Hey Studs, welcome back to Studson Studio. I’ve been playing Horizon Forbidden West
recently, which is a game with a plot and characters that drive that plot. But it’s also a game with wow cool robot! I can’t stop ogling these mech designs,
but can we talk about the robot elephant in the room? When I first saw it, I only had one thought.
[SAMWISE] “It’s an oliphaunt!” And my second thought was: oops, I didn’t
preorder the collector’s edition figure. So let’s kitbash a plastic pachyderm from
various junk and also not junk. Starting from the bottom with these big elephant
waffle stompers These thick feet need a sturdy base, so I’m
using these plastic discs from the tops of soda cans and these cans from a pair of old
broken headphones. On the top of each disc, I’m placing a dome
from a ping pong ball. It’s a little tricky to perfectly divide
these, but if you hold them to the light, you can see the perineal raphe and mark it
with a pen to help you bisect them. And now that we have four domes, I’m sanding
the tops of each foot base.
This gives the plastic some “tooth”, which
will help the super glue bind the domes to the discs. Next we need some toes. I have a bunch of gunpla parts in my bits
box, and perhaps ironically, many of these toes are actually fingers because of the excess
of hands that gundam kits come with. And those of you with taste might recognize
this insignia. I found this incomplete set of vintage Robotix
toys at Goodwill recently. They have these really nice hexagonal connectors
that will make excellent joint pieces after jamming them into these ping pong holes. Just gotta get that piece out of here. It’s better in there actually. As I have no personal nostalgia attached to
this toy, I have no qualms with destroying them. Now these feet need shoes. Using these horse shoe charms, along with
an abundance of gundam polycaps I’ve been saving, we can make a little piston for each
toe. And if you’re following along with my debt
to the horse centipede, only three horseshoes remain.
This is important. I actually built this model before the game
came out, which made finding reference images tricky, so sometimes I just made it up and
glued on whatever I had in my junk arsenal. Like broth caps. These are worth keeping, but there’s one
other piece of important cap technology to discuss. The tamper evident sealing ring is perfect
for implying these stationary ankles have multiple axes of movement. And that’s it for the feet. More spicy elephant feet pics can be found
on Only ‘Phants. Okay, now show me your belly. Ooh, I have the perfect piece for this. It’s the shell from an old RC car and it
actually inspired this whole build. And if you’re a gunpla fan, this is the
point in the video where I start scavenging perfectly healthy kits for pieces to use. This skirt armor will make a nice elephant
chest, but that Zeon logo has got to go though. Then to fill in the chest cavity that’s
left behind, I have this leftover piece from a previous video which happens to fit right
here.
But to bulk it out, here’s a dense piece
of plastic from a broken sous vide immersion cooker. Just gotta cut it in half real quick. Uh oh, I’m weak. Don’t look at me. It’s always so soothing to the brain when
these curves line up like this. But it’s less soothing how this white is
joining this red gunpla piece, so let’s cover it up with another piece. Here’s a threaded rubber I don’t actually
know what, I just found it on the ground covered in dirt. And what’s in here? Ah, perfect.
Two discs to overlap this unsightly overlap. On the topic of that broken sous vide immersion
cooker from earlier, here’s more of it. This is just to add some internal torso strength. More gunpla pieces on the elephant chest. And then half of a star wars turbine to complete
this semi-circle which is essentially the elephant’s armpit. A lot of this portion of the torso is just
building bulk from various plastic junk I have. Like this leftover dollar store robot torso
as the start of an elephant pelvis. Speaking of the dollar store, they sell pencil
sharpeners. Or are they heat vents for these powerful
elephant oblique muscles? And speaking of elephant pelvis, from this
set of Robotix toys, I’m using these bell nozzle engines to make a pelvic girdle.
And with these gray connector pieces as removable
leg joints, these rockets have hip sockets. Next we need to fill out the rest of the elephant
back. Using this dollar store helicopter flipped
upside down, we can slot it over the stomach after trimming it to fit. Whoops. Okay, time to guard the eyes from flying debris. After many shallow slices in a direction that
wouldn’t result in my stabbing myself, it now fits. The tail rotor is where I’m planning on
mounting the head. But now the helicopter body is much wider
and needs some structure. So I’m adding some spinal column support
with dog poop bag tubes. Takeout food containers. Sometimes they’re really high tech and made
with carbon fiber from the year 3000. After hot gluing some of this texture to a
few cardboard poop tubes, we now have a very futuristic looking elephant rib cage. Then after filling out a few more gaps on
the belly, we’re ready to stack the back on this pachyderm.
