A couple of years ago Nickelodeon started the Nick Grand Prix which is a radio controlled car race. Teams are put together by combining crew members from the various shows and departments at the studio. Ours was the Danny Phantom/Fairly OddParents team. The cars for each team are customized, raced, judged and then auctioned off to support the arts program at nearby Washington Elementary School. It’s a very worthwhile cause, and lots ‘o fun to boot.
The race has been held twice so far. The first year the car was built by Steve Silver, Ben Balistreri and myself. If I can find the photos of that car I’ll post them. That was a wild ride. The car below was built for the second, not-quite-annual race. Somehow I managed to finagle my way into the position to design and build the car myself.
The building process was waaaaay more elaborate than it needed to be, but I had a vision… What I did was take a plaster casting from the stock body that came with the car, then I sculpted the relief work on top of that base, (what they called “gingerbreading” in the propmaking community), and finally brought it to a local prop shop where I had it vacuuformed. Since the gingerbreading was so delicate, the original didn’t survive more than one off. (You should have seen the look on my face when then guy pulled out a mallet and began whacking the mold to get the sculpt out.) Thank God the the final vacuuform turned out okay, although I would have liked to get a couple more tries using different thicknesses of vinyl to get better detail.
I then primed and painted it with a purplish to greenish color changing paint and hit the sides with some silver and gold metal flake, then I clear coated it.
We didn’t win the race, (grumble…grumble), but we did win the Coolest Car trophy!
Click on the images for enlargements:
Photos Courtesy of Ray Leong
