hey everyone its norm from tested here hope you're all staying safe and I
wanted to do a little bit of a check-in this weekend with a Show and Tell as
well as a little bit of a technology test I'm doing and running right now so
hope you've been enjoying the videos that we've been filming at home
especially Adams builds being he's been doing so many of them they've been
really fun it's really fun to watch him film himself as well as conduct his
weekly live streams and if you haven't been following those you can subscribe
to the channel we've been doing them every Tuesday at 1 p.m. Pacific time and
you can ask questions and we'll be interacting test the team will be in our
discord server which is just a discord dot GG slash tested also hope you've
been enjoying some of the check ins that we've had from the members of tested
team showing the projects they've been working on and since I last checked in
with you guys I've been working on some LEGO sets myself I do have a huge back
catalog of LEGO sets but found some time here and there to put some together and
want to share them with you because these I think are pretty fun and
definitely unique I'm also running a new set up at home with as you can see here
I have an iPhone and actually not recording directly on the camera you're
watching me on I'm actually having the camera pipe into my laptop and what
you're watching is actually an OBS studio recording and what I'm allowed to
do with that what I can do is not only capture from this camera but also pipe
in my iPhone camera with a little bit of picture and picture and doing this as a
live mix this is not being edited after the fact is all being done in real time
and the iPhone here is connected over lightning cable over USB it's running an
app called OBS camera and as you can see as I'm waving my hand in front of the
camera here the latency is pretty good just little bit
slight delay but it's good enough that you can see what's going on and then it
also lets me give you a close-up view as to what I'm showing here so what I have
here is it's a koi fish and it's a Lego set yeah this is Lego even though it's
actually plastic pieces on top of Technic pieces it's a part of what Lego
launched as an IndieGoGo campaign in this pilot program back in 2018 called
Lego forma and what came out of it was as one test set it's about forty five
dollars sold it in the US and the UK only and they once sea won't be like to
whether there would be an appetite for basically a mechanical automaton for
older Lego builders 12-plus is what they did it said so this isn't the kind of
set that you buy pieces assemble and then disassemble you put together once
and it is a display piece and because it is otamatone it animates so I'll show
you the animation but they did create one unique piece for here so you can see
in the insert here is that yeah it's Technic and it has this skin here and
the skin is attached with these pegs and so this peg is a new piece they created
a new injection molded part that then allows basically soft or pliable pieces
to be snapped in because it's a little bit of a ring here that holds it in
place and then you can plug it into your standard Technic slot and it snaps right
in and boom and so they're about thirty of those that then pin the skin of a koi
fish into a skeleton that animates and it works like so it's a really lovely
animation so you see basically it's our standard you know otamatone with the cam
with some reciprocating motion instead of going up and down like that it's
moving sideways so that's why there are these three poles here and if you look
down here as I turn it's moving not just up in
down but because it's two parallel bars you get this nice wave of emotion and
because this is just plastic it's soft plastic it's pliable if I turn it you
also get this kind of secondary animation Adam likes to talk about and
that animators talk about with just a movement of the tail and the fins as
they go back and forth it's really really lovely now this was launched in
2018 they shipped it last year and about 6,000 of these sets were made
unfortunately they announced back in December that they're not gonna be
continuing this project they got the feedback it was really useful they might
incorporate the ideas of this and something in the future but Lego forma
as a category of set will not continue there are a bunch of these you can find
in secondary markets on eBay that's where I got mine and if you do get one
what Lego also did was release designs for these skins themselves so there's
PDF so you can trace them you can essentially cut out with a laser cutter
or something like if I don't cutter these skins that then let you replace
the fins and you can see this is supposed to be like a shark head and
that goes like it would replace then this koi head and you can design your
own and paint your own so for those that were able to get the forma set there's a
little bit of customization there but I really love the animation I love the koi
fish design love these little whiskers here and really pleased with the build
the other Lego set that I worked on that I symbol recently is an MOC and this
came from a builder who designs basically Star Trek starships something
I'm a big fan of but there are no official Lego starships and there's a
Star Trek license and so Paul Weaver has an Etsy store where he's created some
wonderful designs and plans that you can purchase about $4 each and he sent me
this kit of the USS Reliant with I am a big fan of you of course
recognize it from the Wrath of Khan it's some Randall ass starship and it's one
of my favorite designs it's so 80s it has you know the nacelles go down as
opposed to up there the most pontoon like nacelles of any starship and also
has this crossbar which I love is just a unique silhouette while still retaining
that the saucer that you see in the Constitution class in the galaxy class
and all the traditional Star Trek ships and really fun build really fun
instructions and that you can see up close here it does you know use some
unconventional Lego assembly that I don't think is would be sanctioned by
LEGO Group and so some of the pieces are a little bit flimsier that would hope
but big nefeli be reinforced and it fits nicely on stand here and that's a
wonderful little ship so hopefully this set up work where you can not only see
me talking about this but also get close-up details one of the nice things
about using smartphone as opposed to you know a webcam or DSLR as this close-up
cam is the small sensor the relatively small sensor means that you can have
some really nice minimum focus distance I can bring this this ship and these
pieces really close to the camera I can even switch between different lenses
here it is a little bit pricey app but you're paying $15 to not have to
essentially buy another camera a webcam and spend a hundred bucks on something
and use something you already have and because it all ties over USB into OBS
you could even do this with some live streaming so i hope this test worked out
i might be using a similar setup like this in the future for some projects and
for demos while we're filming at home again hope you all are doing alright
share with us the projects that you're working on we'd love to hear what you've
been working on at home while we've all been under lock downs and stay tuned for
more check-ins and more projects especially these builds that Adams
filming himself they're just so fun to watch again stay safe thanks for
watching and I'll see you next time bye