Here’s a Gundam pelvis. I sacrificed pieces of this kit on the Howl’s
Moving Castle build and the ritual is nearly complete with this one. My partner gave me her extra fitbit wrist
strap recently, so let’s check that booty pulse and strap that here. Then some more pieces from the headphones
that became the feet to frame the strap. And the last torso task is to cover up the
tube spine. Most important is to build strong shoulders
that can support the weight of the model. So I’m using some two part epoxy to lather
up and clamp the parts where the front legs will mount to. Then between these elephant scapula, I’m
adding a gundam shield divided in two because it looks cool. And for the rest of the back, I found this
build your own robot set at Daiso that is a treasure trove of robot greebles. I’m not too worried about how the back looks
because it’s going to be covered under a rickety clubhouse later, so for now the Tremortusk
torso is nearly complete.
Oh yeah, this is called a Tremortusk by the
way. Seven minutes into the video and I figured
I’d tell you what I’m making. The Tremortusk and all the other big robo
beasts are my favorite thing about these games. The designs feel organic, yet mechanically,
they make sense. If you’re into seeing other creators build
machines from these games, then I highly recommend you check out Melissa Dawn Makes and KayPea
Creations. Both of them are very inspirational and tackle
these design challenges across different crafting mediums. I love how Guerrilla Game’s design language
blends animal anatomy into machined parts. Now let’s continue with another piece of
classic elephant anatomy: rib cage guns Aka the Tremortusk’s salvo cannons. A friend salvaged these used label cartridges
from the trash and they have lots of nice surface detail. There are some nice internal bits here too
as long as you unspool the tangle of label spaghetti. We’ll save these bits for later. Two cartridges together make the cannon housing,
then I sealed up the openings with some scrap plastic. More dollar store toys. Save these elephant tusk looking things for
later. And the rest of the accessories are almost
good to go, but the cannons need their barrels drilled out for my full immersion that these
are actually functional weapons.
After gingerly setting the pieces in place
and then gluing off screen, welcome to the gun show. Next, they need some side armor. The Space Shuttle program is officially retired,
so let’s repurpose these wings. Honestly these wings kinda made it look worse,
but this armor placement will make sense once we assemble everything later. Next let’s make the Tremortusk’s booty
tubes. The main booty bulk is two robo torsos from
Daiso glued back to back. But for the ammo drums, I have these glitter
tubes which I’m going to repurpose. If your tubes are filled with glitter, a fun
mini mini project you can do is dump it straight in the trash because that’s where this blight
belongs. Okay, we got tubes, now we need these Mars
rover wheels and we can construct an ammo drum. And now we come to the most difficult and
time consuming part of the build.
Constructing those thick tree trunk limbs. Using a couple dollar store staplers, I removed
the parts that make it a stapler so that I’m left with the start of a leg joint and shoulder. Then with an old lighter cartridge, I glued
it in under the shoulder joint and now this leg bone is a little humerus. And for the knee joint, a gunpla leg piece. Oh wow, the Tallneck exhibits such beauty,
power, and grace. But I need this spaceship head to start building
up some armor pieces for the leg. This flying saucer toy will cover the majority
of the shoulder, but it’s taking a lot of self restraint to not start tearing into this
gunpla pile for the rest of the armor. And I almost did, until I found this lonely
50 cent model kit sprue at Goodwill. A beautiful find. [TEERSA] “A gift from All-Mother herself.” But we can still pretend it's gunpla. This has been your subliminal messaging to
seek more ASMR clack and gunpla content at Millennial Model Mayhem. Okay, now mind this gap. I want to maintain this thin line so the armor
plates read as separate pieces when they’re glued together.
