Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Chewbacca and C-3PO!

okay it is no secret how much I love Chewbacca both as a character and as a cosplaying opportunity this is my Chewbacca costume I have worn it several times I love it more than most of my other costumes and I've upgraded it most recently I rebuilt the band's earlier on tested but now it's time to take two vodka into a whole new cosplay territory see Chewbacca has a deep important relationship with another important Star Wars character 3 p.m. in Empire Strikes Back as they're escaping from Bespin Threepio can't run by himself because he's been completely dismantled by the robot Factory and Chewbacca straps all the pieces of repealed to his bag to help him escape I am going to replicate that as a cosplay so Threepio are you ready yeah let's now obviously for this costume I needed a c-3po and I went to the best master c-3po cosplayer and constructor Gordon Tarpley and his team turned around a fully vacuum metallized and weathered c-3po costume for me in a record amount of time it is a gorgeous achievement that they have built me and I am now going to start to assemble assemble this into a backpack I'm actually going to build it onto a backpack frame because all told it's probably about 30 pounds of Threepio it's a lot to wear on my back let's get started okay now you might notice that I made c-3po his head able to move that is because this video is going to be animatronic I can make it move from here he will actually have servos on his head to allow him to move this is left thigh left left right okay so this is the first it's going to be hard for you guys to watch what happens is Threepio sitting on the back in his head and his right arm and torso are all in place but his left leg and foot are sitting right here it's clear that the calf is jammed into the thigh and as you can see right there that ain't going to work unless I flash off a whole bunch of freaky oh it just seems so wrong that is the left is that the left or is that the right I cut the wrong one ah it seems so wrong again left left and left oh so that let us do some attaching alright so there's that and then this is left this goes like that you'll notice I'm tapping all these pieces together this is because I don't like to use glue if I don't have to in terms of attaching stuff I like things to be reversible so the engineer and me prefers to have everything be mechanically connected awesome okay so this left leg and thigh arrangement is the first big piece of Threepio it's it's kind of like here on him if I'm Threepio the next big one and the probably the most difficult part of this build is his right arm which is attached to his body and moves and mine will do the same that's right my creepy Oh will be animatronic but we'll get to more of that in a little bit if I'm going to work on this Threepio and make it animatronic I'm actually going to need to be able to address my work that means I need to have a proper working space that's not just this so I'm going to build an upright stand for the Threepio torso arrangement so that I can fully work on all of its animatronics cubby there we go let's bring him over here so this is the owner Oh better better better better better better okay so there's that this is a really complicated I want I want three POS arms they have a little bit of dynamic movement like that which you know I could off of the beefy servos I have be just a cam arrangement but I need a mechanic inside there's it gives me that and I'm just trying to visualize how I'm going to make that work it's non-trivial there's there's a lot of little stuff to work out here okay alright I'll put you in there I'm sure that veteran Threepio cosplayers are like oh the shoulder Bell it's really hard to attach I'm sure that you guys have already experienced all this but um the shoulder belt really hard to attach there's not a lot of meat to get up in there for a positive LOC fascinatingly enough that actually works see why do you keep letting go that's bothering me but I can't really control that I was thinking about putting a hard mechanical linkage all the way through this that kind of was like a secondary movement thing but now I'm actually moving towards just a simple string arrangement and it affords me some some advantages one it's simpler but two if I go with the hard mechanical arrangement then I have to add in every axis of movement into that mechanical arrangement because all of my connections and pivots are rigid whereas if I have a loosey goosy connection here and what I've got is a string that comes in here that attaches down here at the wrist and gets pulled by a camshaft on the end of a servo in here and I have a lot more freedom of movement in the arm so I get all this extra axis of movement for free effectively see that see that that's a lot more dynamic that looks like there's a person inside there that's kind of amazing that's really hard to get with hard mechanical linkages and to be honest from what I understand this is not far off how they made the real one work they gave apparently Peter Mayhew a puppet string or they were just puppeting it from off camera that's kind of great I kind of dig that spine I'm happy with that now let's see oh the hands are a little heavy not much I can do about the heaviness of the hands oh okay yes so if I get this extra movement how did I actually get that good I've got much of the arm assembled I've got a bungee cord screwed into the hand here which is attached to the elbow with some large fender washers and then I've got some high-strength paracord going from inside the forearm all the way up into the shoulder so that I can pull this and you can see I get some secondary movement out of the upper arm and out of the hand by doing this luckily I'm using some very high powered servos for this but I'm going to have to now build some structure inside three Pio's chests to hold on to my high strength servos that's the next challenge oh you may be looking at this wondering why I made this weird winding river kind of cut well it's for alignment I am making a wooden infrastructure that goes inside of Threepio and it's a trapezoid that'll get wedged inside of him so I can't just make a piece of wood and install it this helps me align the two pieces back to their original size and then once this is in I'm going to epoxy it around this wood will become the structure off