@@lisa-y6w1z yeah, I still have mine from when the movie came out. I've been wanting to do the same for a while but I'm just not sure what kind of paints to get
I LOVED "Small soldiers" as a kid! Even had the game for Playstation. I thought those toys were really alive. haha I checked my own toys twich before goin to sleep. :D
Awesome, for real! Practical FX like this seriously need to make a comeback in Hollywood films. Who else agrees with me? BTW, Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. ARE making sure that Practical FX will NEVER die with their upcoming film, "Harbinger Down." GO ADI!
Why would I agree with that? CGI looks better, more realistic AND is cheaper... I agree with environments somewhat. Models of buildings, instead of their 3D counterparts, has something going for them. But for characters? No way!
Henrik Kragh Look, I'm not hating on CGI, I don't hate it at all. I'm just saying that it shouldn't be just the only way to create special effects in film & TV. There still has to be room and a market for the old techniques such as Practical FX and even Hand-Drawn Animation. They should co-exist with CGI. I'm saying that because very time I turn around, there's something CG coming and I'm wondering 'Don't people in Hollywood have any love and/or respect for the old techniques?' Yes, CG is cheaper, but the people in Hollywood should seriously give the old ways that are tried, true, and still working more chances. That's all I'm saying.
velociraptor4you Of course Hollywood respects the old techniques. That's why when it's better they'll use the old techniques. But Stan Winston himself saw that CGI was superior to a lot of what he was doing when they started working on Jurassic Park... 2 decades ago. There's respecting an old technique and there's using the best technique. There's an entire position called VFX Supervisor who largely decides how most effectively to deliver a shot whether that's practical or CG. Look at all of the armature and puppet controls coming out of the puppets in this making-of. You have to paint all of that out or find a way to hide it in your camera angles. That's not a trivial amount of "CG" right there so even if you used practical it would still be a ton of CG paint and roto to "fix" the practical. I've encountered many situations where a director insists on shooting practical... and then we have to project and paint and roto so much clean up that 90% of it is CG anyway and the 10% left looks worse than just going full CG. In fact I've also seen a ton of "practical shots" where 100% of it was CG because the cleanup was just going to be more arduous than starting from scratch. Lastly, Small Soldiers looks great... but smalls soldiers for its day was a pretty CG heavy film. You might be nostalgic for shots that were mostly CG already.
Gavin Greenwalt You know what? I never really thought of that whole part of Practical FX. That there's a heavy amount of CG work (digital paint & rotoscope) that goes into "erasing" a Practical prop's controls so that the end result looks like an organic character. Now that I think about it, a lot of 90s movies that I saw involving Practical FX (because I'm a 90s kid) such as "Small Soldiers" here are more CG-heavy than I realized. And I actually remember watching a behind-the-scenes documentary about "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" where I think John Rosengrant was talking about using digital paint & roto to erase the external controls of some of the Stan Winston dinosaurs, such as the rods & wires for the Compy puppets. Thank you, really.
Very true Gavin Greenwalt, though we're all fans of Practical FX, the huge advances in CGI just make our jobs cooler and better. We can put puppeteers closer to the action, we can worry less about hydraulic cables and rods. The best effects are hybrids: invisible blend of CGI and Practical. - David
What's crazy is as a kid I didnt want the Hasbro toys I was obsessed with finding toys that looked just like the movie. Turns out they're more or less real! CGI enhancements post filming but still way cooler than Hasbro..
I loved this movie when I was small!! Made me tear off all the heads of my dolls and action figures though cuz I was afraid they were going to come alive. 2 years later I found out that one of the dolls was worth 5k.... *sigh*
Back when this movie came out (before I got a chance to see it) I thought the Commandos were the good guys and the Gorgonites were the bad guys. I was so disappointed when I found out otherwise.
EclipseHedgehog well the creatures were okay ..but i liked the commandos more ..i disliked the fact the got destroyed at the end ..they could have been just deactivated ..since PEM doesn't destroy anything ..it just deactivate electronics .
