Joyride Flatout: Hot Rods and Dream Machines

During the 1960s, out-of-this-world automobiles took America by storm, care of pioneering custom car designers like Ed ＂Big Daddy＂ Roth and George Barris, whose dazzling chrome creations--each with its own name and personality--captured the hopes and dreams of thousands of youth ready for their first joyride.

Simultaneously, the music world was getting its own punch of adrenalin with Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, and Dick Dale providing the perfect soundtrack for a time when experimentation was the order of the day. The counterculture that emerged was one of pure innovation--hot rods, MAD Magazine, Rat Fink, Von Dutch, Robert Williams, Stanley Mouse. Never before or since has there been a time when the border between imagination and engineered physical reality was crossed with such boundless, almost reckless regularity.

Joyride/Flatout: Hot Rods and Dream Machines is a tribute to this formative time through the eyes of author and designer Dan Quarnstrom, whose love of hot rod culture, and those who were a part of it, is as fresh and contagious as it was more than 50 years ago, when he was a young boy attending his first hot rod show. From thumbnail sketches to finished drawings, Post-it squiggles to thorough model breakdowns, Joyride/Flatout is a testament to what can happen when you hold onto your enthusiasm and infuse it into everything you create.

Dan Quarnstrom’s experience as a designer for 3D animation and visual effects extends from his 16 years as a Creative Director, Art Director and Designer at Rhythm & Hues Studios, in Los Angeles, back through a career that has taken him from the pages of Rolling Stone Magazine, designing the Coca Cola Polar Bears to designing for animated feature films.

Along the way in what he describes as a ＂restless career＂ Dan has covered a lot of design territory, editorial illustration, rock and roll posters, advertising, album covers, character design for animation and games, storyboards, layout for 3D animation, visual effects design, fantastic environments, vehicles and complex worlds. He delights in translating the world of ideas into a fully functioning multi-dimensional one, on the printed page or as computer generated imagery.

Dan’s affection for his roots is apparent in Joyride Flatout: Hot Rods and Dream Machines, his homage to the 60s hot rod culture that brought him into contact with the tools and inspiration that would fuel his interest in a lifetime of design. That world, its design parameters, scope of ambition, and colorful cast of characters are intrinsically applicable to the design curriculum of today’s up and coming designers. Who knew that within the cryptic outrageousness of hot rod monster shirts and car magazines existed a clear design vernacular and graphic language as sophisticated and applicable as any 3D computer program.That the lessons learned from a generation of gearheads can inform a lifetime of innovation. From thumbnail sketches to finished drawings, Post-it squiggles to thorough model breakdowns, Joyride Flatout is testament to holding on to your enthusiasm and bringing it to everything you create.

Recent History:

Sony Pictures Animation, visual development Arthur Christmas, animated feature
Cartoon Network, Art Director, Firebreather, animated feature
Rainmaker Entertainment, Art Director, Escape From Planet Earth