hey guys I'm will from tested I'm here
at Comic Con 2013 with guys who built
this amazing robot here was matt winston
who's the co-founder of stan winston the
stan winston school and alan scott who's
a cofounder of legacy effects hey guys
how are you morning I'm much better now
that I've seen something this awesome
now Adam helped unveil this the other
day at the start of comic-con but I want
to know how you built this and how it
works so it's not really a robot right
it's not really a robot no it's all
movie trickery but we brought it to the
masses and did a public appearance
character which is always has its own
challenges so ok so we said it's not a
robot it's a it's a puppet it's it's
actually a suit okay it's a suit with
animatronics built in kind of a
combination of everything that we do for
movies and TV and commercials
so what we've got in here is we've got
Bruce Mitchell inside there he's 6 foot
3 and we needed to transform him into a
9 and a half foot tall robot and you of
course you guys price event like 6 or 8
months working on this no yeah this was
about three and a half weeks of work Oh
late they came to the table with the
idea but it oh how many man-hours in
three and a half weeks it has to be
insane two thousand man-hours 5050 man
weeks right 59 weeks about 25 people put
their skill and heart and soul together
for that period of time to build this so
Bruce is on a pair of stilts inside the
shoes versus on stilts and then he's
wearing a backpack that raises up and
the secondary pair arms live about three
feet above his shoulders the bottom one
are actually Bruce's arms and then
there's a set of linkages that puppet
that I happened upon a site a group in
Japan called skeleton --ax that had
built this Bunraku type pantograph robot
that slaves your arms to the robot arms
upstairs and they had amazing leg
extensions too that was the inspirations
like I've never seen that before
and it's such a fluid great movement and
that was what this was all about you
have to make it mobile you have to make
it high-performance and really
impressive so we took that seed of a
concept we vers engineered when we
thought that they were doing came up
with came up with this guy okay so so
one of the things I've never seen in
cosplay before is the sound effects
there's no servos or hydraulics inside
the robot to speak of right no there's
not but every time he moves his arms or
legs I hear hydraulic and servo noises
first off when you're doing movie props
you don't get to do that right no in
movies in fact you have to be completely
silent so that the actors and the
dialogue can be heard and then you add
all the the sound effects after the fact
actually complain about our servos and
our hydraulics on set it's like you're
covering up the dialogue we need clean
dialogue of whoever the actor is we're
working with so we usually have to
muffle it but this was a time for us to
embrace it and when you're live like to
make something this big fly it just
didn't really work so we wanted to give
it as much noise as possible
so how do you make the noise tie to the
arm movements well we have a
potentiometer in the elbow so when Bruce
moves his arm like this it sends a
signal to a little Arduino when it
triggers a series of sounds that we can
program in there and the same thing with
the feet we have proximity sensors that
are shooting a laser down to the ground
so it's like radar he lifts his foot it
tells it to turn on it closes the loop I
stopped him down it creates a stop sound
so off-the-shelf off-the-shelf hardware
the shelf hardware but with our own
custom program it all has to be
programmed of course of course the
beauty of open-source Arduino is that
you can take these components and mix
and match and create things that we've
never done before this is a magic trick
what the goal of this whole thing is to
show people that making real things is
still possible and still far cooler than
pixels because you can't bring pixels to
comic-con
and the sound effects keep people
guessing is it
hydraulic is it can't be a guy I hear
all that noise
so it helps sell the magic effect that
he weighs 5 tons and so the sound is
really then huge a huge benefit so ok so
you said he weighs he doesn't really
weigh 5 tons obviously there's a man
inside so hot man inside the hole with
Bruce in there we might be pushing 350
pounds Wow the food itself is about 130
550 pounds of assist so then did you I
mean this is all cast your back you what
are your materials what materials you
use once for the lightest materials
possible there's a lot of a queue
forming in there but we've got sprayed
urethanes and you know lighter weight
there's a little bit of fiberglass just
for strength but light light light light
light yeah we did our first test and was
like okay take it apart drill some holes
cut out as much weight as you can
because it would
kill him he's got to be able to
withstand as much time in the suit as
possible so you get that type of
audience experience and the last thing
is let's talk about the head a little
bit because it's all it seems to be
articulated looks like there's some
puppeteering there right there is yeah
we actually
I love the r2 builder's group because
they have r2d2 my kids fell in love with
it at Legoland and it looks like it's
autonomous but there's a guy over there
with his hand into a little messenger