But for the larger gap, I guess I’ll have
to destroy my favorite dollar store compass ring
and use part of this plastic to continue that beautiful thin gap to the top of the shoulder. The rest of the leg is more of that delicious
model kit sprue I found at Goodwill, I wish I had more of it. Except that, that’s a rocket booster leg
from a gunpla kit. A button. An airplane wheel. A dollar store gun. And a dollar store quadcopter. But just a single rotor motor. A lot of the time spent on this project was
picking up random pieces of junk and holding them up to each other to see if they “fit.” Mostly, they didn’t. But when they did, it was a great garbage
day. Hey look, it moves. Whenever you buy dollar store pencil sharpeners,
they actually come with these pieces of shin armor.
This is a very big boy, so we need two pencil
sharpener covers to fill out the real estate on each shin. And while you weren’t looking, I strengthened
this joint with a piece of a metal clothes hanger and added a ball joint to connect to
the ankle. That’ll do it for the main structure of
the front leg. I really wanted to keep these joints poseable,
but sadly, they’re weak and wobbly so I’ll have to abandon that plan and lock the joints
in place with glue. This boy’s just got too much heft and I
don’t want him slipping all over the place. For the back legs, I’m starting with more
of these dollar store toys, specifically this very scary looking hoverboard.
[GRIFF] “Hook on!” On the backside, I epoxied another Robotix
connector that will join with the hip mount. Then started building up armor plates from
pieces of generic sci fi toys. But I’ll need a hand. Actually a forearm. The goal is to first get the general shape
of a thick elephant thigh, then we can fill out the gaps with generic mass. Like this. The internal waffle press from inside a deodorant
stick. You’ll never see it, but it was just nice
and round and it fit here so why not. Those are some nice arms you got. These arms are now legs, they just need some
armor plates to bulk it out a bit. Cool, these pieces kind of balance each other. I think we’re ready to slip this robo sock
on. And for the ankle, I embedded another gunpla
joint, but it’s ultra scrawny looking, so I had to bulk out the bones with a bit more
beef to make it more formidable.
With that extra thickness, these legs are
now ready to stand on their own. And now, don’t mind me while I zoom into
this elephant grundle to showcase the fibers that weave throughout the machines. For all of these tubular details, I’m using
garden wire since it’s extremely flexible and forgiving. Some of the pieces I used have holes, so why
not shove some cables in there. But for the most part, I’m taking large
swaths of wire and laying them side by side to create a muscle fiber pattern, despite
my lack of elephant anatomy knowledge. And for less visible sections like the inner
thigh, I’m using this mesh tubing. You know, for Halloween. Which is appropriate because it’s scary
how haphazardly I’m stuffing this space. I used the same garden wire to add some details
to the Tremortusk torso, and this plastic football is complete.
If you ever run out of kitbashing materials,
don’t be afraid to seek out community second hand stores. Sometimes the bottom of the drawers have some
overlooked gems, like this Mega Bloks toy. This is a HALO drop pod toy
Or apparently, a Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicle or SOEIV
But today it’s an elephant head. Speaking of heads, I’ll need more of this
Tallneck head as armor plating. This piece is already perfectly shaped for
the elephant forehead. And for Tremortusk’s trunk… This flexible fidget toy will make for a nice
poseable snout.
These will be the nose bones, but we’ll
need some armor plating for full protection. For that, we’ll use some gunpla pieces from
the bits box. This piece in particular feels like it was
meant to go right here. Most of these pieces are from a friend who
donated their kits to my gunpla graveyard and they’re going on to live their second
life as an elephant face. We can’t forget the trunk teeth to make
it a bit more menacing. And the eyes, which are the most accurate
kitbash piece I found for the whole build. These are a set of gunpla hand cannons, which
are perfect for these quintuple eyeballs. After some surgery to remove the plastic cataracts… I’m using this string of battery-powered
red LEDs for some eyeball lighting effects. I went with red because I prefer that menacing
on-the-hunt appearance. How’s it looking? To accompany the eyes, it needs some ears
made from a few miscellaneous pieces. Plus some plasticard, which is easy to snap
off after a light cut. I sanded the edges smooth until we’re left
with a streamlined ear design for the 31st century.
