Hi guys!
Practising my modeling skills as of late, and I need cars for my project, so I found some blueprint of the new beetle and got going. Blueprint´s not perfect, doesn´t match up exactly between views, so some improvisation here… donut wheels are just placeholders, ok? 
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I know it´s very early progress, but let me know what you think and don´t be afraid to give constructive critique - I´m here to learn! 
Doesn´t look like much progress, but I finally fixed the mesh deform issue on the front, and wrapped the rear of the car, which was cumbersome while maintaining a nice curved surface everywhere, so it took more time than it should 
I think I have a good stategy how to finish the rest. Reference images really aren´t very accurate, but if I at least get a good likeness, I´m happy…
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Should be able to wrap this up in 2-3 hrs or so, once I find the time…
Pretty nice, but I have always mixed feelings about subdivision. What kind of project is this?
Pantheon 12, an animated series I plan to make (over the next 10 years or so, at this rate:P) about superhero teenagers. Not very original, but a very old dream of mine, and Blender finally enables me to go through with it 
So anyway, obviously I will need to build a world where the story takes place, so cars… and other stuff that comes later. I´m learning as I go along
So, trying to keep daily updates. Just got 30 mins in today after work, but starting to shape up
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Day 4:
Getting closer to finishing this.
Front´s almost there, started wrapping around back, very crude so far, lot of issues with flow in these screenshots, but I must say, for my first car model, I´m quite proud of how it´s turning out Today I skipped the blueprints completely and worked from actual photos of the beetle, realised I had made some wrong assumptions here and there.
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Tomorrow I´m off work, so let´s finish this properly!
Day 5:
You know what hubris is? Hubris is when you´re overconfident in your abilities. Thought I had this down, but turns out I hadn´t! Looking at photos of the beetle, there are some really nice creases going on across the surface, especially on the front, and I had laid out the wrong edgeflow, so been reworking the front some to better accomodate for that. Did a lot of experimenting, discarding ideas, and in the end not much to show, but imprtant changes nonetheless. There is one more crease I´ll handle next, the one that should go around the wheelhouse. And not sure how handle the crevices around the hood, tried a couple of things but didn´t look good with subsurf.
Little by little, young padawan…
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Late night update:
So I couldn´t sleep It´s rough progress, and I´m not completely happy, but posting anyway…
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very nice so far!
Coming from you, that´s worth something, you do stellar car work Especially interested in your technique with separating panels, going to try for the hood of my car.
I have posed the wrong edgeflow, should be remade some problems. I did a lot of testing, eliminating the idea, and in the end there is not much to show.
Nothing to criticize. There is still a looooooot of work ))
Hello Ape,
I think you’re doing good so far, you can cleary see what car it is, without even looking at the description.
How detailled do you want it to be for your animation project?
Uff, I know… I thought I´d have this done in a week - yeah, right!
I´m not going for uber-realism/super-detailed, characters are going to be fairly stylized, so it should match that style (check my signature for sketchbook). There´s also the matter of not wanting to spend too much time on every model, since (for now) I´m doing everything on my own…
I mostly want it to be recognizable and not look completely off. I would like to make it functional though, so you can at least open the passenger doors and stuff.
Day 6:
Today I went through the “beautifying” phase. Removing redundant edges here and there, improved edgeflow and smoothed out any deformations. Also started wrapping up the back, and not pleased with that patchwork, but it´s a start. I´ll finish that up tomorrow, and then slap on some nice car paint to see how everything looks before detailing further. cleared out space for all the windows, including the sunroof.
Starting to look a lot more complete already
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That’s looking great!
Day 8:
Was to tired after work yesterday to do anything creative…
Today, I finally welded the rear wheelhouse to the body, started working on rear lights and also detailing the chassis a bit more. Obviously more edgeloops will be needed, to create some of the more angular details, but try to keep polys low as long as possible…
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looking good so far!
If you want it to be as low poly as possible, I’d maybe add mor geometrey, but reduce the number of subdivisions.
For example at the rear lights, you need a lot of subdivisions to make them look round, but the rest of the model does not need that amount of subdivisions.
I am not an expert, and have not cared a lot about poly count in my models yet, so I might be wrong 
My comment about keeping it low-poly is mostly beacuse the more detail you add early, the more difficult to make changes later on.
However, I do try to keep it rather low poly in general, and use subdiv, because I want to use this in animation, with alot of characters, environment and stuff happening, and my computer isn´t the most powerful, so every poly saved counts
I might, for instance cheat a bit with the grill, and simulate detail with a procedural texture. Wheels will definitely be normal mapped, to save some more.
thank you for the kind words! i’m happy that you looked at my car model! the technique i used (and always will for cars or similar surface) for the nissan model, allow me to have far superior control over the continuity flow from panel to panel! i’ll keep an eye on this model!