Hot Wheels designer, Dwayne Vance, reveals how Porsche model cars are made
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Ever wondered how model cars are made? Hot Wheels designer, Dwayne Vance, tells us about the process and how he designed a unique Porsche off-roader
Since the birth of the car, children and adults alike have played with and collected model cars. It’s a process that allows us to dream. Dreams, after all, have been central to Porsche since it began making cars in 1948.Porsche continues to be driven by dreams – and to collaborate with the like-minded. Since 1968, Hot Wheels has been making scale model cars and bringing dreams to life in miniature form. Even if you don’t own a Hot Wheels model car yourself, you’re likely to know someone who does.Today, Hot Wheels is one of the world’s most famous model car manufacturers. Its products – including recreations and reimaginings of Porsche cars – can be found in homes all over the world. To find out what goes into making these models, we spoke to Hot Wheels’ Dwayne Vance. As the design manager of all of the graphics you see on today’s Hot Wheels models, he plays a significant role in how they look. Here, Dwayne gives detailed insights into how the models are created, from design stage through to the final products that make it into the store. Watch Hot Wheels’ Dwayne Vance and Porsche chief designer, Michael Mauer, at Porsche HQ
?si=upxfLqIgEgPaTR5TWho is Dwayne Vance? As design manager at Hot Wheels, Dwayne oversees the portfolio of models created by the company, from what he calls the “dollar” basic car – which are sold for a suggested price of $1.25 – all the way up to the premium car range, which can retail up to US $35 (around €30/£25). Dwayne originally started life at Hot Wheels in the early 2000s, where he was part of the team designing the models themselves, among them cars that were featured in a popular Hot Wheels kids’ entertainment series on TV called Hot Wheels: AcceleRacers. After working elsewhere between 2005 and 2019, Dwayne – who studied car design at university – returned to Hot Wheels, where he’s been ever since.Tell us what you do at Hot Wheels, Dwayne?“I oversee a team of 10 people – amazing graphic designers that design all the graphics for the cars, whether it’s replica [like a Porsche or Cayenne] or fantasy-type graphics. Initially, we have a product development side, then we have a graphic side. The product side is more industrial design. A designer will design the car, then it goes all the way through the process – including working with car manufacturers – of getting it to a final 3D model that’s ready for production.”Hot Wheels designer Dwayne Vance (left) and Michael Mauer, chief designer at Porsche, met at the Porsche HQ at Zuffenhausen to discuss their shared love of design and creativity Photo: Hot Wheels“The designers on our team trace around each individual part of the model that’s been sketched by the product development designers – what we call ‘blue images’. Then the designer uses Adobe Illustrator to lay out their design. After we finish that step and it’s given approval, it gets sent to the factory for the models to be manufactured.”How do you take a full-sized car and make it into a model car?“We take the concept sketches and move into what we call orthographic drawings – that’s the front, top, side and back views. Then the sculpting team creates a solid car. This helps us ensure that no parts break, for example. All our cars are 3+ rated, which means that they’re safe for any kid three years old plus. They’re designed not to come apart and to be pretty indestructible.“Next, we print it out one-to-one [scale]. We actually can see how it sits, how it looks as a toy, right off the bat. Then I’ll look at it to see if there’s any adjustments I need to do. We have to creatively think about how we want to break these cars up in order to get cool colour breaks and keep it as a four-part car, which is the standard structure of all our model cars. “The factory takes the 3D model that our sculptor creates and breaks that into the different parts – windows, interior, stuff like that. There’s a lot of back and forth during this process. A car manufacturer, like Porsche, then gets sent the final 3D tooling model, which is about as close to the real product as you can get.”Dwayne designed this bespoke Porsche off-roader with trailer, full of intriguing details, for Hot Wheels Photo: Hot Wheels“When everything’s approved on this side, the factory starts making the physical tools to build the model cars. That’s an amazing process too. Carbon is used to press into the metal to create really fine details for each individual part. They create these big steel moulds for each part, put them in the machines and shoot the plastic or die-cast [metal] into them. And then it’s time to assemble everything. The factory has these special machines that you stack each part in. They swing the cars around, flip them over and then pin them to the bottom of the cars to put them all together.”You designed and created the graphics for a unique off-road Porsche with a trailer. Tell us the story behind that.