Batmobile Side Mech Progress

These side mechs are painstaking work. And honestly, it's no wonder this car has taken me so long to get it to where it is today. And by that, I mean "in the shop of someone who is a competent builder that is also not me."

It's a weird combination of me just being slow, a perfectionist, and also just having a hard time finding time to work on the thing. Cuz you know I have all those other pressing priorities like winning arguments on facebook and updating my blog. Wah wah. Sad_trombone.gif.

With that in mind, I have made a lot more progress in the past week on the side mechs. For those who are following along, you will recall that this type of work is literally my least favorite type of all maker work. The process of putty, sand, primer, repeat is pure madness. But let's get to it.

I spent a couple weeks working out of the model shop at Fonco Creative Services, as it was close to my place, but had to bug out as they suddenly got a big piece of work in. A simple relocation to my workshop and setting up of a spare table got me back up and running in no time.

The bat signal is always watching over me, of course. I mean, come on.

I refer to this piece as "the coffee can" and there are two of them, one for each side and they are mirrors of each other. After looking at the way the whole thing assembles together, I realized a good time saving maneuver is to plug up the open end with a disk of styrene. That will save me some time cleaning out the existing recess, and will also make the mold less complicated. It will also give a nice surface to which I can glue or bolt other parts of the side mechs.

This little gasket-looking connector piece was not originally a stand alone part. There is a piece of the side mechs that is basically like a 90 degree curved and tapered tube. You can see it in a photo below. The white part. Much like the coffee can, there is one for each side, but the ONLY difference between the two pieces is the orientation of this gasket on the tip of it. So I made the strategic and money saving decision to only mold one in it's entirety, but then mold this piece as a separate piece, thus allowing me to create the mirror version of that tube without having to make a separate mold for the entire thing.

What you're seeing here is the early phases of my clean up process. I cut a styrene disk to fit into it, glued it in with super glue gel, then laid down a coat of spot filler putty.

And here is the final product, with a little bit of love and spray primer later.

Let's jump ahead and take a look at this assembly:

See the big white part? And the tip over on the left? That's where I cut off the gasket you see me working on above. Now check out the other end. See the grey, bigger gasket sitting on the table? As originally modelled, that too was a part of the white angle tube. It was all connected. In order to make it easier to mold and cast, and to further my goal of only making one large mold for the tube, that gasket was separated and will be cast as a separate part. This gasked needed treatment similar to the smaller one shown above.

So I cut a styrene disk, glued it in.

Then started cleaning up the seam. A little putty, a little sanding, and it's all but invisible. This will make attaching the gasket to castings of the tube super easy. Previously, all it would have is a micro thin lip to attach glue to, making the bond fairly week. Now I can just bore drywall screws through it if I wanted to.

This piece is proving to be difficult to work with just because the quality of the print wasn't super good. Lots of clean up around the edges and lips.

I did two passes at it today and made a lot of progress. This is also another example of a piece that has a drivers side and passenger side version, both mirrors of each other. Much like with the tube above, I chopped off the little flange that makes the pieces unique, and will cast everything separately. So instead of two large, complex and unweildy molds, I will have one medium complexity mold that can be optimized to use the minimal amount of rubber, and then a tiny mold for the flange that can easily be flipped and attached to create the mirror versions.

This next little piece is proving to be one of the most difficult to clean up. Just lots of tiny corners to get into and perfectly cylindrical parts are always hard to get right. I had the idea of just rebuilding most of it using tube stock and my lathe, but thought better of it. It's coming along. Probably another 2 or 3 sessions with it and it will be ready for molding.

At the end of the days work, here are three parts that are ready for molding. The two gaskets, and also the little flange that I spoke about earlier.

I decided to make my mold boxes out of corrugated cardboard this time, instead of foam core, which saved me the trouble of cutting all those little slits in a strip as I had done before so that I can get a rounded shape out of it. It worked great.

See that little black sharpie mark on the inside of the box? That's my fill line. Before building out the boxes, I measure the height of the piece I am going to mold, then I add about a 1/4" to it, and I use that measurement to mark the fill line. I have never been good with eyeballing how much rubber to pour into a box, and always end up using WAY more rubber than needed, so I developed this method as a helper for my own personal shortcomings. Of which I have many, of course.

