Adam Savage's Dino Build: Painting the Raptor! (Ep 4)

Here she is. Oh, but yeah, you've only seen pictures of her up till now, right? Oh, yeah, that's gonna pan up great Thinking about maybe what sort of patterns we can do that not only Accentuate, you know design wise right also can help hide those. You know, maybe maybe hide those crimes Right, right, right and this is how you can start to do stripes that don't feel like stripes. Oh Do that? Yes rubbing it off the top Yeah, I think we've got we've got proof of concept here for sure I love yeah And we can get that going darker and darker on the top Yeah, and we can pull this into this and then back on for it and back and forth I think that's really when you get when you push and pull you get really nice results I know that, you know, I paint stuff all the time, but I have learned a tremendous amount in the last half hour, man This was a real education So I was thinking before we put the base coat on we just plot out some of the stripe or color action So we had some kind of rough guide. No, I think that makes it's good It's always good to do it small before you do it tall Yeah because also I think you probably have like I know that in in animation and in animatronics like sculptors I work with have a knowledge of Where muscle moves around muscle for a bend and I'm sure you have Understandings of where certain kinds of camo land on topography. It's true. And if you think about where we will There's Anatomically and artistically those are our two things, right? So we've got a way to try and make it look as believable as possible and as cool as possible so I think if we if we plan out some of our patterns to help kind of accent the shapes that yeah, so Wonderfully put in here and I think that'll that'll be a good part of the design All right. Now we've also talked about like I think we're agreed that a dark green Top back spine or that a darker value top back spine exactly starting I think if we do that sort of Classic counter shading so a little bit lighter on the belly with some neat kind of dusty washes and maybe a darker Top back and then we can bring in some neat patterning. I think that'll visually be really stunning Well, and that's the one where I don't have any ideas at all Like I don't know I have no idea where I it strikes me that there might want to be some verticals on the tail Like this is not my I don't know so I'm curious about where your eye starts to see stripes or yeah And we can look at some modern references to because there's there's any pattern or color Imaginable has been In lizard or birds so you can you can really You know the pat the palette is is any color you want, but is it believable, right? And is it interesting artistically to look at that tells me that you've seen stuff in the wild that you think Oh if I actually did that you wouldn't believe that it pink dolphins So in the Amazon There are there are dolphins that are absolutely pepto-bismol pink right if you painted if we painted this this dinosaur pepto-bismol pink No, no one would believe it. So like the Hello Kitty Raptor, right? So we so I think we want to stay in believable color Things that might you know might work inside of the environment that a little okay All right, a nice thing to do is on also at every joint like on elbows and knees and things like that Yeah, if you go and make it just a little bit and make that a little bit more solid. Oh, it's so at knuckles It's very similar to what we've got going here. So you know, this is a little bit deeper tone on knuckles And It's just a little bit richer and so it adds another just another visual stop for your eye I noticed here as I was drawing lines down the neck that I naturally wanted to kind of make a triangle transition there Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's good. You want to be able to drop down catch the shoulder inside of that design Oh, right, right, right. I think it would follow you'd end up with stuff on there Yeah, I think I think really yeah exactly and this is one of those situations where you You symmetry is not your friend you you want to make sure you're breaking up you're breaking you know solid Symmetrical lines actually look kind of fake so you want to make sure you're you're crowding and and Stretching things a little bit here and there so a lot of scientists talk about like what for display for potential display Behaviors, you know, what what is that? It's not only just for for balance, but maybe it was part of a display mating ritual Yeah, so maybe it could have a higher contrast. So if you have dark or if you have a light against dark, there's some Patterns, which are really nice that have Black right against white. Oh, wow, which is really nice ringtail. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah that same really really contrast II Scheme can be really nice. I remember so San Francisco Zoo has a bunch of peacocks wandering around Just you know, they're not. Yeah, sure. Yeah, and I was there with my boys when they were like three and You know, we're walking down a path and like there's a fence right here and behind the fence is a peacock Get over and we like standing at the fence and the peacock is like right where Josh is like right there and the boys You know, there's three so they can barely contain their excitement. Yeah, and one goes Turns around and does the full display Oh with the So loud I had no idea It was evolutionary how it was genuinely scary. Yeah, right and the boys are like Screaming terrified. I'm carrying them both the way week. They're weeping. I'm laughing you ever went to the zoo again This is a good plan I always try and do a color scheme or a small scale Version of it because it's very difficult to change stuff at full scale If you have a 60 foot long thing to paint you can't make changes that easily on the go So you want to really make all those hard decisions design decisions in the small scale and give yourself I find myself