everybody norm from testa here and no need to introduce this guy Frank
Ippolito Frank how you doing pretty good of course pretty good because Frank and
his company finger G at e3 just delivered six of these giant statues for
Borderlands three I'm so excited about this game I love it
so you've been working on this for how many months now this is about a 10 or 11
week project I know you've been like feeding me a little bit info seeing on
social media but really seeing these in person these are incredibly sore one
point one I am one of the upscale representations of the game characters
and I look at statues we've seen statues at other events I know you like have fun
with a mixed-media it's not just makes me if mixed process yes this is
literally every process that we've like accumulated over the years all into
these statues there's 3d printing there's milling of forms there's hand
fabrication there's machining there's all the fabric stuff foam fabrication
like it's literally everything well I want to start from inside out okay so
this these are posed characters okay gave you the poses the look you have
these high-resolution assets and so underneath all this resume as an Amish
oh yeah so we start with the the form and we design what the aluminum armature
would be inside of it and how it's going to come apart because all these things
have to be transportable too and some of these are a little bit trickier like a
Maura over there she's in such a crazy position we tried to like run the
numbers and do the calculations to make it but it still came down to at the last
minute we had a fabricate it to be more robust because it's just you don't you
don't get the same thing when you're trying to do it in the computer so we
were saying do the numbers you're actually doing some calculation on
center of gravity weight distribution the strength of materials try to but
sometimes the material deflection just is what it is
you don't believe her a giant gun out there it's gonna deflect the medal it
makes me think of like when I buy like hose most collectible stamps and they
have crazy poses they all wires underneath except this is even bigger
and so a little bit of movement can be a lot that's huge yeah especially like on
this gun and on that gun like you just touch the tip and it just kind of gives
a little bounce Wow so you guys figure out the strength the core of it yeah now
building on top of that you're making bodies yeah so we see in seed out foam
bodies which are basically like mannequin forms those serve two purposes
one so that all of the cloth fabricators can use it as a mannequin to pattern the
clothes and then another one so that when the ones have skin we could sculpt
on top of it and we have all of the flesh parts on proportionate we've
previously work with you to work on your giant you know your avid CNC the big
three axis you have your four by eight big sheets of foam yeah and you're
basically kind of sandwich king like like an arm you'd back stuff up back so
figure out how to slice it so that it makes sense to fit on the mill and
that's it and you're kind of layering and building something that you can
sculpt on yes so real sculpting comes into play yes and something you make
molds yeah we sculpt it out of clay make a fiberglass mold and then we put
silicone inside of it cast it in silicone paint it make the eyes
everything so something like like a character how many different molds you
making for the body form it was not a ton of molds on this project only the
stuff that you're gonna see that's flesh and a couple of parts to get repeated or
molded like compared to other projects like it's really not that many molds a
lot of the stuff was built as a one-off and the molds isn't necessary for
repeatability because you can mill like you said mortal body forms for things
like experiments cut and so the molds or so you can get the silicone correct on
top because you're not 3d printing silicone no
so 3d printing also comes into play for the other fabrication yeah yeah a lot of
the gun parts a lot of the hard surface stuff was 3d printed like where when we
sculpted the hands we would 3d print the hand form and then sculpt the fingers
where you see like I'm like I'm hurt where you see the glove
we only sculpted where you see the fingers and of course like some make
this sonic is all robot so that's all printed and milled and milled like this
is real wood this is real wood so we got that and we kind of hand carved that
down the scope that's real brass I I kind of went a little nuts here and
there and I said let's just make that scope out of brass I think it'll look
pretty you know so we're using a little bit of every technique and it makes it
more fun for us to build you know I have a really amazing team of fabricators and
yeah you can just throw everything on the printer and sand it forever but why
not give him give him something fun to machine and you know and also like foam
right full fabrication comes into it I was like the accessories yep are like
other prop makers we know there are exactly building foam and then kind of
covering with fake leather and all that stuff yeah there's really no techniques
in here that's anything foreign to what anybody else does it's just putting it
together and picking and choosing when you get which ones you want to use and
at that scale the scale makes it the scale makes it tricky you know
patterning pattern a and clothes for like me and you your pattern one side
then you mirror it you know but because these guys are all in crazy positions
they had a pattern the full garment both sides because they were asymmetrical a
lot of times and so some like this jacket yeah it's a good real a real
jacket these are real leather this is everything as as real as it
could be like I wanted to make something like if it's metal let's try and make it
metal if it's fabric let's make it fabric let's do the best we can and then
you're like something like this you know that the zipper pulls your fabric and
that's foam yeah but the actual zippers you're
sourcing you're looking for online we found these giant oversized zippers for
his things that are like one and a half scale zippers and then that's let's it
weed and they're like beautiful convention light that like this
beautiful sculpture there's beautiful painting I noticed
like your guess ins on some of the skin the eyes look really cool yeah if these
electronics is no literally everything yeah some of these things light up
blacks eyeball lights up you can't really see it in this light but some of
their accessories light up yeah that is ridiculous where do these things
go after work there's a couple of things that they're bouncing around and where
they're gonna go I think the Calypso twins are gonna end
up going to games come in Germany and then these four are gonna bounce around
here in the States a little bit I don't know what's locked in you know in the
books yet but there's a lot of stuff floating around and where these things
are gonna go so wherever I imagine Borderlands 3 is being promoted these
will be there because people I think really should see this in person you
know we've gone to conventions from comic-con to III and we always take a
look at what's being fabricated it's always cool to kind of dissect the mind
of a fabricator I'm lonely good yeah yeah a place like this and seeing
everybody else's artwork it's like oh how would I build that right and that
that's exciting for me so I hope that somebody else is excited about this
stuff yeah we met up with with Harrison pen and he was asking you questions
about it and hopefully you out there you know if you're interesting games you
shouldn't you prompt make and get a chance to see this because this is
really beautiful stuff that holds up real close yeah and a farm graduation
Frank wells daughter yes it's a great team effort awesome and more information
on all the stuff on your website yet which follow you on Instagram social
media and follow both energy and I'll hopefully see you at the next big
project
you