What do you think is life like for people who create cool inventions for a living? Well, you don’t have to imagine anymore. The person we’re going to talk about today applies his knowledge in engineering to create real life counterparts of movie and video game props. Let us take a closer look at James Hobson, the brilliant mind behind the Hacksmith Industries.
The Hacksmith Industries
The Hacksmith Industries began in 2012. During this time, James was juggling YouTube and his full-time work. He applied his knowledge in Mechanical Systems Engineering to make working prototypes of movie and video game props. However, it took him years to go viral.
His first big break was in 2014 where he created an exoskeleton that allowed him to curl 170 pounds. This earned him 500,000 views in 3 days. Sometime later, he was invited by Discovery Channel to showcase his invention. During his appearance, he was able to curl 275 pounds with his exoskeleton.
The Hacksmith currently has 9.21 million subscribers on YouTube
Crazy Inventions and Other Projects
The Hacksmith is no foreigner to crazy inventions. His most popular videos seem to be involved with recreating popular weapons from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Their most popular video to date is their video about Captain America’s shield. Check it out below
The next popular video in his channel is also marvel-inspired. This time, they recreated Thor’s stormbreaker. This video got 32 million views.
Probably one of the coolest series in their channel is their attempt to create a fully-functioning lightsaber.
Hollywood also asked him for help. In 2017, he flew to New Zealand to test out the motion capture suits for War for the Planet of the Apes. In 2019, they created a working neuralyzer prop for a Men in Black: International promo campaign.
Net Worth
In a Toronto Life article, James computed their average earnings per video. According to him, they doubled their annual gross revenues from 2017 up to the present. They are comfortably bringing in over half a million dollars salaries.
As for the Hacksmith industries, James focuses on its engineering side over the YouTube side of things. He prioritizes investing back to his company over big paychecks. James plans to open their 13,000 square-foot facility to the public by hosting high school tours and workshops for additional revenue.
According to Naibuzz’s estimates, James has an estimated net worth of $1.5 million. This coming mainly from his YouTube ad revenue and other sponsorships.
Check out the Hacksmith on Instagram and subscribe to his channel to catch his latest inventions.
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