Hello Adam Savage in my cave uh answering some questions from Tested patrons about my tenure at ILM and Shadowfax 1007 has a great question shadowflex 1007 wants to know what inspired you to get involved with special effects and visual effects work. Well, as it turns out, my interest in special effects and visual effects started at a very young age. Growing up, I was always fascinated by movies and the way they could transport me to different worlds and make me feel like I was part of something bigger than myself.

As a kid, I spent hours watching movies and trying to figure out how they were made. I would ask my parents if we could go to the special effects lab or the prop department so I could see what all the fuss was about. And every time, they would say yes, because they knew that I was genuinely interested in understanding the process behind creating these incredible effects.

When it came time for college, I decided to pursue a degree in filmmaking and visual effects. I knew that this was something that I wanted to do with my life, and I was determined to learn as much as I could about it. Throughout my college years, I worked on numerous projects, honing my skills and learning from some of the best in the industry.

After graduating, I landed a job at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), one of the most renowned special effects companies in the world. Working alongside some of the most talented people in the business was an incredible experience that allowed me to grow both professionally and personally. Over the years, I had the opportunity to work on some truly groundbreaking projects, including films like Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

But it wasn't until I joined Shadowfax, a special effects company founded by legendary visual effects artist Ray Kane, that I really felt at home. Working with Ray and his team was a dream come true for me, as I had always idolized him as a young filmmaker and had the chance to learn from him firsthand.

Shadowfax has been an incredible ride for me, both personally and professionally. It's allowed me to work on some truly amazing projects, collaborate with talented artists, and build my skills as a visual effects expert.

Today, I'm still active in the industry, working on various projects and collaborating with other artists and filmmakers. But even though I've had the opportunity to work on so many incredible films and projects over the years, it's clear that my passion for special effects and visual effects has never wavered. There's something about bringing a story to life through sound and image that just gets me pumped up.

So what's next for me? Well, I'm always looking for new challenges and opportunities to grow both creatively and personally. Whether it's working on a new film, creating a YouTube series, or simply experimenting with new techniques in the lab, I know that there will always be something exciting around the corner.

But before we wrap up, let's take a step back and talk about one of my favorite projects – the blanket mold technique. This is a fundamental concept in visual effects work that involves creating a thin layer of silicone to capture the shape of an object or character. The idea behind it is simple: you want to create a mold that can be easily removed from the final product, allowing for intricate details and textures to be preserved.

In the case of my ship model, I wanted to achieve a level of detail and realism that would transport viewers back in time. So, I started by creating a clay blanket around the ship – essentially sculpting a thin layer of material that would capture its shape and contours. From there, I used a combination of plaster and silicone to create the actual mold.

The key to this technique is the use of "keys" – small details that register the mold onto the outer surface of the mother mold. Without these keys, it's impossible to achieve accurate alignment and adhesion between the two surfaces. By carefully crafting each key to fit snugly into place, I was able to ensure that the final product would be both durable and detailed.

One of the most interesting aspects of this process is the way that it requires a combination of artistic skill and technical know-how. As an artist, I had to think about how to shape the mold in a way that captured the essence of the ship – using materials like clay and plaster to create subtle textures and details. At the same time, as a technician, I needed to understand the physics behind the process – how to balance the needs of adhesion, durability, and detail.

It's this delicate dance between art and science that makes visual effects so fascinating – it requires a deep understanding of both the creative and technical aspects of the craft. And when everything comes together just right, the result is truly magical.

