hey it's norm from Tested.com I'm here in Atlanta Georgia right outside Atlanta
for Dragon Con but we're also here with Harrison Crick's Vulpin props the
culmination of a nine-month journey we've been following along untested we
commissioned you to build us a prop almost a year ago now and right here the
see in person it is if you play video games the needler from halo halo reach
yeah well I don't want to beat you look I wish I had the glasses to kind of push
up and do the nerd moment it is magnetic it's not the one from reach and it's not
the one from Halo 4 either it's got a halo 4 paint job but it's actually the
reach model and there's very subtle clues to people who are super Halo fans
as to how they would recognize the difference between the two so yeah
welcome those absolutely we're gonna go inspect this in
excruciating detail in just a second but I want to talk about the whole history
of the whole build process for this because it was fascinating you can read
all about that here some of these wonderful build bugs on tested but I
want to go over them right now so first design when you want to build something
from scratches these are all built from scratch yep in this workshop right here
this is not a real object in the real world it's a versions now well now it is
yeah so how did you start going about the design for this okay well whenever I
build anything any prop any replica I gather a whole bunch of reference images
so for this I started off with just grabbing screenshots that people have an
airplane halo and the unfortunate part of halo is it's on an Xbox right and
that's exclusive not on PC it's very unfortunate yeah it's really hard to rip
the models so normally when you when you build something from a video game you
can open it up and you know in there's all kinds of model viewers out there and
you know play with the model and look at it different angles that sort of stuff
so I started with screenshots and I'm a little lucky in the sense that I've got
a really good following on Facebook a lot of other builders a lot of really
good technically minded people a lot of big fans of these franchises in series
and so I put this out there and I said hey anybody out there in the internet
world if you have any references of the needler from Halo I'd love to have them
and this guy got in touch with me runs a Halo site on Facebook I think it's
called the history of Halo and he sent me all of the 3d files for
this and not only that he sent me those in obj format which you can open in
Photoshop because I'm not really 3d program savvy so he sent me all that and
I was able to rotate this thing and do cutaways and skeleton views and get some
really fantastic references and then you decide on the scale of this yes Master
Chief's the big guy yeah he's like seven foot four you know he's astronomically
tall yeah and for that for him this is a sidearm you know this is a pistol it's a
one-handed you know it's a one-handed thing so I went on the hailer Wikipedia
and it said that this was 29 and a half inches long I also pulled up some images
of Master Chief holdin it scaled him up and found out that the model in his
hands if you scale him to seven foot four is actually about 32 inches long so
it's a little bit of variance I ended up making this right at 29 when all was
said and done if you include the last little bit of in there I guess would be
29 and a half not the full 32 because I felt like any bigger in this thing's
just a way to control for anybody walk around so it's a good scale for someone
for regular person yeah it's still you know first for you and me and anybody
else is not seven-foot tall you hold it and it's still a big weapon ya know if
you have somebody who's seven foot tall holds it it's going to look more like a
sidearm so I'd note I actually a friend of mine
who's coming to Dragon Con who is 7 feet tall so I'm really looking forward to
seeing if you can hold this and get some scale reference so you design schematics
and blueprints and from all angles and then you get to work building it before
the casting you have to building a prototype right right so how do you go
about that what materials you use so this is this is a finished prototype and
this is the upper casing of it and this is all in primer this right here is a
little porch that I made for the mold but this is a whole bunch of different
parts sort of amalgamated together if you were to to take a saw and just cut
this down the middle you'd find that the inside of this kind of looks like the
hull of an old ship right on a wooden boat layers and yeah yeah it's held all
these sorts of spines that go this way right
and from those I'm blending the shape out around it and then gradually kind of
add in details so I get the basic shape done then I start carving in these lines
and adding in these indents and adding in this indent so it's it's kind of you
know get the general thing down and then gradually work smaller and smaller you
build like a skeleton like MDF skeleton on the inside and they use
yep and a shave off and foam wat solando yeah lots of sanding to get it all nice
and smooth that's basically how most of these parts were assembled it's a it's a
sort of additive layer process if you've ever you know seen 3d printers on you
know like a MakerBot or something at prints in layers I'm kind of doing the
same thing inside out right you know lower fidelity obviously and I can't I'm
not doing all these little cuts in so I do a rough 3d print I suppose of the
part and then add in the rest of the deal sculpt early later and then after
you've sculpted and finish the prototype you cast it right so this piece right
now is you know it looks obviously like that and if I painted the two of them it
would show up and they'd be you know virtually identical problem is the
inside of this is this spiderweb of foam and MDF so it's heavy its fragile and
it's very difficult to electronics through right so the end goal you want
something that's lightweight durable and that's what all this is this is urethane
resin um so you take this part or you know parts like it and you make molds so
this is for example a simple mold of the back part so you can see it's it's sort
of an inverted copy and I you know I made it I made this master made this
mold out of silicon you pour a two-part resin in here so it's just two different
colors plastic dump it in after a little while it sets you pull it out and you
end up with a finished plastic piece that's the long and short of it for all
of them you just repeat that for all these parts and so for the bigger guy
this is what the mold looks like this is silicon rubber on the inside this outer
particle mold jacket keeps the silicon in shape you dump the two-part resin in
here you slush it around as it cures it sort of sticks to the sides and you end
up with a hollow part that's lightweight like this guy so this was my first pull
from the molds very solid it's very solid and it's probably about half the
