Tested Builds: Foam Propmaking, Part 1
Welcome to a Tested week of builds! We’re joined in the studio by prop and armor maker Bill Doran (Punished Props), who shares with us his techniques for making awesome foam weapons. Throughout the week, we’ll be designing, fabricating, and painting foam props that can be used for cosplay! (This first video is available for everyone–watch the rest of the build by signing up with the Tested Premium member community!)
17 thoughts on “Tested Builds: Foam Propmaking, Part 1”
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Sometimes I ask myself why people enable youtube comments at all. So much salt.
Entitled kids whining about content they have to pay for.
While I do agree it constitutes as whining. My personal opinion is still that the content should be available for everyone eventually. Just let the premium members get it first. Maybe delay posting it to youtube for a month or so.
Looking forward to the rest of the series. A colleague of mine and myself have been kicking around building in foam (both of us are novices at the process). So this series will be a good reference as well as inspiration to start our own EVA foam project.
As far as the whining issue…the youtubers need to get over it and move on..there is a reason why they call it Premium content. Do not want to subscribe? Look elsewhere. There are hundreds of other videos, websites, and source material to educate oneself about EVA foam prop building (believe me I know..I have researched ALOT in the past couple months prior to beginning my Hellboy Golden Army Robot Build).
Brian
Sure, that could work. But one of the big incentive for buying premium, is (was for me at least) that you get access to the archive with hours and hours of quality content. Really no point in paying if you know in 3 months time you get access to everything anyway.
Guess the question is if they would make any extra money to speak off from youtube vs 1-10 premium accounts.
It’s a interesting discussion. One that I know a lot of youtube content creators have spent hours looking into. And as far as I know, no easy answer has presented itself.
“hours and hours of quality content” maybe it’s just me, but I only find about a quarter of it interesting.
to ilustrate my point here’s some pie charts I made https://www.dropbox.com/s/ivxkn03fiyfv7ko/Zrzut%20ekranu%202016-05-23%2021.12.53.png?dl=0
EDIT I just realised the second pie chart is wrong, blue part should be not interesting videos which is 52 and not “total”
I counted all premium videos released in 2015 to a total of 82 videos, that’s almost 7 videos a month. it’s similar to youtubers who provide quality, informative content. they generaly release videos once or twice a week(keep in mind, those are only premium videos!).
I grouped them in to categories: tutorial, lego, review/test, kitbuild and other. since I currently don’t have a premium account I can’t compare it properly including time of each video.
So back to the point, 40$ divided by 82vidoes that’s roughly 50c per video. that’s a good price. but how many of those videos are actualy quality content? let’s look at the categories:
tutorial: person who knows their stuff explains how to do things. yes please! bring them on! while I might never build the thing out of the tutorial, I probably will use a process or step in one of my things.
lego: bunch of guys building lego sets, following the manual.. please.. waste of time..
review/test: luckly most of those are free, two premium ones were a ride in a tesla, and some paint thing for 3d prints or something, it’s hard to make a decision if I would like those to be premium. Tests, involving proper test gear, or things that are rarely tested, for example connect 100 clients to a new wifi acces point to see what happens, that would be most welcome!
other: tested the show, and other things, those are always welcome!
kit build: just like lego, people following instructions… zero creative process, pretty much no problem solving involved, boring.
all that boils down to about 30 videos per year that I find interesting. I find about 75% of your premium content from 2015 horribly boring. shift your effort to interesting and stimulating things.
create more instead of following instructions. Build things from scratch and show that process! Like when Adam built a box for his beaver :p
interview interesting people, people with interesting or rare proffesions. ask them questions, show their work and share their experience and perspective.
this year starts much better, only 1/3 of videos are those I don’t like.
TL;DR:
most premium videos are people assembling stuff and I find that boring and not worth 40$ a year.
Far be it from me to tell people what $40 is worth to them. To each their own (Seriously.. no condescension intended). But to provide a counter point.. I would gladly pay double or triple or even quadruple that to make sure this website keeps going with the great content they have.
To be sure, I don’t enjoy everything they do or even the way they do it. But for the things I *do* enjoy? That’s worth the money for me… even if I could actually get some of that stuff for free without becoming a Premium Member).
These guys are doing great work and they should be rewarded for it. I don’t have to love everything they do (or even the majority of it, if I’m honest) in order to make my $40 a year money well spent.
Don’t think you fully understand what “lego with friends” is about. It is more a podcast with a bit extra then a “lets build something from a guide”.