The other two pieces will become the mount
so the ear can rotate and find that optimal 10G signal. All right, eyes, ears, mouth, nose, so next
is the fifth part of the face, the plasma cannons. The base piece I’m using is this extra dense
plastic turret from the dollar store. Uh oh. Something went wrong. Hmm. Oops. Generally speaking, nippers can’t nip with
one blade. We’ll upgrade to the heavy duty pair for
now… …Whilst I contemplate what I’ve done. The rest of the plasma cannons are various
gunpla weapons, which brings us to the eponymous tusks of the Tremortusk. This seat piece from that yonder set of Robotix
toys I used earlier will make a fine tusk mount. Using another dollar store quadcopter… I made a mount for where the tusks will attach,
but this machine is greedy and has four tusks, so we need an extension.
I wanted the tusks to be poseable… So I dug up four ball joints from my gunpla
bits box and started building up the tusks from various pieces I had. Like this broken rechargeable flashlight. Lots of good stuff in here, but this trigger
speaks to me as a tusk joint. I added a gunpla polycap so it could interface
with a ball joint.
Then covered up all the hideous fake joints
with beads to at least imply articulation. The end of each tusk is a Gundam shoe and
this pointy piece from a dollar store toy. I don’t know what it is, but I can only
think of it as a sci-fi grasshopper wing, as invented by the Crafsman. So let’s amend that. Each tusk is topped off with a Gundam shoe
and a sci-fi grasshopper wing. But this tusk is special and gets to have
two pointy grasshopper wing toes. One of the problems with lazy kitbashing is
the empty peg holes left behind, but just fill those with garden wires and it looks
intentional. These tusks are kinda cute, it could be its
own guy. And with the poseable pachyderm head complete… That means we’re ready to paint all these
plastic parts.
All the pieces primed black look pretty good,
but why are the wires so shiny? Oh no. Two days later and the spray paint never cured. Luckily it was the kind of wet that is very
friendly to paper towels, so after a bit of clean up and a fresh acrylic coat, you could
blur your eyes and almost fall this mecha mastodon done. Time for some metallic drybrushing. Drybrushing is the technique where blast most
of your expensive paint all over a paper towel that get thrown away. Then with the crusty remnants on your brush,
you lightly caress all the raised surfaces to give a nice varied metal appearance with
a lot of depth.
Then it was time to break out the masking
tape. I’m only masking the dark metal areas I
want to retain, while all the uncovered armor will be primed white. I also used good ol’ painters tape for the
larger areas. Looks like everything is covered. Let’s take this wibbly wobbly set outside
and prime it. Here’s a fun reverse tip. It was almost freezing the day I primed these,
which is twenty fahrenheit degrees colder than it should be, so don’t do this. Or do if you want paint that doesn’t dry
properly that you can call free weathering. And now for some always satisfying masking
tape peels. And by tape peels, I mean paint peels because
you forgot to sand the ultra-smooth dollar store plastic to help it take paint better. Don’t worry though, the rest of the paint
peels are extra crispy.
But the armor isn’t just white. It’s dark white and warm white. All the futuristic triangles are painted gray. And if you’re wondering why everything,
including the currency, is triangles in Horizon games, it’s because there’s a triangle
surplus from when all the corners were cut off sci-fi doors. But the Tremortusk isn’t only these exciting
unsaturated shades. It’s also yellow in a few key spots which
helps the white armor and gunmetal areas pop a bit. I actually really dig the white and yellow
color scheme, yellow and white look cute together. I did some of the additional sloppy triangle
details freehand, but I was able to clean up some unwanted lumpiness with a toothpick
before the paint fully dried. I’m booting up the airbrush for the rest
of the yellow sections, because painting yellow by hand is generally the worst and takes 100
coats. First I’m laying down a bed of orange on
the Tremortusk’s blaze-filled belly and the ends of each tusk.
Then coming back with yellow to make a subtle
gradient that is almost invisible to the naked eye. [DOLORES] “Doesn’t look like anything
to me.” The paint didn’t peel off this time, good
job. I’m pretty happy with how this looks, but
I felt like a blockhead once I saw the bottom. All right, time to destroy the paint finish
I worked so hard to achieve. I prefer my robots to be a little battle-damaged,
so I’m attacking the paint with a toothpick. This chipping technique works best when the
top coat of paint is still fresh, hopefully within the first few hours of spraying. But the sweet spot is finding the perfect
amount of pressure that only removes the first layer of paint and doesn’t disturb the black
primer underneath.
