From Squares to Art: Painting in Forza Motorsport

That image on the car above was made entirely out of primitive shapes, such as circles and squares, by Javier Hernandez. He is a painter in Forza Motorsport, a talented person who combines shapes—importing images isn't allowed as designs must be made within the game—into hundred-layer works of art. I'm not one of those kinds of people, therefore I decided to cover this aspect of the game with the perspective of someone who does have the talent. Here, he goes into detail about how he got started with the game, the creative process that goes into his works and the changes in the painting aspect of Forza Motorsport 3.

Ben -

Javier Hernandez: My name is Javier Hernandez, I go by Jube[3] on NeoGAF and Forza Motorsport 3. I paint in Forza 3, well Forza 2 and I’ve been painting in Forza 3 in the past month.

Ben Alford: Where are you from and what do you do for a living?

JH: I’m from Boston, Massachusetts and I’m a graphic designer.

BA: For graphic design, are you formally educated in that or is it something you just picked up?

JH: I picked it up in high school when I was sixteen and then I went to school and I’ve been doing it for three years professionally.

BA: What other games do you enjoy?

JH: I play a lot of sports games—I’m playing [NBA] Live right now and I’m playing Brutal Legend. Those are the two games I am playing right now.

BA: I saw you made a Brutal Legend car.

JH: Yeah, I did and it didn’t turn out as good as I hoped it would. I’m also working on a Space Channel 5 and Jet Set Radio car.

BA: You said before you had started graphic design in high school, did any of that experience help you in Forza?

JH: It helps you come to grips with the editor pretty quickly. Since Forza’s editor is a layer based editing program, just dumbed down, really simplified, it does help quite a bit.

BA: In Forza, was it the painting that attracted you to that game or did you already like car games in general?

JH: No, I really get into car games, I try to be really into them—I’m not the top one percent hot lap guy—I’ll never be that guy but I do enjoy them. I just played Forza because I enjoy racing games—Gran Turismo, Need for Speed, well, not so much Need for Speed.

BA: More sim-like?

JH: Yeah, sim, but I got hooked on Forza 2’s paint editor and I ended up painting more than I did racing. Even after I stopped playing, I still went back to it just to paint.

BA: Some of your previous cars in Forza 2, I noticed—I think you painted a Zelda car, Wind Waker?

JH: Yeah, I had a Wind Waker car and a couple Mario cars.

BA: Why did you decide to start out with something like a Nintendo character on a car?

JH: I think the Zelda car was my second attempt at a Forza car, the first being Stewie because of how easy I thought it would have been to pull off a Stewie, which I recommend to anyone starting off to pick a Family Guy or Simpsons character.

BA: I saw you had recorded a tutorial for Forza and you did Homer Simpson. One thing that really surprised me was how fast—even though you were talking as you went—it seemed like it just came natural to you. Was something like that really easy for you or were there some things you had to overcome with the tools as you go along?

JH: When you start off it is very frustrating, it is a very frustrating tool because you want this specific shape, especially when you are working with arcs and very specific, you know, like Homer’s smilie face would’ve driven me nuts starting off in Forza 2. But after a while it all clicks and once you figure out one method to do it on one car, it translates over and you start getting better and better and more efficient at it. So to the point that my Stewie car might have been 800 layers, just for Stewie but the ODST car was just 500. So yeah, you do get a lot more efficient the more time you put into it.

BA: A lot of the things I have seen from you, like with the Zelda, Mario and this Stewie car, they are preexisting properties. Do you ever do original art work with your designs?

JH: I didn’t do it in Forza 2, I have done it in Forza 3 but I haven’t posted them yet. Original designs, they're hard enough to come up with on your own and then to translate them over can be a little tough. Unless you draw them ahead of time and then transfer them over. But yeah, I do have a couple for Forza 3, a couple of characters that I’ll be putting up.

BA: Do you plan out your designs beforehand, either recreations or original content, or do you work on it as you go?

JH: I’ve tried planning them out because I knew I was getting a green disc copy ahead of time. I got these blueprints off of a 3D modeling site, so I tried to plan it out but it never is going to translate because the curves of the car are very different from a flat surface. What I mainly do is find a picture—when you start painting in Forza, you really start looking at photos that would fit on a car. So when you see a photo you go, “Oh, that’s a good photo but it won’t look good on the side of a car.” I generally just tend to build off of that, find a nice reference photo that will fit, that will flow with any car or a specific car and then build the design around it.

BA: A lot of your designs seem to be based on cartoon or comic book characters and I was wondering if you have thought to do something realistic. For example, I saw a Chuck D car done in a realistic style, in Forza 3. I was wondering if you have ever attempted to do realism or if that is something you stay away from and if there is a difficulty change between those styles.

