I came up with a trick that worked so well (better than I could have hoped),
I just thought I'd better share it:
Preamble: to make a long story short, the asymmetry of the wannabe rod was
driving me nuts, and so I tore into the drivers side bodywork sooner than
planned. Lot's of internal and external metalwork ensued, but I saved the
drivers door. Got everything primered, and then yellow. Got the door hung,
and shot the last color coat. Then, a big challenge... how to get the
flames the same as what I'd done earlier on the passenger side. Here's a
neat solution I came up with:
1) Rolled the truck out into the driveway, and took several photos with my
digital camera, noting distance from the truck, and approximate height off
the ground. Rolled truck back into garage.
2) Previewed the photos by dropping the flash-card into my palm-PC. Decided
which one gave the best view of the flames and infared beamed the chosen pic
onto my laptop.
3) Opened the image in photoshop and flipped the image left-to-right so it
looked like a drivers side photo.
4) Next, I digitally superimposed some "way-points" in bright red: door
seams, the main horizontal body ridge, bottom of the door, and a big red dot
at the center of the front wheel.
5) I work with a bunch of marketing guys, who give remote presentations a
lot... and have a few of those nice "In Focus" projectors for presentations
;-) Borrowed one for the weekend, and placed it such that the lens was as
close as possible to where the camera lens was (on the other side) when I
shot the photos. Hooked it up to my laptop, and projected the display onto
the side of the truck.
6) Using my software, deleted the picture of the truck leaving only the
way-points.
7) Skewed, rotated, scaled, etc., the image so that all of the way-points
I'd created lined up when projected onto the truck.
8) Turned off the way-points, and turned the image layer back on, dimmed the
lights in the garage.
The effect at this point was amazing- at first glance it really looked like
I'd already painted the truck. From here it was just a matter of putting
down the first masking tape along the projected edges. Once that was done,
I turned off the projector, and worked just to make things look "right",
with a final check against the projected image to make sure things were
still real close.
Without this trick, I expect masking the second side would be a lot harder
than the first- in actuality it was much easier/faster, because I didn't
have to "make it up", it was basically like painting by the numbers.
A few pics of the work that followed:
http://home.earthlink.net/~rborder/truck/ds1.JPG
http://home.earthlink.net/~rborder/truck/ds2.JPG
http://home.earthlink.net/~rborder/truck/ds3.JPG
Here's the image I ended up using for the projection work:
http://home.earthlink.net/~rborder/truck/ps.JPG
Pinstriping and clear-coat follow the last of those pics, the clear-coat
gets the yellow matching what's on the rear fender. Had my share of woes
actually- but that's a tale for another day.
Ryan.
oletrucks is devoted to Chevy and GM trucks built between 1941 and 1959
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