Adam Savage’s Hellboy Mecha-Glove Replica
One of Adam Savage’s favorite movie props is Rasputin’s mecha-hand from Hellboy. It’s an elaborately machined prop that’s only in the movie for a few minutes, and Adam has spent over four years painstakingly replicating it. Now that it’s finally done, Adam walks us through all the individual components and how he fabricated each.
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It is truly a thing of wonder and beauty.
Will Adam shave his head and go the full Rasputin?
This prop is off the chain! It is simply stunnning in its detail and complexity. No wonder it took Adam this long to make..
Congratulations on completing this beast, Adam!
July – The month that Tested friggin’ brings it!! 👍
Awesome. Looking forward to seeing the inevitable box… 🙂
Words do not do this justice. He made two, so I guess we know what Guillermo is getting for christmas this year? :p
I wonder if Adam’s new facial-hair styling is part of his SDCC costume?
I have to second Hiluxtaco, this month has been insane.
This is a good excuse to do a ‘One-Day Build’..
omg
Just amazing work!
Thank you for giving us a tour on it.
And then there was two!!!!
I know he made two right hands but in my head I wanted it to be a right and a left hand at the end of this video, hehe.
Can´t wait to read the designing document. I want to think that I could make it myself. Maybe someone would team up with me? hehe
I like it.
Both movies are great for the detailing and the costuming is very inspirational.
One note; you might want to blur a certain symbol in the video at the end if you want this show and tell to be seen easily in parts of Europe.
Absolutely amazing build. I have been waiting to see this finished for 2 years and Adam did not disappoint. Stunningly beautiful.
I think we’re all mature enough to handle a swastika 😉
Amazing build! Is the servo going to be covered or supposed to be visible like that?
Desire
We might be, but there are laws in other countries that specifically forbid the viewing of such things in media content. YouTube included.
These look amazing, I’ve been following the progress on this for about 4 years now since it was first discussed on TheRPF.
Incredible stuff I was wondering if the second is going to be a weathered version or if its a commission.
pointlessly nerdy note: I noticed you’ve still got the wrong names in the Demon dial, but who cares the whole is greater than its parts.
It’s such a gorgeous piece of work, I should really watch the movie.
On a ‘Still Untitled’ podcast, it would be cool if you guys could list off a few epic must-see Sci-Fi movies that we all should watch.
A thing of absolute beauty. Congratulations, Adam.
Now if only a build kit were available in the Tested Store. I’d be all over it!
WOW! Impressive! Beautiful build Adam! I’m going to pull out my copy of Hellboy and watch it again! LOL!
If you’re talking about the Strafgesetzbuch Section 86a, that only applies when used in an ideologizing context. Don’t worry, Tested is all in the clear here 🙂
Desire Groovy. 🙂
Ooooh, it’s finished! And it’s even a bit “dirty”!
Gah, that’s beautiful.
I wonder if Adam would like to dress up as Rasputin. Though I assume he’d have to shave his head for authenticity! (nah, he could use some of those bald make up caps or something.)
Oh My! Awesome and epic build! It broke a bit my heart when I’ve seen the weathered version but after the shock passed, it is even more awesome!
Will Adam keep a clean version and a weathered one?
I wish so much I could be at Comic Con just to see Rasputin live!
I thought it looked pretty cool when it was on the stand, but when he put it on. Amazeballs
Im not a Fan of the movie…but I do appreciate the amazing amount of effort, skill, research etc that has gone into this beautiful prop. Master craftsman at work..
Absolutely love the intricacies of it, nice job!
If you pay attention there’s hints to the Inventern project in there…
Love this! But a small technical point. On the Demon Gauge, shouldn’t the last item on the gauge read “Anung un Rama” instead of “Hellboy”? He wasn’t called that until after he was adopted by the soldiers.
I totally agree. I would love to see the reactions of del Toro and the original prop maker.
At the 11:10 mark, “The Millenbaugh Motivator that Sean built” !
