It wasn't just driving talent that blew me away the first time I watched pro RC racers driving at tracks around Southern California. Sure, not only was I getting to meet the stars of the A-Main covered in the most recent issue of the RC magazine I had read cover-to-cover (there was no LiveRC - or mass-consumed Internet at all - back then!), but it was all the little details of watching someone who was really good at what they did that made them larger than life. From the way they arranged their pit areas, to their calmly intense demeanor on the drivers stand, to the way their cars looked fast even when sitting still. I remember back when having an ultra-cool paint job seemed exclusively reserved for the factory elite - long before custom painters and graphics companies could churn out top quality lids and distribute them widely with the help of the Web. It came as no surprise that the best painters, who were responsible for recreating the iconic color schemes of Kinwald, Easton, Pavidis, and more, were often racers themselves. And back in the mid- to late-90s, perhaps no painter was more well-known than Thunder Wessels, who was able to parlay his prodigious painting prowess into design work for some of the largest brands in the industry. I shot Thunder a Facebook message to see how he was doing - and I bet if you look at some his work below, you'll be able to recognize in the future what Thunder had his hands on.
Aaron Waldron: How did you get started in RC?
Thunder Wessels: A couple friends had RC cars and they had an old Tamiya Falcon that they were not using so they got it running for me. It was in 1992, and I had the biggest backyard in the neighborhood so we built a track.
AW: When did you realize that you were a talented artist?
TW: In junior high kids would always say I was good at drawing, but once I got to high school and had adults telling me, that’s when I realized I had something going. Three out of the five classes I took my senior year were some kind of art.
AW: What kind of work did you do before starting in RC?
TW: Before RC was when I was 18, and I worked at Huckleberry’s Sandwich Shop in Huntington Beach.
AW: Was it mainly through painting bodies that you were introduced to the industry?
TW: I started out in the industry building tracks for a facility in Fountain Valley called RCOR. Darren Westman got me the job and it was way more fun than building sub sandwiches.
AW: Who are some of the drivers for whom you’ve painted?
TW: Billy Easton, Barry Baker, Brian Kinwald, Mark Pavidis, Scott Hughes, Greg Hodapp, pretty much everyone in the off-road A-main in 1994-95. I’m old.
AW: Aside from creating Lexan works of art, what other recognizable work have you generated within the RC world?
TW: Wraps, advertisements, box art, decals, catalogs, etc.
AW: What companies have you worked for?
TW: RCOR, Socal Raceway, Associated, Orion, Peak, Nvision, Lunsford, Hot Bodies/HB, HPI Racing, Losi (box paintjob), Hirosaka, Checkpoint, Fantom, Axial (paintwork), BCE, Himoto, Reedy, LRP, Redcat, Stormer Hobbies, PCH, i am sure I’m forgetting some. Some of these were not full time. I freelance a bit.
AW: How much has the evolving realm of vinyl decals changed the RC painting business?
TW: Depends on scale I guess, nobody wants to paint the big scale stuff and wraps are too heavy for the small stuff. I mostly do big scale wraps, for 1/8-1/5 vehicles. Painting undertrays is a thing of the past as well, it’s easier to wrap them. At the end of the day though, you can’t beat paint. It looks so good under the lights.
AW: Do you race or drive RC cars much these days?
TW: I get out every once in a while, I recently rediscovered 1/10-scale 2WD so it’s my go-to now. I was into 1/5-scale for a while, I even won the West Coast Warm-Up a couple years ago!
AW: What’s next for Thunder Wessels?
TW: I have some stuff planned for the near future but I can’t let the cat out of the bag yet.
11/25/2014
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