more complex than the animatronics is a bjorn i had babies well here you go okay
i don't put it on i don't remember okay so i think it's is there a connector over here
wait how does this maggie over here ah i see it's it's a whole feeling it's a little
feeling it's a whole feeling it's also feeling this little hairs on my chin right right this is
a completely tactile experience hey everybody uh adam savage uh here from tessa and i am in
grant imahara's shop with lauren markland who collaborated with grant on this beautiful child um
oh my god he actually vibrates a little so it feels like it feels like he's you know really
there like there's something going on uh all right so talk to me about this collaboration how long
let's just start at the beginning uh three months which is that sounds like a crazy short period of
time it was a crazy three months uh we got the model from project 842 okay um and then from
there we you know sort of altered it a little bit we ended up i know he does fall asleep he'll
fall asleep in the baby bjorn it's we would work on this and then just both be like oh
because it was so cute right that's like zooming in and zooming out and so because i can see in
your face like this is your child it really is uh it was it was three months of sweat and tears uh
no blood luckily yeah good good uh oh maybe a little bit but uh it was you know it was a lot
of hard work over a short span of time uh and it was a lot of new things for both of us interesting
grant was really working hard on learning like maya and and working with rhino and things
like that to both make the interior structures and also sort of um uh alter his face a little
bit because we wanted to make a little bit more cute right and so when we're talking about this
we're talking about a silicon a silicon casting that goes over a hard shell under mechanics and
all of this has to be married to within you know thousands of an inch it is incredibly precise work
i've seen some early 3d prints up there i see size tests over here the scale was actually i would say
probably the most tested thing really done yeah because we wanted to make sure the size was right
so we printed a lot of heads we printed a lot of uh cardboard mock-ups and did did grant
just like hold these mock-ups and he did oh you did okay so we would we would print one out and
paste on some cardboard cut it out and then hold it and this doesn't feel quite right and then
make it a little bit smaller not quite right and then we finally got to the right size and we
we did want it to be you know holdable or or put because again he was the intention was to bring
it to kids hospitals right so you know making sure that it had like a little carrier that it
could fit in and and things like that that's really integral can we see some of the boxes
yeah of course this is a small one yeah so again project 842 i believe did all of our 3d models
that's lovely really nice and posable and so you see we started pretty small and then eventually
we've got a lot of parts in here and this is just a print a solid print of the whole thing
this isn't taking into account the silicone and the under mechanics it's just scale testing yep
the ears are so huge because they are huge and those are actually separate pieces as well
right right they're seamed on um in the silicone i appreciate the commitment to also printing it in
the neon green yeah he you know how he is he everything had to be very particular and you
know he really wanted to to get that effect even when you looked at just the print you know okay so
tell me once you guys decided upon the size then it's time to design the mechanics to that size
and also figure out how the silicone goes right so he essentially extrapolated a skull from the
from the original uh a model okay so that whole thing looks i don't like a horror show uh yes
you can sort of see some of the pieces here that's part of the skull oh wow we've got some
of the eye mechanisms here for the lids oh wow look at that it's so pretty oh and this fits in
i think that's the coolest they might not be mine might not be the same
there we go wow right i know for some people this is nightmare fuel for me it's just like super it's
actually really cute yeah he's quite cute with and without skin which is a weird thing to say
but it really is true especially when he gets the the eyes fully in it
it looks like a little gremlin which i'm into i love that so it sounds like within the three
months slug of like burning through to get this done there's also like all these moments of like
i can't believe how cute it is yeah oh yeah 100 all right so once you've got the underskull and
the mechanics and these all sort of are playing well together there's still the huge problem
of getting them to work with silicone yes so from there we we essentially had a core
and a a mold so we did this a lot we did it with a um a silicone we we uh a syringe so we injected
everything oh okay so we actually had 3d printed i don't know if we have any of the cores here
um 3d printed molds we did do 3d printing molds oh that's beautiful
so you can sort of see on the interior his face here and this is sla incredible
so there would be a so these two pieces would go together and a core would go inside and the core
is precisely the shape of the mating surfaces for all the mechanics yep
so what a great oh and a guitar base as well so we would inject through
this way oh right so it's really specific so you'd inject through a port at the bottom these four yes
okay wow oh my god lauren that is brilliant is this a process you guys have tried before
this is the first time grant and i had tried this process together so it was very much a uh