bag and he's controlling it so we again
are industries notorious from borrowing
from other industries so we took that
idea and there's a puppeteer that
controls the head it's got elevate and
head turn and tilt
he's got lighting effects in the face
and spinning powers out the spinning
power supply on his chest is actually a
cd-rom a CD the light behind it just
refracting light this had to be a blast
to come in and do something what were
the design constraints what when you
when they when Wired came to you and
said hey we want to build a robot what
what did they actually say the well what
we talked really broadly was just about
is he a good guy or a bad guy and we we
talked about sort of the transformers
model is he a bumblebee kind of cute and
lovable
is he an Optimus Prime Stern and tough
but good or is he a Megatron and we we
opted for the Optimus Prime route very
dangerous but if you're on his good side
your ear okay you try and find his
personality then you design around that
so they wanted them bristling with
weapons but at the same time
approachable because you don't want to
scare people off I don't know much about
the Stan Winston school time it's
something I'm interested in he tell us a
little bit more about it absolutely Stan
Winston school was founded to keep alive
the creative spirit of my father Stan
Winston by bringing together the army of
geniuses who worked with him to change
film history and give them an
opportunity to share their work with the
world up until now the techniques behind
all this magic have been kept a closely
held secret but we feel it's really
important to share it to remind people
around the world
that you can still do this filmmakers
there's a generation of filmmakers who
believe the pixel is the best tool in a
filmmakers toolkit and we strongly
disagree and our mission is to keep this
alive forever and and hopefully in 10
years you'll see something twice as cool
and by sharing information that
innovation is possible and do you find
that the industry is more more open to
sharing information now I know for a
long time you know the FEC's houses were
kind of closed closed walled gardens of
innovation and people didn't share much
between the different houses right well
there are two there are two approaches a
dick Smith for those of your fans who
knew who that is one of the godfathers
and makeup effects he was always big
into sharing everything and then there's
the other approach where you want to
keep it close and keep the competition
at bay so we have had to negotiate with
the studios and really let them know
that this really benefits everyone in
the long run the more you share the more
it's out there the more innovation
happens and doing this sort of stuff has
a bright future so people have come
around shared that philosophy for the
school but I'm going to take it to the
public that doesn't have the same skill
set but you know it is such a small
environment of people that do this the
technicians and artists that work with
live-action stuff is that we always they
come to us with different ideas from
different shops and it's always been
building on those techniques of course
it's a business so you have to be
competing against each other but that's
usually not why they do usually don't
come to you for one particular material
or technique so it is shared
you know the guys go from shop to shop
and they you know we're all elevated
together that way if you think this is
all about technique you're wrong it's
all about artistry and vision and
teamwork that's something you can't give
away you have it in you so sharing the
techniques is just sharing a tool and
all about the execution so most of the
most of the parts are over scrounge but
I know you did some custom work for this
build right yeah of course whenever we
do new characters like so much comes
from the face and the head that's the
soul of the character so we knew that
was going to have to be a completely
unique thing most of the parts on there
are actually designed in 3d and wrapper
prototype for other projects but for
this one we went with
and Matt and the team is that what was
he going to look like so we designed a
3d phase rapid prototype that our only
3d printers with Stratasys and grew it
so that piece that's up there is
actually a grown piece at additive
manufacturing more than rapid
prototyping so we're right from the bed
right out onto the floor where the guys
installed it and put lights behind it so
you print with like a deposited fusion
printer or something like that or no
yeah we we have we have several we have
five different printers but that's what
we use yeah and then hydrogen sand and
fill and all the normal stuff that the
guys at home do yes so it's a glorified
version of the MakerBot you know with
objet they've got just you know the
higher end higher detail tighter
tolerances fantastic well thank you guys
so much it's it's amazing to see this up
close and they can find more about it
both on your website and I'm wired
yes you should go to Stan Winston
schools YouTube channel legacy effects
YouTube channel okay for lots more of
this kind of stuff you guys did crazy
documentation recorded the whole
building up process every minute of the
build fantastic and we'll be back with
more from tested comm at comic-con 2013
and on YouTube's geek week see you guys
then