Bakersfield, California is well on its way to becoming known as more than just the country’s third-most important pit stop for dirt and Sonic drive ins, as Bakersfield’s own Michael McMaster has built a real-life working replica of Wall E. Or, to put it another way, Johnny 5.
According to the video, McMaster, who built his remote control Wall-E bot from scratch, had previously belonged to something called “The R2D2 Builders Club.” I would give anything to attend a meeting of the Bakersfield chapter of the R2D2 Builders Club. I guarantee at least half the meetings took place around a bonfire.
McMaster and his maker buddies have spent the last five years recreating Wall-E. The resulting bot in the video above has been made entirely from scratch. Previously McMaster had worked on a recreation of R2D2, but the Wall-E posed a couple of unique challenges.
From a design perspective, there is no real-life source material for Wall-E. While George Lucas and company created several actual R2D2s for the Star Wars films, Wall-E has always been entirely animated. It turns out that throughout the film, Wall-E’s proportions and design don’t remain entirely consistent. (McMaster has contacted the folks a Pixar and they say his design is, you know, pretty enough.) [Gizmodo]
Of course, it’s not entirely a “real-life Wall E,” because it’s missing that all-important component: the capacity to love.
Even aside from the fact that he built a working remote-control robot entirely from scratch, you could tell McMaster belongs to the Bakersfield intelligentsia because none of his garage dogs are pregnant.
[Tested.com via Gizmodo]