[WIP] Annihilator Replica Proposal

I've mentioned it to a few people - though it has received little attention - that I'm excited to create a 1:64 scale near-replica of the Annihilator Street Rod from the video game Burnout Paradise. It is a fantasy car based very closely on a mix of several existing muscle cars such as the '71 Plymouth Road Runner and the '71 Dodge Charger. It sports a unique livery and because of such, is one of the meanest looking muscle cars I've ever seen in my life (regardless of it being a fictional vehicle).

I'm an avid Hot Wheels collector and I'm also quite fond of customizing them. I already have the cars I need to dissect and reconstruct here:

Getting the screenshots was rather surprising to me. To think I'd get a better quality image by taking a picture of my TV rather than screencapping a video output directly fed to my computer.

This is what I'm going to try and replicate:

The front has a clear resemblance of the Road Runner, however no head lamps are present. Might have to grind down the casting for that.

Got a lovely dragon decal on the side, the original colour being a pearlescent blue which turns darker when not in direct reflection of the sun. Am I going to grab hold of material that can do the same? Probably not. I could imitate it through gradients in the printing process but that isn't all that likely either. What's more important is whether I want to go through the trouble of multi-layering tampos and potentially get a really close replica of the dragon, OR go the easy route which would be to try and get the background colour as close as I can to the body colour. Should I aim for the latter, the body paint needs to be put down first, a picture to be taken as accurately matching the colour balance as possible so that eye dropping the colour would require no effort. I haven't decided yet so let's move on.

The roof's got more sakura flowers, a full moon and even "dragon" written in Chinese on the trunk.

The Charger's rear fender is clear as day here, though its proportions are a tad squished. The circular form in the center will likely be disregarded for the sake of making my life a little easier.

Cutting out the hood is sure going to be fun. As for the humungous engine, the best I could get my hands on was the engine on the back of this Beetle:

I don't know the part names of an engine, but I can already tell this engine doesn't fully match the one the Annihilator has. I can probably create the arm bar with a few simple materials.

As for the blue pipe, that can likely be taken from a piece of 16 gauge wire. What's most important is that the intake lids are red. That's the most eye-catching part of the entire engine for me.

The workflow is going to start with tracing via Adobe Illustrator. Once all shapes have been made, I shall export that to Photoshop, and maybe add some dot gradients so that  the inkjet printer will have an easier time with handling the colours.

Although I don't have any set of wheels that look just like it, I do have something close enough. For this I'll likely dish out the extra money for better paint; car paint. The solid dark blue bearing a rich depth colour like that of a sea is simply gorgeous. I only now wonder how I can recreate that illusion with what might be a flat appearance.

Will post more as more progress is made!