Photo: adry53customs/instagram
Back in 1968, when Hot Wheels launched "The Original 16", the collection managed to distill the American car culture of the era into 1:64 scale model form. Meanwhile, these tiny machines have evolved into a culture of their own, even though the principle behind it all has remained unchanged: finding brilliant excuses for adults to play with toy cars. So, why not invite the Internet to the party?
Obviously, the specialist has already taken advantage of what the world wide web has to offer by moving its Legends Tour (a 2018-born initiative that seeks out actual builds from across America to convert into models) to social media, in an effort to steer around the effects of the health crisis last year. And that's how we ended up with a memorable home-brewed 1970 Pontiac Trans Am project being shrunken to supermarket size (you'll find the winner of the 2020 Hot Wheels Legends Tour in the Instagram post below).
Besides, in 2017, Hot Wheels had selected five machines from the Project Cars 2 racing sim, vehicles it had co-designed with Slightly Mad Studios, the game's developer, for a standout series of 1:64 models.
But there seems to be an opportunity to make the connection between the Mattel-owned company and the online community even more of a two-way street.
To be more precise, the great diecast garage we're talking about, which has converted over 25,000 individual vehicle models into more-than-just-toys over the past five decades, could welcome little builds based on renderings.
These pixel paintings are gaining more traction each month, especially since the past few years have seen many artists transition into the three-dimensional land that used to be mostly populated by giants whose work we've enjoyed in Hollywood productions. Citizenship approval became a self-regulating process: once the software tools evolved along with the hardware supporting them, the younger generations started expressing themselves in this manner.
Having put over a thousand of these renderings into words until now, I can tell you that the portrait of such a young digital artist typically involves a car guy in his 20s, whose thorough understanding of the automotive phenomenon emanates from his photorealistic work.
And you might have already seen the fruits of these digital wizards' labor in dominating video game titles or even SEMA builds. In fact, from your local shop building a muscle car to afluent collectors aiming to visualize various specs of the hypercars they have on order, more and more enthusiasts occupy the business hours of the community.
Of course, some of the said giants give something back to the universe they grew up in by continuing to deliver spare time projects for the fun of it, while a new wave of teenagers is preparing to enter the spotlights.
While many were pushing their graphics cards to the thermal limit to mine Bitcoin last decade, some of these artists managed to bring the realm of renderings straight into popular culture, even though the process is still ongoing.
So, at least from where I'm standing, the question revolving around Hot Wheels potentially selecting some of these digital builds for a future collection is simple: why not?
And, thanks to Timothy Adry Emmanuel, one of the artists who held a top position in our gallery last year, we can all imagine adorning our desks with a Hot Wheels contraption of the sort. While certain pixel players render the rides you see at Cars & Coffee into diecast models wearing the famous logo (others seek inspiration in the Hot Wheels style), the enthusiast did this with his own pixel work, as you'll notice in the Instagram post below. The stage names for these rendering rebels are included.
My favorite of the ten-piece series? The "Moparpunk" in the intro image of this tale. It takes the iconic second-generation Dodge Charger straight into the future, using the Cyberpunk 2077 open-world RPG title released last month to reach its destination, all while paying tribute to the work of the late neo-futurist concept artist Syd Mead.
Besides, in 2017, Hot Wheels had selected five machines from the Project Cars 2 racing sim, vehicles it had co-designed with Slightly Mad Studios, the game's developer, for a standout series of 1:64 models.
But there seems to be an opportunity to make the connection between the Mattel-owned company and the online community even more of a two-way street.
To be more precise, the great diecast garage we're talking about, which has converted over 25,000 individual vehicle models into more-than-just-toys over the past five decades, could welcome little builds based on renderings.
These pixel paintings are gaining more traction each month, especially since the past few years have seen many artists transition into the three-dimensional land that used to be mostly populated by giants whose work we've enjoyed in Hollywood productions. Citizenship approval became a self-regulating process: once the software tools evolved along with the hardware supporting them, the younger generations started expressing themselves in this manner.
Having put over a thousand of these renderings into words until now, I can tell you that the portrait of such a young digital artist typically involves a car guy in his 20s, whose thorough understanding of the automotive phenomenon emanates from his photorealistic work.
And you might have already seen the fruits of these digital wizards' labor in dominating video game titles or even SEMA builds. In fact, from your local shop building a muscle car to afluent collectors aiming to visualize various specs of the hypercars they have on order, more and more enthusiasts occupy the business hours of the community.
Of course, some of the said giants give something back to the universe they grew up in by continuing to deliver spare time projects for the fun of it, while a new wave of teenagers is preparing to enter the spotlights.
While many were pushing their graphics cards to the thermal limit to mine Bitcoin last decade, some of these artists managed to bring the realm of renderings straight into popular culture, even though the process is still ongoing.
So, at least from where I'm standing, the question revolving around Hot Wheels potentially selecting some of these digital builds for a future collection is simple: why not?
And, thanks to Timothy Adry Emmanuel, one of the artists who held a top position in our gallery last year, we can all imagine adorning our desks with a Hot Wheels contraption of the sort. While certain pixel players render the rides you see at Cars & Coffee into diecast models wearing the famous logo (others seek inspiration in the Hot Wheels style), the enthusiast did this with his own pixel work, as you'll notice in the Instagram post below. The stage names for these rendering rebels are included.
My favorite of the ten-piece series? The "Moparpunk" in the intro image of this tale. It takes the iconic second-generation Dodge Charger straight into the future, using the Cyberpunk 2077 open-world RPG title released last month to reach its destination, all while paying tribute to the work of the late neo-futurist concept artist Syd Mead.
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