Cars
The second Disney project was to paint a few characters from the film “Cars”. Our main project was to paint “Mater” the old tow truck but UK Loco were also building “Lightning McQueen” “Luigi” and “Guido” and these also need a little Scenic work.
This was only the second, full size Mater in the world to be built, the first one being at Disneyland in America. The fiberglass shell had been built, prepared and primed in an orange satin finish before being handed over to us to start the scenic effects.
We started to build up the layers of paint and texture to achieve the rust and sun burnt effects which cover the majority of Mater. We had detailed artwork from Pixar of every angle of Mater to work too and Kevin Mahony from Disney flew over from the States to give us Art Direction on the project.
Towards the end I sign wrote the doors with the “Tow Mater” logos and then Martin Travers got to work aging them down to match the Pixar images exactly.After two weeks Mater was taken outside in the daylight to be photographed and Kevin emailed the pictures to Pixar for approval.
Luigi had arrived back from a local car body shop sporting his yellow top coat and in between him having his wheels fitted I was able to add a light aging to his paintwork to add that touch of realism.
Lighting McQueen is such a new and clean race car he only had a light spray around the windows and some pinstripes added to the wheels, the graphics were applied by a local company.
I thoroughly enjoyed working on the Cars, particularly Mater, and I would like to thank Martin for his hard work and endless collection of Ska and Reggae which kept us going through the weeks! Kevin for his expert knowledge of all things paint( and his airbrush.) And all the Staff at UK Loco for making us feel welcome. UK Loco have built four superb vehicles which are identical in every detail to the animated versions in the film. Have a look at Disneyland Paris.
