Create Your Ultimate Profile Picture on Facebook & Twitter by Miniaturising Your Car with the SquashMyCar App

Posted on October 1, 2012 by SpeedingHippo

If you love cars now is the perfect opportunity to turn your own car into a stunning profile picture for your Facebook or Twitter account. The SquashMyCar App for iPhone & Android allows you to create stunning profile pictures for all your social networking accounts and any sites you use that ask for a user image. The beauty of the app is that once the app miniaturises your car it is the perfect size to fit in the square space used for most profile pictures. So why not download the app from our website www.squashmycar.com or go to the App Store (for iPhone & iPod Touch) or Android Market (for Android Phones). Then follow this simple guide to create your perfect car profile pic!

1. Open your app and press start! When you hear that engine roar into life and see the dashboard light up you are ready to choose between taking a photo or using an image stored on your device. When you take a photo make sure you take a side-on image just like you can see below.

Make sure you are using a side-on image like this. Move the pink line through the centre of each wheel then press the green ‘next’ arrow.

2. Now the discs appear. Put your finger on the left disc and move it so that it covers the left wheel. Now move the right disc to the right wheel in the same way. Press the green arrow.

3. You arrive at screen 3/5

Enlarge each circle with your finger so that each wheel and a portion of wheel arch is covered. As you get to know the SquashMyCar app you can experiment here – with some cars only a tiny bit of wheel arch is needed, with others they look great when a lot of wheel arch is included.

4. When you press the green arrow the doors will close. They will open to reveal that body of the car has been squashed and the round wheels will appear on top ready to be put in place.

5. Touch each wheel and move it to where it looks just right. Remember, you can put the wheels where you like but they look best if you get all the bodywork around each wheel within the bodywork of the squashed down car. If you don’t you can be left with wheels sticking out like on the screen shot above.

When you have positioned the wheels just right, press the green arrow and the doors will close. When they open you have your final squashed car!

6. Your Squashed Car!

7. Save the image by pressing the save icon (top left). The image will now be saved in your folder.

When you go to the folder and select the image it will look something like this:

8. To turn Your Squashed Car into your unique profile picture you can move the image around when you upload it to your social networking site to get it looking just right. If you find that the site you are uploading to will not let you move the image as you want it, before you upload it simply crop your image into a square shape. To do this you can use the cropping tool on apps like Instagram or Camera+. Once uploaded, your squashed car is now your unique profile picture. Congratulations and … SQUASH IT!

We would love you to join the SquashMyCar community on Facebook and Twitter. We would love to see your creations so please get in touch.

Great SquashMyCar Squashes from our Facebook Page

Posted on August 13, 2012 by SpeedingHippo

We are well pleased with the great response from everyone to our Facebook and Twitter pages which have proved fantastic for sharing the best squashes from all our followers. A big thank you as always and here are a few of our favourites!

The SquashMyCar Noble M12 has arrived!

Posted on June 3, 2012 by SpeedingHippo

Back in April we showed you the journey the SquashMyCar Noble M12 had been on from design concept to almost finished product. Well now the finishing touches have been added, not least painting the wheels and doing some tidying up inside also. Our motor is now running (and looking) like a dream and we will be heading off to Le Mans in it on Wednesday 13th June in good time for the race on the 16th. We will be staying with our friends at Travel Destinations close to the Porsche curves and will be updating you through our Facebook and Twitter pages throughout our trip – why not follow us on these pages to get stuck right in with the SquashMyCar and Le Mans spirit. If you see us at Le Mans, come and say hello. We can’t wait to get out there and meet fellow petrolheads, gearheads and car squashers. Until then, enjoy the pics below and …. SQUASH IT!

More Great Squashes from SquashMyCar

Posted on June 1, 2012 by SpeedingHippo

A very big thank you to everyone out there sending in their squashes to our Facebook and Twitter pages – we love seeing what you are up to. Remember to get in touch if you have any problems using the SquashMyCar app – we are always available to help with any problems, tips etc. This is a great place to add some of our favourite recent squashes, so here goes …. SQUASH IT!

More Reasons to Love SquashMyCar

Posted on April 30, 2012 by SpeedingHippo

We have been having a cool time here at SquashMyCar. Our Noble M12 is currently at Jetstream Motorsport at Bruntingthorpe, Leicestershire getting tweaked and finally sorted – it’s also getting its wheels painted orange! Not long to go to Le Mans which will be the SquashMyCar Noble’s maiden outing in its new livery. See our previous post for full details. Thank you to everyone for sending in your squashed cars, including to our Facebook and Twitter pages – after all, that’s what keeps these pages buzzing and that’s what we do this for, so that you can have a bit of fun with what we all love … CARS! SquashMyCar is now selling on a global scale which pleases us greatly – last week we must say thanks to our buddies in the USA for downloading most apps, followed by the UK, New Zealand, Australia, Spain, Japan and Canada. It’s great to know that the SquashMyCar message is fast spreading globally and we love to know that what we have created and enjoyed so much here in the UK is being enjoyed in exactly the same way so many thousands of miles away.

We pride ourselves on reacting to customer feedback and giving support to the best of our abilities. We don’t just say how can we help … we actually mean it! For that reason if anyone out there is experiencing any difficulties with the app in any way at all just get in touch and we will work our butts off to sort it for you – we promise! Just get in touch here.