Lastly, here's all the piece super glued down to the surface. I try to give about a half inch of border around each piece. Maybe a little less. I defintely don't need more, and maybe less would be ok. I really define the height of the fill and the thickness of the borders based on the shape I am molding, and how well the mold will hold it's own shape when it is empty. It varies a lot based on the complexity of the part. Something you just get with experience, I suppose.

Ok that's all I have to show off for now. Thank you for taking the time to read it, I greatly appreciate all the good folks who are keeping up with my blog, are asking questions, and maybe are even learning a thing or two from my ramblings. Until the next time!!!

Time To Make The Donuts

When it comes to building a replica of the Keaton era Batmobile, the place that many builders stumble is on a component that is often referred to as the "Side Mechanics" or "side mechs" for short. These have proven to be the most difficult pieces to find originals of. To my knowledge, nobody has ever discovered the origin of most of the pieces that were no doubt cobbled together from discarded industrial junk. There is a piece that has been identified as a part from a hot air balloon, but that's about all I know.

It has been my goal to put together a top notch replica of the side mechs for my car. Regular readers of the blog will know that my pal Tim Neill in canada modelled the side mechs based on extensive research and reference, and they are absolutely amazing. Tim offers them for free to download on his Batberry blog. Here's a link directly to the files, should you be so inclined.

A friend printed these files for me, and I set about the task of cleaning them up. My goal is to produce them in resin and/or fiberglass. I have kicked around the idea of getting them plated, but honestly I think painting them will be good enough.

For reference, here's what they look like on a screen used Returns car:

The process of getting this right has been incredibly time consuming. Cleaning up the 3d printed parts is super labor intensive, and also intersects poorly with my anal-retentiveness when it comes to perfection. I have invested easily a couple hundred hours in puttying, sanding, primering... repeating until these things are at a point of quality that I am happy with. Cleaning 3d parts is not only an art, but it's also a tremendous hassle. The filament sands differently than putty and primer. It's very resilient. A real pain.

I finished cleaning up the part that is often referred to as "The donut" almost a year ago, and finally just got around to molding it. In this post, I will walk you through the process I used to mold. This will be a fairly technical discussion, so if you don't really care about materials and techniques, you can skip this. I found a great video by my pal Bill Doran that showed his technique for doing a brush on, jacketed mold, and this proved to be very valuable to my process. Here's a link if you'd like to check it out.

Prop: Shop - Molding & Casting 101: Brush on Molds for Helmets & Masks

I started by bulding a box for the donut, with about 1/2" of space around it. I used 1/4" foam core, which you can get at Michaels or any art supply store worth its salt. I cut slits into a strip of foam core at about every 1/4" so that I could shape it into a circle. Building a square or rectangular box for this project would have wasted a lot of rubber. I used Smooth-On's Rebound 25 for this mold, which is an expensive platinum cure silicone that is resilient and really takes the shape nicely. It's billed as a product that sticks to vertical surfaces. While true, it's not quite... accurate. More on that in a moment. I brushed on two coats of the stuff using a 1/2" chip brush from home depot. Oh, the base is made out of a scrap piece of MDF. I glued the donut to the MDF using super glue gel. No accelerant needed. Here's a pic of the donut with the first two coats of Rebound 25 on it.

The real takeaway from this photo is that the stuff isn't thickening up in all the right places. The horizontal surfaces are acquiring a nice, even and thick coat, but the vertical surfaces are not. Though thick, the rubber still tends to succumb to gravity, and only leaves behind the thinnest of layers on vertical surfaces.

And that's where a product named "Thi-Vex" comes in. It's what's known as a thixotropic agent, which basically means it thickens the stuff up while retaining all of the rubbers original properties. Ie, it doesn't effect the cure time, the pot live, the shelf life, etc. I mixed up another batch of rebound 25 and eyeballed an amount of ThiVex and went to town. You basically just add it in a little bit at a time until you get it to a consistency that you are happy with. I was going for a cake frosting level of thickness. I then applied it to the donut using a "senior" tongue depressor. Those are the big ones, mind you. Not like typical Popsicle sticks. So complicated!!! I tried to make it as smooth as possible, though I was definitely going for function over form. Here's a pic of the donut after one attack of thickened rebound.

