I Built a LEGO RACETRACK Around My House!

Try out Photoshop for yourself HERE: https://adobe.chrd.ly/PhotoshopChris
I Built a LEGO RACETRACK Around My House!

I build 4 LEGO Remote Control cars and put them through 3 obstacle courses featuring stunts and challenges, including a racetrack, a golf course, a maze, a glass smash, a slime pool, fireworks and a ring of fire!

This video is sponsored by Adobe

These are 4 LEGO remote control cars, and I’m gonna put them through a series of increasingly treacherous obstacles to find out which one’s best. You see, I build a lot of LEGO, but most of it just sits on a shelf collecting dust. These cars however, well they deserve better,

Even if that means going down in a blaze of glory, and spoiler alert, it does. Plus, with the help of this video’s sponsor, Adobe Photoshop, I’m gonna transform the boring speed camera shots into something that matches my childlike imagination. Ok, let’s do this. Round One.

I built a sprawling racetrack around my office, complete with various obstacles and hazards. The rules are simple: the fastest car wins, but if it falls off the edge, it’s a 15 second time penalty. Our first competitor is the Rally Car, with medium speed and erratic handling.

Good morning one and all and welcome to Round One of what promises to be a glorious event, as the Rally Car kicks us off slowly and carefully. Great Scott! It’s almost fallen off already, teetering on the edge, but that is a most excellent recovery.

Over the speed bumps at a tortoise-pace, before it’s on to the hazards, and by gar! It’s fallen off like an apple on Newton’s head, can we get a replay of that please? The contestant appears to swerve to avoid the deer in headlights, before cartoonishly slipping on a banana peel and over the edge.

After respawning and this time dodging the hazards entirely, it’s round the bend again with quite some lack of speed, before approaching and indeed expertly avoiding the roadworks. Now it’s onto the penultimate stretch, before turning onto the final straight section, which it navigates in a remarkably un-straight line.

And good gosh it’s hit the finishing post! It’s almost as if steering using a mobile app is wholly inadequate and downright silly, but there we have it, it reverses and crawls across the line. The lap time was 43 seconds, but with the time penalty for falling off

The edge, the total come to 58 seconds. Our next contestant then is the Big Fella, the largest and slowest of the cars. Next it’s the turn of the Big Fella, the large lad, slow, clunky and so terribly clumsy. It’s adopting a fascinating technique to negotiate the corners,

Almost falling off but regaining it’s footing, there were butterflies in my stomach for a moment there. From here, the rest of the lap was pretty uneventful. Having past the hairpin bends, its lack of speed began to work in its favour,

Staying on track with ease and eventually finishing in a respectable time of 1 minute 11 seconds. Next the Off-Road Buggy, fearlessly fast and fiercely erratic. Here we see the fastest contestant and good heavens! That is certainly not the start he would have hoped for.

I just want to state the obvious here, these cars are painfully difficult to control. There’s no physical remote, just a touchscreen app, but that requires you to actually look at the screen rather than looking at the car, which means crashing, a lot. Ok back to you, commentator Chris.

Why thank you squire, and after a troublesome start, the car appears to have found its wheels so to speak, zooming past the hazards and stopping just shy of the roadworks, that was an exceedingly close call but disaster averted. After another sloooow stretch, it’s a speedy zigzag past the speed camera,

And oh the horror! It’s fallen both physically and figuratively, from grace! The hopes were sky high, and so is the embarrassment. After respawning, it finished in 50 seconds, swollen to 1 minute 20 with the two time penalties. Which means it’s all down to the Flipster, a slow tread-based transformation vehicle.

Lastly it’s the turn of the wild card, but will slow and steady win this race? Predictably not. It was so slow and uneventful that I’ve even had to speed up the footage, but this car was a delight to drive, slow, precise and responsive.

It finished in 1 minute 12 seconds, just a single second behind the Big Fella. So at the end of Round One, the Rally Car leads, but this speed camera shot isn’t anywhere near as glamorous as I expected.

It’s just a toy car on a makeshift racetrack in a room in my house on a cloudy Tuesday, but my inner child can’t help but imagine it hurtling down a mountain road. So using Adobe Photoshop, that’s exactly what we’re gonna make it do.

First I used the object selection tool to automatically cut out the car, adding it to a new layer. Next I cut along the road to remove the background, and copy and pasted some road surface to hide these ugly bits. Then I added a stock image of a mountainous background,

And did some minor colour correction. To add the movement, I need to create quite an intense motion blur, both on the mountains and road. Finally I added a lens flare to each of the headlights, and some subtle film grain to finish it off. This looks amazing. But anyway, it’s time for… Round Two.

The round begins on a golf course where the car must putt the ball, before driving down the ramp, knocking over the skittles, and solving the maze. But there’s a twist. The maze has two possible exits, each blocked by a sheet of glass. One of the sheets is movie-glass that breaks safely and easily,

Whilst the other is unbreakable. Which is which will be randomised each time, so if the car picks wrong, it has to reverse back through the maze and out the right one. Oh and I’ve glued a screw on to the front of each car, to concentrate its power for the glass.

Welcome back, I hope you’re having a most wonderful afternoon, and are ready for a spot of golf. The Rally Car here lines up and goes for it, missing at first try but rolling the ball back and into the hole, bravo. Down the ramp it goes, and over towards the skittles.

