A poster that captures the magic of Austria, the pink of BWT, and influenced by the cameras used to film F1: The Movie. We go behind the design with this weeks Austrian GP race poster.

What was the initial spark or idea behind this poster?

With this years Austria poster I wanted to focus on 2 things, embracing the Pink aesthetic of our Austrian title Partner BWT and exploring an angle for the posers we have not tried before, the beauty of working in CGI for these posters is that we can go above and beyond the ordinary, and create these hyper real, more artistic angles and visuals.

With the recent F1 movie making a high use of a wider FOV for their onboard shots that standard, that is where I drew my main inspiration for this one, next was to find an area of the circuit to replicate, with turn 8/9 (penultimate corner) heading up toward a hill and giving a sharp drop down afterwards, allowing me an easier job to create a vanishing point that could disappear across the horizon matching this.

As with my previous posters, building the scene, materials and texturing is always the most important element for me, as I continue to use and explore the use of the Corona render engine for my posters, each time I try to learn something new and this time it was playing with the volumetric fog, to add a pink haze (as we see at the circuit from a certain group of fans with their Orange flares filling the circuit) I wanted to recreate this in the BWT colours.

What advice would you give to aspiring designers trying to find their voice?

The advice I’d give to any young or up-and-coming designer, starting out in the industry or even motorsport, is to never stop learning, improving - and benchmark yourself against the best.

I still have a very long way to go in what I want to be able to create with these visuals and year on year I try to learn a new program to help me achieve better results, design in different render engines, post-production techniques or even modelling software. There’s always time to be able to set apart a few hours a week to learn a new skillset.

I'm really trying to improve the photorealism of our CGI visuals this year, and the constant benchmarking, reference taking and comparisons to real world photography is helping drive that, taking the time to get our materials and textures as close to the real car was a huge unlock for me this year, with a lot of time taken at launch season taking 100s of photos of the real cars tyres, carbon weaves, metals, paint/vinyl finishes and even components such as the rear rain lights I had to model myself, just to get that bit closer to realism and compete against our very talented rivals down the pitlane.

So with that ‘lesson’ working for me, and pushing myself along even after 8 seasons in F1, its critical for anyone getting in the industry to never stand still.