I ended up doing another pass with thickened rebound, then a final pass of non thickened rebound. I then pulled off the box walls. I used a piece of copper tubing to bore holes in the outer lip of the mold. These will serve as keys for the rigid jacket, and hold the flexible part in place.

I brushed a ton of wax paste on to the MDF base, as it is very pourous and anything I put on top of it will probably attach to it pretty firmly. Now it's time to make the jacket. I chose Smooth-On's Plasti-Paste, which is also what Bill uses in his video. It's super easy to work with, fairly non-messy, and is really quite rigid even at thinner applications. I mixed up a batch and as with the rubber applied it with a tongue depressor. I did two coats, which was probably not necessary.

I left that to cure, and in a few hours I pulled it off the MDF base using a spatula and all was good in the world. Here's a pic of the underside of the piece.

At this point it occurred to me that a mistake had been made. In order to save time, I decided to forego making a seam down the middle, which would have allowed for easy removal of the jacket. The donut proved impossible to remove, so I ended up cutting a seam line down the middle of the jacket using a dremel tool and a big cutoff wheel. No damage to the mold or donut, but it added some complexity to the final steps, as I now have to manually align the two halves of the jacket and keep them stable while casting up a donut. Not a big deal, but if I had it all to do over again, I would have done the jacket as two separate parts.

Success was still within my grasp, and as a test I used Smooth-On's 65D to rotocast a donut in two pours. It came out EXCELLENT and with a little clean up it will be ready.

The other side mech pieces are also coming along. Here is the first pull out of the mold of one of the attachment pieces. I don't even know what the name of this piece is but who cares it looks great.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading. I'm really happy to be making progress on this build again. Maybe some day I will actually finish it.

The Ugly Work of Fiberglass

Fiberglassing is messy work, and frankly I do not like it. Fortunately for me, my man Paul on the east coast is doing a lot of this work for me on the Mattmobile. A few progress pictures to show off.

These are replacement bumperettes. Not certain I spelled that right. These are the things that go right under the front headlights, and make it impossible to drive on any road that isn't entirely flat. Great design!! There's also a mold for the front wheel hub in there, if I recall correctly. From what I am told, most modern replica cars use the same wheel hub for the front and rear, though they are in fact different sizes on the screen used cars. So now mine will have both sizes. Yay for small victories.

Paul was also kind enough to remake my dash pad for me. I didn't even know that was a real term until recently. That's the thing that you put your french fries on when you're driving home from Burger King. The part that sits horizontal. This is a pic of the newly laid up piece.

Lastly, here is the dash board being joined to the dash pad. These originally shipped as two pieces, but having them joined and all the gaps filled in will give it a lot of structural strength and will of course be entirely pretty.

In other news, there's been a lot of work on the side mechs lately, and I have started doing some pulls from the molds. Results are absolutely outstanding and I could not be more thrilled. Still a few pieces to finish cleaning up the masters of, and a lot of molds to make. I purchased another 2 gallons of RTV from SilPak, and I am hopeful that this will be enough to see the project through to completion.

If you are just discovering this blog, please be sure to visit my facebook page for this build, as I tend to update that more frequently and you can also ask questions and follow discussions on different pieces and photos.

https://www.facebook.com/RiseOfTheMattMobile/

Batmobile Side Mech Progress

The old blog has been neglected for a very long time. I have been very focused on fitness for the past year, and have made tremendous progress on that front.

But the Mattmobile project still lingers. Much has taken place. Much still to be completed. For now, here are some pictures of recent work I have done on the side mechs. Trying to get these all finished in the next two weeks.

This first picture is my workbench I've taken over at Fonco. I am not working at the Mattcave right now, but have temporarily set up shop here.

I of course brought with me a bunch of tools and supplies that I know I will need to get the job done.

I have become very particular and peculiar with my work spaces. I need to be close to my work, but also sitting in a comfortable chair. I am using this stool as my work surface.

These are some parts that I finished a while ago. Heck, probably more than a year ago. It's been a while since I have tackled these pieces. Honestly, this type of work is my least favorite. I could almost say I hate it. 3d part clean up really sucks and is no fun. Its a seemingly endless cycle of sand, putty, primer, repeat. It makes me bonkers. But for the sake of this project, I have to get it done.