weight of that maybe a little less and so this piece has a bunch of numbers on
it I was using it as a test piece when I was placing all the needles but since
this is all one material it's not affected by heat moisture it's it's a
lot more durable you can you know this since this is bondo you press your
fingernail into it it'll scuff and straight this is very rigid this year
thing resin won't be going anywhere for a while in the detail the mold it
a lot of detailing yeah yeah this here is very small yep those little guys
right there those are just vinyl and so they're less than maybe 0.02 of an inch
thick right and it pulls in all those details so mostly your thin resin yeah
it's actually all your thing resin there are several different kinds of urethane
in here so this stuff the stuff that you do all of these parts with can be opaque
so that dries as a no-bake resin obviously all these guys need to be
clear because there's a bunch of light going through them so this is a very
different type of resin this stuff the stuff that all these parts are made with
sets in about 10 20 minutes so you can pull it out of the mold in about an hour
these guys have to sit up for about 90 minutes and then they're not fully cured
for seven days so it's just different properties of the resin you kinda have
to get used to all right so once you've kind of assembled the resin pieces this
also it lights off as you can see there are some electronics in here there are
would you like to would you like to pull the trigger yeah it is fun well more
than one sound effect because there's another switch on the opposite side of
the power and so if you want full auto fire you just hold that down now that is
amazing it's fun awesome yeah so tell us about the electronics that are in this
dealer okay there's 54 LEDs in it pink ones obviously here blue ones here three
mil and five mil there are about a million wires because each LED has its
own you know cables and series and all that sort of stuff there is a power cord
right here right that leads up through the bottom of the stand into the base
and powers all the LEDs and the audio while it's plugged into a wall which
means you can leave this thing turned on long as you want it has an audio chip in
it from a website called replica props calm and the guy who runs that is really
cool you send them a file or a series of files and you say I want these sound
effects to be triggered by a button push or a trigger or you know hold it down or
just one press and he'll program it for you and get a little chip in the mail
it's all set up you know 1.0 header and you can drop it into bread boards and
stuff so it's real easy to work with so that's the audio I got the audio files
themselves from the guys again with that Facebook page and then there's an amp in
there from Sparkfun so it's nice and loud and robust a
little one-inch speaker back that's hidden under this accessories you
don't really see it little push-button trigger right there to turn the audio on
and off so when it's plugged into the wall this power runs up through the back
you can pop these guys off so these are little detail pieces they're held on
with magnets which is a new thing for you oh my gosh it may go great makes
life so much easier so these my battery covers if you want to carry it around
this little switch back here it says ac/dc switched over there right here in
DC now you're on the battery battery power and you can lift it off carry
around have a good time perfect for Dragon Con oh yeah totally and then
finally there's the paint shop and you do such incredible work you talk a
little about the paint job again normally as you can see with my giant
wall back here rattle cans I tend to go with pre-mixed paint for a lot of stuff
that's okay and a lot of video games have sort of flat paint schemes and guns
or silver and black most things don't require this sort of level of layering
to it the needler though is supposed at least in Halo 4 is supposed to have this
almost iridescent quality to it like blue fade to purple that kind of look
for that I did a lot of airbrush work so all of these guys here I started off by
painting them silver like these parts were and then I laid down a mask right
so all these little hex patterns were cut out of vinyl laid down I sprayed
purple and blue and combination to give these a darker look I peeled up that
mask then did the rest of the paint job in the purple so that gives me this sort
of ghosted hex pattern across the whole surface so I got to know my airbrush
really well during the course of this project I think it turned out pretty
good and some additional weathering on the edges yeah yeah you know the rest of
the weathering all of the darker is just acrylic paint lots of washes so I'd go
over with you know medium brown darker brown black you know just to add up and
give it more grime personally I think that adding weathering and layers you
know adding thin wash thin wash then wash gives you a more realistic look and
if you try to try slop it all on at once because you know that's how things get
dirty over time and then all the dry brush stuff is you know enamel paint
just on the accent edges to call that out a few pieces like these guys back
here we're painted silver originally and then I did
dust coat with blue to give them a little bit you know like a different
metal texture almost you know it's an alien weapon who knows what this is made
out of absolutely well the whole thing looks fantastic thank you it's gonna be
really hard to give this to you I mean I know you paid for it you've been waiting
nine months for the thing but I kind of want to give it all well the great thing
is you have the mole yes I have the moles like maybe not gonna make another
one and for people out there you're actually selling kits I am for the
needler now yes and people can go on your website dip and props developing
crops don't know LP n yep and they can get castings yep just of
the basic shape yes it's a it's a 24 piece kit it's you know it's all these
needles it's all these different parts and they all come straight out of the
mold so I've taken a lot of work out of it for you but there's still a lot of
work to be done left and for people who just want to see pictures or read about
how Harrison built this over the course of this past year you go to test comm we
have a big feature on the new your prop from Harrison Harrison thank you for
inviting us to your home's your workshop well thank you for hiring me to make
this really awesome thing I've always wanted to make one and this is a treat
to be able to actually bring it into the world thank you so much and for more
stuff again go to tests comp I'm norm from tested we'll have more from
DragonCon more from Harrison shop on tested we'll see you next time
how do you make it like shoot a whole bunch okay there's a trigger over here
right and it's the auto and semi now hold button down