Orange Hoverboard

I still think its just a flat, printed decal. This wasnt a hero board so I doubt they would have spent much time picking out odd materials when they could have just painted the pattern on or used a decal. Plus jersey material would be near impossible to attach vinyl to (for the logos and whatnot) and would most likely have started to come loose in those Planet Hollywood pictures. Not only that, but the dot pattern doesn't match.

I'm a big fan of Ockham's Razor and I just feel there are simpler solutions, unless we can actually get some evidence or better pictures.

-Nick
 
I wholeheartedly disagree.

Since it wasn't a hero board, as you state... I don't think they would have gone to the trouble of making an all-new graphic and decal for it. They probably grabbed what material was laying around for the backing.

It's definitely Jersey material, or something VERY similar... and in my view, the pattern matches nearly perfectly. The size of the holes might be a slight variation.. and by slight, I mean damn near microscopic... and as for gluing material down, you know those colourful numbers and names that go on Jerseys? Guess what they're made of...



Vinyl. ;)
 
From those I know in the textile printing business, they tend to use heat transfer plastisol inks (Basically screen printing inks on a transfer paper) to put anything onto jersey/mesh material. And the ones who don't just silk screen onto the material directly. Plastisols may feel like plastic or rubber once cured, but they are not a vinyl applique.

Take a look at the pattern though. If you analyze any 4 adjacent dots on the board, they form a perfect square. On jersey material 4 neighboring dots form a rhombus with non-right angles.

-Nick
 
If it IS a decal which you claim it to be. Take notice of the ring around the handlebar hole.

P75-2-1-1-1.jpg


Was that a sliver of decal cut out and meticulously attached? Nope. It's a quick paint and sharpie job...if it were a decal it probably would have peeled off around that curb and wouldn't look so sloppy. This was a painted material.

You'll also notice that the colour is exactly the same. Not even with the pink board did they manage to match the exact tone of the pink and yellow, the stripes on the photo boards were practically purple.

There's no way that they would have tried to do a colour match on this board that wouldn't even be seen, let alone nail it.

It was a painted material, a jersey material or similar. I'm sure that not every jersey material is the same There are likely some variations on the dot pattern from manufacturer to manufacturer.

Now to find the right type. :)
 
trust me the material on the board is not jersey material. I worked as a football equipment manager for a while... It's some sort of squishy rubber material that looks the same as the patterns on jerseys. I've seen the type of material before but not quite sure what they call it.
 
The material may not be the same as football jerseys. As I stated there may be some variation in pattern, there may also be a variation in material.

I was leaning more towards Basketball. I've seen material identical to this, Basketball has been in my life since birth. I had a fluorescent yellow jersey that would have been perfect. :)
 
If you look, the pattern appears to be poorly painted on the handlebar mount. To my eye it looks like they just added the mount, then hand painted a close color match on top of it to continue the pattern. The dots aren't even straight on the mount.

If they didn't just have some sort of speckled vinyl lying around the shop, (And they may have had some from prototyping the other boards) using the technologies of the day, they could have simply silkscreened the pattern on.

There is no depth in the pattern, I don't see the need to overcomplicate the construction searching for a mystery material when we KNOW that they had the ability to print vinyl appliques, (Like on the stunt boards) had access to odd vinyls, (Like the holographic stuff) and likely involved some silk screening for the No-Tech board. Prop makers, especially back then, tended to go simple and printed vinyl is about as simple as it gets.

-Nick
 
Actually, I discovered the "poorly painted" mount previously. I had an arrow in my picture pointing to it... looks like it was done with a sharpie. The point is - the colour is not "close" or near enough, it is...

identical1.jpg


Identical.

Cutting out material and gluing it down to some wood isn't that complicated either IMHO. They did it with 20 other Hero boards, didn't they? And with all due respect, the quality of the photos isn't good enough to judge whether the hole pattern has depth or not. It could very well have some depth.

We've seen the prop makers ability to match the colour of the boards to the decals and it stinks... you never know, maybe this wasn't intended as a "Stunt" board. They probably made it a Hero for the possibility that it might be visible on screen.

The production crew of the Back to the Future films are well known to be overly detailed and thorough in their approach. They were most certainly not simplistic...

In the case of the orange board they even made sure to change the text of "Hover Board" (just so it "goes" with orange) to blue and added Velcro strips. If they had known how much of the board would be seen they wouldn't have made little more than a wooden deck painted orange... It was made with all of the details for a reason. It only makes sense that there would be a rubbery material like on the pink board.

And sure, obviously they were well equipped in making vinyl decals. They probably had the Universal sign shop at their disposal. All of the boards in some way or another are made up utilizing some sort of vinyl decal, whether it's a few details, a full board decal, or a small Pitbull logo. That doesn't change the fact that there were boards that had hand-applied lenticular material on them that was separate to the vinyl.
 
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If they used some kind of mystery material with holes in it instead of simply using a vinyl graphic type decal, wouldn't the dark spots in the picture where the material has been ripped be a lot lighter or perhaps not there at all?

ifu7h2.jpg
 
I see a ripple now, thanks for showing this to me. I see a separate material.

But for argument sake... maybe it was a dark cast material that was painted on the board or separate and then applied. Maybe it was originally brown.
 
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Regardless, unless they painted the vinyl material in the same tan/orange beforehand... which probably would not work, You're not going to get the same colour on the ring around the handlebar hole. It had to have been painted.
 
Well, looks like I can stop working on my version of the board design! :lol

Quit being so awesome, Roland.

-Nick
 

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