And I like most of it, like when they had Phil Broughton as a guest, talking about the arctic and Black Blood of the Earth. Just have to put it on the second monitor and listen to the chitchat and glance over to see the building progress from time to time. But I understand that it’s not for everyone’s taste, and that is okay, but claiming it is not quality content is up to each viewer isn’t it?
I could pick and chose and argue each and single point you make, but that wouldn’t really bring us anywhere. But I will comment on your numbers, since you took the time to gather the data.
By your own numbers, in 2015 they made 30 premium videos you most likely would have liked. That is less than 1.5usd per video, pretty good value if you ask me. And those videos alone is multiple hours of entertainment. So how is it wrong to claim that premium users get hours and hours of older premium content when they buy access?
Tested cater to a lot of different viewers. And it is hard to satisfy everyone. But instead of skipping the videos when i pops up in the subscription list, they feel a strange need to whine about it. Something I never understood. At least not for the free stuff on youtube. If there is a video you don’t like, dislike and search for something you want to see instead. It is not like Tested is the only producer of “lets make stuff” or “this week in tech”. And that is the reason I called them “Entitled kids whining”.
Because if you feel you deserve things without paying for them and/or that they should make videos to your taste only. Then you are behaving like one.
And this turned into a much more heated argument then intended. Something I apologize for Norm and Tested team. This is a discussion for the forum and not really something that adds to the video.
If you go to the movies in a major US city, you’ll spend more on snacks/drinks and parking than you will on a year of Tested Premium membership. And that isn’t even counting the $18 IMAX ticket. :p
The discussion of the materials was really useful. Looking forward to the builds.
it’s just, the addition of those 30videos a year don’t justify spending 40$ for me. I’m happy with free content. if I was more in to making props I’d probably get premium access. Browsing the premium video list doesn’t give me that feeling that I have to get access to those. if tested wants my money they’ll have to bring/show more people like Adam.
where I live, average monthly salary is about 1000$, when you count the taxes, mandatory health inssurance it leaves you with about 700$. Bills take about half of that. 40$ gets you about 35liters of gasoline, you could take your 7 friends to the movies(no snacks though), about 6 meals at an alright restaurant. or healthy and balanced food supply for a week.
Lol. yeah. They have tested, not sure why they need to allow comments from the grade school. A lot of those are pretty juvenile.
I think your feedback is good and healthy. Your tone – well – understanding that what you want is not what all may want is important – and that might be why you got slightly defensive responses. But what you want might be what a lot of others want, so it’s great feedback I am sure Tested will see. Nice thing about it is that you don’t have to pay to see the vast majority of the content.
I might point out that when you consider your (actually very informative) stats, that the effort to make six lego build videos is likely not much more than making a single Adam One Day Build. Just consider that in you stats – maybe even change the count based on it..
My comments about the youtube comments are that they are simply juvenile for the most part. Not referring to you obviously, but seems these days everyone wants everything for free and get really mad when they can’t have it. It’s a serious first world issue too. These folks are using top end tech worth hundreds of dollars that many of them will keep for about 12 months and then trash and replace and squawking because a pay wall exists when they wouldn’t spare you a quarter to get on a metro.. Just kinda erks me.
I also have to say I found it very interesting that wherever you live you can “…take your 7 friends to the movies(no snacks though), (or) about 6 meals at an alright restaurant.” It’s awesome perspective. For me, average monthly individual income in my “hood” is about twice as much (we make much more but choose to live in a humble area). However, $40 would buy 3 friends to the movies and 2 friends ONE meal at an alright restaurant. Lunch today was $24 dollars from the budget menu of an OK (slightly above fast food) place for 2. A fast food meal here is 8-12 bucks.
I always enjoy Matt Doran’s contributions to Tested, he’s so articulate and clear, and doesn’t let his enthusiasm trip him over when explaining things. A rare skill, which I certainly don’t have.
Excellent!
I bet the TSA loves you, Bill.
The other property of this material is that if you heat it to ~140*C (Gas mark 3, and yes kids I do use my oven for this) for about 10-30 seconds it will become as bendy as thermoplastic and it can be formed in a simliar way as long as it is held round a forming object until it cools. I have formed karimat (LD50ish, 8mm camping mats) around a cylinder then stitched and glued the foam, once cooled, to form a Kubaz nose pieces. It can also be faux vacuum formed between a pair of dinner plates to make armour segments. To be honest there is no real limit, bar your imagination, it is why I love working in this medium.
Contact cement is like camera wifi, it never works.
If your intending to use them for larping use carbon or fiberglas rods instead.
You should probably still use fiberglas or carbon for convention purposes as it’s probably lighter than aluminum.