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JimmyK's Nascar Racing 2003 Season Painting Tutorial

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    The intention of this tutorial is to help answer any questions that you may have on using Paint Shop Pro 7 to paint cars for Papyrus' NASCAR Racing 2003 Season simulation. There's also a links page for the sites I use for add-ons for painting, things like layers, numbers, logos etc.  There are many different ways of painting and I'm not saying that these are the best and only ways, but they work for me! If you have a different method of doing something and/or a link to a site you use and want to share it contact me here I'll make sure that the author of any tips will get credit for submissions. There are links for sites and email in the text, I've made them yellow.

    First let me tell you a little bit about myself. I'm 49 years old (No, I DON'T want to grow up! and you can't make me!) and live in Canada. I've been racing online for about 6 years, and painting for at least 5. I think that this latest version of NASCAR from Papyrus is the best, for both racing and painting!

    OK, down to business. I'm going to break the painting down into sections. Index is below.

 

What to start with

    Let's get started. You need a few things before you start painting. First thing is get a copy of Paint Shop Pro. Jasc no longer has a demo version of PSP7 so you'll probably have to get the PSP8 demo. If that's the case you'd be better off using the PSP8 tutorial. You'll need something to paint as well. I use Brian Simpson's templates for cars that you can get from Team Lightspeed Brian Simpson NR2003 Templates. Truck templates are available at Masgrafx. Make sure you get the templates that are for Paint Shop Pro. In order to check my work without having to start the game every time I use a car viewer from Masgrafx. CarViewer   You may want to make a folder somewhere to keep all your painting projects in. I've made a folder called "NR2003" that has everything for painting NR2003 cars in it.

    There's a ton of tools and functions that PSP has. I'm not an expert in everything PSP does so I'm not going to try to explain what everything does. What I will do is explain what tools I use and where to find them in PSP  for the different parts of painting in NR2003.

Starting to paint

    Open up PSP and then open the template of your choice. I add about 10 raster layers so I have room to add what I think I'll need to paint the car. If you are unfamiliar with layers. Brian Simpson has an excellent expalination of how to use his layered templates for NR2002, and most of it applies to NR2003 as well. Brian Simpson's guide to using layered templates Now what? I usually start by picking a sponsor. When picking a sponsor you have to keep in mind who's going to see the car. I use my daughter as a sounding board or "proof-reader" for all my cars so I don't use questionable sponsors. I also have a personal guideline that says "could this sponsor really be in Winston Cup or Busch or the Truck series?" If the answer is yes then I'll use it. I also do requests and they are a bit easier, the sponsor is usually provided. Once a sponsor is decided on I search the internet for a good logo to use on the car. I've found that Google has a very nice image selection, or if the sponsor you want has a home page it can be a good source too. If you are using a secondary sponsor now would be a good time to get logos for it. You may be asking why pick the sponsor first? Well, sponsor's logos are a good source for the colors to use on the car. A good example of this is one of the many Coca-Cola cars that have been done for NR2002. Ever see a yellow one? Probably not because yellow doesn't really match the Coke logo.

    Time for a check list. Things we should have by now:

    To add a layer open the "layers" drop down menu along the top of PSP. There you will see some of the layers for the image you have open, in this case a Ford Template. I add my layers after the "car body" layer. Notice on the top of the template in the blue it says "Tape H/S". This is the layer that is currently open on the template. We need to select the "car body" one on the drop down and then add our layers. The New Raster Layer is at the top of the layers drop down. You'll see a new window open that lets you name the layer, its a good idea to name them so that if you need to change something in the layer later it easy to find.

   

       I've added layers named Graphics 1, graphics 2, chrome 1, chrome 2, decals 1, decals 2, contingencies, numbers, driver's name and one last layer second from the top called head and tail light numbers. Here's a tip: Once you've added the layers save the template. That way whenever you open the template the layers will be there already.

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