How to make icons for Avtokadabra machines

Every user of Avtokadabra has a virtual garage, where his cars are stored. The project developers ( Thematic Media ) turned to us ( Turbomilk ) with a difficult task - to draw icons for all cars in the world. But not simple icons, but “repainted”, so that users can choose any color for their cars.


Typically, the size of the icons in the same set is the same, but real cars have different sizes and we had to decide how to display it. At first we thought to divide the machines into classes and for each class enter a fixed length in pixels. But then they decided to use a more accurate system - draw to scale. We took 60 millimeters of the length of a real car for 1 pixel of the length of the icon. Thus, to get the length of the icon, it was necessary to measure the real car and divide the resulting value by 60.
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So that the machines could be easily repainted, we had to come up with a special drawing technology. First, the outline of the car is drawn, and then black shadows and white highlights are placed on top. It turns out here is such a translucent machine:



If we put such a picture on top of a colored background, then the machine is magically repainted to the color of this background:



At the moment, icons are drawn for most popular cars in Russia. They decorate virtual garages and delight users of AutoCadabra. Here are just a small part of the total number of auto-monkeys: