AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days 2012 – Event Illustration
Every summer, the American Motorcyclist Association hosts Vintage Motorcycle Days at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. The theme this year is Rockers & Mods, and we were fortunate enough to work with the good folks at AMA in designing and illustrating an event poster and T-shirt.
If you’ve ever been curious as to how these posters come to life, here’s a behind-the-scenes peek at the process. We start with pencils and paper, sketching many, many rough compositions (thumbnail sketches). In the comp below, you can see how we’ve roughed in an old Brit bike and a metal-bodied scooter.
We scan and import the sketches into the computer and loosely mock up how it’ll look with type and required graphic elements. Once the overall composition is determined, we’ll dial in the details with tighter sketches. For the Rocker’s bike, a Norton Manx 500 provided inspiration.
The stylized proportions are figured out in graphite, to be used as a reference when rendering on the computer. For this project, the “inking” stage took place in AdobeIllustrator.
Below: Maintaining the proper fashion of the 60’s Mod required a li’l research and consideration for each item of clothing. His scooter is a period-correct Vespa, enhanced with cartoony zoom lines and whoosh-clouds.
If you dig what you see, swing by the AMA merchandise booths at Vintage Motorcycle Days and pick up a shirt! Tell ’em you saw our design and illustration when it was a mere thumbnail sketch. 🙂
VMD in a nutshell: AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days is a massive event featuring the largest motorcycle swap meet on the continent, old-school racing, demo rides, camping, bike shows, seminars, a classic bike auction and lots of other moto-fellowship that a motorcyclist shouldn’t miss. We’ll see you there…and keep an eye out for a post-event feature here on Good Spark Garage!
Who we are: Wilkinson Bros, Inc. is a graphic design and illustration studio in Indianapolis, creating cool content for the motorsports industry and beyond.