Come Join Us in Louisville!

Motorburg announced that it would be presenting a “Design Center” attraction at the 2010 N.S.R.A. Nationals in Louisville, KY – August 5th through the 8th.

Motorburg.com, the online resource for automotive designers, artists and enthusiasts, with an emphasis on rod & customs, will be heading up this uniquely entertaining venue.

The website features art and design galleries by an associate group of some of the hottest artists and designers in the industry as well as a thriving Forum of international talent. Increasingly, it’s becoming the “go to place” for an ever-changing array of articles and tutorials for all who appreciate the form and function of the American style of custom built automobile.

Motorburg’s associate artist list reads like a “who’s who” of rod & custom art and design and includes: Darrell Mayabb – Thom Taylor – Jimmy Smith – C•Cruz – Greg Tedder – Ralph Burch – Brian Stupski – C. Smith… as well as CARtoon greats Nelson Dewey and Errol McCarthy. The Design Center gallery will display art by these associates as well as prints and portfolios by Motorburg’s talented forum members.

Additionally, the exhibit will display several rods and customs designed by the stylists, along with drawings and illustrations involved in the actual build.

The 1967-1968 ABR-winning Invader

Of special interest will be the display of the “Invader” – America’s Most Beautiful Roadster in both 1967 & ‘68 and the subject of a Motorburg Forum design challenge, as well as Egon’s ‘41 Buick, a Charlie Smith concept, and East-coast show favorite and Motorburg icon.

The 1941 Buick custom designed by Motorburg's Charlie Smith

You’ll also get to watch as artists work in the exhibit’s two design studios, in traditional and digital fashion. The public is invited to get up close and personal as the designers do their magic on paper and monitor.

So, stop by and “talk shop” with the artists, builders and industry guests at the “Motorburg Design Center”. They’re in space 1001 through 1003 at this year’s NSRA Nats.

* Join our Forum and read more about the Design Center HERE.

It’s been a period of great growth in the Motorburg Forums over the past few months, and we’ve seen quite a few new faces participating in the lively discussions, sharing work, and generally making the ‘Burg a great place to be! As the Mayor of Motorburg, I’d like to take this opportunity to personally thank each one of you for your participation and support in making this community a great resource for automotive artists and designers.

As you know, we added the Motorburg Network, which will act as a feature similar to Facebook and other social network on the web, but with a very noticeable difference:

On the Motorburg Community Network, it’s ONLY ARTISTS AND DESIGNERS. You’re not lost among thousands and thousands of other users, or worse, among folks only out to market their products, music or anything else. The logic behind this was to give the artists an opportunity to make connections with one another, have an additional (or even primary, if you don’t have a website) space on the ‘net to display your work, and get the word out about it!

Here’s the truly magical part about the Motorburg Community Network:
It’s a search engine optimized powerhouse. Each and every member capitalizes on the collection of keywords, search phrases and AUTOMOTIVE ART-SPECIFIC content! Consider how great that is… No watered-down searches, no outside interference, just simple use of the search engines to direct traffic to you, the artists and designers! And the more artists we have participating, the broader our reach becomes. The icing on the cake is that you can then direct the traffic from your profile here to your own site for further exploration! In essence, we’re helping to funnel the people looking for your work directly to you!

When we hatched this concept, we wanted to be certain that everyone had a number of tools at their disposal, and we added a small gallery for each artist, a landing page with a profile (load yours up with information and keyword-rich content, and you’ll climb the search engine ranks!), and even a “Wire”… This Wire is like a mini blog… use it to spread the word on new projects, work availability and more! The Wire posts are scooped up right away to the search engines, and you’ve instantly got some coverage. Combine this feature with posts in the Forums and even links back from your Twitter, MySpace or Facebook pages, and you’ve instantly created a network of information, leading customers to your door!

As always, this only grows if you utilize the tools we’ve offered, and help to spread the word! Our mission is to make Motorburg the definitive source for automotive art and design tutorials, collections of art, and, above all, THE ARTISTS THEMSELVES!

We sincerely hope that you’ll continue to be a part of Motorburg’s exciting future, and thank you for being such a dynamic part of its present. We value your ideas, input and energy, and look forward to seeing all who participate reap some great rewards!

Viva la Motorburg!

Welcome to the 'Burg!

Welcome to Motorburg USA. As you’ll notice, this is an extension of the main site, offering more of a hands-on, social network style for our members.
We hope that you’ll enjoy using the profiles, galleries, chat, groups and more, and that you’ll continue to give us feedback as we add and improve features around here!

