SRM Round 4 - Côte d'Ivoire

The fourth round of the 2025-2026 Sim Rally Masters season is upon us! After picking all of their various car parts out of the Italian scenery our competitors will be heading south to test their mechanics to their limit in the most gruelling event on the calendar.

 I made a poster.

I really wanted to focus on the "car in a water splash" image as it's an iconic feature of the rally, but i didn't want to make it a realistic, muddy pit.

I used origami african animals on white paper because i wanted them to look like a regular water splash at first glance but reveal their shape on closer inspection. And the blue water made from ripped colour-coated card isn't realistic to that aforementioned Ivory Coast mud, but blue is a visual shortcut for water. And the car as a cut-out of an in-game screenshot using a safari-spec Audi added to the mixed-media collage style, toned a little pink and yellow to reflect the light in the image.

The watercolour-effect pink sunset behind the car is meant to invoke imagery of the savannah, a generalised African trope. The pale colours and gentle gradients go with the dark blue water and off-white splashes in a subtle nod to the works of Katsushika Hokusai, which i thought neatly tied in with the origami.

Unfortunately the image was coming off as too cold looking for Africa, so i tried to pump it up by adding a classic acacia tree over the sun (as seen in a thousand images of Africa), a bit more plant life to the sides to invoke the more jungle-y nature of the rally, lowered the horizon to favour the sky, and warmed up the image a lot. We needed some heat!

But i missed that colour palette from the start, it was getting a bit dark and serious. I merged the two ideas. The paler pink sky was offset by the red lettering at the top, it has the heat and the lighter look at the same time.

The last thing was to check that Bandama is indeed an actual place, as the rally was formally called the Rallye Bandama for a very long time. Turns out it is in fact a river and not a city, and the rally runs out of the capital city Yamoussoukro. Art is no good if geography nerds still come at you!