artistic LICENSE

By Ashley Zimmerman

WHETHER YOU’VE admired them for the artwork you see gracing the pits of your favorite drivers, or you’ve long since dreamt of how you would design your own, the talent that comes from designing and painting racing helmets has long since been coveted. At one point or another in the mass expanse of colorful creations spotted throughout a single race season, there is one thing guaranteed, you’ve spotted a Shell Shock helmet. Shell Shock Design and Paint, also known as Noah Ennis, is not only high in demand in the world of dirt track racing, but hockey as well, making a living bringing to life some of the most memorable helmets fans and drivers have seen to date.

Dirt Empire: Can you share how you got involved in racing and eventually ended up painting helmets?

Noah Ennis: I grew up in the Northeast, outside of Syracuse; basically my entire life has revolved around racing and hockey from my grandparents all the way down to me. To make a long story short on how I got involved in painting helmets, I was involved in a car accident and I was hit by an 18 wheeler; I spent six months in the hospital and another year and a half to two years in a wheelchair. During that time, I had a handful of people that brought me stuff to mess with and keep myself busy, since there wasn’t a whole lot I was able to do. I more or less was self-taught painting. Prior to that, I had worked at a wrap shop, where as a side job I did race car wraps, so I kind of knew the basics of painting, color theory, and design; it was more or less putting it all together.

DE: What is your process from start to finish?

NE: Typically, a client sends over their colors, ideas, something personal to them, things like who they are away from the racetrack, their interests, sports, music, TV, that type of stuff. Usually from there the easiest thing is to just tell me

DE: What are your favorite types of designs to work on?

NE: Probably hockey masks, and themed helmets like with Dominic and Gio Scelzi, where we did the Super Scelzi brothers, which was kind of based off of Super Mario. I’ve done other ones like a Greenday theme; I’ve done a Van Halen theme, a lot of different college themed stuff. For some reason I end up doing a lot of tribute helmets. I don’t know if I would necessarily say I’m a fan of those, just because there is usually something sad that’s involved with it, but I do tend to do a lot of them.

DE: What would you rank as your top five helmets?

NE: One would probably be my childhood hero Jacques Villeneuve, I had two helmets that I had to turn around in 24 hours for Ryan Briscoe that were literally out of the blue, Ryan’s gold helmet that he wore after James Hinchcliffe got hurt during Indy 500 qualifying and probably two of the many, many I’ve done for Joey Saldana.

DE: Who was the first driver that you ever did a helmet for?

NE: Ever? Like ever ever? AJ Fike.

DE: How many helmets do you think you do a year now?

NE: On average, it’s right around 200 to 250.

DE: In total how long have you been painting for now?

NE: Going on 17 years.

DE: When you began, did you imagine it would grow to as big as it has?

NE: No, I guess in a lot of ways, I don’t even think it’s that big.

DE: If someone wanted to get a helmet done by you, what is the process?

NE: I tell everyone that wants to reach out about one, don’t bother calling, I check my messages like once a day. E-mail me. There is somewhat of a screening process, I don’t just agree to anything when anybody calls, it has to check all of the boxes so to speak. Then we go from there.

DE: What is the average cost of a