Yeah I know where I can get overwhelmed Where like I can't I won't be able to see this I can't zoom out enough to look at the large, right? You can't in many cases in my I mean, I have a really large shop, but there's times I can't get far enough back away to see that the whole the whole picture my dad used to Put him have a little mirror in his in his studio and he would he would he would look at the thing from as far away because he as he could get then he put a Mirror on the wall and he'd look at it in the mirror and then he'd walk backwards from the mirror Yeah, and it's all just to see the formal. Yes. How is it laying out? Very important And also is there like on lizards? Are there anuses like super dark are there parts of them that are strangely a anomalous in terms of color? It's weird that you say that There was just a perfectly preserved cloaca And what did we learn from the perfectly preserved cloaca that that dinosaur cloacas tend to be a lot like crocodile cloacas Okay, but they don't tend to have a lot of color to them They tend to be devoid of pigment, yeah, well, this is cutting edge size the crocodile cloaca look like I've How much right go So I've been lucky enough to be you know to help capture and measure crocodilians and Part of that process is you sex them so doing that you have to sort of reach inside of the animal in the cloaca You have to reach inside to check to see what sex it is. Wow. So yeah, so I'm familiar with crocodilian cloacas and But yeah, they're they don't have really a lot of color They're still they tend to see to be the same color as the belly for the most part. It's mostly a shape difference So so I I see we're We're absent of the cloaca, so there's a thing called the ish This is get into the weeds too much but so there's this thing called the issue closity which is this bone that sticks out here and then right behind that is usually where The cloaca opening is but we can do that in paint as easily as anything else So I was watching a video the other day of a python pooping Like you do as one does I I had always thought that that snakes ejected out of their mouths But I guess some of them don't or is there some waste that comes out of one end and something comes out of the other Depends on what they're like egg-eating snakes will kick out the broken shells out of their right, right, right Yeah, but for the most part it comes out of them So what I saw in terms of this large Burmese python ejecting a lot of stuff and urine Is that what it would look like when a dinosaur pooped? Maybe yeah. Well, and then of course you have birds of prey So there's things like owls right that will regurgitate the stuff that they can't process Like the hair and little bones they may have kicked out pellets like that. It's hard to really know I don't know if we have anything really preserves that shows that but they do have Coprolites they have dinosaur poop. Oh, right that have bone in them and they can cross-section that on Herbivorous dinosaurs they can see what species of plant they were and then they can also see At at some level what kind of animals they may have been eating. Oh, that's cross-sectioning. Yeah That is awesome, all right Sorry, we covered it all we got Got it all figured out And our stripe patterns like something that also sometimes repeats on toes and feet I Yes, they can I'd like to bring those down Like from the if we're gonna do light, but if we can do that dark this thing Like get the light color first, right and then do that dark on top of the feet with those big scales Yeah, especially with the way that exactly scales are then that looks super good So if we can get I would say if we you know, whatever like whatever high tone we use high value use To give it a base coat then on the tops Maybe on those things called scutelli We can darken those up and have like some really really handsome Yeah, I think that what we're doing here sort of filling out ways in which it could work in our minds But knowing that once pink gets on it, the front path will become a lot more clear. Yeah, I One of the axioms here is I don't have to know how to finish it I only have to know what the next step is. Oh, that's good. That's a good It's like it gives me so much relief so much of the time I can see you can end up with some really cool stuff. I know right? Oh, that looks like your strikes against each other. Yeah colors and stuff. Yeah, that looks really good It's amazing how much a whole character starts to show up like you feel like this is a character right? This is like something. Yeah, no really really changes the whole Whole landscape, so I'm really curious about where you start to imagine on I'm just gonna use well, we would use this light at lighter tone as an under base, but as far as a like doing doing things where you're going every other and Crowding. Oh, wow. So that that can look a little eyelashy. Mm-hmm. You're not careful Yeah, but the the other thing to do That works. So the topography helps you tremendously in terms of yeah adding subtracting. Yeah property Good good sculpting helps it paint itself. I often find my best paint jobs are achieved by scrubbing off the paint job I just messed up, right? Yeah, you take off that you take that off. You're like, oh, that's nice Beautiful turned out great Do you sometimes come in late on a paint job with an airbrush to do some general shading and stuff like that That's really subtle. I was yeah That's gonna be a really good idea with this is if if there were areas that we wanted to say like, oh gosh It would be really nice if this part had a little bit of a you know, the skin fold in it like that, right? We could literally airbrush that. Oh, wow. Yeah, so because if you really just thinking of then it's just like sculpting, right? It's just shadow. Yeah. Yeah, so we could if we needed a spot that was like, oh, that's not working maybe we could come in and we can airbrush that and that that simple simple act of a