I have a little painting station set up outside, and these are some of the pieces that are in flight.

I call this piece the "coffee can." At this point I have probably done three passes on it, and am getting close. These, my friends, are what we in the trade call "Famous Last Words."

Another pic of the coffee can, from later in the day.

This piece is proving hard to clean up, as it's just got so many little cuts in it. Putting all my files to good use this week, that's for sure.

The plan is to finish clean up on these pieces, mold them, and then cast them. I don't know how sturdy 3d printed parts are, nor if they can survive sitting on the side of my car. I have already seen one of them get completely ruined by sitting in the sun for about 20 minutes, so I know raw 3d printed parts are not the answer. I have started the molding process on a couple of the small connector rings.

I have started construction on a box for one of the weird looking pieces.

Laid down some rubber on the first couple of parts.

Because of the weird shapes of these two pieces, I decided to pour some rubber into the recesses on the front, thereby eliminating any possibility of an air pocket getting trapped in there. These pieces are really oddly shaped and there's loads of opportunity for air pockets. I shall proceed with great caution.

This is an assortment of parts I was working on earlier today and yesterday.

Overall things are coming along really nicely, though it's just such back breaking work.

I'm definitely getting better at stopping short of perfection. These are going to be mounted on the side of the car. They will be painted castings, which means a lot of the detail will be lost, or simply will never be seen. I'm also taking into account that there is a "back face" to these pieces which will never be seen, and am paying even less attention to those surfaces. But it's tough. The perfectionist in me struggles against the part of me that just wants it done.

Thanks for reading this post and for checking in. I will of course try to update this as things continue. Best bet is to check out the facebook page for "Rise of the Mattmobile" where I tend to post more often.

Memories of Richard Hatch.

Richard Hatch - May 21, 1945 – February 7, 2017

It was Tuesday afternoon on Feb 7 that I got the news. A friend instant messaged me on Facebook to share a link, an online article announcing that Richard had passed on. I think I skipped all the traditional phases of mourning and went straight to sadness. With a few days having gone by, and the news being confirmed that Richard succumbed to a battle with pancreatic cancer, I thought I would join in the legion of fans and friends that have put pen to paper to record their remembrances of him.

Richard as Captain Gaz on "Loadout: Going In Hot

What's most interesting to note about all of the comments, posts and write-ups I have read is that they all echo the same sentiments, and the same things that I have to say. That Richard was the NICEST man. That he was always generous with his time and attention. That he was a great friend. That he was a good guy. That he was one of the gems of the convention scene, and sci-fi fandom. ConDad. So Say We All. Lifetime Fan.

Nobody has posted any half hidden, back handed compliments that you often see when someone has a dark side that nobody really wants to address after their passing. Everything everyone has to say is nothing but positive. And that's how I remember him to. He was one of the nicest, most sincere, friendliest people I have ever had the good fortune to call a friend. I will miss him dearly, and my greatest lament is that of the missed opportunities to spend time with him over the past year or so as his health must have been deteriorating. I hope that when/if I grow up, I can have the same type of temperament and personality that Richard had.

A group of friends from Wondercon, 2015

My head is swimming with memories and fun times that he and I shared over the past couple of years, and I'm writing them down here not only to share them with others, but really just to document them for my own purposes. I'm sure one day my memory of the past few years will grow dim, and I'd prefer to not lose hold of the good memories I have of Mr. Hatch.

Dat hat, tho. Wondercon, 2015

When I and my family first moved to America, I was of course wrapped up in the whole Star Wars craze that was sweeping the globe. And like most kids of that age, I was hungry for more, and pretty much anything would do. Which is where Battlestar Galactica really hit the mark. It was a big budget-looking tv show that filled that gap between the next Star Wars movie and the low end of the spectrum that was sci-fi tv of the time. I cannot say with certainty if I saw BSG on tv during its initial run, or if it was in re-runs. I enjoyed the show, but at the time it didn't hold sway over me like Star Wars did. I had a couple Colonial Viper ships, and a Cylon Raider, and they received equal play time among my Star Wars toys. Even at that age, my little brain felt a certain "wrongness" of blending one sci-fi universe with another, and was even more distraught by the different scales of the action figures. I was also too young to really understand many of the bits of political and social commentary that the show was trying to espouse. I was all about the space battles and killing cylons. Which is what made Richard Hatch and his portrayal of Apollo so fun. He was one of the iconic heroes of the show. Everything a leading man should be, and very inspirational to viewers of the show.