I really loved your first video on how to build a rod puppet. I've been in love with them, ever since Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr's work on Alien 3. However, I wished the video had delved more into the workings of rod puppets, beyond some head and mouth movements. Can we have more about how to make little hands that move, how to make them walk, stand, appear to have wait, and the like? I'd really be into that.
Good suggestion, Chistopher Moonlight, and thanks ***** for fielding the question about the Stan Winston Studio. Also, to velociraptor4you for the Harbinger Down shout out! As you know Alec & Tom are instructors and big supporters of the SWSCA. - David
Yeah, they should try to remake this series, and use this kind of animatronic technology and great interaction with the toy and the player that is like the toy actually had real intelligence instead of artificial intelligence (without the wires, of coarse), it can be made by hasbro, have all 6 of the Gorgonites and all 6 of the Commandos that is just like from the movie, and it can be made to celebrate the movie's 15th anniversary what do you think, would that be a good idea for a toyline?
MKN4EVERR yeah man ..like the toys of this movie was not like the actual toys used in the film wth ....they just needed to make the exact same model and stuff ...the toys where great. i wanted to have the actuall characters when i was a kid watching that movie ..
Funny thing is...now is the time for these with the articulation now in toy robotics and what they have learn from robots like Asimo by Honda this toy can be made and would be a huge hit with a movie sequel to help sell the product!yup
They should make a sequel, that would be the greatest... Come to think of it, lots of movies that deserved sequels should have sequels... Before the actors that played in them die...
What I'm wondering is, that why someone hasn't made actual toys based off the ones off the movie, that actually walks, talks, battles, and have actual intelligence instead of artificial intelligence, it'd be perfect for the anniversary of the movie series, do you think that would be a good idea?
the Don of Creativity It would be amazing, but only if they would cost less than £25 each (or your nationality's equivalent). It would still probably be far too expensive to be marketed as a toy.
uburton You mean about $40.00 (or $39.19 to be pricise)?, well I would be for both fans of war toys and fans of robotics, so it would make sense if it was somewhere between $35.00 & $50.00, don't you think?
the Don of Creativity I was thinking more about toys, aimed at kids, rather than high-end models. What you're describing could probably cost thousands.
FULL STORY: bit.ly/SmallSoldBtsYT - Balázs
❤❤❤😮😊
These effects still look good today
Stevie Wonder Gustavo 1992 quer
Said 9 year's ago lol
Memories with this film. So underrated film. Gosh I want these toys so bad. I had forgotten them
Using a combination of robotics and puppetry is genius!
This is one of my all time favorite movies. Still have the talking Chip Hazard which I'm going to customize to be more movie accurate.
This is one of my all time favorite movies . Still have the talking Chip Hazard which l'm going to customize to be more accurate .
@@lisa-y6w1z yeah, I still have mine from when the movie came out. I've been wanting to do the same for a while but I'm just not sure what kind of paints to get
That is some good skill with using those controls on those puppets.
I LOVED "Small soldiers" as a kid! Even had the game for Playstation. I thought those toys were really alive. haha I checked my own toys twich before goin to sleep. :D
probably the best use of action figures
Has anyone ever noticed that Chip is colonel miles from the james cameron avatar movie
Awesome, for real! Practical FX like this seriously need to make a comeback in Hollywood films. Who else agrees with me?
BTW, Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. ARE making sure that Practical FX will NEVER die with their upcoming film, "Harbinger Down." GO ADI!
Why would I agree with that? CGI looks better, more realistic AND is cheaper... I agree with environments somewhat. Models of buildings, instead of their 3D counterparts, has something going for them. But for characters? No way!
Henrik Kragh Look, I'm not hating on CGI, I don't hate it at all. I'm just saying that it shouldn't be just the only way to create special effects in film & TV. There still has to be room and a market for the old techniques such as Practical FX and even Hand-Drawn Animation. They should co-exist with CGI. I'm saying that because very time I turn around, there's something CG coming and I'm wondering 'Don't people in Hollywood have any love and/or respect for the old techniques?'
