Rusty's Garage Sep 2, 2025

The Motorsport Brief | The art of helmet painting with Antman

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Ever wondered what goes into those magnificent driver and rider helmet paint schemes?

We're about to find out here on the Motorsport Brief.

Hi everyone, Rusty with you and something different for this ep, shortly to Ant-Man's

studio in Queensland.

He has painted for some of the best over the years and not just for Aussie and Kiwi

races either.

You immediately think of Chas Mostert, James Courtney, Greg Murphy, Jamie Winkup,

Shane Van Gisburgen in NASCAR and many, many more.

He did a bit of work for Warner Brothers just before the turn of the century too on the

Pokemon set.

We'll get to Ant-Man in just a few moments.

Have you checked out our recent panel discussion ep on AI in Motorsport?

Tech commentator Trevor Long and Tom Moore from DJR joined us for that one with some

clever revelations around things that we're starting to see in supercars now

and in the motorsport industry generally in our corner of the world.

AI and machine learning, fascinating discussion that one.

Young Aussie Taylor Gill also joined us for a short cast ahead of the junior world rally

championship decider.

Taylor leads a handful of contenders going into that final event, the European rally

in October.

Good to share a bit more of his story and see or hear some of his personality, he's

a good talker.

He'll sneak home for a run in an AP4 Yaris next month too on the New South

Wales South Coast.

Is that a bit of preparation for what he might be tackling in 2026 on the

international scene?

And Matt Hickey from Codesports came back on ahead of the second half of the F1

season.

It will be an epic run to the finish.

We talked Cadillac 2026 and Moore there as well.

There is some sage words from Matt on what could be a defining moment in the

final 10 races and he did that before the Dutch Grand Prix.

Did we see that on Sunday night for Lando Norris?

Oscar Piazzari went on to win and is now 34 points clear at the top of the F1

ladder.

You've heard the expression for years that a competitor's helmet is their

signature.

It's a place where they can give sponsors a bit of exposure too to look

after them.

It's a valuable piece of real estate and a place to express their

personality.

Helmet painters are working to somehow capture all of that and still have a

bit of creative license too.

That is not easy.

One of the best in the world can be found on the Gold Coast.

Search for Ant-Man helmet design online or Facebook and Instagram.

He is an artisan with an incredible eye for detail and that rare ability to

take what you're loosely thinking about as an idea or a concept and bring

it to life way better than you ever imagined.

His workload is massive so we are eating into time but he just does

not have.

Hello, mate.

It has been too long.

Thank you for coming on.

It hasn't been a long time, hasn't it?

What was the last time we probably spoke?

We've only texted.

We message each other occasionally via socials when something catches

both our eyes but you painted a helmet for me 10 years ago now and

that's kind of inspired a little bit of this conversation today.

We'll drill into that but let's just begin with in prepping for

today, Greg Murphy and I had a little bit of a laugh because you

have signed off your emails for 20 plus years the same way.

Ant-Man, where does the nickname come from?

You've basically held on to that brand, haven't you?

It's clever.

It's so weird because I never ever, like before I painted a helmet,

was never called Ant-Man.

It was always my last name.

This guy, you know?

And then I worked at a place where the cleaner, funnily enough

the cleaner guy who was always a funny fellow would come in every

morning and go, Ant-Man, like that, right?

Every morning.

And he used to drive me nuts.

He would do it to annoy me, right?

And then a couple of years later when we were mucking around

with the idea of doing this for a living or even attempting it,

we were trying to come up with a note.

And I had a couple of things going and then I just thought,

you know, like Ant-Man, it's just like kind of a character

thing that kind of disassociated myself a little bit.

And then I came up with the logo thing on the back.

But that people just associated it with me

because my name's Anthony.

Like it was a nickname.

It kind of just went two and two together.

And it just kind of went from there.

Yeah, and like I always think, I always think the Ant thing is

like a way I sort of put it into perspective now is that,

you know, you have to do crazy, crazy workloads sometimes.

And it's like one guy doing 10 guys work like an Ant can

pick up, you know, 10 times its weight type thing.

So it kind of works perfectly to me sometimes, you know,

because especially at the moment, it's crazy, man.

It's crazy.

Last minute stuff, yeah.

That makes a lot of sense.

I mean, does that mean that this kind of began for you

as a passion project on weekends?

Are you a spray painted by trade or something?

Like, where did it come from?

No trade whatsoever.

I was in the casino industry.

And I was a special effects artist.

So I used to go to casinos and walk in and do rooms.

And sketch out rooms.

