Robot Mini Wars Part 10 (of 10) The Making Of the Series Video

This final video shows you how we made the arena and robots in just one week. The arena we made in a day, and it cost £15 in materials. Made of wood, with a cardboard box pit. Tape was used to make the side walls. We show you here how we make the live action 'explosion' effect for the pit too using flour!

The robots were made from paper, strengthened with cardboard in places (such as the wedge fronts). Then Blu-Tacked on to micro radio control cars. Blu-Tack is a sticky plastacine-like substance used for sticking things. They run for 3-5 minutes. They weigh about 25 grams only. No active weapons, just pushers and wedges.

Computer programs used were Adobe Premiere for editing and putting it all together, Adobe Photoshop for making up the robots and arena markings, EJay software to make the copyright free music, and Particle Illusion to make the computer generated (CG) effects such as smoke, sparks and flames that are here and there but mostly it is as the fight happened.

There are one or two cuts points. This was for when the pit opened, as we wanted a shot of it opening for each fight. Also if any action was missed such as Chaos 2 pushing Lightning, then we would film it again, so that what actually happened is the story we show.

The end of this video shows some outtakes (mainly Jon), so you can see we had fun making this.

To see what the real heavyweight 100Kg Lightning did on Robot Wars and live events go to www.calvertfilm.fsnet.co.uk plus there should be some clips on YouTube.

To download paper robots go to this link (whilst it is there):

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/calvertfilm/paperrobots.htm

or photograph the toys yourself and print out the photos and glue them together using paper glue. Or make your own designs.

We may make more series, perhaps something different next time.

Have fun.