Well, I think that's enough for now – I hope you guys have enjoyed joining me on this trip down memory lane. If you have any more questions or topics you'd like to discuss, please don't hesitate to reach out to me directly. And remember, keep on experimenting and pushing the boundaries of what's possible – that's where the magic happens!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello adam savage in my cave uh answering some questions from tested patrons about my tenure at  ilm and shadowfax 1007 uh has a great question shadowflex 1007 wants to know wait a minute  what would you say is the best skill you took away from your time at ilmit's going to be mold making not that i didn't know how mold making worked before i worked at ilm  but my exposure to mold making pre-ilm was only the work of one guy mitch romanowski uh  who taught me a tremendous amount about mold making how to think through it  how to imagine it what the philosophy was and mold making is a really really difficult discipline  because it's all about thinking upside down and backwards and also inside out kind of the way  sewing does too they have some similarities um but it wasn't until i got to industrial light magic  and met the folks in the mold room mike jobe and tony prestiado and the others uh mark ferenza thatsorry a machine i've got running over and the other side of the shop sounded like it stopped  running um it wasn't until i saw the craftspeople in the mold room at ilm that i really grocked what  a magnificent intricate complicated concerning amazing art form mold making can truly be  and to demonstrate this i want to show you a mold that i built that i think is the best mold  i have ever personally built um i was doing a job so this is uhyeah this is like 2000 2001. uh galoob toys uh hired me to make some uh prototype models  for a mid-range set of star wars ships um here is a rough casting of the star destroyer that  i produced for them i didn't actually built this dave fogler uh who was the uh effects supervisor  on the last transformers film good friend of mine he did all the model making on this  uh this isn't a great casting it's got some separation here and there but like it took  us a few to get this right but to make this piece as a it was almost monolithic this was an add-on  um and also yeah let's show you some real close-ups of this thing you can see yeah  i'll shoot some better close-ups as b-roll uh this star destroyer was one of the ships that i that we  produced for galub and uh they wanted i think two or three of each ship um one they had to send to  lfl marketing another they sent to their factory etc um and i had to figure out how to mold this  and so i specifically remember having a conversation with mike jobe and tony preciato and  getting advice from them about how to do it and recently in storage in my storage space i foundthe original mode oh no no no no no no no i'm totally wrong i didn't find this in storage john  duncan brought this by because i'd lent this to him like 12 or 15 years ago i found another  one of my models i found my tie bomber mold in storage recently um this is the mold that i made  for this ship and it's worth showing you because what i needed  was a mold that allowed me to remove this delicate shape from its confines right so the normal easy  cheap fast or not necessarily cheap but the fast and dirty way to do a mold is to put a pouring  gate somewhere and then pour a brick of rubber around this and then when you pull it out you  pour rubber in the pouring hole and it fills up the brick and that's got dimensional stability and  everything but for a model like this that causes a lot of issues you're going to have to cut that  block of silicone and you're not going to want irregularities along this leading edge  from that cut yes you could do a jeweler's cut that would eliminate much of it but  you don't want the hassle so i wanted a two-piece mold that held this in orientation but then i  didn't want the rubber to be too thick because i wanted to be able to peel the rubber off the resin  casting i wasn't going to cast these solid i i actually cast them somewhat hollow  and again like i said these are delicate so i need that rubber to be thin so this is  the mold that solved all those problems the outer jacket the mother mold is uma ceramic hard plasterwhose name is escaping me at this very second but it's a it's an ultra cow  it's a super hard plaster uh it it actually if you had a thin chunk of it almost sounds  like glass when it breaks it's so hard and it's got some if you look here closely you can see  a little bit of fibrous material that's jute uh and jute uh which is like a hemp-based  sort of fibrous material is what the mold room used for supporting ultracal mother  molds so again all of this came from the the wonderful tutelage of the mold makers at ilmokay so in order before i show you this i just want to like walk you through the  mechanics of thinking through this so if what i want is what's called a blanket mold  that is in two pieces that surrounds my ship that's fairly easy to understand a blanket mold  is a thin layer of silicone about an eighth of an inch thick maybe a quarter of an inch  that is the overall shape of the ship nice and thin so i can pull it off the resin but  it also needs to actually have keys that hold that blanket mold in the mother mold  so how do you do that well you end up actually doing a lot of work with clay and plaster and then  you remove the clay and you pour silicone into the interstices where there was plaster and yeah i  can't get more detail than that because i'm going to need drawings and supporting materials but this  is the mold that i made and 20 years later it's still beautiful it probably will survive one more  casting which is why i actually have it sitting on my mold table right now because i do plan to do  one last casting with it before retiring it old silicone gets brittle  you have to be very careful with how you handle it but if you look really close you can see that  what i did was i actually sculpted a clay blanket around the ship that the ship registered inside  of and then i keyed the outside of that blanket to the plaster mold and then in addition i have  these keys here that register it into the outside of the mother mold and in order to achieve real  good adhesion there i would precede every casting by putting a little vaseline on the inside of the  mold to pro to provide a little liquid suction to keep this very thin mold perfectly registered  to the inside of the plaster a motherboard this is not a mold i would have been able to even conceive  of had i not been able to watch the incredible craftsmanship on display in ilms mold shop and  yeah i learned so much from those guys and they were open books about my questioning  uh it was a real delight thank you guys for uh joining me on this trip down memory lane  yeah i will do a casting of this i will show you the the the final thing because i want to  i i don't have any of the castings of the ships that i built for glue i have all the molds now  and it's time to put them all back together all right thank you guys for those great questions  tested patrons please keep submitting your wonderful questions and i will continue  to answer them thank you guys so much i will see you next time\n"