Yeah, so I was always working with corporates.

So I always knew how to, you know, deal with people

on a higher end basis and never intimidate any one bit.

You just got to do your thing.

And so it kind of everything that I'd done in the past

with effects and then things like that.

And then I was, I've always been a modeler, you know,

modeling and things like that in my under days and that.

So kind of all the little tiny skills you pick up over the

years seem to kind of fit perfectly with what my destiny

kind of put aside for me.

And it just fell into it, man.

I love how you've fallen into it, but it's, it's, you know,

brought you to this place.

I never raced.

Amazing. I never raced.

I went to school with Jason Bright.

We're in the same class together

and never paid the helm for Jase, right?

He wanted me to do it once.

Indy, when he did the indie lights thing in Australia,

I bumped him in a nightclub, bumped into him

in the gold case, he goes, you've got to pay my helmet.

And I said, I don't pay an helmets.

I'm a musician, mate.

It's funny, you know, look what happened, man.

Awesome.

So that was years before in my early 20s.

When was the first one?

How did it, was it like,

I'm going to give this a crack or what did you do?

First one was a,

I was obsessed with F1 back in the shoe market days.

Right, loved it.

I went to the first Australian Grand Prix with my dad,

watch Kiki Rosberg win.

You know, so my father was always around motorsport.

I grew up.

I had the RX-7 Peter Staubenson in my garage.

Moffat.

Greg Hansford's one.

My dad had Mazda dealerships.

I was always around the motorsport thing.

Always around it, you know?

And, but I never, never clicked.

Never really clicked, man, you know?

And it's like, the first one I did

was a shoe marker replica.

I just kind of bought a cheap bell hammer

just for myself because, you know,

back when eBay started, remember when eBay started?

And I was looking on eBay for like,

for like these replica things

and people were selling these astronomical priced replicas.

They were hopeless.

They were terrible things, you know?

And then I thought, I'll bugger this.

I'll just do one myself.

And I was living at my mother-in-law's place

at the time and her son was an ex-panel beater

and down in a little tiny shed, he had like red, black,

had a couple of lacquers still there,

acrylic lacquers still there.

So I just grabbed an airbrush from the shop from work,

took it home and off I went, right?

Had a basic broad idea of how to do things.

You sand it back, you know?

I think I cleared it in acrylic, man.

Right?

And then I remember I just kept it for like, you know,

maybe six months or whatever.

It's like a guitar lead in it, so it looked like a mic,

you know, all that kind of thing.

And it was just the prop, right?

And then me and Vanessa, we decided we're gonna get married

and yeah, we have no money.

I'm just a struggling musician,

trying to play four, five nights a week in Sydney.

And I thought, bugger this,

I'm just gonna chuck it on eBay, right?

So I threw it on eBay.

Oh, I felt like 800 US dollars for this thing, man.

Right?

And it just blew my mind.

I couldn't believe it.

I just like, nuts.

It changed my life.

Yeah, it changed your life,

but clearly you're detail orientated.

So what you did around trying to ensure that the helmet

was as close or as authentic as possible.

And that has been a bit of a hallmark.

I've always been like that.

Yeah, it's a hallmark of yours, isn't it?

Well, I used to believe it or not, mate.

I never had a plotter.

I'd never had a plotter until probably,

well, when I first moved into Atlas,

so for the first two years,

everything I ever did was cut by hand.

So you see all the lettering,

you know, right pattern Shakespeare back in the days

of WPS, every single thing you saw was cut by hand.

Yeah, I just stick it up on the, on the window,

like a light box and I would cut it out.

I would just print the fonts on a computer.

And then that's what I did, you know?

And like, because, you know,

knife skills are everything.

I mean, I learned knife skills back.

My first ever job was in a printing company

when I was 15 and that was back

when you had to use bromite machines

and you'd print out the lettering and you'd wax it on.

And everything was done by a knife and hand.

So I've always had knife skills.

Amazing.

You are the sum of all of these parts,

which is amazing.

How many do you reckon you've painted now in your time?

Okay, so 24 years or something, isn't it?

Yeah, it has to be.

It's crazy.

I can't, it's 20 something years, man.

You'd have to, it'd have to be in the thousands,

wouldn't it?

You'd have to have a couple thousand or something.

You'd have to.

I'm only guessing, though.

No, I mean, tell people about the process.

Well, come to some of the big names that you look after.

Yeah, the process.

I mean, I can remember coming with Craig Baird

it would have to be over a decade ago now

and you and Baird, I just walked around the studio

and talked.

It was an awesome story that we did for RPM.

