Bodykit design tutorial by illusionest

Don't think we only show cars without explaining bits on how we design them. 

illusionest, our admin, posted a bodykit design tutorial, so let's make it public!

1) BASE photo, 2012 Honda Civic 

2) Before you do anything, LOWER THE CAR 
if you are already confused to why we're doing this, please refer to this page
 

3) Most aftermarket body kits are taller than stock body kits, this helps the car appear lower. 
so what i usually do is highlight a rough shape and fill it in with the current body color so i have an idea of how low my body kits will be. like so: 

4) Shading is not important at the moment, just fill it in 

5) Fire up a new layer, and start patching over the existing vents, those existing disgusting, gross, vents. 
HATE STOCK VENTS 

6) Some may use pen tool, some may use brush, i have a tablet so i just draw right on top. 
i made a new layer, and just used a thin black brush and sketched out a simple 3-hole design. 
by 3-hole, i mean one center "mouth", and 2 side vents. in this design i made it look like its grinning, and the general shape is very smooth flowing. 

7) Now try to visualize where the "black holes" are going to be. its not too late to change the shape of the vents now, so if you want to do that, do it. Here i just filled in the 3 holes with black 

8 ) Fill in the splitters with a darker color - of course, its shadow area, so use a darker tone. 
then add some highlights near the edge of the splitters. 

9) Now its time to develop and play with the surfaces. manipulate the splitters, adjusting them from left to right, right to left, top to bottom, making random cuts that dont make sense, etc. 

10) Now make them make sense lol - basically, make it more practical. instead of floating splitters, think about how the bumper is actually put together 

11) What about side side splitters... maybe worth a try... why not 

12) This is no aero kit, so im going for a more extreme design. im going to add more vents and details 

13) Okay once you have your general shape, time to start "cleaning it up" with the pen tool. and yes, for the whole time so far ive been just sketching everything in. you'll probably be using the pen tool for most of the work. 
basically ive just highlighted each part section by section and started cleaning up all the edges. 
this is probably the most boring, and time consuming step. 

14) More touch ups, and some new rims, thanks to Danyutz 

15) I didnt like the two slots in the bumper, they looked weird. 
I smoothed it out, and put an inset into it. also added a highlight on the front corner. 

16) More work to the bumper, i think in this screenshot some work was done to the far side of the bumper. 

17) Some mesh for detail 

18 ) Some graphics, ps-garage and Matthew Law.ca logo... 
and we're done! 

This tutorial and chop (i did the tutorial while i was doing the chop) took me just under 2 hours. 
I think, step #13 took the longest, spent almost 45 minutes just cleaning it up. 

Feel free to ask questions....