of which I hang the mechanics and I hang c3po off of my back that means I'm attaching everything to a solid plywood infrastructure rather than the soft resin of three POS body ah yeah look at that fabulous for gluing I'm using a really really wonderful thing an epoxy gun system this is like ten minute quick dry epoxy with a tip that pre mixes the two parts of epoxy in the tip and it clamps into a gun here that allows me to put epoxy down exactly where I want it when I'm done I threw out the tip this is not the cheapest glueing method in the world it's actually kind of a pricey little system to setup with but in terms of speed there's nothing faster okay so now I've got a plywood infrastructure inside the chest to help offload a bunch of the weight but while we're talking about offloading the weight the question is how do we unload the weight on to me and that's where this comes in this is an old backpack that we had in my house and I'm going to utilize this which is effectively a camp versus a camping backpack and I'm going to use the weight distribution of this right like a bunch of the weight on my on my waist as well as on here in order to be able to carry this and I'll wear this backpack frame underneath my Chui shirt so that's the next part I'm going to do I'm going to cut off the backpack part of this just to keep the frame and figure out how to mount Threepio to the frame of this that stays yep yeah this is perfect okay so let's get if this is yeah this going to be heavy let's just be clear it's going to be really heavy this is a fishing net it's never what you think that's going to kick your ass that kicks your ass and right now I'm just I've slowed way down to solve this problem of how to hang three peel off my back it's a lot of weight it could get uncomfortable very quickly and I needed to sustain so building it off of the backpack I think is a great idea I've managed to shorten the frame of the backpack by a couple of inches so it's not sticking up and Chewy's hairshirt but the other problem is I have to make three peel removable from me after I'm dressed as chewy so we are close it's just a few more niggling little details I'm liking this like this I can feel yeah I could tighten those up yeah hey okay yeah I'm going to need a little stability down here which means I'll add in a couple of clips right there and there then we're on our way this doesn't really look I mean if this weighs another ten pounds which it will with the arms I'm still not terrible and the load is being really well distributed across my back plus 3 P o is removable so let's see here hey that's I'm very pleased with that that I can put away for now and work on the aestheticization aestheticization is that even a word you know what I mean houndour start attaching bit stuff like that that's the question this is their I don't need the upper arm and I could use all the weight I can yet well actually I like the way that it had some structure to it we're coming up or we're getting closer I'm very pleased with how this is feeling I've got to glue this back this that's totally fine I'm getting happy with how solid this is getting right Threepio your head I think your head means think your head tilt them too far back so one of the things that Threepio has is a whole bunch of gnarly wires sticking out of his arm and out of his torso so I'm now making the rat's nest of wiring that it's going to be sticking out of that I'm going to start with a bunch of dark wire that I've got and then I'm going to move to some multicolored stuff I'm looking at this thing and I'm realizing that I've got a lot of screws some through resin into plywood and I just I worry about one piece going and then all the other pieces going so I'm going to add one more bit of strengthening to this arrangement and I think it's going to be fantastic so here's what I'm going to do we're going to go I'm here excellent boom you're a strong powerful thing you are going to live here right I need some more water that's it that's what I wanted yeah that's what that should look like perfect awesome this is the most fun part the aesthetics yeah making it look like three pillows got guts I need to be able to transfer him I need him got a transport and transfer so I got to pull them off the stand I got to make a new stand sometimes engineering a costume also means engineering how you're going to get into it this is a heavy cantilevered thing plus I still want to work on it so I built a stand there's a socket in the bottom and the back of Threepio that fits right on top of this stand so that when I'm dressed is chewy I can step up into him clip in and walk right out that's the goal there's also the way in which Chewbacca carries Threepio and that is in a net so I have here a fishing net and now it's time to put this on and around that was always going to be the last the last bit so let's see here what we got I'm going to add my too much net to begin with and then we'll go from there there you go now it looks like it's actually bearing some weight which is good that's what I wanted it to do I wanted it to give the illusion and by the way I'm here to tell you that the net does go over c-3po right shoulder okay so now it's time for an engineering test and that means I'm going to put on the Chewie shoes and the CH and the back pack frame and the Chewie shirt and see if I can't clip into this thing okay let's see here all right I'm separated all right Wow I'm here to tell you this is a heavy costume this may be one of the heaviest I've ever worn I'm also going to be wide Wow that is crazy it's good though it's good it's um it's stable on my back I don't hear anything cracking Wow okay all right so ladies and gentlemen that that I can do that alone makes me very happy don't get me wrong I like to work with the team but I also like that I could get in and out of this myself okay Chui shirt I'm going to try a test-fit of the mask just so I can see how this looks but I've got a backpack frame underneath my Chewie shirt hiding most of the mechanics that holds the steering pio up I'm pretty psyched so here we go I'm just gonna have what could go wrong with me taking off my glasses and a SHOP full of tools wearing a lot of fur hold on here we go okay I think grandmas ready I just checked my work here I had some photographs taken with my phone but it's really just being able to see the mask with the suit with the Threepio I'm