IndyCar nuts and bolts

Click above to view a PDF of this image.

This diagram looks to explain the various parts of an IndyCar that teams must consider while searching for speed on racetracks across North America during the NTT IndyCar Series season.

It was a big effort, as it turned out. No part of drawing this car was easy, and adjusting the colors, shading and perspectives of shapes so they were just right was quite difficult. Even when I was happy with the car itself, the background and track still needed massaging, and the asphalt and grass didn’t look quite right until I added textures to them.

Overall I’m happy with this, though if I had more time I might have expanded on the diagram, including a cutaway feature that I didn’t feel I could do justice with the time I had. Explaining the engine composition or something could have been a great addition to this, but I’m ok with pointing out and labelling the various parts of the car as well.

I used an image of a real IndyCar to trace over, which was very helpful. However, it was odd to try and pick a color for the car. At one point I realized I couldn’t wait until the end and retrofit it to a color scheme, I had to settle on one right then. I picked gray and red, highlighting wings, mirrors and other bits of the car in red matched with the gray overall color.

NCAA Women’s Tournament Teams

This chloropleth shows the density of NCAA women’s basketball tournament qualifying teams. I tried to use an NCAA blue-adjacent color scheme. The most teams in this year’s tournament came form North Carolina, indicated by the darkest blue color. A few states had no qualifying teams, which are indicated by a grayed out color.

The map I drew consists of San Antonio, San Marcos and Austin, Texas, where all of the women’s tournament games took place. I gave a little more info by including a table showing cities, stadiums and which rounds were hosted by each site.

This map was rather difficult, as the Austin and San Antonio city limits are rather ridiculous, sometimes extended further out by roads to other incorporated areas. The Colorado River was also “fun” to draw, as it gets very thin in parts and disappeared from the map I used to draw it.