Brandt Fuqua of Graphic Disorder takes an image in a solid color, digitally clips the body, and re-colors the truck with graphics. Placement of digitally clipped rolling stock dictates the vehicle's attitude. When asked how he comes up with his graphic designs, Brandt replied, "I just let the body lines form how the design flows. From there, it all comes easy."

Chris Southworth builds fantasies. He makes custom kitchens and commercial millwork, and much of his work can be seen in the pseudo-reality in various Las Vegas casinos. At the end of the day, however, he flicks on the computer, launches Photoshop, and starts building another reality of an automotive kind. It's a creative, fulfilling hobby for him that went from a casual curiosity to fiery preoccupation in March 2006 when he discovered the Photochop forums at Streetfire.net. He hasn't a preference for either domestic or import brands, cars, or trucks. He just likes what looks good and will try to pick up where the manufacturer left off. If it's a car, he tries to give it an aggressive look that exudes pucker factor, should you see it getting larger and larger in your rearview mirror. Chris is more flexible when it comes to trucks. He'll lift or lower them and do whatever it takes to make them look awesome. Case in point, take this Frontier.

Remington Box is no square. Sure, he works a day job as a mild-mannered graphic artist at the local newspaper, where he lays out advertising and articles in the useful, but hardly stimulating, blocky format demanded by that medium. By night, however, Remington Box the salary man becomes Remington Box Designs, the creative professional who gets the job done with visual panache. Need a promotional flyer or automotive rendering? Done. And, would you like that in metallic cocoa fuscia?

Ben Hermance's mother still has Ben's first rendering that was identifiable as a car. He was 4 years old when he drew that blue tow truck. Art was always a passion after that day, but Ben didn't consider it as a career until concepts by Chip Foose, Steve Stanford, Thom Taylor, and others convinced him to forfeit a full university academic/sports scholarship in his sophomore year and pursue a career in design. He won a truck design contest in 2004, started doing renderings for free to get exposure, and set up an online gallery of his work. His efforts have netted him more than 30 project vehicles he had designed, some of which debuted at SEMA this past year.

Kristina Biane is a self-taught artist and graphic designer, an unabashed car fanatic, and a motorsports nut. She has melded her imagination to her love for motorized transportation, and built a freelance career as a designer. Her renderings have appeared in automotive magazines and have inspired projects which have been shown at SEMA and elsewhere. In fact, Kristina even rendered our SuperCrew project way back in 2000. She has teamed up with Jeff Biane on SEMA projects, designed aftermarket body kits, and worked for Hot Wheels Collectibles, Modern Image Signworks, Jada Toys, Johnny Lightning, and Maisto International. Her purview even includes T-shirts, custom paint, and vinyl graphics.

Jamie grew up in the foothills of Southern California's San Gabriel Valley, where he planted his passion for automobiles in the fertile SoCal car culture. Preferring the fantasy of paper, pencils, and dreams to the reality of axle grease under his fingernails, Jamie decided to attend Art Center College and pursue a career in automotive design. An internship at Kawasaki introduced him to the world of powersports, which he further explored as a designer at Thor Motocross. Now, Jamie is back at Kawasaki as the company's U.S. designer.

Fabricator. Designer. Dreamer. Todd Merrick has been into cars since he knew what they were, and he has leveraged his passion for the automobile by studying transportation design at Pratt Institute in New York City. Not sure if the whole car thing would pay the bills, Todd moved on to Columbus College to learn how to design furniture. Luckily, his friend, Wes, saved him from a life of drawing bookshelves by recruiting him to move to Las Vegas and work in his new shop as a custom fabricator, bodyman, and designer. Todd's cousin brought his mechanical aptitude into the fray, and Sin City Kustomz was born.

What's that? This was the question posed when I pointed out this rendering to one of the staffers here at Truckin'. When I replied that this was a Dodge, it only confused matters further, because it doesn't look like any other Dodge on the road right now. In fact, it looks like a fresh take on the new Silverado. But it is a Dodge, of sorts, based on an '80s Ram. That was when all of the pickups resembled bricks, and it was before the '90s redesign that ushered in the Ram's current, curvy, big-rig inspired front end. Jason Battersby's rendering did borrow some design cues from the latest Ram, and it stands out a bit with its crosshair grille. Overall, this concept yanks the hair-band era pickup directly into the 21st century.

Troy Bourland sees a truck in everything. The first time we spotted his work was when someone at a local custom shop showed us a pickup-truck version of a Chevrolet HHR. That was Troy's handiwork. He had converted GM's retro-styled crossover into a compact pickup, affirming that the bulbous back end of an HHR really can look compelling.

Brian Stupski was raised by a family of car lovers. He spent many weekends wandering junkyards with his father in search of the perfect part. His mom was an enthusiastic owner of a '56 Chevy, as well as an active member of her car club. Brian dog-eared many issues of Hot Rod, Car Craft, and other magazines, and eventually started building "custom" plastic model cars out of multiple kits. Drawing cars became a compulsion that gobbled up much of his time, in and out of school. Wanting to indulge his love for automobiles in college, Brian got his feet wet by studying to be an automotive engineer. However, that dream ended after a professor allegedly told him: "Math doesn't like you. It told me so." Taking the hint, Brian decided to cannonball into the fine arts studies instead-a move he has not regretted.