And there’s a video about this forthcoming! At long last, we have an answer as to what the secret project that Sean (the Inventern winner) was working on for Adam. This is truly Christmas in July!
wonderful, wonderful work here! insane in the best possible sense! adam, you are so very inspiring, and i love how uncynical your enthusiasm is.
i am with though, “hellboy” is the name the US troopers gave him, and it was seen as perhaps not the luckiest choice in retrospect. his in-universe name is anung un rama, his right hand harkens back all the way to creation, being the last remains of anum, the one stray watcher “angel” who created and then sealed the ogdru jahad, was revered by the hyperboreans who were then corrupted by hecate and so on and so on. in that vein, it might also be more true to source if the dial read the in-universe names of the ogdru jahad instead of their lovecraftian inspirations. (amon-jahad, adad-jahad, etc.)
given the liberties del toro took with hellboy, i’d say this is all well in line. just me being anal about my beloved mignola source material. 🙂
text/language/history point “bestellnummer” on the plaque doesn’t really mean “part number.” it means “order number,” indicating some kind of referencing system for ordering from a catalogue of stuff. it implies something like a ragna rok mail order kind of thing. for secret government project stuff, i’d have gone with something like “registernummer” (sth. like “index number”). the (for me) perfectionist solution would have been a more generalised, project ragna rok-centred plaque (bonus: you get to use the cool dragon/swastika-logo) that indicates the glove’s indexing position within the whole project, design based on a “bureaucratic flavour” grokked from looking at actual german ww2 paperwork.
on a related note, the name for the enigma manufacturer is a nice idea, flavour-wise, but the name (chiffriermaschinen aktiengesellschaft) translates to something like “cipher machines incorporated” i.e. something very specific to cipher equipment. my “german sense” tells me that a one-off super secret project like this would have either been built at its own dedicated secret lab or (ragna rok) lab complex, i.e. something you can make up your own name for, and parts manufacture could well have been outsourced to all kinds of industry, which is an opportunity to put small makers marks of big german war industry names all over it, like messerschmidt, blohm & voss, krupp, carl zeiss (for the glassware), and so on.
please don’t think i am discounting the whole project on the grounds of a few details – it’s just the few details that stuck out to me and the project itself is so super amazing that i felt i’d share my point of view.
COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, AND ONLY TANGENTIALLY (at best) RELATED POINT quilting might be numbing, but is amazing stuff. look at this test they did for a discovery documentary
now, there are a few profound weaknesses about this – the gambeson is not only many layers of linen, but also a layer of leather and it looks like there is a layer of chainmail in it, too, and they shot with unreasonably wide broadheads (the kind you’d use for large game or, in a military context, the horses) and short bodkins (non-cutting, pyramid shaped arrowheads). from what has been heard through the grapevine, the partaking EWBS members would have chosen different arrows against this sort of armour (needle bodkins, very elongated pyramid-shaped arrowheads), but it puts a basic principle in perspective: quilting a few layers of good fibre fabric makes for a surprisingly resistant soft armour. i wouldn’t be surprised to see linen and horsehair padding on its own stop a broadhead.
it is also exactly the same principle we use today with kevlar vests and pistol bullets. it also gives us a hint why we only know of (cutting) broadhead war arrowheads that have been hardened (a more typical war broadhead would have been much narrower than the one they showed), and (piercing) bodkin arrowheads only unhardened. bodkins were long thought to be a countermeasure against plate armour, but this test indicates that (needle) bodkins might have been designed specifically against this kind of soft armour.
random archery nerd intermission end. 😉
Over the top this month. Great stuff.
Whoa! I am blown away! That is a truly spectacular prop replica! The number of separate parts and detail is crazy!! Thankyou for this video, it was very interesting and enjoyable! Great work Adam, congratulations!! 🙂
This is going to need an incredible traveling box. And a box to put the box in.
weird I asked if it was for him before and it came back in the negative.
Nice hand, job!