“I came up with the scenario of this person that drives this overlander Porsche that they want to drive around southern California and all the way down to Baja California, Mexico. So, it had to drive through all this mountainous terrain, through the Baja and on to the next surf location. There was a whole backstory behind this.“I actually designed the casting myself by taking one of the pre-existing castings we had for an earlier 911 model and thought, okay, what would this person need for this scenario? I incorporated all this equipment up top [on the model’s roof], like jerry cans for extra gas, then added a really rugged whale tail on the back. One of my big design decisions for this car was the sizing of the wheels, which I wanted to be a bit bigger than normal in order to really celebrate its off-road nature. I put a surfboard on there and also put a bodyboard on the trailer that’s towed by the car itself. And then there are details you can see, like my name in graffiti.”During their time together at Zuffenhausen, Dwayne and Michael spent time sketching cars and discussing their inspirations Photo: Hot WheelsHow much collaboration do you have on a project with manufacturers like Porsche?“One of the first things we do is to take those concept sketches and send it to Porsche to look at. They then tell us yes or no based on this. For the graphics, we create what’s called an ‘E sheet’. For our basics assortment cars, we use just four spot colours in total – that might be black, white, yellow and red, which we then break up for the E sheet. The E sheet features all the sides of the car – top, front and back of the car, showing where the graphics go. “Before the cars go into production, we’ll send the E sheet to Porsche for them to look over it and – usually – give us the approval. Of course, if they see anything that they feel doesn’t represent their brand well, they’ll make a comment on it, but Porsche is really open to things.” Did you collect Hot Wheels as a kid? Were you designing cars back then?“Like a lot of people who grew up in the 1970s, I started drawing after seeing Star Wars. I used to sketch aliens, spaceships – real crazy-type stuff. These ideas remain an ongoing story in the back of my mind. I always use that as a jump-off point for my imagination and as a background inspiration for my designs for Hot Wheels today. I always try to draw to a story. For example, one ongoing idea of mine is this underground racing crew that finds this alien technology which they use to build hot rods and supercars. I think it would be fun to take that and actually make it a full-blown story at some point.”Tell us what was it like meeting Michael Mauer, chief designer at Porsche, at the Porsche HQ in Stuttgart?“I was definitely nervous, I have to admit, because I’m meeting the head of Porsche design! But I was able to relax and treated it as talking to another designer. The conversation flowed and later we sketched some designs ourselves. Every designer tells similar stories of where they came from, what inspired them. As kids, we both drew a lot. That a commonality between all designers. One of my big questions was how he felt when he started designing the latest 911 and how, with all its history, it must be a nerve-wracking thing to do. I love hearing stories from other designers. We had this really cool connection point.”The process of creating these Porsche 911 GT3 RS models for Hot Wheels is one based on creativity and close collaboration Photo: Hot WheelsDo you look at real-life cars and get inspiration for designing your own model cars?“Absolutely! A lot of the time it’s the custom cars that catch my eye. Sometimes I look at them and go, wow, that’s really nicely done. I often go to car shows and look at custom cars. I think the biggest mistake I see that people do is put the wrong wheels on their cars. Wheel choice can be the difference between making a car look really ugly or super nice.”Hot Wheels is known all over the world. Do you feel privileged to play a part in that?“All the designers at Hot Wheels really care about the kind of product we put out there. We read comments from fans and customers, from the bad to the good. We take that very seriously. We put a lot of thought into how we plan out our year – about what’s popular, what we think is cool, what we think would be cool on the shelves that people have never seen.”Any tips for future Hot Wheels model car designers?“I feel like Hot Wheel designers are a little bit of a different breed than your typical designer. You’ve got to be able to reach into that fantasy story-based stuff a bit. You’re creating toys for kids. You want that fantastical side to come out of your imagination to create a compelling product. And these story elements can become part of their lives.“With the off-road Porsche and trailer we made, at the heart of it was that whole scenario of ‘Why does this car exist?’. It’s not just a car and a trailer – that’s the part that you really have to think about. You have to engage your imagination in order to create that little toy that’s going to compel a kid to go, ‘Oh, I want that!’”
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