Big Bot Bash for Amateurs (Pasta Bot WIP)

A few years ago the YouTube Algorithm fed me the Bill Making Stuff channel when I was looking for terrain-building ideas.  The BMS channel introduced me to a number of other wargame-adjacent crafters, most notably Bill’s twin brother Dan, who runs the Dan Does channel.‡

Bill introduced the Big Bot Bash last March, and brought it back this year.  The BBB showcases a number of invited YouTubers, who each contribute their own unique take on the “Junkbot” concept exemplified by Bill Making Stuff.  As the name implies, a junkbot is a robot model scratchbuilt from “junk”, i.e. generally unrelated and repurposed objects.

The BBB challenge introduces a random element, by having the participants roll a d20 six times on the “Junkbot Generator”, found on Bill’s website for his own sci-fi setting, the Gutterlands.  Each roll on the Junkbot Generator assigns a specific aspect to the five different body areas and an overall robot “flavour”, with each die result vague enough to allow wide interpretation while still providing enough constraints and inspiration to prompt the scratchbuilder to start gluing.   

As a Patreon patron of the Dan Does channel (sorry Bill, money’s tight!), I have access to that channel’s Discord server, which hosts a slew of creative and lovely people.  A number of us patrons decided we’d unofficially join the BBB; while none of us run our own YouTube channel, we tried to stick to the same 28 March deadline that the pros were bound to.

***As an aside, you don’t need to be patron of either the Dan Does or Bill Making Stuff channels in order to join their respective Discord servers (Dan Does; Bill Making Stuff).  If you do toss them a few quid via Patreon however, you can get access to each server’s members-only section.  Either way, it’s a great way to meet like-minded crafters and I recommend it.***

A couple of the other Discord members made the deadline and their creations look awesome!  I’m truly blown away by the creativity and totally different perspectives and techniques everyone brought.  Obviously, based on the date of this post and its “Work-in-Progress” title, I’m way behind and still not finished with mine.  The build is done though and only the painting remains, so I feel safe enough to talk about it.  Posting now should hopefully give me some accountability to fully complete the build.

Anyways, let’s get on talking about my build.  I don’t feel too bad about missing the deadline, as I didn’t commit to making a junkbot and download the generator until around 15 March.  

OK, so anyone who’s seen this blog knows I like to build little spaceships out of pasta.  I’ve wanted to make other mechanical constructs from pasta for years and figured the Big Bot Bash was as good a time as any to try.  That meant, in addition to the constraints from the Junkbot Generator, I also forced myself to use pasta for a majority of the build.

Here’s my list of six rolls, followed by my initial thoughts/interpretations:

Section	D20 Roll	Result
Body	7	Heavy Smoker
Head	5	Hole
Arms	13	Fancypants
Hands	14	Two-handed
Legs	14	Centipede
Flavour	4	Beaten

I wasn’t exactly in love with a lot of the rolls but knowing the various pasta shapes I had on hand, coupled with Bill’s guidance to “Interpret the results how you like”, a few rough ideas immediately sprang to mind.

A “heavy smoker” body seemed easy enough, with all the tubular pasta shapes readily standing in for exhaust pipes.  I wasn’t sure what to do with “hole” for the head, so decided to come back to it.  I immediately decided that “fancypants” arms just meant overly complex, instead of frilly or ornate.  Hmmm, “two-handed” most obviously meant the robot bore some kind of two-handed weapon, but I rejected that.  Instead, I planned on each wrist ending in two hands.  I did not like “centipede” legs because it sounded like so much more work, a real pain.  I also didn’t like the idea of a long lower body with a lot of legs.  Turns out I went with the multiple legs configuration anyways.  Rolling “beaten” for flavour made me smile though, as that meant I could treat construction and painting mistakes as blemishes.

An idea formed quickly and I started gluing together pasta and wire in a vaguely humanoid shape.  I decided to make the overly-complex arms using three separate tentacles (each) that joined at a wrist unit.  The same wires for the arm tentacles passed through the body and splayed out into six separate tentacular legs.

The robot started to take shape and it screamed “mining bot”, like some piece of titanic but mundane equipment in a Chris Foss painting.  The “hole” result for the head could be the robot’s gaping maw, occupying its entire face (making for an easier build).  And a mining robot doesn’t need delicate hands, so the wrist units could feature claws.

Other than the wire armature and much baking soda accelerant, the entire build was, so far, various pastas held together with CA glue.  I started bulking it out using standard office paper and some vinyl sheeting, creating flat and smooth surfaces for later greebling.

The nature of those greebles caused me a bit of consternation.  I feel using anything other than found objects violates the pure spirit of a junkbot build.  The junkbot generator even states “no 3D prints”.  If you know me and my feelings toward 3D printing, you know there is no danger of printed parts showing up here.  Yet, I had to trash all the contents of my bits boxes in our recent move.

My second most favorite scratchbuilding technique, after gluing pasta, is casting my own greebles and nurnies in homemade, often single-use, impression molds.  I even took up valuable luggage space and weight during our move to hand carry my mold clay and casting plaster.  Still, I was reticent to use this technique, as it seems like an analog version of 3D printing.  I made peace with myself though, as I was doing all the mold creation from simple found-object shapes.

Keen-eyed readers will note that I strayed from the Junkbot Generator prompts in a few areas, most obviously the hands.  I wanted desperately to meet the (non-existent) deadline, and started cutting corners.  The first thing to go was the two claws per wrist idea. 

So, here’s the bot now, covered in greebles, secured to a base, primed, and waiting for paint.  Unfortunately, my airbrush set-up also stayed behind with our big move, so this guy will be purely brush painted.

‡All ideas from the Dan Does and Bill Making Stuff channels are the copyrights of their respective creators, used without permission, and with no intent to challenge.  I hope by featuring links to their channels/websites here, I can convince the reader to go check them out and maybe even support them on Patreon.  Thanks!