Subtle shadow can give a lot of dimension Wow. Oh, that's great It's like one of my weathering axioms is also always add a second or third color It's gonna look great with that one color you tried But you add the second colors gonna look twice as good and you can't see it until you do it, right? Right. No, that's that's very very good advice I keep thinking this transition is gonna look ugly and I know that when color goes on it's just gonna I think it will I think it will we need it. This is so educational, right? Yeah, I don't think I think if we can make sure I think we need to keep bold pattern The bold pattern is really gonna help and if we if we do it across lines and certainly do it strategically Yeah, we're gonna and I may do just a tiny bit of crazy going around here to clean up that interface on a micro level But that's it just to squish it down a bit. Yeah, exactly Yeah color tends to be the most because it's the most subjective thing And it's the thing we know least about with dinosaurs that it becomes one of the I mean I'm sure this is the case with anything you've ever worked on as a director people come in and they're like, oh Colors, not right We had a so it depends on whether it's a sometimes you're working with someone who's absolutely right about it You got to scrap it. You got to redo it Yeah, they have the 10,000 foot view and those guys are wonderful. Those folks are wonderful to work for but yet Sometimes you'll have a director that is like if you make everything really great They're gonna come in and find a problem that is systemic Could you make the whole thing more? Oh Well, I have a story. I'm a story but go ahead. Sorry That's those so with directors like that or art directors like that We did a thing called we painted purple, which means we would take one part of the thing and make it Absolutely the wrong color. So they'd walk in and be like that's wrong. You'd be like, I'm really sorry I've we've have this convergent thought in our shop is totally the same thing You got to do like some super obvious thing. That is that is a red herring So that because otherwise if they want something to do right, right and it's not in it it's not malicious and no way, but it's just because if they've Yeah, look I understand it from their point of view They walk into this room or someone's been working on something that they've started right and they've got a contribute Right. I totally feel like you don't want to walk in a room and go Everything's great and walk away that feels like you haven't done your job, right? So we do have to sometimes give some of these art directors a sense of doing their job. That's so funny Wait, you have a story. Yeah. Yeah, so this is probably not on camera. I Think if we took if we you know with the tone underneath it, that's just mostly values. Yeah Yeah, I think with that and then what you've done here we've got have a plan and then as you said I bet well it'll change a little bit as we get some paint on there and start messing with and then we can come back and You know just work some worse work some details It gets it strikes me that this gets more and more fun. Oh From this moment forward as soon as you get the first color on it gets really exciting. Yeah. All right Let's get the first color on let's do it. All right Watching her mouth move face move around while I'm hanging is awesome She's all like this the angle rate is really it's like it's responding to you, right? Yeah, exactly Chin scratch It's just amazing how it coheres. Yeah Yeah, I said thing of like, you know, I started out I guess the first thing I called art was found object art Yeah, right and so I had to make these assemblages and the thing with found object art is you need the pieces to transcend themselves Right, and it doesn't work unless they do. Yeah, and that's such a hard one Aesthetic that when you paint and everything close to you, it feels like you're cheating With it. You've done them to this. Well, that's the prep. It's the prep that makes that all works I'm ready to play right? It's like all that hard work finally coming together all the work you've done Coalesces with color there's a funny story about you know It's like when you dump this much paint on something you realize how how much weight you're putting into it, right? There's the thing about airplanes, you know, they have to be painted very carefully because of that Oh because it adds so much collective weight Yeah, and consequently it costs a fortune to have even a small plane painted So there's a famous story from Marin about a guy who was like, I don't want to pay all that money so he calls up an auto body shop and he's like Can you paint my plane and they're like absolutely and they're like they give him a price That's really high for a car and dirt cheap for the plane. Ah, so he's like absolutely. Let's do it They paint his plane and he comes in to look at it and he's like it looks better to be honest than any plane He's ever seen like did he like crack open some new formula here was what is so beautiful. It's so Where he says are all the rivets and they said all we ground those down and bonded over they made a That would never fly again You don't need those rivets, yeah, exactly. Oh my gosh How to ruin a plane and one easy step Yeah, I want a little thin back there. We need needs a little I think a second. Yeah coat to get some saturation Little little thin Okay, I'll keep out this one. You know, I may have to break out my painter stilts. Oh, yeah for getting to the top of the getting to the These finally match I think That's really nice That other ochre I agree with you. I think that could be really fun if we yeah We just like I'm gonna start doing all the dark areas. Maybe that's sponge time. I mean, yeah might be yeah First coat is on and she looks great More than that, it's like I always say that I build stuff I think sometimes just so I can paint it at the end. This is absolutely that because an Hour ago. This