Vintage BSG Toys.

Flash forward a few decades. The BSG reboot is on the air, and despite an internet full of initial skepticism and fear, the show turns out to be rock solid. Many would argue better than the original, though in different ways. What the original had in charm and camaraderie between fighter pilots, the new one triumphed in character development, political intrigue, and the overwhelming sense of terror this last band of humans suffered from on a moment-to-moment basis. As with the original, I watched when I could, but I wouldn't describe myself as a die-hard fan. I didn't collect the props or make any of the costumes, I just enjoyed it and watched. It was big news when Richard Hatch joined the cast and took on the role of Tom Zarek. I remember at the time thinking how awesome it was that that actor had found new work on a reboot of his original show. I thought that was extremely graceful of the new shows producers, and showed great respect to the show of the past. I would say my closest involvement with nuBSG came at this time, when I served as a model for a line of costume replicas being put out by Anovos. This just serves as a weird example of the intersect of me and BSG, I suppose.

So Say Matt Munson!

At the time, I was living in Ohio on a work gig, and some local friends invited me to join them at a small, local con called "Ohayocon." A fellow Ohioan named Geoffrey Gay and an LA friend Thom Parham were part of a nuBSG costuming group who had set up a table there to help promote their club and get new members. The offer was I could get a free pass to the con if I worked the table for a while during the event. Of course, I was on aboard. As luck would have it, Geoff had an entire library of BSG costumes of his own, and offered to lend me one to wear during the event. It was a flight deck hand, or something. One of the orange jump suits. The con was a good time, and a nice little affair, and best of all allowed me to spend some time hanging out with Geoff and Thom and catching up with fellow attendees. Our table was set up right outside one of the panel rooms, and in the middle of the first day, we figured out that Richard Hatch was going to be hosting a panel in that very room. Something about Tom Zarek's view on government or something like that. As the hour approached, Richard was walking into the hall and stopped by the booth to check out the table and said "Great Costumes!" before heading in to give his panel. I thought that was pretty cool. I am not AT ALL one to get star struck, and nor was I at that moment. I just thought it was cool that the guy who was running a few minutes late for his panel took a minute out of his day to acknowledge some folks who were clearly dedicated fans of a property he was deeply involved with. I'm sure that my friends were too.

Richard at Comikaze in Los Angeles, doing a panel on writing with the Winner Twins

Flash forward to Dragon Con a year or so later, and Hatch is everywhere. It was then I started to realize that Richard was a fixture in the con circuit, and was deeply loved. He was the guy that would put on your replica Viper Pilot jacket that you brought to him to sign, and then he would ask if he could wear it for the rest of the day. He would get into heated debates with fans about choices his character had made. He would accept ANY and all thumb war challenges. The best way I can describe it is this: if you're a fan, and you've built up in your mind what it would be like to meet the actor who played Apollo in real life... you will not be disappointed. He's a fans dream. Courteous, polite, friendly... awesome.

I have a vague memory of him sitting a few stools down from me at a bar in the Marriott one night, and I thought it was pretty wild that he was one of the con guests who was out mingling with the muggles, without fear of being mobbed. Maybe it was because he was so approachable and friendly that nobody felt the need to scramble after him for an autograph... because they knew he would be there tomorrow to sign their photos and take a selfie with them.

A couple of years later, I had written a sci-fi short film that I was Executive Producer on. We were making a live action video game adaptation of the game "Loadout" for Machinima. By this time, Richard was heavily involved in the "Fan Film" scene which had really exploded, and small film makers like myself came to realize that recognizable talent could be roped into your film without too much trouble. It's like the whole industry system was collapsing, and all kinds of great collaborative opportunities were becoming available. I thought Richard would be great for the part I had written, as he possessed not only the age and physicalities of the character I had in mind, but based on the body of his work I had witnessed, I felt he was more than capable of pulling it off.

