Yes they were rescued, otherwise I would have had to put bones in the scene.

Thanks for commenting Olga.

Thanks Ernest.

Thank you very much Verikakis.

Thanks Sylvie. Love your humor. Haha.

Thanks Wyndham.

Thank you Verikakis.

YAY!! Someone commented on my entry... and they liked it. Thanks lolu.

Especially my gifs haha. Well that one gif I made you anyways. Thx SA.

Thanks TFC. Honestly I wouldn't have been surprised if yours won. Was a damned good chop.

Merci Z.

Haha good point. I did forget the door handle.

Interesting question. I made it perfect at one point. I decided it really looked like I just copied the VW, so I went back and made it worse to make it look like I just didn't copy the bug. This is a rougher version of the perfect looking one I was working on. Do you think this shape is better?

https://image.ibb.co/gGHGLK/good_looking_bug.jpg

First time I thought something came out too good, and had to go back and mess it up.

Thx Denlig. I went ahead and changed it. I like this one too.

It was so fun to make. I love old air cooled VW's. I had a 1963 very very very rare VW Notchback - Rally Edition from Germany. I stripped it down to the floorpan, welded in a new floor pan, reworked and beefed the front end suspension, new gaskets for the fenders, built a custom motor with oversized pistons/cylinders (had to bore the block), cam, dual carbs, and spent 60 hours porting and polishing the heads. New window gaskets, all the lights, converted it from 6 to 12 volts and a whole lot of other things.

The car was in primer and before I painted it I took it for a test drive to the beach at night. Six months of hard labor was coming to fruition. So me and a bunch of people are hanging out at the beach checking out my new car when all of the sudden this drunk guy comes barreling down the coast highway and starts losing control of his car. BAM!!!!!! The #@$^$%#@##'r crashed right into my Notchback!! Totaled my new car. I was so much in shock I didn't even get mad.

So, after the insurance claim I found a 1965 Notchback and rebuilt it... End of story.

That was a terrible thing to happen. I hope the insurance paid well. At least you found another one to rebuild.

My very first car was a second hand VW. Can't remember the year model.

Thanks Still.

I liked making this one. It looks like I just copied the ladybug, but bending the parts around, doing the lighting, shading, brushing, and stuff was still challenging. The roof is a little flat, but the other parts are kinda realistically shaped.

I showed this one to my dad and he thought I only took the ladybug parts and overlayed them for color on top of the bug.

Oh, and mahalo.

Another member on this site gave me pointers like brushing out little scars on a face...small things that make the WORLD OF DIFFERENCE. Your work brings that point home to me.

Thanks Z!

Thanks CM. Simple but effective.

That is a very difficult question. This Chop had some difficulties but also had some good things going for it. The main problem was the car external source was underexposed, and had lot of lost detail. Due to loss of detail, I probably could not "lighten" the car parts to match the source pipes, so I decided to darken the "source" pipes to match the car parts. You can see this in the engine block, the heat-fin thingy, and the front end part in steps 7, 8, and 9. Color Match worked good as a start (which took a bit of finagling) and then some lighting/color adjustments to dial it in.

Cutting things out properly is vital too. I generally use a 1px feather when cutting things out but sometimes that is greater or even much much much greater. The enemy is a "hard edged cut out" that looks like a cut out. If the 1px feather doesn't look good you can always re-mask and re-feather it as you already have your "base-line" cut out. Also cleaning the edges from **ANY** fringing, to me, is key. Even something minor like these "yuckies" on this spring should be taken out IMO https://image.ibb.co/dn0nr8/springs.gif. This is rather easy to do. Clip a layer on top of the springs. Sometimes I use Multiply, Hard Light, Overlay, but this time I kept it at a Normal Layer. Then just clone in some matching color from the springs to cover the yuckies and it will lessen that "cut out look".

Also when blending something in, remember that you do not always have to use a 100% brush while masking. A lot of the time it's best to use a lower opacity soft brush (22%-44% in my opinion but u can go higher or lower if needed) and just keep brushing from the outside to the inside which will create sort of a feathered mask. It takes time, but your blend can come out WAY better. Don't forget you can change the hardness of your brush so sometimes a harder brush will do better, but this is not usual.

Get used to your Pen Tool when cutting something out and make sure you can set your mouse/tablet to a lower DPI to make it move slower when using a Lasso or even while painting/masking. Use Smart Objects when you can, and also use Clipping Mask layer adjustments. You shuold almost NEVER work destructively.

Beyond that the brightness and color should matching, which is a whole 'nother ball game. Sometimes you may even have a bright/dark "spot" on something that needs to be taken care of, so that will have to be masked (generally with soft feather)and adjusted accordingly.

Proper shadowing or lightening of areas is also vital. A lot of the times you should use several layers when making a shadow. Make a darker one on top (this one will generally be smaller in size), and get lighter and lighter towards the bottom layers (these I generally make larger and lager). You want to do it this way because if you put the lighter shadow layers on top of the darker one, it may make the dark shadow layer TOO dark. You can change your brush shape with F5, so a lot of the times it's best to use an "oval" brush when doing this.

I'm probably missing a million things, but these are the ones that popped into my head while sitting here. Watch YouTube videos. Besides looking at other's work, it's one of the best ways to learn. Hope this helps.

Thanks SA. It all fit together nicely. I had two final versions and basically after a coin toss, I decided on this one. The other one didn't have that "old fashioned" look but it was definitely awesome too. Sometimes nothing is good enough, but this time I had two to choose from. Not a usual situation.

You could have put both in the contest if they look different enough. You are allowed more than one in a contest.

Mahalo seestah. My score surprised me. Didn't expect that high.

It all came together pretty easily actually. Once I found that source car, it was destiny.

TY BTW.

I tried and they didn't turn out looking any better than the lightning brushes so I used photos. I put them in the sources list.
I think it's better now.

Thanks for your suggestion.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks Lolu. Yours was very nice too. There was hardly any difference in scores between yours and mine so consider it equal first.

Thanks Sylvie.