Hey everyone, Norm from Tested here and I have a show and tell today that bookends
this week with another bit of model
making.
now we kicked off this week with some
videos about
model making miniatures from our visit
to prop store let's check out some
original miniature props
from films to adam talking about his
time working
in the ilm model shop and showing us
some pieces from that
and today i have a model making video
that's a little bit more accessible it's
actually
a kit that's available now that we first
saw a couple years ago
back in maker faire 2018.
we were down in san mateo we're walking
the show convention floor and we met
jeff and scott from a new company called
snapships now these are just two guys
who used to work
in the video games business that then
took this idea
of designing in 3d studio max and then
3d printing
a prototype for a modular spaceship
building
system caught ri kind of looked like
this combination
of lego style modular construction sets
with kid bashing and now two years later
they've actually
partnered with a toy maker play monster
to make snapchats into a real
product into a real kit you can get them
today and jeff and scott sent me a few
of them and i've been spending this past
week
wrapping up my evenings kind of winding
down by putting these together
and they're awesome i mean it was so
cool to see
the prototypes and to see the pieces
that they were experimenting with back
in 2018 and now i mean they're real
products
these are the ships they come in
a bunch of different versions there's a
whole back story and universe
they've developed with these two
factions
and the kits come in a variety of sizes
you have the small size here
um which is about 25 pieces
again you see all the hallmarks of a
classic science fiction ship
from your cockpit to your wings
you have your intakes your engines your
weapon systems
uh to more novel designs um
that are a little larger so there's a
medium-sized set that's
about you know between 75-100 pieces and
this is one of those i mean it's just
wonderfully detailed uh i followed their
instructions to put this one
together but has you know tons and tons
of surface detail you can't even really
tell that this was a modular kit
because it's nicely hidden with panels
with
accessories with thrusters so today i'm
gonna be putting together
this kit it's their largest set at about
125 pieces this amazing looking
drop ship and it'll give you a sense of
their ambitions how this comes together
and the thoughtfulness and design
that went into making this modular set
let's break open the box and let's get
started
all right let's take a look at some of
these pieces so first off one of the
neat things
is the top of the box ends up being
a display base so we keep those and they
come with little display stands
that you can place the ships on and then
you can see
that something like this this cube is
basically the fundamental building block
of what i would consider like the core
of
the ship so there are five sides here
that have this recessed
docking point and then one peg here
and then other pieces have the pegs as
well
so they perfectly connect on and snap on
because it's called snapships what's
also neat it's very easy to remove
it's a pretty secure connection is that
you can see
it's not just a square here it actually
can be
oriented in multiple angles including a
45 degree angle
and it's locked pretty tight while there
are certain
pegs that also let you do a full
rotation so you can have
a ship like this small one for
example and then have that do that full
rotation
um so the first step typically in
building this is building out what you
would consider the
internal core volume of the ship but
then you start adding
your you know greeblies around and so
for this
we take these cubes and then we start
piecing them
together in a way to create a bigger
internal volume
that's going to be somehow shaped like
this dropship
you'll notice as i'm putting this
together it's already
looking like has some weight and mass to
it and that's what i really like when i
start getting
these pieces put together it's pretty
tight connection
and a lot of these ships you know
there's symmetry to them
uh so it's really easy to really pick
out these pairs of parts
when you have things like wings and you
need chirality
and symmetry that's when you have to
make sure
you have them oriented correctly but
they've done a really good job of making
sure some of the pieces
can be flipped upside down and so
there's a lot of versatility
in terms of how you can actually put the
pieces together and still
retain symmetry
but i found really neat as i'm putting
this together obviously the goal is to
make this
look like it's a full ship i don't want
to hide
all the places where there are holes for
the pegs
either with you know something like a
blaster
or a wing or an engine but they're also
these just basic panel pieces panel
coverings
that i can use to cover the holes
and make it look like a manufactured
product
now i think one of the tricky things
about designing a system like this
is to make it modular but also to give
enough
variability so when you take it apart
and rebuild it they look sufficiently
different
and so that and i think they've designed
over 100 different
just types of components so you have
different looking
guns and blasters to exhaust
to just you know panels
that can fit on and i do
recognize some things that are repeating
but
there seems to be enough variability
that i could totally see myself you know
putting together a ship that looks
completely different from this
and there's even unique things like
hinges
so there's some playability and some
maneuverability
in them they're not just static models
you know there are little tiny figures
that come with them
uh as well and then there are some you
know
more proprietary pieces that are for the
specific
model so for this dropship gun ship like
that's what
this comes from but it's all pretty neat
so far and
color wise you know it's a lot of grays
here
uh two major color schemes between the
two factions but there are little
accents
you know in the greens and the blues
that do make them pop but i do think
it's something that you could throw some
paint on after the fact
it's really tied together
all right so here we go we have our
drop ship our gun chip really fun to put
together
super simple like i was saying they
are really forgiving in terms of uh how
well the pieces fit together and how
easy they are to pry apart
this kit actually came with two vehicles
but toward the end of the build i
started to go freestyle
and just kind of started putting pieces
together
and yeah i like the look of it i have a
little separate drop ship now that can
that can come off um and they're not
expensive at all either the small
sets the smallest ones with about 25
pieces like ten dollars the medium-sized
ones fifteen bucks and this one's
i think you can get online for around
forty dollars i think they're totally
worth it
super fun a lot of surprises like
there's even a whole
ar phone tablet game uh companion that i
haven't even dove
into uh that expands the universe and
allows more interactivity with what
you've built
but i just wanted to give a big
congratulations and shout out to scott
and jeff
of snapships for turning their
kind of pet project their
experimentation
into a real product that i can enjoy and
hopefully you out there
will enjoy as well we'll have links to
where you can find these
in the description below hope you get a
chance to pick them up
holidays are coming up and i can't wait
to
take this all apart and build them when
my kid is old enough to start building
his first
spaceships but hope you all have had a
great week we'll be back next time with
more fun projects more videos
and until then see ya bye