Filming Loadout at Laurel Canyon Stages

A friend put together a meeting for me and the director of this short film, and we all met up at the Aroma Coffee & Tea in Studio City. I don't know what to say other than I was immediately struck by just how nice he was. Here I was, an absolute nobody in the film industry, whose primary accomplishment are a bunch of dopey youtube videos and a few shorts for Machinima, and I was having a conversation with a veteran actor whose work I respect ... and he was really excited! Very mind blowing. I pitched him on the story, described the character, and we were pretty much right away at work on it. For every assertion I made about the character I wanted him to play, named "Gaz" after a friend of mine from my University days, he had a follow up question for me. As he dug deeper into the motivations and ethos of the character, it was as if the character was coming to life right in front of me. It was a surreal experience. Richard said he wanted to see a copy of the script, and we exchanged email addresses.

Loadout Table Read Chez Moi

The next few months were great. We had costume fittings, a table read at my apartment with the entire cast, and just loads of fun and creative awesomeness that culminated in a hectic 2 day shoot. We spent one day at the famous Laurel Canyon Stages, using their frequently filmed sets, and another up north at a sand and gravel depot. Richard was the consummate professional. He had his dialog down, and killed it EVERY take. I think he is a writer and directors dream. He gives you a take or two that are on script, then starts peppering in his own dialog. Or sometimes he'll deliver the dialog as written, then end on a line or two of improv. He was focused. He wasted nobody's time. He was already ready when he was needed on set, and was always available when he was not.

On set with Richard, some cast and crew

For me, the experience was beyond surreal. Months later, I described to Richard what it was like seeing Gaz come to life on set. I told him it was is if he had reached into my brain, and plucked out the vision I had in my head of who Gaz was. His intonations, his facial expressions, the way he carried himself and interacted with his ship and crew, Richard absolutely nailed it. He shared with me some of his process as an actor, and how he goes about finding the character. I don't know how he did it but it was pure magic to me.

Hatch makin' da magic.

And everyone loved him. I invited a few friends along to help out with the shoot, as you do. One was a big time BSG fan who I knew would be thrilled to spend a day on set with one of his heroes, and another was a friend from high school with whom I used to hope to one day make films with. One piece of feedback I kept getting time and time again from both cast and crew is that Loadout was the most fun they had ever had on a shoot. Richard really helped set that environment, not only by being such a great guy, but also being so supportive of the other craftspeople on the show.

The cast of Loadout, and yours truly.

Richard held acting classes at a workshop up in the valley, and had literally been doing it for decades. He was always quick to offer insight and guidance to actors wishing to learn from him, and this was evident on set. I feel like everyone learned something from Richard during the shoot. Whether it was how to be a better actor, or just how to be a spectacular person.

Hatch holding court on set.

On the second day of shooting, I asked Richard if he would mind if I took a selfie to put up on the facebook page (the result of which is the first picture in this blog post), and he corrected me, saying it would be an "us-ie" as it includes more than just me in the photo. And thus a new term was born! My girlfriend Kristin joined us on set, and of course was also captured by Richards charm and friendliness. Richard had that very rare quality of having the perfect balance of charm without seeming sleezy. You KNEW he was being charming, but it never felt like he was being gross or even trying to pursue some agenda. He was just a damn charming dude, and he infected all of those around him with it.

Not just a pilot, this time he's the captain!

Filming came and went far more quickly than I had hoped, but Richard and I stayed in touch. We would have goofy interactions on facebook that always made me laugh, and thought provoking txt message threads that always made me contemplate. One of my favorite facebook exchanges came shortly after filming, when I posted a picture of Richard and I to my feed. A couple of in-laws commented on the picture saying things like "oh man I had such a crush on him when I was younger" and another one suggested that the crush continued to this day. My response to both of them was something like "You do realize he is probably reading this right now, right?" and almost on cue, the next response was from Richard, with his signature battle cry of "Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" and assuring the ladies "I'll take whatever love I can get!!!!!".

The second day of filming on Loadout

That's the guy I knew him as. He was the friend who didn't treat fans like fans, but like friends. Even if you were one of those fall-on-your-face, lose-your-shit in his presence fans, he treated you like a friend. One that wanted to know what's been going on in your life, how you've been, and what you've been up to. And he treated friends like a valued treasure.