strike there's one last part to this build which is to add in the big honkin servos that will power the head and the arm this one day build going to take just a little bit more than a day all right kids Threepio is now finished scenic wrapped in netting and he's ready to go except for he's not ready for primetime because he can't move by himself it's time to make him animatronic and for that I brought in a tested friend and expert Jeremy hello sir hello sir so we talked about what we need for this I have two large 24 volt servos and we want him to speak mm-hmm I have some new voice I think you saw we have some new voice files coming in tomorrow morning but we have some sample ones to play with them great so far good I went and bought a 24 volt a 20 volt to Walt drill mm-hmm what I found out is that most of the things advertises 20 volts are actually 18 no but they have a peak of 20 okay it turns out that my favorite brand right now is Dewalt has a true 20 volt so this is one of the better ones and it's really nice and light since I'm wearing this thing on my back cool and I think it said what did they tell you one one and a half amp hours that's significant I think you'll be fine yeah I think so yeah so what do what do we have this is going to be what controls the the servos and triggers the sound it's an Arduino who know it's it's the makers best friend yeah so this is the sound board on top with an SD card that houses the mp3s and we'll play those out of this headphone jack okay I'll plug into this amplifier which takes 24 volts or 2100 watt amplifier oh you should be in good shape should we play yeah fine right if there's any kind of crossover ground loop stuff we've got a filter for that hopefully that won't be an issue great this is our this is going to convert your 20 volts down to 5 oh great and it gives us plenty of power at 5 volts so that's going to power drives we know and the light now so we should be good to go and then any tweaking that we need to do we can do in software once it's all solved great I know I did some work off-camera I'm sorry I just I had to get some of this ready so we can actually the most important thing for me to do is give you 20 volts okay always weird for my projects to buy one of these brand new drills and then take it apart before you've ever used it yeah I have a box full of motors from other projects sacrificial drills look at that yep so we're going to use the the two big water so I think so got me this dude yeah would this kind of thing be unheard of in Hollywood if it needed a quick 20 volt not at all this is absolutely the way you want to do things because you know it's a system right I have a charger for this so I can pull this out I can buy extra batteries I don't have to do anything special for it this is totally a reasonable on-the-fly special effects solution it's super cool because it solves all these problems that are otherwise you know I have to make custom battery holders for custom batteries that I have right gel cell shelves rather to screw them back together this is a system where c-3po when he runs out of power all I got to do is drop that back in and we're good to go oh we got 20 volts one of the little bits of mechanical engineering I've done in here is these servos have tons of power but I'm mounting servos on wooden platforms inside a fiberglass body so alignment perfect alignment it's going to be a vanishingly small proposition so I add what's called a little strain reliever here called a Lovejoy and this is a mechanical coupler that allows to two rods that aren't perfectly aligned with each other to still transfer as much of their energy as possible to each other without having to be perfectly aligned so it's a little baby Lovejoy in there it's actually called a Lovejoy Oh shall we try a systems test first before we start mounting stuff inside sure yeah let's do that okay I'm here you know what that's what I'm going to do I'm just going to bolt that through cool that sits there I can paint this black you won't be able to see it no you won't be able to see it oh this looks like more of the junk from Threepio we've got 20 volts coming in and then we're going to convert that down to 5.2 m/s that's doing the right thing if we get a light here we got a light here I just got a connect tile from here to here and we're ready to serve it well you could start to hook up his eyes if you want to the reason I'm putting it head back on is because I want when we fire him up if it works I wanted to feel like we're on vestment and we're repairing a broken and he just get into like oh my goodness it's creepy house boy Brown is brown yeah you're good and this is the arm small cups right anymore alright the moment of truth we're ready well we're ready to see sparks or see you something awesome I did t-tauri office I stopped it so we can change how often he does stuff you know right now that it has not moving too much I think his head could use more why previously quiet dude he works it's beautiful I'm like so psyched thanks you let me help Adam are you kidding that was a blast ah it feels like we're working at Disney now it's exactly what I was thinking i mention yours it's fabulous I'll see you down a peg huh great oh it's really nice to be able to shut him up yeah I might have to make that a feature so like Han Solo

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 3,038,838

Rating: 4.8997416 out of 5

Keywords: adam savage, testedcom, star wars, chewbacca, wookiee, one day build, one day builds, c-3p0, adam savage one day build, tested one day builds, adam savage one day builds, one day build adam savage, adam savages one day builds, one day builds adam savage, adam savage's one day builds, tested adam savage, adam savage tested, adam savage chewbacca, adam one day build, adam savage c3po, adam savage cosplay, star wars costume, star wars cosplay, adam savage one day build chewbacca

Id: 9xpPXpnnCNI

Length: 39min 24sec (2364 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/dikduk]

If you want to see it in action.

[u/50StatePiss]

There are a few channels I get pretty excited about when there's a new release; one day builds are always fun!

[u/dagmarrr]

I love these one day builds so much.

[u/adish]

what kind of soldering iron is that?

[u/warlockjones]

I love Adam's videos and his builds are incredible, but his frantic energy during these one day builds really stresses me out.