esper,
2-ton and
ek22: thank you, all three of you! you've been a good help. 2-ton, i'm not a big fan of chrome but even i realised that deftone chrome text was a good idea (i already had the font). i tried it but in the end i didn't need it - it gave me an idea for a future project instead
. i brightened the car, tried to light up the sky a little more without spoiling the effect of the shoe, did my best with the chrome and put the motion blur under the car and it looks much better. no way i'm going to put it more in the middle, though, esper! that would ruin the effect, the car is supposed to have been and gone. i also changed the edges a lot. first i ditched the square format (talk about killing your darlings! i
love square format, rectangular just isn't the same!) of the main image and removed the middle bar. then i ditched the checkered pattern altogether, first i tried plain black edges but then i decided to use a shape fill gradient with a chrome effect and i thought that looked pretty good, so i kept it. i put in more asphalt and put the text over it and like i said i tried the chrome text - but then i had the bright idea of trying neon again now that the whole image is brighter and this time it worked! i had to tone it down, but only very little, i still think it looks enough like neon. this version is probably the one i'm keeping, i'll only make small adjustments from here, like maybe changing the font.