was a gray object and now it is rapidly on its way to being a character and I can feel it I asked him if he'd ever had his hand inside the anus of a lizard and he said well, I've got a couple stories Okay Yeah, it's a nice subtle tea going on I agree I'm gonna pull out my camera and take a look I'm gonna wash this one first. I Think we can bring some dark. Yeah dark on top. Maybe. Uh-huh Are we thinking about the same thing a lighter value letter side coming up? Why don't I yeah start on the belly color do it and then if you want to do you want to start on top dance? Maybe that dark stuff coming. Yes. Yeah, I mean we should be Do you want to go with an even darker brown or do you or do we just go go with the gray go with that? Or I'm just gonna ask also What about the green or the I guess the green and the brown would make it will make it kind of gray Yeah, yeah, why don't you try it? Yeah. Yeah, but like over that thing. How about that's good the waxy thing that yeah Yeah, yeah. Yeah Like that. I like that. It feels really good Fastener just hit the tips. No, I know. It's like the fastest dry brushing ever. It's cool. I like how what's that called? This is schmutz stick raw under and this is literally made for like weathering clothing Right, like this is for when you need it art directors take values down of anything. Yeah, just another another thing One more just add it to the list of things to buy With schmutz, yeah, right like it just pops though. Yeah, it just gives it a little bit of that Cool. All right. Very nice Yeah, it's gelling guys, yeah, yeah, it's really gelling Shoot the shadow work is great And shoot you're gonna give the same kind of love over here to these guys just on the other side You tell me how much love you want. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I Feel like I feel like since there's a bunch of that darker value on the other side We should match it here to a certain extent This but the whole color planes are starting to really coalesce into something. Yeah. Oh, right. I'm gonna put her eyes in I started up the hot glue gun. We're gonna do that Yeah, it looks great, doesn't it? Oh enough the other one What a looker, okay. Oh a Person arrived right boy. Did that change the world? It really did Hey girl Crazy Can you imagine being this low on the food chain just puts it all in perspective? It really does Alright, and so now I've got this nice and dark ---- Yeah, yeah, exactly Exactly. Oh See that. Yeah, just let me get it at immediate. Yeah Dude, she looks old and like she's seen some ---- Too good. Now. I want a voice modulator in this thing right All right. I'm gonna come and hit the tail because I'm it's missing some gray now. I've neglected it. Oh You ain't be watching this. You're probably watching this. I would be watching this going. Do you know where to put this stuff? And the answer is you don't you're like, I think each of us is just looking at this repeatedly and thinking Where is there something I can deal with and just moving towards that thing? And then you just keep on doing that and over several days something comes out of it. Is that about accurate? Yeah, I believe that's yeah, you gotta follow your nose and you look for the high spots attack those and attack the next set of high spots, I Feel like I feel like tomorrow morning what you and I are gonna do is actually scab on all the rest of the parts Let's do that get these in here and color match them Yeah, cuz like I want to do some trimming in here. This needs some work. I haven't done anything in there. Okay? Yeah, you know, I just I've been noticing the white I can't even see the white you did but I can see what it does Yeah. Oh, no, really? Yeah. Yes. It's that the you're doing that nice fade from in the pocket And you can always bring them back if you want to trip it no, I think that's a that's great Adds a little something there I can that can be warmer But I can I can scrub a dry brush over that to get that's a nice little light gray over the top to that helps like I just this is Yeah, and we can go eat. Yeah keeping keeping the darker But if maybe even pulling that value here here a little bit To also it's making the transition work is really nice. Yeah makes that go away All right. Yeah, it's the end of the first day of painting and I will admit to you I did not think we would get this far. I also didn't know that she would be this color I was really solid in my head of that sort of greeny Sickly green of the edge of an alligator stomach being a sort of North Star for color and then we started layering in just where the striped patterns would go and I talked about this before but there's a moment in which the object tells you what it's gonna be and The object made it clear that this is like a desert Raptor Not a rainforest Raptor or whatever the environment we were thinking Because it's really like right here This is all working like firing on all cylinders and this is giving us really really clear understanding of how to carry the texture across and Gary was saying that there is a moment when you stop seeing a fiberglass object in front of you and you see an actual animal and I can It's like it's like there's a peek above the clouds and I can almost see that moment coming and I love painting stuff I love it when the paint starts to fool me, but I haven't done a creature at any scale before So I'm um, can you tell how giddy I am? Thank you guys so much for watching. I wanted to remind you about some classic merch We still have available at Adam Savage comm specifically these beautiful pouches I use these like side cars for everything I do I've got them in different categories in different colors and if you want to know what's inside them We also sell patches that label them like for cables or pencils or if you just want to represent the savage logo We also make these in two different sizes small and large for whatever needs you have They're available right now at Adam Savage calm