And I recall you talking about taking the helmet,

a bit like a car when you restore a car.

You take it back to bear and with the only thing

basically being that the safety straps

and then off you go, don't you?

Yeah, basically, we strip them.

Yep.

Right.

And then this was carbon, obviously.

This is one of JC's lids.

And I just blacken it out,

whatever the pin line's gonna be,

I decide I will blacken out and I'll clear seal it.

I don't spray on and then have any,

I will never allow any raw paint on my pin line.

Because if you make a mistake on your pin line,

you've gotta come back on it right and fix it, right?

So you don't wanna be trying to fix something on raw paint.

You wanna be able to scratch some stuff off or whatever.

You want it sealed, right?

So that's just our, not even in your mind, right?

So then you can start working on that next layer, right?

And then once you get your basic lines down

and you follow the design, like this, for instance,

this is in a raw, it's a friend of mine, Tristan's,

it's been here for a long time,

but it's an art piece.

And I'm etching that by knife, right?

So this has been etched.

What is that, like a dragon or something?

What is that?

That's a dragon, man.

So you're the dragon it was,

and it's gonna go right around the helmet.

So that's all leaf, like a variegated red gold leaf thing.

And I just like that stuff.

Grab Nicky's for me, can you though?

And I got Nicky Perkats here, mate.

This is just in a buff right now,

but that's Nick's latest one, which will be as lovely.

We had to frame the logos a bit more.

We've got to separate them a bit.

We usually have a white section here.

But Nick's kind of kept the colors this year.

We're rocking the fluoro red.

See, I'm here right now, I'm just buffing.

So any type of imperfection that I see in the clear,

the final layers, and we have to remember,

you gotta tell the audience, man,

the reason why these costs so much is because it's not

like the old days where you saw a trolley video,

you know, and they spray on and bang,

and that's it, right?

And you'd have these lumpy edges,

you'd have everything terrible, right?

So I knew that from day one.

That was what I was gonna do.

I was gonna sand everything back.

And then my experience was what I would want.

And I have high tastes, right?

When it comes to this kind of things.

That's why I don't have a helmet, right?

I've never been able to paint something for myself, right?

But I think that you should expect, you know,

a flat finish.

And the only way to get that is by locking color in,

right?

So every time you do a layer, I will seal it

and I will sand it back.

So everyone thinks it gets built up

but you're sanding it off, right?

So you're just locking in that layer with UV, right?

So every time you get it out in the sun,

you've got three layers, three and a half layers, man,

that have been blocked out

that probably have the weight of one and a half layers,

right?

And it's locked and the sun will protect it.

You know, it will protect it from the sun

as much as humanly possible.

You just don't leave fluoros out in the sun, kids.

Do not leave them out in the sun.

So for people that are listening and maybe not watching,

we'll put this on YouTube, obviously, as well.

The colors that were on Nick's, our eye helmet there,

a bit of red, a bit of blue.

That's fluoro red.

Yeah, fluoro red.

But he's also got a, he loves dogs

and loves chocolate labs.

He's got a motif on the back and so on.

So I mean, one thing I've missed in the process here

is the design.

So I guess drivers and riders come to you and say,

hey, I'd like to incorporate a bit of this or that.

And you know, we need space for sponsors.

You've got a corporate angle that you've got to take care of

in many respects as well.

Do you do that design process?

Someone does that for you.

What happens there?

Yeah, I do all the design.

Everything is done by me.

Basically what I'll do is I'll get a list.

Like for instance, with Jamie, you know,

Samantha sends me a list of the tier one,

tier two, tier three sponsors on there, right?

And an idea of where they would like them positioned.

The obvious ones are obvious,

but sometimes you've got logos

that what they call a stacked logo is quite elongated.

So the minute you start trying to fit in elongated position

on the chin, which is, you know, good real estate,

it starts to get smaller and smaller

because you're fitting it in this section here, right?

So you've got to maybe position that somewhere else.

And those kind of things, just like,

you've probably seen a lot of Chaz's stuff,

obviously over the years,

and Chaz has just loaded with logos, right?

It's phenomenal.

And, you know, he's every year, and Will Browns,

you know, you've got to somehow frame around those.

You can't go through them, right?

You've got to frame around them somehow

and still keep it interesting.

And it's the same shell helmet, it's the same shape, you know?

So it's like, not like the shell changes.

So you've constantly got to try

and reinvent the same wheel over and over again

to make it interesting, right?