a learning process yeah you know like i've made a lot of different kinds of molds never 3d printed
molds is sort of the first four right into that but yeah it was it was the first time for like
this first time for for a lot of things for both of us for him it was more on the 3d printing side
or 3d modeling side rather with brian rhino and for me it was um and and doing molds and things
like that yeah and doing all of that in a computer because he was so used to doing it physically
right you know yeah um and for me it was first time working with silicone and doing hair punching
of this scale you know casting it with a with this kind of mold and then doing the painting and
all of 10 hours of hair punching 10 hours straight his little history oh my god i mean the fact that
you got to this point in three months when it was the first time for both of you trying all
these processes is absolutely astounding to me it is an incredible achievement it was long days
a lot of long days i can feel his battery has worn out yeah he's tired he's he does get sleepy
normally he does his cycle he's got one animation cycle right now where he sort of will wake up
and then get sleepy he'll get excited to see you and then he'll sort of fall asleep again it's
i know it's a lot to handle because there's so much love in that in that arc of like the
interaction i just really dig it we had the whole the whole conversation of airbrush use because
it's all airbrushed silicone so we used a lot of naphtha to thin it out essentially we use psycho
paint in different tones and and you kind of have to think of it in translucent layers as opposed
to regular painting it must change your whole mindset about color getting the color balance
it's really reverse you have to think in sort of filters wow so he's got a lot of different tones
on him you can see if you look close he's got a lot of like blue and his wrinkles and his skin is
quite translucent we wanted to make sure if he has like light coming behind it you can see through
the ears so it really does feel that sort of like fleshy cartilaginous yeah structure you know
it sounds uh it sounds dumb to say i'm impressed but like when i tackle a project uh that's even
close to this kind of complexity i still don't end up doing near the amount of iteration that
you guys did and it's like it's a fully sort of like almost film studio level of iteration that
you guys did with all these pings and the painting tests and everything and the the fact that you did
in three months i'm still a little like it makes me tired just thinking about it uh yeah were you
also working a full-time job at the time no i was working fully for granted okay so a lot of uh you
know actually we had met through working here at faunco and uh you know it was grant coming to me
after an already long day and uh and saying hey do you want to help me build a darth vader cowboy hat
he he really i'm so thankful for every for just everything that we did together and you know like
one of the things that if i could pass on what he taught me was even if you don't
have confidence in yourself if this is a new thing you're trying if you're making something
if you're just getting into into the industry or just making this as a hobby you know like
believe in yourself because somebody else does the people that care about you
will believe in you no matter what and that's kind of all you need sometimes
that's lovely a lot of what we did was for other people you know is to either help them with with
the performance or make them happy or or you know bb was for kids and and grow group was for kids
and you know a lot of that so much of what we did and so much of what grant really loved doing was
incorporating steam so you know science technology art robotics and math to you know really put
a lot of whimsy into people's lives and that was so important to him through these wonderful
creations that we got to make and i'm like it still feels like a dream really yeah and so
to have spent the time making these things yeah so i mean i feel the whimsy even from here right
like it's just i remember seeing that first video that he put up of this and i was just
absolutely gobsmacked there's so much um emotion and and and not humanity personality personality
like on one level a lot of what we do in film is we make stuff look like it's real but it's totally
the farthest thing from real imaginable but with the bb-8 and with this guy you guys really sought
to make something that both looked real on camera but also looked real when you were standing right
in front of it touching it and putting your hands on it and that's a level that film rarely gets to
and it's a whole nother level of engineering but i really appreciate the the engineering for the
experience oh for sure well we don't have a you know a a whole post-production crew to do
it for us right right you know when we take when you know the plan was to take these things out
to see people in person that experience really has to sell yeah and and incorporating all of
the the things tactile make sure the the programming is just so subtle uh that you
get that like sort of slow fall back asleep and like like a puppy you know when you see a
puppy that's too tired it's sort of its head is a little bit too heavy and it it falls over like it
takes my guard goes down watching it watching this child do that and then i'm just like i'm along for
the ride it's an actual thing in the room okay i just lauren it's so beautiful the paint job
is so subtle and i can't even tell you guys how cute these little hands feel it's a masterpiece
thank you i can't believe you let me wear this thank you it feels great my loads feels great
you