Hey everyone!
Time for the final part of my series that gave a little look behind the scenes of the creation of "Giu's Robot Repairs".
If you missed the first three parts, check them out here:
Giu's Robot Repairs - Part 1
Giu's Robot Repairs - Part 2
Giu's Robot Repairs - Part 3
Let's start with the painting of the base!
The base was basecoated
roughly with a black spraycan. The finer details and undercuts were then
basecoated black with the airbrush. I started spraying on some basic colors while I already payed attention not to overspray too much on other parts.
I applied some
base colors and started weathering the door.
At this stage it looks very annoying (like a comic book...) to my eyes. I have to quickly move forward, the plan was to paint the base in 1 day as I didn't have more time for it.
At this stage some
more shadows were airbrushed and I started
painting details on the brickwall.
You can see some of the
painted lights and shadows on the bricks here. I also tried to give the
bricks some color variation.
I used
grey pigments mixed with water to create the plaster. Just paint the mix in the recess and use a
cotton dab to remove the rest that didn't get in the recess.
Using
oil based colors I created some color variation in the corner using a dark green. To vary the colors as much as possible and make the base as interesting as possible I regulary used my brush to
splatter different colors at different places. Using white spirit I could easily move the color around.
Using Mig Productions "Oil and Grease Stain Mixture" and a brush casing I did some
oil stains on the floor. I did this multiple times through the painting process to
simulate multiple oil stains that got covered with dust over time and oil stains that are newer.
Another test fit of the already painted details, looks good so far! You can see the concrete floor changed quite a bit, this was due to
airbrushing a mix of pigments and airbrush thinner.
While testfitting, I sprayed some marks for all the objects that will be placed later. I used those marks to spray strong shadows for the objects that will be glued later.
Some
"newer" oil stains that I applied
after using pigments to make the floor look more dusted.
I started weathering the upper roof. I carefully applied the rust streaks in a realistic way. T
hinking about the form of the roof and how the rain washed down the rust from the damaged spots and the nuts makes it much
more believable.
More rust on the door and some details!
Rust rocks!
This testfit really starts
looking serious :) It's
an indescribable feeling of seeing such a big project growing and when more and more elements get into place it makes my
heart explode from joy. Oh what a fool I was, because there
was still a LOT electrical work to do :(
Some small paintworks still had to be done like the backside of the shop sign.
Now the real
troublemaking part of the project started... Finishing the control plate was the next step. This shows the first layer connecting all the
switches and buttons I installed.
Here is the second layer built up, you can see the ribbon cable I will be using to
connect the control plate to the rest of the project.
Building the
fixed voltage regulators for 3,6V and 3V. I needed
three different voltages, 9V for the music amp, 3,6V for the shop sign and the MP3 player and 3V for all the camera, lights and the motor.
The
almost finished control plate, you can see the MP3 player and the music amplifier fixed on the second layer of it. After this photo I found much more stuff to connect, in the end there were
34 connections to the ribbon cable.
No words can describe the madness I encountered when soldering all of this together.
The robot and it's self build
custom fish eye lens. It was build from the lenses that
I scavenged from different cameras.
Slowly things get into place and work,
wow what a feeling :D
I still had to do the "fake" cables connecting everything. This was pretty important to me as the viewer should get a feeling that the
setup on the table somehow makes sense :)
This is a special
maintenance opening in the back of the socket that I used to
wire everything up.
That was the first time I was seriously worried about my flight to Italy...
what will the security guys think of this contraption???
My worktable after putting everything back to it's place that wasn't trash... This is all the leftovers from some days of electronic hardcore work....
and that's the point the project was finally finished and packed for Monte San Savino. I yelled and danced in the studio. The feeling of finishing such a big and exhausting project is beyond price.
And finally I will show you a video and some photos of the
finished project ... in the next post in some hours :)
To shorten the wait, you will get some more photos
from the project!
I hope you enjoyed this final part of the behind the scenes articles of my project, stay tuned for the final photos and a video!
Best wishes,
Raffa
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