Real in the hands of Mário de Araújo "Nicha" Cabral (said to have been the greatest Portuguese driver in history). For that year's event the organization payed for David Piper and his team to bring the car from England to take part in the race, just for the spectators pleasure! Nicha Cabral (who was racing Piper's cars at the time) delivered a good show, having a great race against Bagration in his modified 906 and a Ferrari 512M. Cabral lost some time after a oil pressure scare and then recovered in a spectacular way, but despite the effort, Bagration won and Nicha came in second. Though, in the hearts of the Vila Real people Cabral was the real winner!

I started from Mexe's skin of this car from when it raced in the 1971 Watkins Glen 6h, but ended up changing almost everything. This is for all those like me that lived, breathed and loved the races in the Vila Real Circuit (finished just in time for the 2014 edition, many more skins will come with time).
Here for many more years of racing!

DOWNLOAD FROM MEDIAFIRE

Wednesday 18 June 2014

[GTL Skin] Lamborghini Miura 1968 ACP GP at Granja do Marquês













Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/ndlv8uhnnjsc737/45.rar

This car is from the 1st ACP GP at Granja do Marquês, here in Portugal in 1968, at the hands of Mário de Araujo "Nicha" Cabral (said to have been the greatest Portuguese driver in history).
The car didn't do very well and wasn't able to finish due to bad amateur tuning, but is one of
the very few known cases of a Miura competing.

As far as I know, there are only three black and white photos of the car. To know more I contacted the museum I thought owned the car nowadays (their car has the same numberplate, but they said theirs actually came to Portugal much later than Nicha's), either way I'm told that supposedly this colors are about right. I'm not sure about the "Sacor" stickers, but every car racing in Portugal in that time was fueled and sponsored by it.

Convertible to GTR2 and rFactor.

[GTL Skin] BMW M1 Group 4 winner of Vila Real 1983

This is the skin of the BMW M1 that won the 1983 Vila Real Circuit, Portugal.


This car is the ex-Warsteiner M1 that came to Portugal in 1983 in the hands of Antonio Taveira and completely dominated all competitions in the country for the next few years.
I was only capable of finishing it thanks to the hints of a mechanic I met that served it and was literally by my side while I was painting it.
Thanks to this skin I was able to actually meet Antonio Taveira, who still lives in Vila Real and still owns the car, and show him the finished result. He absolutely loved it, pointed out a couple of corrections, and he spent the night telling me stories from his races in the 80s. One of my greatest days ever!

You will need Ron123 & Sidstalker BMW M1 Group 4 mod at Trackaholics (GTL version: http://trackaholics.nstars.org/t1259-bmw-m1-group-4-for-gt-legends#2052
This skin is convertible to GTR2 an rFactor.

Friday 6 July 2012

MAKE BACKUPS, PEOPLE!!

I just had a major setback when just recently I lost about half of all my GTA SA modding files (downloaded mods, tools, my paintjobs and models, etc.) while I was updating my backup and my pcdecided to crash! In other words, of 39 GB and 44.000 documents I was left with 19 GB and 20.000. Right now I'm using data recovering programs to retrieve as many documents as I can and, as soon as possible, I will continue uploading those that I can save here.
It's frustrating that, after making mods for so long, this had to happen when I barely started releasing them!

I just hope that, whoever modder that reads this, will not have the same misfortune. Notice that it happened while I was making a backup, so remember that ALL THE CAREFULNESS IS NEVER ENOUGH!

Hopefully, if I can recover everything, you soon can expect me publishing:
Paintjobs:
Ford GT40 MkII 1966
Aston Martin DBR9
Shelby Cobra Daytona
Dodge Viper SRT-10 ACR
Aston Martin DB5
Chevrolet Camaro Z28 1972
Chevrolet Corvette Stingray 1969
Ferrari 458 Italia
Pontiac Firebird 1970
Ford Gran Torino 1973
Ford Mustang RTR-X
Chevrolet Camaro 2007
Ford Mustang GT 1967
Ford Escort MkII
Jaguar E-Type Series 1 1961
Lamborghini Miura
Pontiac Soltice GXP
McLaren-Mercedes SLR
Volkswagen Scirocco
Mini Cooper S MkII
Bowler Nemesis
McLaren MP4-12c
Chevrolet El Camino 1976
Dodge Charger 1969
Dodge Charger 1971
etc, etc, ...

3D models:
Lancia Delta S4 Stradale
Lancia Delta Integrale Group A
Plymouth Roadrunner Monster 1971
Chevrolet El Camino 1976 Offroad
Man TGA 18.480 4x4 BB Firetruck....
and a pack of cleos featuring dinosaurs and other extinct creatures around san andreas and under your control , and whatever more I come up with.

Boxman