At the Geekie awards in 2016

We had a couple more encounters after principle photography was complete, including a trip up to the valley to record a podcast to help promote the release of the film. We sat in about 90 minutes of traffic together to get there, and we talked about all kinds of stuff. Richard told me about how amazing it was to be on Classic BGS when it was on the air. About all the horrifically long hours he would work each week, and then having it all be justified when his paycheck showed up. I may be misquoting him, but I think at the time he was one of the highest paid actors on television, if only because of the sheer number of golden hours he would rack up each week. The wrap party for Loadout was great, and it was a thrill again to see Richard interacting with so many of my friends.

Part of the Loadout "publicity tour"

We also had a party at Machinima and did a live stream play of the game that served as inspiration for the short. At the party, someone challenged Richard to a game of ping-pong, as there happened to be a table in the middle of the office. I thought to myself, "Oh man, I gotta get in on this action!" and then I saw Richard play and backed right the hell down. Turns out Richard is like some kind of grand master at both ping-pong AND thumb wars, though doubtfully at the same time.

At the Machinima party

I attended a screening of another project he worked on, "Cowboys & Engines" which also starred Walter Koenig. During the Q&A, it was great to see yet another set of filmmakers taking pride in having Richard be a part of their project, and I could tell that they enjoyed working with him as much as I did.

With each convention Kristin and I attended, Richard was always there as a guest, and always seemed as happy to see us as we were to see him. We would religiously pose for an "us-ie" and post it to our social media accounts immediately. It was always great to hear what Richard had been up to, the new projects he was working on, or things he had in the works. He would often pull us close, and conspiratorially whisper to us some lurid tale from the past about his days as a youngster in hollywood, and assure us that that story wouldn't make it into his biography. Sometimes we would go out to dinner afterwards, sometimes we would get a drink, but it was always magical. Richard also introduced us to some amazing and talented people, many of whom I now consider friends.

Wondercon 2015 dinner with Kathrin and Richard

A funny chapter came later, perhaps one of the last times we saw him. Richard was telling us all about this movie he was working on at the moment. He said "oh yeah it's going to be great. The female lead is John Dykstra's daughter" to which Kristin and I both replied "you mean Chloe??" and his eyes lit up! He was suddenly fascinated once again with what a small world it is, and how we are all connected through common friends. Kristin explained to a slack-jawed Hatch that she and Chloe were part of a costuming group a few years ago, which he found both fascinating and shocking.

our last Us-ie with Richard

One of the things that saddens me is the missed opportunities. I was looking back on my txt messages with Richard, and saw a couple times where he had asked if I wanted to join him for some bowling, or get together for a drink. And for one reason or another, I was busy, or unable to make it. I guess I always figured there would be another chance. I mean, come on... it's Richard Hatch! He's a scene-central guy! I was just like the people at Dragon Con who didn't swamp him at the bar, because I figured I could just see him the next time. There will always be another opportunity, right? Maybe next weekend. Maybe next con.

And then, just like that, with zero warning, there are no more opportunities.

Comikaze

In his last text to me, he asked me to congratulate Kristin on passing one of her exams, and told me how cool he thought my Batmobile project was. He told me to give Kristin his best. I replied telling him I would give her MY best. My next text was me wishing him a happy new year, and I never heard back.

Wondercon, 2015

Richard Hatch is the first friend I have lost in my life. I have known people who have died, and some of them at one time played a bigger role in my life than Richard did. But Richard's passing really hit me hard. Though not literally, I assumed he was invincible. He lived an amazing, full life. He must have spent most weekends at some convention, in some corner of the world, hanging out with fans and being the friendly ConDad that we all came to know and love, making them feel special, and being the childhood hero come to life that fans wish EVERY actor could be when you finally have the chance to meet them. From all of the friends I have whose lives were touched by Richard, be they friends, fans or co-workers, their thoughts, words and memories all align, leaving the world a much better place for them than before he came along.

The Geekie Awards, immediately after dance floor shenanigans

And while I am sad that the world has lost this bright light, I'm beyond thrilled that I got to enjoy his company before the opportunity passed altogether. And even for those chances that were missed, I'm thrilled for the ones that were not.

You will be missed, good sir.

the Loadout "Theatrical Release" one sheet poster.