Discovery Channel: “Prototype This”
A little while back I had the honor of working on the new Discovery Channel show “Prototype This!”. The project at hand was to build an interactive boxing video game, but without the video part. The idea was that human boxers would throw their punches in the air and a pair of Giant metal avatars would do the dirty work in the ring. The regular cast of the show was more than capable of designing and building such a system, but it fell a little short in the appearance department. I was brought in to help design the look of the robots with my usual arsenal of scrap metal objects. The show ran about 45 minutes and can be seen on Discovery’s website until 1/15/09 (launch the player, click “Prototype This!, then click “Boxing Robots”).
For those with shorter attention spans I have edited the episode down to 7 minutes (giving myself particular emphasis). Click here to see the video.
Keep scrolling down for some behind the scenes images.
October 28, 2008
Humble beginnings: I bought a lot of outboard boat motor housings and BBQ grill covers for the basic body parts.
Once I had the basics worked out I had to move over to the Prototype shop to graft the parts onto the armatures.
A few images from fight night. Really worth seeing in the video. Its difficult to communicate the size, power, and noise of these things. I wish I had the resources to work in this scale more often.