Because you can't take them away too far from their look,

right? Even though Chaz and Will

are like a new look every time,

that's the thing with Chaz and Will,

like you've got to come up with a brand new idea every time,

where guys like Nick and that and JC,

they like to evolve and, you know, keep it,

you know, all married together type thing

through their careers, you know?

And which I love doing too, you know?

So it's a challenge.

It's a challenge.

And there are some iconic things

that you have worked with along the way.

I mean, you talked about that dragon there before.

I mean, I immediately think of Murph and like the feathers

or the Indian headdress kind of thing that he's woven.

I mean, how difficult is something like that

to do?

Can be difficult, man.

Can be difficult because the thing is right,

you've got guys that have been around for a long time

and they're like back in the days where your helmet, man,

you know, you didn't have many logos on it.

So the artwork on the helmet was mega, you know?

And they were trying to still hold that individuality

that's left for a driver now, you know?

Because everything's coated, you know?

Everything's coated on them now, you know?

Nothing is theirs except for that, you know?

So with Murph stuff, it's like, you know, it came to me.

It's like you're trying to get old school stuff, right?

And try to make it, you know, don't get too far ahead,

but like try to make it modern

and in today's kind of look, you know?

So that's kind of where, and look,

it's only my opinion of what I think is cool, right?

So that could, people might disagree with me, you know,

in a lot of cases.

But it is pure artwork in that sense.

Does tech help you in some ways

when you're going through this process?

Maybe not the painting side, maybe from the design side?

Yeah, design side.

Well, for instance, this one here,

I'm working on it, Dale Woods, right?

So, you know, Dale's is always a classic every year, right?

So I'm, this year, I've got to get it done

for, believe it or not, for Bloody The Bend.

So usually I have all the, yeah,

I've got four helmets to complete from now until the bend.

Just to put that in perspective, guys, okay?

I just want you to put that into perspective.

How hard that is, okay?

That means no sleep.

That means total dedication and, you know,

no time for the kids, no going out, none of that shit.

And it's just lock in and get the,

get the meditation music going and drink coffee.

And keep going with the gym to try and stay healthy.

And I'm trying to get healthier at the moment, mate.

Trying to get fit.

Music is a bit of an outlet for him.

It's a passion for you.

You talked about that before.

Have you still got the guitar?

Do you play a little bit of that?

Do you take a break?

Yeah, I've got more guitars now, mate.

I've probably got three times the amount now,

which is, I think, I have a problem with collecting.

Like I'm an old school, 88, 87 BMX freestyler, you know?

So I collect American freestyle bikes from the 80s.

And, you know, it's just, that's a passion of mine.

And guitars was one, it's probably a dopamine fix

more than anything, you know?

Because I get it and then I get the guitar,

I get the bike and it's like, okay, I got that next.

You know?

So, yeah, I don't know, it's a weird thing.

But I don't know, like, music's good.

I haven't written a song for a long time.

OK.

But I don't know, man.

I mean, music's kind of not cool anymore, you know?

Like, it's a cool way out there.

It's a great outfit.

You know, like, to bring a guitar out,

everyone just cringes now, you know?

I think the last time I walked in there,

you was straight onto a bit of Van Halen

or something you were very, very good.

It was excellent.

Good memory.

I'm enjoying this.

Hope you are too.

Ant-Man's kindly going to stick around

for a little bit longer,

About this episode

Delve into the fascinating world of helmet painting with Ant-Man, a renowned artist who has worked with top motorsport personalities. From his beginnings in special effects to creating iconic designs for drivers like Chas Mostert and Jamie Whincup, Ant-Man shares insights into the intricate process of helmet design and the balance between artistry and sponsorship. The episode also touches on the challenges of maintaining creativity in a competitive industry, the personal connections formed with drivers, and the evolution of his craft over the years.

Buick Century Mazda RX-7

Original notes

Just like the great riders and drivers this is a story of a self taught artisan who passionately dedicates himself to the craft spending long hours every day to personalize helmets that could easily be on display in a gallery.

Working with Chaz Mostert, Greg Murphy, James Courtney, Shane van Gisbergen and many more to capture and express their personalities and to keep bringing a freshness to each design.

How his background was the perfect foundation for this unlikely career path and the Michael Schumacher replica that started it all.

Expanding into custom trims to give each ‘lid’ that special touch.

And why he won’t compromise on quality in the race to finish a number of new helmets ahead of the Supercars enduros.

Checkout Antman Helmet Design on FaceBook and Instagram or go to https://www.antmanhelmetdesign.com/
Head to Rusty's Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and give us your feedback and let us know who you want to hear from on Rusty's Garage.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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