It’s been a tremendous undertaking to get it rolling, and we’re not slowing down anytime soon, either! There are even bigger plans on the horizon, with podcasts, Twitter integration, more feature-rich blogs and more coming very soon, and we hope that you’ll take full advantage of what we’re becoming in Motorburg! Each profile can be customized to suit your needs, and the “Wire” feature is a great way to let everyone know about your latest and greatest projects, updates and news, and we hope that you’ll enjoy using these and see the benefits as well!

As always, thanks for being a part of the ‘Burg, and let us know how we’re doing!

Cover

This new book on Dean Jeffries, written by Tom Cotter (and forwarded by Bruce Meyer) is a fun look at the career of one of the most under-rated builders of all-time. As stated right from the beginning, Jeffries was never one to “toot his own horn”, and this may be a large part of the reason that many folks don’t know that much about this incredibly talented man. While he was one of the pioneers of the custom car movement (alongside the more “celebrity” names like Barris, Winfield, Von Dutch and Ed Roth), he’s always been relegated to the footnotes, or seems to play the “behind-the-scenes” role more often than not.

The humble visionary was born in Lynwood, California in 1933, the second of three children, and from an early age took an interest in cars… but preferred metal work to mechanical, as he hated to get his hands dirty. His father being a mechanic and truck driver who wrenched on race cars (midgets, namely), took young Dean to the races, further inspiring him.

Jeffries left school early to join the Army, and served during the Korean War, but was stationed in Germany, where he served duty as a map maker, and began pinstriping. Upon returning home, he worked nights in a machine shop to spend his days as an apprentice under Ken “Von Dutch” Howard. Eventually Jeffries became the “house striper” at Barris Kustom, honing his metalworking skills, and becoming a contractor to Barris, and plied his craft on such cars as the Ala Kart, Clarence Catallo’s ‘32 Ford (the very same from the Beach Boys’ Little Deuce Coupe album cover).

Jeffries' Manta Ray

Moving from Barris’ shop to Hollywood, Jeffries was in a prime location to serve movie stars, and began building specialty vehicles for the motion picture industry.
The book delves into the well-known Jeffries-Barris rivalry, offering insight to those who may not have been initiated to this historic debate. What’s truly interesting about this small part of the book is that Cotter not only gives Jeffries’ side, but takes time to talk with Barris as well, making for an entertaining aside.

Jeffries at Indy

As the book moves forward, we gain extensive insight to Jeffries’ personal life, detailing his long marriage to his late wife Row, underscoring her importance to him in many ways, and being the driving force behind his never-ending creativity. We’re treated to an extensive look at his creations, including some absolutely incredible photos from Jeffries’ personal collection, as well as those collected from sources close to him. From the aluminum masterpiece “Mantaray” to the Kyote dune buggies, we’re treated to some wildly insightful looks at the creative process, as well as Dean’s great business mind. Moving forward to his work on the Ford Custom Car Caravan (and his ahead-of-its-time Falcon Python), to the supremely well-designed Deano Toronado, we begin to see the scale of his creative genius.

The Monkeemobile

There is some tremendous coverage and in-progress photography of his many movie and television cars, including the Green Hornet’s Black Beauty, the Monkeemobile, and the absolutely immense Landmaster for the film Damnation Alley (looking over Jeffries’ designs and engineering thought for this project is almost worth the price of admission alone).  Being a creative, yet practical customizer, Jeffries built a mobile shop from a van to handle on-set repairs for movie cars, and we get a glimpse of what was, at the time a state-of-the-art rolling repair shop.

Following some mini-features on many of Dean’s creations over the years, the book hooks a big turn to his involvement in motorsports, painting cars for the Indy 500, and even includes some of his designs for an Indy car from the early 1960’s. If all of that weren’t enough, we learn about Jeffries’ work as a stuntman, performing feats that today would be deemed as too unsafe, and on one notable occasion while jumping a bridge with a truck, he broke his back. Some fantastic photos accompany this part of the book, and they go well beyond the typical studio PR shots, keeping with the book’s “personal” feel.

Pinstriping a pin-up

Overall, a very well presented book, loaded with rare photos and insight, and one of those “must-have’s” for any fan of hot rods and custom cars. It has that fabulous, high-quality Motorbooks feel with sharp photos, just the right size text, and thick pages with just enough sheen to look great, but not glare when reading. Truly a great addition to any collection, and it’ll even look bitchin’ on your coffee table!

As a monster and B-movie fanatic (even more of the artwork on the movie posters and lobby cards!), I’ve always been into the oddities or more “fringe” kinda stuff… the lesser-known works and artists, some of whom a reader or client will pick up on, and shoot me an email that shouts “I know that artist!” or “I’ve seen that before!”. It’s a great response like that which makes my day… Hopefully this installment will be no different. Let’s take a look at monster art, and do this thing by looking at two artists who inspired the hell out of me as a kid, and who recently had their influence muscle its way into some new work, James Bama and Basil Gogos.