It’s not a perfect system because the different
plastics I’ve used have slightly different paint adhesion, but it’s good enough. But in some places, it wasn’t good enough. So I’m switching to a painted-on chipping
effect… …layering on gunmetal gray followed by chrome
silver. Next, grab a surprisingly tough sponge and
rip off a chunk… “How tough are ya?” “How tough am I?” A sponge is great for chipping because it
provides a nice random pattern that would be too tedious for my brain to paint by hand. I’m dabbing it in just a few key spots,
then using the chrome paint to fill in the gun metal areas almost to the edge, but making
sure to retain a visible two-tone effect. The last hues to paint are the red and green
color scheme of the rebels that have captured this Tremortusk. Rather than painting by hand, I wanted to
try carving some stamps out of scrap foam to make the proper insignia. I like this method because it avoids brush
strokes that would look way out of scale. Whoa, Super Cool. The MVP stamp was this very scratchy triangle.
Because you already know about the unbridled
strength of triangles in the world of Horizon. And so I pretty much went to triangle town
with this guy. I was aiming for an intimidating teeth pattern,
but it kind of has more of a Simba’s leaf mane vibe. The triangles continue, except on the forehead,
where I created a skull icon that looks like discount Punisher. With all the pieces painted, it was grime
time to tie it all together using oil washes. With my jagged limoncello La Croix can ready,
I mixed up an oil wash using one part oil paint to something close to two-ish parts
of mineral spirits. I like to get it to a nice thin Au Jus consistency
and let gravity do most of the work and let it flow into all the nooks and crannies.
I wiped most of the grime away with a paper
towel or cotton swab before I remembered that Black Magic Craft used a foam makeup wedge
and oh yeah, that’s the good stuff. After a bit of grime squeegee, it’s now
perfectly dirty and weathered by the Forbidden West, so let’s start the assembly. It looks nearly complete, but why’re we
not done? Because wire. I wound up a bunch of dollar store wire and
garden cables to create the corrupted coils that interlace through the machines.
I left a lot of awkward gaps in the model,
but with wire stuffed in those holes, now the gaps look like very much intentional conduit
passages. The red wire was a little intense in some
places, so I painted them in gunmetal and copper on the front and back legs respectively. And now we can make a baby Tremortusk. Now it’s time for the after-market Tremortusk
additions, namely this wooden structure that looks like it’s made out of sticks. Which is great news, because I can find sticks
for a great price. This is free. Free. Free! Also free. Eight dollar bundle of decorative sticks not
free. First we’ll need to debark on these sticks,
which was how I discovered someone is living in here.
I built the log foundation directly on the
back so it wouldn’t crowd those hefty delts. Then made a second platform that would stack
on top of the first base piece. Some balsa boards for a nice deck. But it’s not OSHA-approved without some
railing. It took almost eight hours to complete this
pencil sharpener punishment, what a time. Okay, we got walls, but we also need wolverine
claws for spiky embellishment. I left some gaps between the chunks of wall
so that I could fill them in with said wolverine claws or stacked up some leftover sticks for
a haphazard and dangerous looking porcupine treehouse. I fashioned a few flagpoles and a roof structure,
but it needs a canopy.
This artificial big leaf can also be an artificial
small leaf by adding one million cuts to create a palm frond. I used hot glue, but also directly melted
these plastic leaves onto the sticks This wood is currently the color of wood,
but it could be better with a smattering of inks through the airbrush. A spritz of carbon black, burnt sienna, and
yellow ochre. And just so it matches the Tremortusk, I want
to add the same red green color scheme. And then a wash of burnt umber oil paint and
mineral spirits to unify everything with a layer of grime. The last treehouse touch is the flag flying
high. Using an old t-shirt, I cut a few ragged banners
and glued them to the flagpole sticks. But this cotton polyester blend is too floppy. To stiffen it up, I’m soaking in a generous
amount of super glue, then using super glue accelerant to instantly lock it in place. Then to spice up these t-shirt flags, I painted
on some designs with acrylic paint and dipped the whole flag in a dark wash to blend them
with the rest of the color scheme.