Travis Pruis' father loved cars, a passion that Travis apparently inherited. Drawing has been a mainstay of Travis' existence since he was in kindergarten, where both art and autos melded together early on. As a kid, Travis remembers watching his father sketch cars while he sat in the kitchen and chatted on the phone. Travis would take these doodles after his dad discarded them and copy or customize them. Sometimes, Travis drew boats and whatever else happened to be around the neighborhood. His mom's cousin did some designs for George Barris way back when and taught at Pasadena Design Center, yet another vector of the custom bug. Joining a truck club, Down to Earth, completed his downfall into the competitive world of custom one-upmanship.

DJM Suspension and Stylin' Concepts '07 Tahoe Sweepstakes

Artwork: Stylin' Concepts
This animation of a fully customized '07 Tahoe became a reality by DJM Suspension and Stylin' Concepts. They created a Chevy Tahoe by using great parts from great companies, to make the perfect street cruiser. If you can see yourself behind the wheel of this Chevy, go to www.truckinweb.com and enter yourself in the giveaway sweepstakes. No purchase necessary. For more information on this good-looking ride, flip backward to page 174.

Murray Pfaff has worked for years as a designer in America's automotive heartland. A close-watcher of auto trends, he thought it would be a cool idea to energize the Chevrolet Colorado. He thought that GM got the overall size and proportions of the S-10 replacement correct, and he liked the aggressive demeanor presented by the sculpted flanks and angled wheel arches. But, the front end didn't excite him. So, Murray infused elements from GM's redesigned trucks and SUVs. He borrowed lights and a grille from the new Tahoe, narrowed the grille, and cleaned up the bumper with a narrowed TrailBlazer bumper cover.

Gerard Blommaert loved horses. Or at least he did when he started to draw them when he was 5 years old. But after his family moved from Europe to Edmonton, Alberta, Gerard got to see his first '56 Chevy. And at age 6 or so, he was hooked and his fascination shifted from horses to horsepower. Much later, he spent a couple of years in a body shop, where he slung Bondo, shaped metal, and started to learn the fine art of painting flames. But the dirt-free and creative call of art school lured him away to Salt Lake City, where he attended Utah Technical College at Salt Lake (where he learned the fine art of automotive design and where he met his wife). That was more than 30 years ago.

Custom trucks know no boundaries, and neither does good design. Truckin' has a strong contingent of fans outside of North America, some of whom watch trends here in order to reapply them for local consumption. Take a look at this Dodge Ram. It looks similar to a project truck you might see in SoCal...but different. It's an example of California style seen through German eyes.

David Lewin grew up in a family of machinists and almost took up that mantle for his own career. But an abiding fascination with cars, leavened by tinkering with them and the resulting sucking on busted knuckles, convinced him to turn away from trade school and study classic industrial design at Rhode Island School of Design. After many years of directing design in the corporate world his neckties felt more like nooses, so he surrendered to his hot-rod heart and went freelance. Now he designs for auto companies and custom shops, and as an industrial design consultant. Sometimes he even works on his own automotive projects.

Bombarded with an overflow of Radical Renderings here at Truckin' Magazine, we thought it would be a neat idea to bring you some of the additional renderings from former featured artists via an exclusive online section. We hope you enjoy these innovative creations!

Shaven lives in Sulfur, Louisiana-an unusual mix of words until you realize that Shaven is the nickname for Benjamin Powers. His town is named after the chemical and mining ventures that put the city on the map. A young guy, Shaven has been freelancing as a designer for a short time now. He flips between designing and his day job, juggling assignments like a short-order cook during a lunch rush.

Shlomo Fattal is a CARFREK. At least that's what his license plate says. As a kid he participated in newspaper trivia contests that challenged participants to identify a car from only a photo of a specific detail. He could glimpse a picture of a car zoomed in so close it revealed only the molecules of the exterior metal and he could still blurt out the make, model, and marital status of the driver. OK, that's an exaggeration, but only a slight one. He won around 13 of these contests before he was 18 years old. Yeah, he's a FREK.

So you want to build a cover truck? Chances are that you will have to spend a lot of time, money, and imagination to get a custom truck or SUV published on the cover of Truckin' magazine. You're on your own when it comes to how you spend your time and money, but we can help stoke your imagination. It takes vision to build a radical ride. To pull that vision out of your head, however, it helps to start with an artist's depiction of what your project will look like when it is finished. That rendering becomes a blueprint that guides the buildup process so that you end up with the truck that you always wanted.

We're going to get weird this month. OK, maybe "weird" isn't the best word to use. How about "outlandish," "cutting edge," or "fascinating"? Typically, we cover one artist per issue, and the work tends to be vehicles that are creative, unique customs, or forward-looking OE concepts rendered by someone working on the outside of the auto industry and looking in. This time we snagged a couple of ideas from the creative studios of the largest automaker in the world.

Jimmy Smith drew his first hot rods when he was three years old. We're guessing that the concept was box-shaped and bristling with machine guns and rocket launchers. Luckily, his style evolved over the years, especially as he has worked with hot-rod shops and individuals around the country. Squeeg's Kustoms, Pinkee's Rod Shop, Boyd Coddington, Rick Dore, and many others have tapped Jimmy to bring their brainstorms to life.