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A quick chat with Chris Stevens, GT500 designer

Twin Turbo

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GT500 Sketch Chris Stevens.jpg


We Talk To A Mustang Designer About This GT500 Sketch Becoming Reality
A small part of how the halo Mustang came together.

It’s hard not to love the Ford Mustang Shelby GT500. The halo pony car has an over-aggressive presence that stands out from the rest of the Mustang pack – and that’s by design (literally), says Mustang exterior designer Chris Stevens.

During an interview with Motor1.com (more on that soon), the artist shared with us a special sketch that dates back to the first six months of the GT500’s development. During that period, Stevens remembers coming up with a sketch that was meant to be as provocative as possible.

We Love The Real Car, Too:
He shares, “It’s gotta be pretty damn brutal, and it’s gotta look like it breathes in a bunch of air...it had to look like 1,000 horsepower.” And with those guidelines, he penned what ultimately became one of the earliest design directions for the GT500. The sketch you see beat out others in a process that Stevens described like being on a reality TV show.

“It was kinda like The Bachelor,” he says. “You had all these guys doing sketches of the car, and if they liked your stuff you got to stay on the program … and I kept getting a rose.”

From sketch to final roadgoing car, there are some uncanny similarities. Though the rendering’s proportions are overdramatized, the on-paper Mustang’s face set the tone for the real thing. Details like the pre-facelift headlights and blackout panel between the upper and lower grilles made it all the way to production, along with noteworthy details like the Shelby Cobra logo. That said, this sketch is missing the car’s signature striped paint scheme and features a wing much more extreme than the real-life thing.

For Stevens, it’s still hard to believe that his sketch work led the way for the road car’s final look. This realized dream, he says, will eventually lead to buying a Mustang of his own someday.

https://www.motor1.com/news/420793/mustang-gt500-sketch-story/
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Epiphany

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Thanks for the link.

How can you not love Chris' work here? I can't get enough of his sketches and hope we continue to see more, especially any of them with the stillborn fender vents.
 

Tomster

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I saw that last night. Its good to see/hear the various perspectives from the design team
 

obspsd

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Thanks for posting.
 

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MaskedRacerX

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I'm with ya, Tob and how I wish I had learned CAD when I started out with Photoshop. Being able to render light so incredibly accurately brings a whole new meaning to the word, "sketch."
Heck, grab a copy of Blender, available for MacOS, Winders™, Linux, powerful, but reasonable up front learning curve ... and best of all, it's free :sunglasses:

(Plus, seems like we have plenty of free time at home ...)
 

kilobravo

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Well, as I figured, Blender is every bit as complicated as the previous CAD software I've tried with what I'm guessing has to be a pretty steep learning curve. Dang it, I was hoping for something easy that would allow me to add lighting to PS images.

This is as far as I got before I gave up. <laughing>





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Patio208

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I am also a fan of Chris's work. I know there is dislike for Stangmode, but Chris was featured in a few videos about the GT500 design process.... good content.
 

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MaskedRacerX

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Well, as I figured, Blender is every bit as complicated as the previous CAD software I've tried with what I'm guessing has to be a pretty steep learning curve. Dang it, I was hoping for something easy that would allow me to add lighting to PS images.

This is as far as I got before I gave up. <laughing>
There's a few others that a free and supposedly easier, but figured, spend the time learning the more capable product and it's better in the long run.

I've only plinked around in it a bit, I had an AR/VR company, then did a stint in The Valley, working at a (big, now gone ...) startup. I worked on the SDK, interfacing with the CV folks, but we'd do a few POCs working with the SDK, a guy on my team was kickass with Blender, he'd knock out these amazing pre-viz models (based on some use case studies), one time I showed him this robot my little G drew, the next day he had it modelled up :D
 

MaskedRacerX

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FWIW - and sorry to totally derail this thread* - the other app that's popular, easy/easier, and there's a free version is SketchUp. I mean, Blender is better at tasks like organic modeling, can do things like HDRI lighting (with a free plugin), supports way more complex rendering, but if SketchUp fits your needs, you'll be up and producing much quicker!





* I lied, I'm not sorry ...
 
 




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