History of r/c paint?

[THEYTOOKMYTHUMB]

My wife always says that I think about the weirdest things and I guess she’s right. As I stand here and fold laundry( ) trying to wrap my brain around Eau Rouge’s latest paint I got to thinking about old school paint. When exactly did the tide turn? I mean you had Andy’s of course and reign79 has some old bodies that are super sweet that were painted by some other guy(who’s name I can’t remember), but they’ve just gotten ridiculous now. The whole flames and multi-layered graphics are cool I guess, but I still love the old school stuff. Anybody have any insight to the history of r/c paint, or will this end up as another ridiculous impossible to answer post??

p.s. Vintagemishal and a few others do great old school paint too, I didn't mean to leave them out.

[rctenracer]

I like the old school stuff myself. My guess on the change is when the RTR stuff started coming out with the hopes of boosting sales for the younger crowd. Good question but who knows . Mausami had some wild paint jobs on his cars that would be condsidered old school.

[Eau Rouge]

You can watch the transition of paint styles with the onslaught of touring cars across the globe, and then into the United States. As the class started out to be scale sedan racing, the paint stayed realistic. Once the cars started to move to a symmetrical style (see Atsushi Hara and follow his style). As times changes with personal fashion and art, so did the paint schemes of many Asian racers.

Those styles have permeated U.S racing on road and off road, and right now, many painters can't do anything else but that style. There are a lot of painters today who have portfolios filled with virtually identical paint jobs that couldn't do anything else if they were asked. IT's too bad, as there are a lot of talented painters out there with no creativity, but I digress.



I think you can also document the end of that "old school" style when Andy's (Andy Jacobsen) stopped painting and selling pre-painted bodies. His style was hugely influential for that whole era of race paint.




Just my observations.



dc

[THEYTOOKMYTHUMB]

So basically we went from Knight Rider to The Fast And The Furious...

[Coelacanth]

So basically we went from Knight Rider to The Fast And The Furious...

And The Fast and the Furious was probably influential with the current fascination with plastering stickers all over one's ricer, something you never saw back in the muscle car era. Back then as now, I never liked the idea of putting too many stickers on a vehicle, real or scale model. Some people spend hours doing up a nice paint-job, then obscure half the job with decals. Not my thing at all, I try to have a minimalist view when it comes to sticker application, and I avoid obscuring a nice paint scheme with stickers.

Too many cars I see these days have too many stickers and overly garish, gaudy paint schemes.

[markt311]

I have to cover up my crappy paintjobs with stickers.

[Charlie don't surf]

I have to cover up my crappy paintjobs with stickers.

Hell, my crappy paint jobs are nothing but stickers

[THEYTOOKMYTHUMB]

I have to cover up my crappy paintjobs with stickers.

Hell, my crappy paint jobs are nothing but stickers

Now don't be so hard on yourself Reg. I mean this paintjob is GR-R-REAT!

[JK Racing]

I think you can also document the end of that "old school" style when Andy's (Andy Jacobsen) stopped painting and selling pre-painted bodies. His style was hugely influential for that whole era of race paint.

Andy still sells his painted bodies, just only at the shop where he works. I will attempt to get a cell phone shot of the "wall" of painted cars.

[JK Racing]

[RedScampi]

The problem for me with the fancy mulit-colored, many layered, flamed, carbon fiber, etc, etc paint schemes is that you have to look very hard at some of them to tell they weren't mass produced. It's just like the full size hot rodding stuff. Do you guys remember when pastels were all the rage, then suddenly the car manufacturers started churning out copies? Then they went to neon graphics on the hot rods and soon you could buy a low end Plymouth Horizon with a "cool" neon stripe. The point is, if there is one is that the car shouldn't be all about the paint. The paint should complement the car not obscure it. As a friend of mine says, Any thing worth doing is worth over doing.

[Coelacanth]

The paint should complement the car not obscure it. As a friend of mine says, Any thing worth doing is worth over doing.

I couldn't agree more. A paint scheme should somehow flow with the body lines. I remember reading that in a hot rod magazine when I was in my teens, probably Popular Hot Rodding (in the early 80's). Cars with mostly straight lines should have stripes or graphics that are mostly straight, to compliment the lines; cars with flowing curves should have curved lines/graphics. Although that's not a rule, it's a useful guideline in helping choose a paint scheme that works for a particular car body.

On the other hand, I also can see the fun in having a really eye-catching, "in-your-face" paint-job. These are mostly off-road buggies capable of high speeds and big-air jumps, not cars we drive to school, work, or the grocery store every day, so why not?

I prefer a more understated paint-job with few decals obscuring it; YMMV.

[[email protected]]

At first everyone who gets into RC wants to duplicate the box art. Then as with all things, people learn more about their hobby and want to take it up a notch. So the get a "Custom hand painted" body to show off at the track and to their racing buddies. It seems like another way to out do each other, or compete, even if it is just in the pits. Since from 50 feet it is hard to tell how much effort goes into some of the bodies we paint, it can't really be said that it looks better on the track from far away, so it must be for the pits?

I think it started back in the late seventies, when on road gas racers were trying to find a way to stand out with their gas pan cars, racers like Art Carbonel, Butch Kloeber, Ralph Burch, Tony Neisenger, Chuck Moon were the second generation of them and are better known then the real pioneers from the seventies. There are tons of other racers I can't think of off the top right now. They started painting their bodies more then one color to try and stand out.

As more and more painters enter into the arena for battle and more and more racers want to stand out, the work gets pushed to the limit, only held back by how much work a painter is willing do to for a few dollars an hour and how many hours they are willing to spend on each body.



Let the battle continue! haha

...Jim
W.E.D.