JH: There’s definitely a difficulty change in-between those. You can get pretty stylized with a video game character and you can get stylized with a real life character but it has to look like that character. I don’t really touch real life characters because I never could really figure out how to build a car around them with the layers. MiMiC built the Chuck D car, the Tupac car and I think he built an Eminem car and they are really amazing but I don’t know, that’s not something I try to go for. I try to go for really colorful stylized things because that is what I have the most fun with.

BA: Do you ever pick the car before you make the design or do you make the design then pick what car it fits best?

JH: No, after I finish a design then I pick the car. I try every time to pick a car ahead of time but it just never works, it’s never going to work. Sometimes the car you want to put it on just has a really small back side.

BA: I noticed, when I was watching the Iron Man car, you first tried it out on an R8 but the side paneling kind of got in the way of that. Do you ever design something that is intricate to a car like that or do you stick to the general layout?

JH: When I design the car, like when I start actually painting on the car, like with the Iron Man car, I go specific for the car. Like the wheel wells on the Supra.

BA: The rivets.

JH: Yeah, I try to do that specific to the car but as far as the character, no, I try to get the character as clean looking as I can.

BA: In Forza 3, one of big features they were touting was the grid layout for making vinyls. Has that been a big help for you designing character on that?

JH: Not for me personally. I don’t use grids in real life either, I find them a little distracting but for text, like creating logos, getting everything squared away they have been great, they have been a godsend for that. My favorite feature in the new game is, aside from having the canvas, not having to worry about zooming around a Mini Cooper [Note: In Forza Motorsport 2, there was no blank canvas—you had to paint on a car. To cope with this many people used flat areas on cars, commonly the Mini Cooper's roof, as a canvas to create designs to be used on other cars], my favorite thing has to be groups. Being able to group a thousand layers into four or five groups is just probably the biggest time saver.

BA: How frequently do you bump up against that thousand layer limit?

JH: Not too frequently, I’m pretty efficient when it comes to layers. But the Brutal Legend one snuck up on me. I actually had to redo it because I got a little careless with the shading. I was up to 850 and it wasn’t even close to being done. It does get away from you sometimes but you kind of learn what you can and can’t do. If you go back and clean a design, like say if a design—maybe with the exception like Fred’s designs and MiMiC’s stuff because that probably takes a ton of shading layers but stuff, like if you have a Mario or a Stewie that is a thousand layers, you can probably cut quite a bit out.

BA: How long does it take you to make just the single character alone?

JH: Depends but they take quite a while. I think that is one of the things too, going into the editor, that’s so intimidating: “Oh, I don’t have the skills for this, I’m not going to bother.” Going into it like doing the Jet Set Radio car, I did Gum today. An hour in, it just looks horrible. One eye is up here, the other one down here. So usually every character takes, at least, a good three hours. Iron Man took about seven and about nine for the whole car. And the ODST one took about six totally. It took a good chunk of time, usually spread over two or three days, four days but the Iron Man, I did in one sitting. [laughs]

BA: [laughs] I saw that, I was thumbing through your archives and it was just like a constant Iron Man for so long.

JH: Yeah, that was pretty bad, that was an all-nighter. [laughs]

BA: Another thing for somebody who creates in this game, is the Storefront that has been added to Forza 3. How has your experience of the Storefront been so far?

JH: The Storefront has been great, I didn’t think I would get much use out of the Storefront because there is a limit right now on what your cars can sell for, about 10,000 credits for the paints, the vinyls. I have a bunch of license plates up there, like different world license plates, New York and California. Every time I log on, I have like 200,000 credits waiting for me which is huge cause that’s a bunch of cars you can pick up or one super car. So I think I’ve made about two million already, just from the Storefront.

BA: Oh wow and the game isn’t even out in North America yet. [Note: The North American release date was October 27th]

JH: Yeah, it is pretty cool and the leader boards are huge too. I get a lot of messages, through the leader boards, just people scroll through it and click you. The Storefront is great, it is awesome just being able to paint, put it away [on the Storefront], and go back to painting. Not having to worry about making the car, replicating the rims and kits and putting it on the auction house and dealing with that. It is nice to have that option. It’s also nice to be able to look at other peoples Storefronts, probably one of the coolest things—just like Blackjack Evolution, just hoping through his, seeing all this photos and replays and stuff like that.

BA: How much inspiration do you take from other people? Do you see other people’s designs and feel motivated to then design something better—not necessarily better but like: “Oh yeah, that gives me a good idea.”

JH: Both. I think you see somebody do something, especially when you see them work through video speed painting or tutorial—there is definitely, I can only speak for myself but I definitely have a competitive spirit, a friendly competition, like I got to step it up. You go to MiMiC’s Storefront or Fred’s or M0dus’s Storefront, it’s like okay, he did the Crackdown car, so I got to come back with something. Not so much one up them, just you want to keep yourself getting better and better. It’s always nice to have some really really talented people displaying it, so you can go in there, see what they are doing and it kind of motivates you to keep pushing what you can do with the editor.