And speaking of a spicy dark wash, the Tremortusk
needs a bath, too. Tremortusk complete, but you can’t have
a Tremortusk without a mini Aloy. Maybe my miniature sculpting skills have spontaneously
improved since previous videos. Well, let’s try anyway. Now I’m no North of the Border, so my wormie
dealies are more like sluggie loggos. Aloy has two slugs for legs. Two slug arms. An egg head. Her toothpick spear. We can’t forget her flaming hair of red. And a classic Aloy expression. For her clothing, I’m a fan of her original
Nora design. Just a few more finishing touches and there
we go. Last but not least, we need a platform for
these two to stand on.
Perfect. I recently got a new tool that’s really
going to change my life. It’s a hot wire foam cutter. I burnt myself a few times… But I tried to limit the burning to just the
foam to create some interesting ground lumps. To compliment these lumps, we’ll need other
interesting ground lumps… Like these pieces of bark I foraged. These will become some miniature boulders. The hot wire tool was very useful in sculpting
out a perfect hole made for each rock.
I’m aiming for a mountainous field scattered
with a vein of boulders all going in the same direction. And to make sure each boulder is tucked in
nicely to its bedrock, I sprinkled on a line of glue…
and then filled that glue with various pieces of wood, gravel, sand… And then to help the glue all settle into
place, a spritz of isopropyl alcohol. This is one of my favorite goops. It makes a great seam cream. First we spread that goop. [MILHOUSE] “Say the line, Bart.” Then we stipple that goop. “Yaaaay!” But that was just a tiny snack and I’m still
hungry for more goop so I’m making another meal. I’m fixing up a batch of Boylei Hobby Time’s
classic plaster paint and mod podge porridge. Plus water as needed to thin out this soup. I’m spreading this texture paste over all
the foam areas.
Followed by a mixture of paint and mod podge
for the bark rocks. But why are the rocks so light and creamy? That’s where these washes come in. This is a rock painting method I first saw
from Luke at Geek Gaming Scenics. I also first saw it on Scratch Bashing. You hit the rocks with a few splotches of
a red wash. A yellow wash. Then drown the whole thing in a brown wash. And when it’s finally brown enough, you
douse the rocks with a black wash to tie all the colors together. And finally, a light khaki dry brush to bring
back all those highlights that were knocked down by the dark wash. And now it’s officially a rock, but we need
some dirt. Using a bottle of nonfat mod podge milk and
a spray bottom pump… I’m glazing all the khaki areas with this
sticky juice before sprinkling on a layer of dirt from a hole in the ground.
It was a hole that I dug outside and I just
go back to it anytime I need fresh dirt. This is also the time to place Aloy in the
hole that was made for her. Canonically, it’s GAIA and the machines
in Horizon that are responsible for terraforming the Earth and healing nature. So it makes sense that this static grass machine
is planting a fresh lawn around Aloy’s feet. While you watch this exciting footage of grass
growing, please enjoy this gallery of art created by supporters on Patreon as part of
this video’s art challenge. The theme was to interpret the phrase “Nature
is Healing” and transform it into any piece of art they saw fit. This was loosely inspired by GAIA in the Horizon
games because I really dig the aesthetic of Post-post-apocalyptic and seeing nature reclaim
things.
But it also might be related to me living
in an area where moss grows on everything. This is the first art challenge we’ve done
and I love the variety of what was submitted. Stay on the lookout for these in subsequent
videos or peep that Patreon link to have your art showcased, too. Thanks, Patrons for your support and beautiful
art. GAIA loves you. Grass is great, but we need a little more
variety, like these clump foliage bushes. A sprinkling of green and yellow flocking
as rock moss. A cluster of red flowers for Aloy to hide
in. And some Ridgewood so there’s always arrows
ready for crafting . Let’s place this Tremortusk in its designated
feet holes, dust up those waffle stompers to show that it’s been tromping, and let’s
roll the beauty shots and latest Patreon shoutouts. Thanks for watching, everybody. See ya next time..