Yes, CG is cheaper, but the people in Hollywood should seriously give the old ways that are tried, true, and still working more chances. That's all I'm saying.
velociraptor4you Of course Hollywood respects the old techniques. That's why when it's better they'll use the old techniques. But Stan Winston himself saw that CGI was superior to a lot of what he was doing when they started working on Jurassic Park... 2 decades ago. There's respecting an old technique and there's using the best technique. There's an entire position called VFX Supervisor who largely decides how most effectively to deliver a shot whether that's practical or CG. Look at all of the armature and puppet controls coming out of the puppets in this making-of. You have to paint all of that out or find a way to hide it in your camera angles. That's not a trivial amount of "CG" right there so even if you used practical it would still be a ton of CG paint and roto to "fix" the practical. I've encountered many situations where a director insists on shooting practical... and then we have to project and paint and roto so much clean up that 90% of it is CG anyway and the 10% left looks worse than just going full CG. In fact I've also seen a ton of "practical shots" where 100% of it was CG because the cleanup was just going to be more arduous than starting from scratch.
Lastly, Small Soldiers looks great... but smalls soldiers for its day was a pretty CG heavy film. You might be nostalgic for shots that were mostly CG already.
Gavin Greenwalt You know what? I never really thought of that whole part of Practical FX. That there's a heavy amount of CG work (digital paint & rotoscope) that goes into "erasing" a Practical prop's controls so that the end result looks like an organic character. Now that I think about it, a lot of 90s movies that I saw involving Practical FX (because I'm a 90s kid) such as "Small Soldiers" here are more CG-heavy than I realized.
And I actually remember watching a behind-the-scenes documentary about "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" where I think John Rosengrant was talking about using digital paint & roto to erase the external controls of some of the Stan Winston dinosaurs, such as the rods & wires for the Compy puppets.
Thank you, really.
Very true Gavin Greenwalt, though we're all fans of Practical FX, the huge advances in CGI just make our jobs cooler and better. We can put puppeteers closer to the action, we can worry less about hydraulic cables and rods. The best effects are hybrids: invisible blend of CGI and Practical. - David
you have no idea how much i love this video i grew up on this move it was one of my fav's when i was little.
I love that today people are making replicas of these figures ^^ for collectors like myself that love the movie
What's crazy is as a kid I didnt want the Hasbro toys I was obsessed with finding toys that looked just like the movie. Turns out they're more or less real! CGI enhancements post filming but still way cooler than Hasbro..
I loved this movie when I was small!! Made me tear off all the heads of my dolls and action figures though cuz I was afraid they were going to come alive. 2 years later I found out that one of the dolls was worth 5k.... *sigh*
small soldiers has been my favorite movie since I was 4
Stan and his team were total bad asses!
Loved this movie as a kid :)
Are you scared? We're all scared...you'd have to be crazy not to be scared.
woow, i thought it was all done in stop motion, this was very interesting to know, awsome!
Back when this movie came out (before I got a chance to see it) I thought the Commandos were the good guys and the Gorgonites were the bad guys.
I was so disappointed when I found out otherwise.
i did too except i ended up paying more attention to the gorgonites and ended up liking them ^^
EclipseHedgehog well the creatures were okay ..but i liked the commandos more ..i disliked the fact the got destroyed at the end ..they could have been just deactivated ..since PEM doesn't destroy anything ..it just deactivate electronics .
That's the point.
Wow, this movie was my childhood.
I wished I had these action figures for my figure collection they were so cool when I was kid
ahh stan is like a little kid with those toys and i like it
This is how studio should spend their money! IMO, Practial FX will always be better than digital.
+CADENA ONLINE mix of CGI AND PRATICAL
I really loved your first video on how to build a rod puppet. I've been in love with them, ever since Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr's work on Alien 3. However, I wished the video had delved more into the workings of rod puppets, beyond some head and mouth movements. Can we have more about how to make little hands that move, how to make them walk, stand, appear to have wait, and the like? I'd really be into that.
The Garage Monster DVD had a rod puppet too.
The rod puppet for the Bear in the movie A.I. is what I would like to see made.