BA: You mentioned the Crackdown car that M0dus did. That car and the Halo 3: ODST one you did, they are going to be given away to people who pre-order and send a picture of their receipt to Turn 10. I was wondering how that relationship with Turn 10 came about. You mentioned you got the green disc, you have the game early, as well. How did that conversation between you and Turn 10 start and how that end up with you creating cars for them to give away?

JH: It actually happened pretty quickly. It happened in Forza 2, I met Che [Chou, Turn 10 Community Manager] through GAF and I was just playing casually online and running him off the road by accident. [laughs] And I would do my cars and I would send it to him and I would send it to other Gaffers. And when Forza 3 came out they had the MVP program, which they picked a bunch of people from ForzaMotorsport.net, a couple of Gaffers, some other people and the press. We just started doing lots of cars and sending them over and he actually brought it up about the pre-order program, I didn’t know until a couple days before. It was pretty cool. I think in terms of community features, they get a lot of heat because they are so public with their community but the amount of stuff they do just for the community is probably one of the impressive things I have seen. Just reaching out to 50 random fans and handing them a copy a month early is pretty insane. When I thought I was going to get a green disc I thought I was going get it like four days before the game came out, you know. Like “Oh, here’s your green disc, get a head start,” you know. That was pretty huge.

BA: Have any of those cars been specifically commissioned for this purpose or are they something you keep on creating and creating, then they pick out stuff they like the best?

JH: Yeah, just kind of keep churning stuff out and keep trying to come up with cool ideas and execute them. If they like—then you know, there is always a possibility for VIP cars. Which I think is one of the coolest things about the collectors edition, that’s one thing that should’ve been on the box of the collectors edition, the VIP cars probably the best thing about the CE.

BA: Some of that seems a little bit like they were unsure of what the VIP membership would necessarily contain and stuff like that—there was a lot of confusion about that but at least some of that is clearing up now.

JH: Yeah, it is pretty cool because the VIP cars are full cars, not just the skins that you get. You get them gifted to you, especially if you are just starting and you are running on a Yaris, Toyota Yaris, or something and you get gifted a BMW M3, it’s a pretty cool thing.

BA: Are there any other parts of Forza that you really enjoy aside from the painting? Do you really get into like photos or videos and stuff like that?

JH: I love the photo mode, you can spend hours in the photo mode alone, just taking pictures of like—I don’t know if you have seen the threads on GAF but some of these pictures are just beyond ridiculous. I’ve just recently started, about a couple of days ago—I don’t know if you’ve seen my stream, the guys in there go me into drifting, which I didn’t try in Forza 2 and I try it now, it is pretty fun. Even though it is mostly me just running into walls.

BA: How has the rest of the game been going for you?

JH: It’s fun, trying to get into the tuning side, learning about this and that, without looking like a jackass because I don’t know anything about real life cars. [laughs] So you’re in a room full of tuners and they are like “Oh, you know, change this camber to this and drop this.”

BA: One of the things with that, the tuning and the painting, and something that you are apparently trying to fill the void with the tutorials—it seems like there is a big step that could intimidate a lot of people before hand. Is that something you feel is really necessary, external tutorials, to start working in Forza?

JH: The problem with a lot of the Forza tutorials, not that they weren’t impressive, a lot of the tutorials are essentially speed paintings. It is really awesome to watch but if you are trying to learn from that, it is very intimidating to get from point A to point B, from a block to Master Chief, in a 10 minute video. I have a series of videos I have planned out, I have four of them done, one of them uploaded and another one is a tip video. I think, not so much hand holding, it is hard to hand hold someone through Forza but explaining what you are doing, I think it is something that will be very welcome for people who want to get into painting. It can be frustrating and a little intimidating going in to it but you don’t need full on technical skill to be a good a painter in Forza, you don’t need to be able to draw a perfect circle with a pencil. It helps if you have artistic skill but if you have patience and keep throwing yourself at it, you will get better. It is something you can improve on.

BA: Do you have any plans for the future in Forza, like any cars you are currently working or something you have an idea of in your head?

JH: I probably have about 10 finished that I haven’t shown yet and about four that I will be showing in the next couple of days.

BA: How many cars have you done so far in Forza 3 alone?

JH: I’ve done three fully finished ones: Iron Man, Halo and Alan Wake. I have about 15 unfinished ones like Brutal Legend—well full on cars, not like the NeoGAF one, I don’t count those—the Hulk, Space Channel 5, a Sonic one that is half finished, Captain America, Green Lantern. You kind of just finish the vinyl and think about what to do with the car later.

BA: Is there any other work that you want to tell people about?

JH: Mainly just the tutorials, keep an eye on my YouTube channel [http://www.youtube.com/users/jube3] and my Justin.tv stream [http://www.justin.tv/jube3], I stream a lot of my paints live when I am online, so if people want to get an idea, I’m always there to answer questions.