What happen to all the cool helmets..

Actually to wear that you need to be close to winning a world championship because that helmet is that RAD! 
As cousin Eddy coined…She’s a beaut Clarke.

I miss those days. Heres a few from my past. Hangin in my dads shop. They went through hell and i didn't replace them nearly enough back in those days lol.

Thanks, I'm still painting - 34th year in business this year..!

Excellent photos.  I hope this Thread becomes a 20 pager !!!!    Here's my custom Arai from the mid-1990's.

Here's another of my custom Arai helmets from the mid-1990's.  My brother painted this one to.

Found this prior thread on Vital. I even have a couple in there when painting under another name that were featured in a magazine. Great to see that.

https://www.vitalmx.com/forums/Moto-Related,20/80s-amp-90s-Custom-painted-helmets-of-the-stars,1297335

I have a massive collection of helmet paint jobs in print that I saved as inspiration. All during the time I was active. No web back then. So magazines, advertisements, and a few other sources were eagerly saved/cut out and kept. If this thread continues with traction, I will scan in all of them.

Great thread here, and thanks for the interest and contributions. Good times...

Back in the mini racing days, me and all my friends went amateur hour with hobby shop spray cans on our moto4's trying to replicate exactly this look. 

 

Here's one for ex British Champ Paul Cooper from around 1994/95l 

Don Serrano's style was incredibly easy to spot. The simplicity of his layouts was all due to his unique style. Completely original, and cutting his own path. His use of Nagel style artwork was another concept he incorporated which no else was doing. This guy like Troy Lee was also a true artist in the commonly understood sense.

Those two guy's can be credited as the originators of helmet painting on a large scale. Just my opinion. 

Trust me, its extremely difficult to copy another artist's layout. Much less learning to flow the design, or angle it, in such a way that it looks fast without moving. I imagine anyone painting helmets understood this challenge early on. Serrano and Lee were early masters of this. 

I just found him on Instagram. So he is still painting. The helmets I saw are in a different style. Definitely more complex layouts. So much so I wouldn't even recognize the work.

Maybe someone on here will reach out to him and get a quote for a late 80's/90's lay out. Those layouts would have been super easy for him to produce due to the methods he used to break up color and create outlines.

https://www.instagram.com/donserranocustomdesigns/

holy macaroni is that clean

Eric Nye 2009 Canadian 250 mx champ trailer park boys theme .paint by Mike Taylor Designs James Bubba Stewart Jason Lawrence jlaw Ricky Carmichael

Wow that's a name I haven't heard for a while. I remember seeing his work when I was starting out. There was a few other guys around that time too; Gerard Designs and Ric Dupstadt are two that come to mind?

I remember seeing that one around D6 back in the day! Break it out for a Tuesday night Candytown ride. Haha

I just recently had a helmet painted by CK Designz out of WI. He has done a couple of my helmets and they always turn out amazing. He is fast and super easy to work with. @CKDesignz_llc is his IG

Max Chilton Indy 500 helmet

Does anyone know of someone in Australia that does custom helmet paints? I want one so bad but just have no idea where to look. 

Quick story.  Back in the late 90’s early 2000’s at one of the Houston supercrosses I ran into a guy and his buddy at the Holiday Inn bar after the race that were from Australia, turns out it was a Vital member with the screen name Whitey.  His buddy painted helmets at the time as did I and we chatted about that for a minute then we went on a titty bar adventure that ended up being a bust but we gave it a hell of a try. Drove down to the BYOB full nude place down in Galveston and I’m not sure between the 3 or 4 girls in there they could put together a full set of teeth. 

What’s up Whitey, hope all is well. Does you buddy still paint helmets? Sorry I forgot his name. Been a minute!

i ship worldwide @bigdogpaint on insta or DM for my phone number

LA designs, RStar designs or Antman. Luke at LA is an mx-er and really into the retro scene, and builds some cool bikes.

Next level

Jason outstanding job on that last helmet, not discounting your other ones. You have immense talent and passion for slinging paint. Few would even think of replicating the Indy helmet. Great job.

@bigdogpaint401 @Jason XCmtb Thank you both! I will for check out all of those. 

Maybe not at yhe pro level, but locally all the top kids have custom helmets. They're pretty badass

Thanks, I really appreciate it! The Indy helmet was a lot of fun to do. It took some working out on how to get the engraved look but I was really happy how it turned out. Got some nice mentions on the TV race coverage too 🙂

You’re welcome Jason… I will start scanning what I saved as inspiration…

What a blast from the past, I remember all those custom lids from back in the day. I would go over every detail from cover to cover of all my old Mx magazines when I was a kid and drool over every helmet. When I used to race I used Pro art works for all my custom lids since I live here in the east coast. Still got my McGrath replica bell moto 4 and my other helmets got stolen.😆