AlphaProto
I'll second that.
Fascinating! Thanks Matt for all these great videos showing how the favourite scenes from my childhood were made! True craftsmen! ;)
It looks so real.
Ultimate toy play. :-D
Good suggestion, Chistopher Moonlight, and thanks ***** for fielding the question about the Stan Winston Studio. Also, to velociraptor4you for the Harbinger Down shout out! As you know Alec & Tom are instructors and big supporters of the SWSCA. - David
Fucking awesome!!
Just .. AWESOME !!
Why couldn't the actual toys be more like this?
Yeah, they should try to remake this series, and use this kind of animatronic technology and great interaction with the toy and the player that is like the toy actually had real intelligence instead of artificial intelligence (without the wires, of coarse),
it can be made by hasbro, have all 6 of the Gorgonites and all 6 of the Commandos that is just like from the movie, and it can be made to celebrate the movie's 15th anniversary
what do you think, would that be a good idea for a toyline?
MKN4EVERR yeah man ..like the toys of this movie was not like the actual toys used in the film wth ....they just needed to make the exact same model and stuff ...the toys where great. i wanted to have the actuall characters when i was a kid watching that movie ..
+MKN4EVERR yes ..the ball jointed shoulders are perfect ..
They did a company called soft garage made them but I think they only made certain characters
That would cost to much money
I liked!
Want to see part two
This is fantastic!
great movie
👍
Awesome work.
Dope
Impressive!
Funny thing is...now is the time for these with the articulation now in toy robotics and what they have learn from robots like Asimo by Honda this toy can be made and would be a huge hit with a movie sequel to help sell the product!yup
Ohh that why it look real in movie!!I THOUGHT THEM USE 3dFX AND STOPMOTION
Crazy they actually worked with toys most the time and not CG.
Yay
They should make a sequel, that would be the greatest... Come to think of it, lots of movies that deserved sequels should have sequels... Before the actors that played in them die...
I hope one day we can see the full cut of the movie. The end fight wirh Archer and Chip was rubbish. This one looks more intense.
Why couldn't the mass produced toys have looked this good?
What I'm wondering is, that why someone hasn't made actual toys based off the ones off the movie, that actually walks, talks, battles, and have actual intelligence instead of artificial intelligence, it'd be perfect for the anniversary of the movie series, do you think that would be a good idea?
the Don of Creativity
It would be amazing, but only if they would cost less than £25 each (or your nationality's equivalent). It would still probably be far too expensive to be marketed as a toy.
uburton You mean about $40.00 (or $39.19 to be pricise)?, well I would be for both fans of war toys and fans of robotics, so it would make sense if it was somewhere between $35.00 & $50.00, don't you think?
the Don of Creativity I was thinking more about toys, aimed at kids, rather than high-end models. What you're describing could probably cost thousands.
uburton wow guy....here probably would cost 99 $ reals ..lol shit....
Cute and cool! Idk how its cute lol
Cool I always wanted to see behind the scenes footage of the animatronics for this movie, too bad Chip didn't get to actually use a gun in the movie.
MrJohnffrey87 lol. ..because it wasn't a real one. .they had to create their own .
what movies hes studio, has been involved lately?
They´ll never tell you or they kill you, bet it!!
James Cameron and Stan Winston started Digital Domain together before Winston's passing.
And was sold after while
How do you hide the rods
Wanna know too
They hide the rods with camera angles that show as little as possible- and they go in and paint out the rods in post production.
they fight cute
If i wouldn't have known this was a test for a movie effect, i'd think you guys take your action figures a little too serious... :D
even if a child is difficult to do!
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Boys with Toys
So he has a gun, but they slowly walk towards each other and fight HtH instead...
Sad they didnt use puppets. It moved exactly like how i imagine an action figure would move.
Actually, they used them. :) - Balázs
but it was all CGI-d, so why did they needed to make this again ?
Tanel Murd a few of the shots of the toys in the movie WERE puppets.
I wonder if these things are still around, and still work this well?
a toy - story superior to toy story.
(don't get me wrong I love toy story but be honest)