Talking stickers with Orrcon Racing
13/4/2005 23:13 (Press Release) -
The silver, blue and yellow colours of the Orrcon Racing Falcon’s have made their mark to be one of the most recognised liveries in the V8 Supercar Championship.
The appearance of the car is the first thing that people notice and generally the last thing that they forget, hence the importance of ensuring that the livery stands out from the rest of the pack.
There have been several evolutions from the original design of the Larkham Motor Sport cars since beginning their partnership with Orrcon, the steel tube and pipe manufacturer, in 2001. All cars however included similarities from the beginning of Mark Larkham’s V8 career.
The 2005 livery is an evolution of ‘04 base graphics. Larkham and Orrcon’s design artist Carl Spencer spent numerous hours massaging various concepts that would subtly evolve the current look.
This work started with lead pencil sketches, then coloured pencils, through to computer simulation and then finally many late nights with LMS signwriter Gary Frampton of Optical Kaos Auto Graphics working bits and pieces of coloured vinyl and pinstripe tape in conjunction with the team’s paint n panel expert Brayden Clutterbuck until the desired outcome was achieved.
“This current livery is one that has evolved over time, and like many teams we like to contain some continuity between years. To identify an LMS car in the current era, just look for the GT stripes.. That is the backbone of our car design,” said Larkham.
“To me the large GT stripes signify strength, speed and performance…at some point most automotive marques have applied them to their pedigree sporting models. We have expanded them a little this year onto the side of the car rolling over onto the back windscreen.”
Signwriter Frampton’s work is not as simple as cutting the stickers out on the computerized vinyl cutting machine, but rather a work of art as he aims to keep the car design flowing amongst various sponsors logo’s and colours, rather than appear like a tacked together billboard
Whole the predominant colours used on the car are silver, blue and yellow there is a total of 12 colours of vinyl used in the livery of the Orrcon Racing Falcon’s. Across each car Frampton uses approximately 36 metres of adhesive vinyl.
Each of the 172 sticker applications (most sponsors logo’s are multi-layered) applied to each of the Orrcon Racing Falcon’s are cut from single layer vinyl with a computer-plotting machine.
After he spending up to 8 hours cutting the stickers it takes Frampton spends 16 hours applying them to the cars by hand.
In addition to the completely liveried cars that are ready to race the team also have up to four complete sets of panels with stickers applied and ready to go at any one time.
The most difficult sticker to apply is the large Orrcon door sticker as it has to be massaged over both doors, particular difficulty is faced when applying around the two door handles.
While the door sticker is the most difficult to apply the complex multi-layer ITA Imagejet logo on rear quarter panel and bar stickers takes the longest time to apply.
Detailed below is a break down of how many stickers there are on each section of an Orrcon Racing Falcon:
Bonnet and front bumper 25, Sides of car 52 (each side), Front Windscreen 3, Roof 9, Rear Windscreen 12, Boot and Rear Wing 19 = 172
The next round of the V8 Supercar Championship will be held this weekend at Pukekohe in New Zealand.
Release Date: 11/04/2005
Larkham Orrcon Racing
|
|
