(bubbles pop) Hello, I'm Odin and today I'm gonna make
Hellboy's right hand of doom. But I'm not just gonna make a fancy glove, I wanna make a puppet hand
with articulated fingers. I'm not making a pattern this time. I'm just gonna freehand all the pieces and cut them to fit. First thing I wanna make is a foam ruler. What I'm gonna do is
follow the instructions of WM Armory, who talked
about the benefits of making a ruler out of foam, and that is that you know exactly how much foam you will need
to fit, say, around your arm. A form ruler is ideal
for making armor pieces out of EVA foam. Ah, 13 is a good number. I'm gonna start with a hand
so I'll make a cylinder that my right hand just barely fits into and then I'll make another cylinder that will be the wrist and
that fits around the first one. First I add a piece that
will be the back of the hand and my plan is to reinforce the inside where I can attach the
mechanism for the fingers. I don't wanna make a special frame just to attach the fingers to. I want to keep this simple and
just use layers of EVA foam. To make the fingers, I cut
some polyethylene tubing into eight inch pieces and
then straighten them out with a heat gun. I need to cut notches most of
the way through for the tube for each of the knuckles,
but keep a small piece to act as a hinge on the back. I don't wanna just cut it with a knife because it's very easy to over-cut and cut the tube all the way in half. So first, I drill a little hole and then I can cut out from
that hole to make each notch. For each finger, I need
to put a small piece of wire coat hanger at the fingertip and then another at the base where the finger's gonna meet the hand. I'm gonna use some nylon
string as the tendon to pull the finger closed. I thread the nylon up from
the base of the finger, around the wire at the tip of the finger, and then back down inside
the tube to the base again. Then I tie it to the second wire that will be in the palm of the hand and that's my anchor. Now when I pull the string, it shortens the length inside the tube, which causes the finger to curl up. Polyethylene tubing has enough spring that it opens back up on its own and this is the simplest
method that I know to make a cable-controlled,
articulated finger. I cut notches in another piece of EVA foam for each of the finger tubes to fit in and then I glue that into
the back of the hand. The nylon string still
hangs out of the bottom and all the fingers will
extend out from the top and this is how I will anchor my fingers. I got some one inch metal
rings so I can comfortably pull each of the nylon tendon
strings for each finger. I tie off each string to a different ring and then apply super glue to make sure that it doesn't untie later. I tried to tie the ring
as close to the base of the finger as I could. I didn't need a bunch of
extra string inside the hand because I can only
close my fingers so much and too much string is
less pulling distance than I can get from my own finger. Unfortunately, the middle finger has about 3/4 of an inch of extra string and it makes it much
more difficult to close. Now the middle finger
and pinky could be tied to the same ring and that
would actually be better as it got pretty cramped
inside the puppet hand with four rings and my actual hand. But that would limit some
of the possible gestures I could make. Perfect. I build up the side of the hand where I'm going to attach the thumb. I add another strip of
reinforcement on the inside. I don't want the back of the
hand to fold over or curl up when I try to close the
fingers and make a fist. Instead of using the stiff EVA foam to make the skid for the fingers, I'm gonna use soft, open-cell, poly-foam. Now this is the same stuff that
I made the Facehugger from. I cut out a front and a
back piece for each finger and then I carefully cut
in half the front piece so there's less material to
curl up inside the finger. Now I could have just used thinner foam, but I didn't have any. I was worried that the
cut wire in the fingertip could tear through the
foam from the inside. So I covered each fingertip
with a piece of shrink tubing. This is the same stuff you'd
use on electrical wire. With the sharp edges covered, I glue the foam backs onto the fingers with contact cement. And then I glue the
base of each foam finger to the hand. Then I only glue around the tube to stick on the front of each finger. I didn't want to glue
the front to the tube so the foam could move as much as it could when the finger curled up. I also mark where each
knuckle is on the foam. With the fingers in place,
I glue on some more EVA foam to make the palm of the hand
and the heel of the thumb. I cut small pieces of EVA foam to fill in some of the holes where all the pieces meet because I know I can sand them off later and get a better hand shape. Hellboy's fingers are segmented and if you didn't notice, the thumb and the pinky
have one less segment each than the other two fingers. And to easily add the segment marks, I melted the foam with a soldering iron. A wood burner would work too, but be sure to wear protective gear if you melt any poly-foam, because when it burns,
it puts out a nasty smoke that smells a lot like chemical TEF. With the fingers finished, there has been enough
time for the glue to set and I shape the hand with a
Dremel and a sanding drum. To make the oversized round knuckles on the back of the hand, I take the mandrill out of the
two and a half inch hole saw and then cut them out of foam. If you use a hole saw on
anything other than foam, you need the mandrill or the hole saw will just walk around on you. And I could have just drawn a circle and cut them out with a razor knife, but this was more fun. I use a heat gun to
slightly curl the knuckles and then glue them on with contact cement. I don't plan on connecting
the hand to the wrist or that wrist piece to the arm. I'll just hold it all
together from the inside and this will give me better
