hey it's sean from tested happy holidays i am here to present my favorite things
of 2019 to start we'll do some books we love books and these are great these are
from wet a workshop one of our favorite places and they put out two separate
books that they then combined into a slipcase version the first book is
basically kind of like a history of Wetty and they started out you know what
a workshop was did a lot of hands on traditional kind of props
they've then went into the digital realm and they now do a mix of both and kind
of combine them seamlessly what I love about this book in particular is that it
goes way way back it goes to the beginning of Peter Jackson's career
where he was making lauki horror films such as brain-dead also known as Dead
Alive and the first r-rated Muppet film the meet the Feebles and it covers all
of that stuff which is stuff II do not normally see out of the Peter Jackson
archive so and the other thing I like about this book is it's not overly text
heavy I have to admit I have a lot of these type of coffee table books and a
lot of times I get them I look at all the pretty pictures I read tidbits here
and there but I never actually sit down and read the whole thing this is much
more approachable and I think he gets right to the point and covers a lot of
fascinating parts about the history of both the traditional wet Asaf and the
digital they followed that up by another book the digital book which is very
interesting how they did it it basically will you know take certain scenes are
parts of movies from Lord of the Rings and other various Weda productions and
will break them down into like what part was a matte painting what part was
digital what part you know was animated and how they did it and it will just
kind of like break all these little things down easily to easy to digest in
little blurbs so once again like a really accessible book that goes beyond
just a pretty picture book so these can be picked up at the wet or even on
Amazon next is another a workshop item they you know delved
into the the prop world by selling them directly to us fans and they've also
branched out into doing like toys and books and other things and one of the
ones that they did last year was a district 9cj generally I'm not a huge
fan of vinyl toys but I love this guy he's a little cartoony but the paint job
is absolutely fantastic the detailing is fantastic and it just is really really
nicely done I was super impressed by this and as one of my favorite little
action figures that I got this year also available directly through the wet a
website now for some tools we always try to do some tools for favorite things the
first one I'm gonna talk about is this little guy I believe I found this I
think they randomly sent this to us a test to try out and we ended up using
this quite a lot this is called the glue looper it was another Kickstarter
campaign for Hobby tools and the idea is that it has these little tiny loops on
the end of this blade that lets you precisely control liquids so that might
be cement that you're trying to do some capillary action to get on a seam on a
model I use it a lot for putting threadlocker on little tiny screws it
gives you a lot of control and it doesn't get everywhere and they they
basically did this by photo etching this is a piece of photo etched metal that
you basically break the size that you want off they have different size loops
for different projects you fold back the tab and then it will just go into any
exacto handle I've been using these a lot the other nice thing about this is
that if it gets clogged up because these loops are tiny you just take a lighter
and burn it off and it'll be open and ready to go and ready these again so the
glue looper NIP X I know Adam is tied about Nick nip X quite often they make
fantastic tools out of Germany I finally broke down and got these nip x wire
strippers this year I've used many many different automatic
wire strippers and most of them I've not been happy with I used them for a little
bit they just didn't quite work like it one of them too and I just went back to
the old fashioned you know regular squeeze and pull type strippers this is
the first automatic wire stripper that I have bought that I truly love and I've
used all the time they are not cheap but if in my opinion if you are doing a lot
of this type of work these are worth the money this particular one will strip
from seven a 32 gauge wire it has an adjustable stop so that you can control
how big the stripped area is it has replaceable jaws for when they wear out
and then it basically pulls closes and pulls and strips everything all in one
go and it works well enough that I found that I can usually do maybe three or
four wires at a time depending on how the gauge of the wire the blades are
replaceable as well it has a really nice fine ratcheting depth adjustment so if
it's cutting into the wire too much or not enough this is easy to adjust versus
the the other ones that I've used where you have to get a screwdriver out and
set a clamp and it just doesn't work as well and then it even has a nice
heavy-duty cutter on the top here to actually cut the wire itself so the NIP
X automatic wire cutters highly recommended
finally I one of my favorite things this is this is a stroking my own ego but
this is something that I made this year and it is one of my favorite things I've
heard Adam often talk about the project that he is currently working on he will
sometimes take a piece of it or the whole thing home and he'll put it on his
bedside table so you can lay in bed and look at it longingly and I have done
this with this not in the bedroom but it's definitely on my desk every day for
those of you don't recognize that this is the keymaster helmet from
ghostbusters 1 basically they put this on Louis Tully Rick Moranis his
character to basically reveal that inside he's vinz clortho the keymaster
of gozer and demon dog underneath his human guise
this thing is such a fantastic prop it is made from an old colander which oddly
enough is also in Dana's kitchen keep an eye out for it so at the track down
there a colander it has a lot of different components they use throughout
the Ghostbusters movies such as these old resistors and particular connectors
and wiring the trick with this guy was it has all of these what looked to be
ceramic electrical insulators these standoffs that are all around it and by
complete dumb luck I think I found the short ones that they used on the
colander it looked right to me I found enough to do mine and then I 3d
model and replicated them to do more of them other ones I just 3d modeled myself
to like look so it looked right to me and printed those out as well we have
nylon standoffs similar to what they would use in like a computer case and
then lots and lots and lots of wire we have a computer ribbon on the back and
then the rest was just I've had to find the right gauge wire and I use the old
dowel in a in a drill to coil all of this myself and then stretch it out to
the right sizing but this was like days and days and days of staring at
high-definition screen grabs to try to figure out the placing and where
everything won on this and like a lot of props there's a lot of places you never
get a really good look at the top or the back or the left side so you kind of I
had to was left to my own devices somewhat somewhat the original trim
chinstrap was from athletic gear it was a leather strap with a rubber elastic
strap on it the impossible to find you can't find these anymore so I found an
equivalent and our friend Kate's a backer did some vinyl cutting for the
logo on that and it just turned out great I did the full costume my wife was
the gatekeeper and this is just such an oddball prop that I am happy to have in
my collection and I had a lot of fun building it so yeah so those are my
favorite things we would love to hear what your favorite things are or if you
have better alternatives to some these tools or whatnot leave those
comments and we'll get back to you and have a great holiday