New Rise of The MattMobile Episode - Party Time!

I do not think this video needs any introduction:

Great Video Tutorial By A Fellow RPF Member

A friend and fellow costumer who goes by the name Guri has put together a REALLY interesting tutorial on how you can create faux leather gear using craft foam and easy to find supplies. I'm sure a few of my readers will find this information helpful, so I thought I would post it here.

It's also really great to see other folks from the community helping to build the online knowledge base, so please support Guri by commenting on her video with any helpful suggestions or kudos, and "like" it so she knows people are watching.

MattMobile Mentioned In Online Article

I think this may be my first press appearance for the MattMobile project, and I dare say it's a doozy! Check out this awesome article about the upcoming documentary on the Batmobiles, written by my pal Steven Kirk. Some great quotes in there from me, and even a link to my youTube channel. Thanks to Steve for all the awesome exposure!!

http://www.examiner.com/article/chicks-dig-the-car-batmobile-documentary-on-the-cw-network

YouTube Channel Subscriber Update

I'm thrilled to announce that I now have 300 subscribers on my YouTube channel, which in my opinion is pretty fantastic! I put together a little "thank you" video for everyone who has subscribed. The next one will be when I hit 500, and I'll try to do something a little special for that event.

MattMobile Body Work

There has been a lot of work going on with the shell lately, but because it's not very visually exciting, I haven't been posting many update pics. It's kind of just the same stuff over and over again. But, since a bit of time has gone by, I figured I may as well show where things are now.

This is that main dip/bulge problem spot on the passenger side door area. I've really made a ton of progress, though it's probably hard to tell. I think the next step with this part, as with most of the other stuff, is to hit it with a coat of primer to see where we stand. As it is, there are so many different colors and textures that it's kind of hard to really see where the problems lie.

More work on the drivers side front fender. This part is really coming together, and some wet sanding has made it very smooth. Still some final detail work to do, but the dip on this side has really been smoothed out to my satisfaction.

Here I'm cleaning up one of the seams in the body, which also turns out to be a bulge/dip issue. I may end up relocating that wheel well about a quarter inch forward, as it seems to be a bit wonky.

More progress on the gas cap area. I'm at a point now where I'm doing beauty passes with the putty, meaning I'm just filling in little cracks and pock marks. I think the overall topology of this area has come together nicely.

I've started working on the shallow dip on the front passenger side fender. This is my first layer of putty, and you can see there are some issues with it. But for a first pass, it accomplished a lot.

I don't know how things like this end up in the casting, but here they are. It's like a spider crack or something. There's all kinds of these deep little cracks in the gel coat all over the place. I don't really think sanding them down would be the right answer, as that would mean removal of maybe a 1/16th of an inch of surface. So I've taken to puttying them in, and then sanding out the putty.

Lastly, here's the drivers side intake vent. The area above it had some weird valleys in it, very chunky looking. I've made my first pass with the putty in this area, and it really helped to level things out. That's it for now. I'm very anxious to start building out the cockpit, but I'm still waiting to get my metal order finalized to make that happen. With San Deigo Comic Con looming on the horizon, I fear that not a lot of work will get accomplished over the next week or so.

Small Tail Lights Have Arrived

After a brief wait, these tail lights arrived the other day, and they are great. I got them for about 100 bucks cheaper each than you can find on ebay, which strikes me as a real deal. They do not include any mounting brackets or electronics, but this was expected. Nice to finally have these on hand, as it will allow me to do some body work on the back part of the car.

New Video Tutorial: Gel Coat and Fiberglass

I just added this to my youtube channel earlier today:

This is a really fun tutorial on the methods and materials I use to run fiberglass for my props, costume, models, or batmobiles.

A huge thanks to my buddy Ewan who drove down from LA to spend the afternoon with me making a mess in my garage, and taking over as camera bro when necessary.

If you have anything that you would like to see tutorials of in the future, please let me know in the comments section.

Second Torchwood/Harkness Earpiece Identified

Update: I can say with near complete certainty that the earpiece used on the show was the Jabra BT250v. I watched the second episode of season 1 last night, which may be the only place these ear pieces appear, and confirmed that they are indeed entirely black. The picture below, in which it appears to have some grey on it, it merely a trick of the lighting and camera angle.

If you are searching for one, ebay is your best bet as they are fairly plentiful. I accidentally found an item listed under "jabra wave" that appears to be a different product, but uses the exact same shell as the BT250v. There are a couple selling for under 20 bucks right now.

This picture was posted on the RPF shortly after I announced my find of the earpiece used in a Jack Harkness ear piece.

Based on the success I had in my previous hunt, I decided the same methodology was in order. This basically meant using Google image search in combination with Amazon.

The key points I was riffing off from the picture are the three slices in the ear piece along the top of Jack's ear, and the near vertical line on the part under his ear lobe, where it transitions from the ear piece into the mic with the word "Torchwood" on it. Also, I made the assumption that this mouth piece was an add on. You can also see in the picture what appears to be a button on the piece under his ear lob.

A few pages down, I found this image, which looks like it might be the right ear piece, but obviously this was of the opposite side of the thing, and has some minor differences. But I was definitely on the right track.

I zoomed in on the logo and realized it said "Jabra" which helped immensely in my search. Then I just looked for "Jabra blue tooth" on google, and was very quickly led to this picture, which I think is the right one.

This picture comes from this website.

It's not that good of a picture, so it's hard to see details clearly, but all of the tell tale signs are there. The color cannot be confirmed, but it looks pretty darn close.

I've found that there are some non trivial differences between the Jabra BT250 and the BT250v, the main one being the color. I'll need to go and watch the episode that this one appears in to be sure, but I'm feeling very confident that it's one of the two Jabra sets identified here. There's also a BT200 that has the same body shape, and the coloring is different.

I actually like the BT200 the best, but the upper ear piece is not black. Definitely need to go watch that episode.

BT200 at Amazon.

Captain Jack Harkness Earpiece Found Item Identified

A thread got necro bumped recently on the RPF that caught my attention. It was a thread on the construction of the ear piece that Captain Jack Harkness wears on the show "Torchwood." The thread started with a members showing off an excellent hand made replica of the ear piece, which was followed up shortly thereafter with a behind the scenes pic of the ACTUAL ear piece by member RubberToe, who is Nick Robatto, who has made numerous key props for Torchwood and Doctor Who.

Here's a link to Nick's website if you'd like to check out some of his work:
http://www.rubbertoeprops.com/

Here's the pic Nick posted:

I immediately recognized the ear loop as something I had seen before, possibly at work. It looked like the back of a hands free phone set.

Thank goodness for Amazon.com, because after skimming through 9 pages of their head sets I found the one that looked right. Here's a comparison picture showing the Plantronics M220 headset compared to Nick's hero prop:

Clearly, there's no mistaking that this is the right piece. If you want to order one for yourself, so that you can build up your own headset, they are five bucks on amazon. Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Plantronics-Mobile-Headset-Phones-Standard/dp/B0001O04SS/ref=sr_1_188?ie=UTF8&qid=1341266111&sr=8-188&keywords=phone+headset