Curious to see the wonders of the Origin System with your own eyes, Tenno? You can do so very soon, as Digital Extremes has partnered with Hacksmith Industries on custom Ratel and Domestik drones — along with a complete Moa cosplay — that will be featured on the show floor at TennoCon 2023! Hacksmith Industries is known worldwide for creating absolutely incredible real-world models from some of the most iconic science fiction and fantasy universes. Ahead of TennoCon 2023, we spoke with their team about the unique challenges and long hours that went into bringing their latest creations to life for the show. It was a monumental undertaking, but with a little collaboration and loads of research, they were able to synthesize some truly exceptional marvels for TennoCon 2023 that will undoubtedly leave players amazed!

How did Hacksmith Industries start on the path to making working models of concepts from comics, movies and video games?

James and Ian have always loved making things, innovating, and hacking just for the fun of it. After graduating with degrees in Mechanical Systems Engineering, they got bored of working standard engineering jobs and decided to found Hacksmith Industries to focus on their passion of taking fictional ideas from comics, movies and video games and making real working prototypes. James would share these creations on YouTube both as a way to fund the creations and to inspire the next generation of engineers.

Approaching this project for Warframe, what was the thing your team was most excited to recreate?

Making a huge real-life Domestik was definitely our biggest challenge and the thing we were most passionate about tackling first… but we ended up having a ton of fun trying to recreate a Ratel as well, using our robotic dog platform as a base! That one took some real experimentation. We had our friend Plexi Cosplay build a giant robotic MOA costume, too, and can't wait to see all these elements come together at Tennocon.

When recreating the Domestik Drone, what were the initial aspects of the project you needed to consider?

Scale, motion and a creative mechanism to dispense some unique spherical collectibles [Endo] at TennoCon were the three core elements of the design we wanted to focus on. Building the main chassis and getting it to live on top of a moving motorized platform took a ton of work by our talented engineer Bogdan (he also designs our lightsabers).

Can you walk us through the process of recreating the Domestik Drone in particular?

It all started with 3D modeling and 3D printing. Digital Extremes was very helpful in sending us 3D models to start with, but then we had to scale up and break it down into 30+ separate 3D printing operations, taking more than 250 hours to print! From there, we sanded, attached everything together, and mounted the entire thing to a robotic vehicle chassis to get it moving. From that point, another 50+ hours of finishing and painting were required to bring it across the finish line.

Likewise, what were the difficulties in recreating the Ratel?

Unlike the Domestik, we knew we wanted the Ratel to start with our favorite Robotic quadruped platform, so we had to adapt the game model of the Ratel around this already complex robot dog body — and that took a lot more time in software than the Domestik. We needed to ensure it would still function properly after being “adapted” and having a bunch of new geometry strapped to its precisely-tuned body.

If someone wanted to pursue a similar path as the Hacksmith team, where would you recommend they start?

Whether you study engineering or design or media in school, never stop learning and making things on your own. Doing something just because it's new or fun for you to attempt is a perfectly good reason to try. Get inspired every single day: play games, watch movies, read comics, talk to people and companies. Start looking around you and asking: "What can I improve? What can I fix? What can I build better? What can I invent?"

Make sure you follow Hacksmith Industries on YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok to see their other stunning creations. Plexi Cosplay can be found on Instagram as well!