What happen to all the cool helmets..

Any of the painters in this thread taking in work? I have a brand new white Arai that I want to send to someone.  

TLD does still do paint work, The 3 main guys are still at it, Hitoshi, Jay Stemska and Isi...they are amazing at what they do...but, a lot of the creative work they do is energy drink helmets (not as fun as old school freedom) and TLD wants to sell their production graphics-so putting a rider in a sick custom lid doesn't really help sell the "Astro Graphic SE4 in RED" etc etc....but yeah, those boys are still painting and are the best in the business. I had the pleasure of watching those guys paint every day for 11 years and was the highlight of my day to watch them paint.

Riders started getting paid, rightfully so to use their helmet as a billboard. Monster, Red Bull, Rockstar, etc, etc. 

Even the creative genius of Troy Lee can’t do much when contractually a huge Green claw has to be 80%+ of the visible helmet. 

Ugly- certainly but without the energy drinks our sport would be in deep trouble financially. 

 

Thanks for posting all these, wow they bring back some memories. I kept most of those articles back in the day and regularly used them for inspiration when starting out. How awesome were the helmets back then? So cool.

Bobs' Crazy Brush... that's another name I'd forgotten. Wonder if any of these old painters are still going?

There’s huge potential for some cool helmets but I think they are held back by contracts. It seems monster is contracted with ap designs (villopoto’s) painter and I’m sure Red Bull has a certain painter they use exclusively. There are some cool designer/painters out there though. Malcom is having korsace paint his helmets, which is like the paint marker matte finish style. Here are a couple paint jobs/concept design I’ve seen recently that use the monster claw but are still cool and are worth a follow

Josh Grant always had badass helmets. I think tagger did his. 

Plenty of amazing painters all across the globe. For some reason moto has been left behind. Probably constraints with team or manufacturers wanting riders in stock designs. Road racing and auto racing has sick helmets being turned out every week. 

Some of my old helmets.  I love my kids go kart helmet.  

Gotta love the fin.

Ha-Ha Travis Mini Helmet.

They have custom helmets for individual races in F1, I've never understood how they churn them out so fast. It must cost someone a fortune, but I assume the driver doesn't pay for it? 

They likely plan ahead of time  and have them all designed and approved before the season starts. They are not repainting the same helmets over and over. Fresh helmets evetime. I would love to see the collections of helmets the F1 drivers must have

Most of the MX tams have all of their graphics kits designed and approved before the seasons starts. All the special designs for themed races, the team pit clothing and so on. So it would only make sense that the F1 teams would have plans for the next seasons stuff before it starts with all of the money involved.   

https://www.facebook.com/xtremekolors/

Most of the F1 helmets are done with wraps and decals now, there just isn't the time to paint them. Drivers get anything up to 30 helmets a year (some get more), and the painters get next to no time to do them, so hand-painted stuff is mostly impossible. Add in the replica work and you can add a zero on the amount of helmets per driver in some cases.

The Bell auto division has a paint shop that produces designs using waterslide decals - a bit like the old model kits but on a bigger scale.! The majority of the rest of F1 helmets are done by JMD in Germany. It's a big operation with about 16 guys there, and they are very good at combining wraps with paint, and turning helmets out fast.

I last worked in F1 in 2015 and I was burned out. It's a very cool industry from the outside looking in, but it's pretty hellish being in it for any amount of time, and it's got much worse since then.

Trust me; nothing in F1 is planned and sorted before the season starts 😄

That’s a really fascinating insight, thanks for sharing

Bell is releasing a limited edition. 

https://youtu.be/Ge6bKapGENc?si=eCoZ7XCtMaIUIlrH

I love the retro stuff!

Not retro, but they also have a Tomac replica.

https://youtu.be/9NOMnqdZ9vY?si=BdAzgxHHwgdjJUwp

I too saved every mag clip I could for inspiration. Used pieces and parts of lots of those helmets.  

Near the end of your scans.  I painted and wore a Larry Ward replica for couple years.  Love what I though was fire and smoke through the tears of the blue and pink. 

@lapped rider.  Unfortunately now that I have lots of time to paint, I don’t have the facility.  Thanks for the nudge though…

Anyone wanting their lid painted, im cranking out helmets every week 🤙 @bigdogpaint on instagram

Polen is the goat

Thanks to @bigdogpaint401 

Always wanted one. Based on JMB

Great taste, great execution!