flexibility with the arm. I add an inner ring to the wrist piece. This will stop the hand from
going too far into the wrist and then I'll do the
same thing to the arm. To start the arm, I make a ring that fits around the wrist loosely and a matching size for the elbow. I want the middle section
to be inset slightly so I add another inner layer of foam to both of those rings. One is short for the wrist and the other is slightly
longer for the elbow. Now when I cut the foam to make the arm, I can glue it to the
seam of these two layers and the middle arm will be inset. Overall, the arm piece is just 10 inches and the rings are both 2 1/4 inch wide. Now that sounds small,
but it looks right to me. The elbow connection felt a little loose so I added one more ring
for a snug fit on my arm. I am worried about how
snug the wrist joint is. I don't want to rub off pain later. So I carve the texture out from the inside to make a little more room for the pieces to be able to move. The right hand of doom is carved with arcane marks and elaborate swirls. First I draw them on with a Sharpie and I make some adjustments
for proper placement. I won't carve the crossed out lines. Then I use a high-speed
cutter bit on my Dremel to carve out all the marks and this one has a rounded end. I was careful not to cut too deep. I didn't want the marks to go
all the way through the foam. As it rotated, the cutting
bit made a cleaner cut on the one side than the other and it seemed to do a better job when I held it straight against the foam rather than drag it along at an angle. I sanded off most of
the wrong Sharpie marks. I don't want them bleeding
through the paint later. And I used a yellow Sharpie to mark out where the stone cracks were on the arm. This is the big one that is really easy to see in pictures, so I copied that one, and then filled in the rest on my own. This is also a high speed cutter bit but it has a sharp
point for finer details. After all the cracks were applied, I was still worried that
it was gonna be too smooth. So I use different grinding stone bits to pockmark the surface
and make the bigger gouges. And I used a heat gun to
soften some of the cuts and open the cracks. I need to skin the open-cell poly-foam. Just painting this foam always looks like you've just painted foam, so I'm gonna brush on latex rubber directly to the poly-foam. The first coat really sinks in but after two or three coats, I can get a good skin that
still has a rock texture. Now this is the same latex
I used for the Facehugger but I'm not adding the
paper tissue on the hand because I didn't want
the wrinkled skin look like I got on the Facehugger. To speed the drying of the fingers, just place them in front of a fan. Latex is water-based and moving
air dries it pretty quickly. I also made sure the fingers
were not touching each other or else they would have
dried stuck together. Now to paint the foam. I don't really need to seal the foam. The heat gun helped and I'm not looking for a smooth surface. I can paint the EVA foam with acrylics, but I can't just paint the
latex with acrylic paints because it will crack and peel off. So I mix up some prosthetic adhesive with the acrylic paint to make pax paint. I talk more about pax paint
in the Facehugger video but for now, just know that
this makes a flexible paint glue that sticks to latex. Then I decided to paint
the whole arm with it so it'd all look the same. I started putting it on with a brush, but the brushstrokes in
the paint were pretty bad. So I cut a piece of poly-foam and then stippled on the paint instead. And this made a really good texture which actually stayed after it was dry. So I've got everything painted. It only really took one coat to cover the fingers to get a good red, but to have just as bright of
a red on the dark gray foam, it actually took up to four coats. But I'm okay with it now. Since it's painted with a glue paint, it'll actually stick together
if they touch either, kind of like contact cement,
but not quite as strong. So in order to get rid of the sticky, all I've gotta do is
cover it with baby powder or talcum powder and then I can
wipe it off with some water. And all of the sticky will be gone and then you can continue
to paint it anyway you like. Even though there's a little
residue from the baby powder, the next coats of paint
will cover it all up. I mix up some dark brown,
reddish craft paints, water it down, and brush it
on to all the engraved cuts that I made on the arm. I can wipe off a lot
of this dark wash paint with a wet paper towel, but
I want as much as I can get in the cracks and corners. I add a second round of darker color just in the arcane carvings
and the knuckle segments. After everything is dry, I
stipple on just the red acrylic that I used to make the pax paint, but try to be selective before I use it, kinda like dry brushing. When I put the fingers together, I did it in the simplest way that I knew. So all you have to do is pull the string and it closes the fingers. But they open back up
under their own power and they don't open up all
the way, which is okay. If I was to hook up the secondary string that ran from the tip
of the finger on down and looped around the base of the palm and back to the control inside the hand, I could almost push the finger open, which would probably
be really nice to have. But for now, I've got
a right hand of doom. (bouncy music) Everything I used to make
this was picked up locally and I put a part list in the description. Now, there's lots of different ways that you could make something, but this is how Odin makes. (bouncy music) (Odin chuckles) (light swoosh) I have a Patreon page
where I give away props made right here in the show. This month's winner is Cyril Lobo and he won the Spiderman web shooters. (light swoosh) If you like the video or have ideas or something for me to make, please leave them in the comments below. And if you make any of these projects, you can send me a picture. (short beep) Next time, I should buy a better cigar.