That was a disappointing first attempt, sending a mere four skittles tumbling, but then the follow up comes good and knocks them all down. Then it’s back the same way and into the labyrinth. The maze footage is sped up, otherwise it’s just way too boring.

The rally car takes the first route, awkwardly manoeuvring the tight corners, but has it chosen wisely? No, it has not, which means it’s back through the hedges, somehow finding enough room to turn around, and along the correct path. Now are you ready for a smashing smash? [small smash] What’s this,

The car appears to have not broken the entire way through, deary me, it’s gonna take at least another ram. Eventually it got there, in a time of 2 minutes 31 seconds. Next the Big Fella unhurriedly tries his hand at golf. It reverses, and pots the ball with incredible precision

It must be noted, well done. Down the ramp it heads, and colour me impressed, it’s knocked over the skittles in one fell swoop, its size for once proving an enormous advantage. But then its size proved an enormous disadvantage, seriously, watching this car navigate the maze was like a comedy routine, it took forever.

And then to top it all off, it couldn’t even break the glass. The judges tell me this is definitely the correct glass, but in a cruel twist of fate the car isn’t nearly powerful enough to break through, even after a dozen rams, this can only mean one thing, disqualification.

And with that, there comes a forfeit. [glass smashes] Yeah! Now it’s the Off-Road Buggy, a fast little devil, which appears to have somehow driven on to the ball. A short reverse rectifies the situation, and then it’s almost into the hole, and then properly in. Goodness gracious!

It’s thrown itself straight off the edge, bypassing the ramp in its quest for victory. It then chose the correct route for the maze, however slowly it took to get there. And for the glass… it was straight through, in a time of 1 minute 53. Finally the Flipster.

It manoeuvres, and employs a rather unique technique in putting the golf ball, my oh my. It handled the skittles efficiently, and again chose correctly on the maze, but again, was unable to break the glass, which means… [smash] Our victor this time is the Off-Road Buggy, but whilst I was picturing a James-Bond-esque

Explosion of glass, we got this, not exactly inspiring. I’m gonna retake the photo in a more controlled setting, propping the car upright and dropping the glass down onto it for a more dramatic smash. It looks fine, but let’s work some more Photoshop magic by combining several images together.

This background image is perfect for the initial impact, but could do with the additional flying shards from this image. I again used the object selection tool to automatically cut them out, and added a motion blur to both layers to better blend them together.

This final image though has the most definition on the car, so I removed the background, fine-tuning with the select and mask feature, then did some manual feathering with the eraser tool. Add some lens flare lights, plus a vignette, film grain and colour correction,

And voila, it looks just as cool as in my head. Round Three. The third and final round is the simplest, but by far the most treacherous. First there’s an uphill climb to a narrow bridge over a pool of lava. Eurgh, look at this stuff.

Then twin walls of fire, before jumping through a ring of fire. And to make things more interesting, each car has some small fireworks attached to it, and driving through the flames might just ignite their fuses. Obviously this is extremely dangerous, please don’t attempt any of this yourself.

The rally car bravely goes first, slowly but determinedly ascending the ramp, until it’s over the pool of lava, and on to the first wall of fire. Wow, it made that look easy, and the second wall, but how will it fare against the ring?

Not a problem for this courageous contestant, finishing in just 17 seconds. Next then, the Big Fella. Immediately it’s unable to climb even a quarter-inch of the ramp, so the mediator must intervene at the expense of a time penalty. Slowly across the narrow bridge, and unaffectedly through the first wall of fire.

But hell’s bells it’s stopped on the second! False alarm, it’s onwards towards the ring, and lord have mercy, it appears to be stuck! And so the Big Fella met his maker, in a spectacular ball of fire. [fireworks crackle] What a way to go.

I then used a long pole to push it to the centre of the course, and added some more fireworks for a fitting send off. You’ve done use proud, Big Fella! Now, the Off-Road Buggy The Off-Road Buggy begins with decidedly more spirit, up the ramp, across the bridge, through the first fire,

Through the second, and off the edge. Oops! I’m gonna put it back here. After respawning, it escaped the course unscathed, even landing the right way up. But including the 15 second time penalty, it finished in 27 seconds. And lastly, my favourite, the Flipster. I am not ready for this.

The vehicle begins typically slowly, it’s construction well suited for such a climb, and keeps going with determination, on its rear wheels. It hesitated across the bridge, twisting and turning above the lava-y slime below, but how will it cope against an unforgiving wall of flames? Expertly done, it marches towards the second fire,

And once again through without a scratch, and bravely towards the ring. Yesssss! It made it! It made in 28 seconds, last place, but I’m just happy it survived at all. Which means we have our winner, the Rally Car, but this time I want to photoshop the loser.

This photo is admittedly pretty epic already, but I’m gonna post it on my socials so it needs to be square. Photoshop has this really cool Adobe Firefly feature called generative fill, which can basically generate anything you can imagine. I’m using it more as a time-saving functional tool however,

See, if I select the empty part above and leave the text field blank, it will extend the image, it’s basically magic. I could have done this myself manually the old-fashioned way, but it would take literally hours, so this is incredibly useful. Finally I lit some of the fuses that didn’t ignite,

And applied some colour correction and a vignette. This definitely captures the Big Fella’s glorious end, and although it may now be a melted shell of its former self, it’s in very good company on the shelf of destruction. As for the surviving cars, well I think they’ve well and truly earnt their retirement.

Try out Photoshop for yourself with the link in the description.