New To Me Dodge Dakota

So we bought a beater Dodge Dakota truck at a used car lot tonight. Needed a second car $300 down and $195 for a year. Dealer went over to show it to me and it wouldn't start. Had to jump start it. It did run good once started though. Trans (manual) seemed very tight, engine was purring and brakes and steering excellent. Interior smells like an ashtray cleaned with windex, no drivers seat belt clasp. Body mostly straight, inner truck bed has a dent on the front inner wall. Hey as long as it runs until it's paid off I'm good. Just need it to get to work (8 miles each way) and haul stuff. I pick it up tomorrow. 

Go-Kustom TV at Darrell's Tavern Hell On Wheels 2013

Go-Kustom went out to Darrell's Tavern, in Shoreline, WA. for the fourth annual Hell On Wheels Show. A parking lot car show, followed by bands playing into the wee hours inside the cozy club. We set up our big out door screen and showed NASCAR footage, old Hot Rod films, a sneak peek of Go-Kustom TV Season 5, Episode 2 and the updated trailer for my new documentary Rats & Gassers: Kustom Kulture Takes A Ride. Turn out of cars for the car show was lighter than last year, but it seemed like more people attended the event overall this year. Always cool to show my films on a big screen outdoors for all of Aurora Ave. to see. This is a main street in North Seattle. Cars kept stopping by the side of the road to watch bits of the films. One day I hope to own an actual drive-in.

Me And My Bass

My daughter took this pic of me playing my Schecter Hellcat VI Bass. 

Downtown Meeting

Had a meeting with our new Go-Kustom Films intern to drop some video files for editing at Starbucks on the Seattle Waterfront. It was such an awesome afternoon. This year has been amazing weather wise here. While much of the country is experiencing heat waves and flooding we are getting three solid months of sunshine and 75-80 degree non-humid weather. Love this town.

1965 Dodge Coronet Convertible Model

Just built this Polar Light 1/25th scale Dodge Coronet Convertible model kit. This is a snap-tight kit that has some ill fitting parts. Already painted. I am really starting to dig these cars. Mostly because of all the A/FX racers of the day and the unique styling. I still like '66-67 Coronets much more, but these cars are growing on me.

Series 4 Go-Girls Trading Cards

These four cards in Go-Girls Pin-Up Trading Cards Series 4 are done or at the printers.

Tom Sanders Pick-Up

Been working the last few days on Tom Sanders interview section of Rats & Gassers. Cut down some of the GoPro sections and driving scenes, getting rid of the shaky camera stuff, bad angles, etc. I really dig Toms truck. Especially the commercial headlights, really set the front end off.

More Facebook Lovin'

My new documentary film series - Rats & Gassers: Kustom Kulture Takes A Ride has been getting some serious lovin' the last week and a half. It started when I posted the new and updated trailer for the show. The trailer has a reach today of 48,848 people (views, shares, likes). Our page post reach is up by 952.7 percent !!!! This jump has also started reaching all our posts with even the more mundane being seen by thousands more people. 

Rats & Gassers Animations

Part of making this documentary has been making little word and graphic animations that illustrate a point in the narration. I just finished working on a short animation showing how Tom Sanders shortened and chopped his Sedan to make a 1929 Ford Extended Cab. I actually started this artwork as a side bar graphic that appeared in Ol' Skool Rodz magazine a few months back (for a feature  I did on Tom's truck). For the animation I used Photoshop with various parts in layers and exported as TIFFs, keeping the transparency background layer intact. The actual motion in the animation was done in Final Cut Pro 7.