Awesome prop! The only thing I noticed is the font on the Ogrdu Jahad maker’s mark/symbol that Adam wants to add, is it Helvetica? It doesn’t feel like it matches the time period of the device. IIRC Helvetica and similar sans serifs came out in the 50’s, whereas this looks like a device built in the 30’s and 40’s (not familiar with Hellboy unfortunately).
not sure what typeface it is, but grotesque sans serifs had been around for 120 years+ when Helvetica was released. Helvetica/Neue Haas Grotesk was based on Akzidenz Grotesk which was released in 1896. 🙂
we all know Adam is good at his craft – pieces like this show that he is actually great at it. GORGEOUS WORK on this HELLBOY PROP.
YOU ARE RIGHT
maybe he just didn’t want to say, at the time I asked.
That thing is glorious! Is there any way they could get their hands on the prop used in the movie for a compare and contrast? Or at least get an interview with the people who built the original?
Simply awe inspiring! A couple of times, like the one day builds, I think to myself, I could do that. If I had the tools and materials. This? Nope. I ‘d need a couple more lifetimes to learn the skills. Really inspires me to go and make something this weekend.
Have to agree with others in the thread. Tested is killing it this month!
Hey Adam, really beautiful work. About the makestamp in german, I would really love you to post a picture of it. If you ever want to make another german patch I would love to check the german spelling for you.
Absolutely stunning. If you do take suggestions, I’d possibly re-do the machine label? Took me a while to pause the video just at the right moment to be able to read it, and … it seems a tad bit off to me. Here’s what, and why:
Firstly, the “Bestellnummer” (order number) – I think this glove would have been a custom manufactured OOAK item in the Hellboy Universe, and not something that could be ordered from a catalogue.
Secondly, the “Von” in front of “Chiffriermaschinengesellschaft” ought to be removed, it just doens’t belong there. It’s what makes it obvious to me that this label is not of native German origin. Just the manufacturer’s name (or name and location) is fine.
That said, thumbs up for your nod to ENIGMA manufacturers Heimsoeth & Rinke. It seems just right to me that an item like this would be manufactured by them.
And I agree with the others, I can’t wait for the box that inevitably will be made for this fabulous replica.
Stunning! The attention to details of insane. It makes me wanna make!
Oh God, Adam is a genius ! Amazing *3*
In the Hindu religion the Swastika represents good luck and has done for over a millennium. For a very small amount of time it was used by the Nazis. This is a common thing across history. You know that @ symbol well originally it was used to denote a measure of wine, that was 450 ish years ago..a little before the internet. we see this through history..skull and cross bones, was used on poison bottles way before the pirates took over it, and now the British submarine service use it. Ying Yang was used in China to denote which way to hang the screens, ie which faced the sun and which didn’t. To ban a symbol because of one context is a pointless exercise and to draw attention to its one use seems again pointless. Not for one minute do I think tested or Adam savage are in anyway supporting the Nazis ideology. If they were to check every picture and symbol to ensure they caused no offence then there would never be any pod-casts. If people are offended then they will not watch it again, or know not to watch anymore. At one point they have caused me offence, but it was not intended as a direct offence, if we want to not be offended ever then we should lock ourselves away in a darkened room. Apart from that its a masterpiece of work and shows what dedication, hard work and a lot of effort can do.
I am not trying to directly attack you nscafe in anyway, just trying to let others see with a less blinkered view of the world (not saying you blinkered). Please do not take offence at anything I post.
It’s not a matter of causing personal offence, it’s a matter of well-known law and if Tested wants to have a global reach, understanding what it takes to participate within other countries is a bit important but as was pointed out earlier, due to the context of this particular video, it appears to fine.
This needs a beautiful case. WE need a one day build.
Amazing stuff! Both motivational and inspiring!
I get so excited every time Adam talks about learning to wind the finger tips. I’m an engineer and used to make solenoid sand electro magnets. We would make all our prototypes with a 70 year old Singer that had been adapted with an adjustable chuck and a revolution counter.
Who makes those parts trays?
I know its almost a year late, but any chance of getting one of Adam’s blueprint posters of this?