Recently I discovered the Bill Making Stuff channel on YouTube and I really love the things he creates. The ones he’s probably best known for are Beadbots. A simple as it sounds, 28mm scale robots made from beads (and other assorted junk).
After dragging my wife around many pound shops and lots searches destined to confuse Amazon’s algorithm, I found the part I needed. So here I present my first of no doubt many, Binary Bob, the Beadbot.
Made in authentic Bill style, he’s wooden beads at the core, armature wire, then plastic styrene and EVA foam. The backpack is made from constituent parts of a barbecue lighter, and the rivets are all nail art rhinestones. Lots of glue (so much glue), then simple paint job topped off with my first ever oil wash.
This was such good fun to build. The step of going from “this looks crap!” to discovering there might be something there was somehow amplified with this one. Kitbashing is a lot easier to see the finished product. When you have some wire and a pile of beads, all in bright pastel colours you really have to work to see what it could be… a beadbot!
Bob is a LoadBot. Hulking robots built purely for lifting strength, LoadBots serve in the inhospitable northern volcanic wastes. At numerous ports they load and offload goods between the hover skiffs and the waiting starliners. Their programming is limited and their moods tend to monotone.
Many decades in the harsh climate have weathered not only Bob's outer casing, but also his personality. Bob knows a joke* (learned from a deckhand who should have known better), which he now repeats ad nauseam to his own amusement.
I’ve already started by second one, this time a Junkbot. And I have lots of ideas, finding this genuinely inspiring. It’s why I chose to be a patreon backer of Bill’s!