James Bama is one of those artists whose work just floors you with technical precision… He’s a realist in the finest sense, and his incredible method of making the subject of his work look REAL, while still managing to throw in such expressive color is a tightrope act with no equal! I chose to cover Mr. Bama’s work first, as his approach is not that different from many of us in the automotive art field. He strives to create a reality… to elicit a response that makes you step back a pace or two and think “wow… it looks real”… and yet somehow, there’s just enough room to make your own interpretation, and get lost in the story each piece tells. Influenced by artists like Alex Raymond (of Flash Gordon fame) and Norman Rockwell, Bama grew up poor in New York, losing his father early and his mother having suffered a stroke. He drew from an early age, and following his service during World War II, enrolled in the Art Students League. While he’s known for his hyper-photo-real commercial illustrations in the Saturday Evening Post and covers for the Doc Savage paperback novel series (and in recent years his paintings of Western themes and subjects), I’d like to keep this installment centered on his work with the Aurora plastic model kits of the Universal Studios movie monsters.

Samples of Bama's Art

The series of kits in question were released in response to the popular Universal re-release of many of its monster films as Saturday matinee’s, and struck absolute gold. In 1961, Aurora released its first monster kit, based on Universal’s Frankenstein… followed by twelve more over the next five years (Dracula, Wolf Man, Mummy, Creature, Phantom of the Opera, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Godzilla, King Kong, Mr. Hyde, Salem Witch, Bride of Frankenstein, and Forgotten Prisoner). These kits were an outgrowth of Aurora’s already successful figure models, which centered on historical characters, and were wildly popular (not to mention collectable today… you can learn a LOT more by grabbing a copy of Bill Bruegman’s The Aurora History & Price Guide). While the kits were great, it was Bama’s box art that drew many a kid in for closer inspection, and ultimately ownership of the kits! Aurora understood that he art had to be exciting, yet toe the line so as not to offend parents. They sought out Bama, whose work on the Doc Savage books had gained him a tremendous reputation, and he created the absolutely stunning artwork which, while astoundingly detailed, left enough to the imagination to inspire young builders. I recall seeing many of these kits as a kid when we’d drop by swap meets and flea markets, but unfortunately lacked the funds to grab one… these probably would have funded a first home! Yet it was the artwork that stuck in my mind, and prompted me to draw (along with old movie posters and more).

James Bama Aurora Box Art

Bama would later move on to create cover art for paperback releases of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the reprint of King Kong, and many others. He continued to create artwork for movie posters, The Baseball Hall of Fame and clients like NBC. He simply retired from professional illustration while at the peak of his career, selecting to focus on his other passion, painting. Make it a point when browsing used book stores and flea markets to seek out samples of his work, and simply enjoy a master’s vision and skill.

The other artist I’d like to include in this quick look is Basil Gogos. Being an absolutely huge fan of old monster movies, and especially fanboy extraordinaire Forry Ackerman, it was seeing his work on covers of the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland that pushed me to work with color in entirely new ways as a young artist. Like Bama, Gogos attended the Art Students League of New York (as well as the School of Visual Arts, Phoenix School of Design and the National School of Design), and began his career as a professional after winning a contest through his school, sponsored by Pocket Books.

Born in Egypt (to Greek parents), he was the artist responsible for over fifty covers for Famous Monsters of Filmland, beginning in 1960 with Issue 9, on which he created an impressionist-style portrait of Vincent Price, using three simple colors: red, yellow and green. Gogos’ use of brilliant, high-contrast color left an impact on me like being hit by a boulder dropped from a skyscraper. I was so blown away by his ability to show such impact that I was often working this inspiration into my early color work in school. To this day, I use a bold palette and try to capture the same visual drama in my work (and like most following a master, I’ll probably never reach his level, but it’s a blast to try!).

Basils Incredible Imagery!

Basil’s work is instantly recognizable, and he’s even the man responsible for album covers from The Misfits and Rob Zombie, as well as monster trading cards and covers for Monsterscene Magazine. His work has been featured in other magazine titles as well, ranging from Wildest Westerns to Creepy and even The Spirit. After retiring from commercial illustration, he continued to create work for Universal, working as a photo retoucher in their ad department, and working on the occasional movie poster, and is also the man behind the concept art for those incredible Universal Monsters commemorative postage stamps. While his work spanned a number of genres, like WWII battle scenes, men’s adventure magazines and pin-ups, he’ll probably be best remembered for his monster work.

I hope that you’ll take some time to not only seek out more information on these tremendous talents, but appreciate their art (and those who have been influenced by them as well!)… It’s always interesting to look at someone’s work and see influences in it, and I hope that you’ll see a little bit more in mine. I’m very interested in hearing about who or what influences you and your work, and hope you’ll continue to look in as this series continues!