I have a request I'd like to ask of any or all the artistically gifted people on this site who might be willing to paint up a virtual car. Allow me to fill in the situation with a little background.

For the last two weeks, I've been waking up at 6 AM on Saturdays to watch NASCAR races in iRacing.

Ordinarily this is the sort of behavior best reserved for Formula 1 viewing, but I'm finding iRacing to be a rather entertaining way to wake up far too early on a weekend. The official series I'm watching uses the same schedule as NASCAR's Sprint Cup does, save for fixed setups and most of the races being half distance, both of which actually make it far more interesting. It's nice to have races where I can choose whatever camera angle I'd like, rewind if necessary, and generally get a better narrative of the unfolding race than I'm able to from the four-hour epics most real NASCAR broadcasts pump out. I also have the benefit of having a few drivers that I can cheer on, since they run in our Giant Bomb Racing League.

It's weird knowing that two of our best oval drivers are a Kiwi and a German.

Quick introductions:

Here's @khann, from New Zealand. He's incredibly fast, but prone to misfortune. Give him an incident-free race, though, and you'll see him battle for the win in just about any type of car anywhere. Seriously, he's that good.

This is @iron1c, from Germany. I'd compare him to Kyle Busch: He's extremely aggressive, and it either pays off nicely or sends him to the pits early. He's pulling off a sick drift here and not about to spin, I swear.

I have one major problem with both of these guys in their pictures: They're not repping Giant Bomb at all. Khann's sticking to his usual pink-and-black attack with a generic Trading Paints sponsor (that's the program that allows us to see custom liveries), and IroN1c races with some sort of Mountain Dew green label art camouflage. Given that there's the chance that more of us could be stepping up to race soon, this absent brand loyalty is a disappointing problem.

It would be nice to show all these iRacing users who we are and just how hard we can run in an official series, wouldn't it?

We could probably design bare-bones paint schemes on our own with some Giant Bomb logos slapped on every panel, but I'd like to enlist the community's help in making Giant Bomb racers look truly awesome on the track.

The Details

These cars are the same ones used in the NASCAR Sprint Cup, so there are three different manufacturers. I've linked .zip files with copies of templates below:

• Chevrolet SS
• Ford Fusion
• Toyota Camry

Any design can probably be transferred between these cars with little issue. There's only a few minor variations between the models, as far as I can tell.

The templates are 2048x2048 .psds with layer groups. They're generally pretty descriptive and will tell you what layers to turn off before saving a finished paint, most of which help show what the finished car will look like in-game and provide other assists like wireframes and number placement.

Numbers are separate from the livery. They're assigned automatically when joining a race and are layered on top of the design alongside NASCAR-required contingency sponsors. One of the layers in the .psds will indicate where they'll go. Colors and font styles can be recommended for numbers on designs, but that's about it.

Designs can't have any offensive language or imagery. That's iRacing's thing, since they have to be PG-friendly or so. Other than that, I'd say go for whatever Giant Bomb images/memes/shirt-based/friend-of-the-site stylings you want. B0nd07 already indicated to me that he'd be OK with users putting his winged bombwheel onto cars, and I'm sure other users who have made awesome work for the site wouldn't mind, either, be it a site logo, the VinnCo emblem, police sketch Jeff, or some other great logo/design.

Finished designs have to be saved as 24-bit compressed .tga files to work in iRacing.

Since not everyone has access to iRacing and this car due to its insane cost, I will gladly model any paint scheme and help point out any seam issues that may arise for anyone who wants to try their hand at creating art. Just let me know.

Help us spread the word of Giant Bomb to the masses of iRacing, won't you? You'll have our eternal gratitude. Thanks!