We couldn’t sign off without adding a few of our favourite squashes … so here goes and until next time … SQUASH IT!

Preparing the SquashMyCar Noble M12

Posted on April 16, 2012 by SpeedingHippo

In addition to a bit of mechanical work, we have been getting the SquashMyCar Noble up to speed in a number of other ways to, including getting it looking spot on! Part of the enjoyment of creating the SquashMyCar app is getting it out there and seeing people enjoy it. We don’t believe in dry old fashioned advertising. Instead we get stuck in and that means going where car lovers go: to the shows, to the races and the best of all auto events. And if you’re gonna go, then go in style – that’s why the SquashMyCar Noble M12 is being transformed into the perfect SquashMyCarMobile. That doesn’t means we’ve squashed it (not yet at least) but we have given it a great new look. This is how we did it:

We started out on photoshop getting an idea of what we wanted. The Noble has so many scoops, curves and undulations we had to think carefully about where to place the graphics.

Sean Davis at Creative FX produced these great mock ups

Creative FX then turned the vision into reality. All that’s left is the wheels!

All that’s left now is to get the wheels painted and the SquashMyCar Noble will be ready to roll. We can’t wait to travel far and wide in it and if you spot us please come and say hello! This excellent work was carried out by Creative FX www.fxuk.net based in Bromley, Kent, UK and we are delighted with the result. Thanks guys and … SQUASH IT!

To see more of SquashMyCar join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Become part of the SquashMyCar community. SquashMyCar is an app for iPhone & Android created by Speeding Hippo.

The Writing’s on the Wall

Posted on March 27, 2012 by SpeedingHippo

SquashMyCar has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to great cars … and especially great squashed cars. But sometimes there is that squash which just captures the essence of great motoring squash pics just perfectly. This week it goes to Subaru and a bit of SquashMyCar tagging to turn the great into the outstanding. SQUASH IT!

F1 Australian GP and SquashMyCar

Posted on March 19, 2012 by SpeedingHippo

On Sunday the F1 season started and congratulations to Jenson Button for leading all the way in a fantastic performance, looking as domineering as Vettel in 2011. Vettel made his luck as usual to take 2nd and Hamilton did not quite reach his promise with third. Webber fought a good battle for fifth and Alonso was a miracle worker getting that ill-handling Ferrari to 6th. It was a great shame to see Pasto Maldonado stick his Williams in the wall on the last lap and another great shame to see Romain Grosjean retire with suspension failure so soon after the start, particularly since he qualified 3rd – now there’s someone to watch in 2012!

It was great to see the cars on track again not only for F1 but also to herald the start of the motor racing season proper across the world when SquashMyCar will get out and about to grand prix and motor racing events across the globe to bring some great images here and to our Twitter and Facebook pages where we would love to see your squashes and hear from you. As F1 fans we have decided to post some of our favourite F1 squashes. Here’s to motor racing and here’s to squashed motor cars, in the nicest possible way of course. SQUASH IT!

SquashMyCar on Facebook

Posted on March 11, 2012 by SpeedingHippo

For those of you who don’t know, SquashMyCar has a fantastic Facebook page, so fantastic that we’ve been building up a great following of seriously cool squashers who are using our Facebook page as a great place to post their most amazing squashes. We’re very pleased to see the variety of cars and the brilliant squashes you have come up with. That’s why we thought we would share some of the best squashes of the past few weeks from Facebook with you. Why not take a look and like our pages at www.facebook.com/SquashMyCar and remember to post your best stuff. We would love to see it. SQUASH IT!

Create the perfect Auto Profile Pic with Squash My Car

Posted on March 2, 2012 by SpeedingHippo

We have had numerous requests about how to make the perfect Profile Picture for Facebook, Twitter or for use on the numerous car websites and forums that so many of us use on a regular basis. Such is the level of interest on this topic that we thought it was the perfect time to do a SquashMyCar ‘How to …’ guide. So here goes: How to create the perfect auto Profile Picture with SquashMyCar.

1. Open your app and press start! When you hear that engine roar into life you are ready to choose between taking a photo or using an image stored on your device. Here I am using a Ford Focus RS stock image stored on my iPhone.

Move the line through the centre of each wheel then press the green arrow.

2. Now the discs appear. Put your finger on the left disc and move it so that it covers the left wheel. Now move the right disc to the right wheel in the same way. Press the green arrow.

3. You arrive at screen 3/5

Enlarge each circle with your finger so that each wheel and a portion of wheel arch is covered. As you get to know the app you can experiment here – with some cars only a tiny bit of wheel arch is needed, with others they look great when a lot of wheel arch is included.

When you have positioned the wheels just right, press the green arrow and the doors will close. When they open you have your final squashed car!

5. Your Squashed Car!

6. Save the image by pressing the save icon (top left). The image will now be saved in your folder.

When you go to the folder and select the image it will look something like this:

7. To turn Your Squashed Car into a profile picture, the best results are achieved when you crop the image down into a square shape. This is simply because the spaces for lots of profile pictures are square. To crop the image you need a cropping tool. There are numerous apps out there which are either free or very cheap which provide this facility. Today I am using Camera+ which carries out the cropping job quickly and easily.

8. Your final SquashMyCar Profile Picture can then be uploaded into Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or any other social networking or internet site you like. Your squashed car is now your proud profile picture. Congratulations and … SQUASH IT!