The first story he told was about a dodo. The bird, that is. After seeing a photo of a dodo skeleton online, he developed an obsession with the bird, and searched endlessly for some kind of kit or model of a life-size dodo skeleton. In his search, he ended up saving over 17000 photographs and scans to use as reference material, but couldn't actually find a kit to build. One day, while in a store buying materials for a craft day with his kids, he decided to make his own dodo skull. After making the skull, Adam decided not to stop there, and eventually fabricated a whole dodo skeleton, using the thousands of source photos he had taken. He even went so far as to make a plaque to mount on its base, as if it were a piece in a museum.
His second story was about his obsession with the Maltese Falcon. Not the movie, but the object from the movie. After ordering a replica of the titular object online, Adam was not satisfied with the quality of the prop replica, so, he decided to make his own. After hours of sculpting while looking at screenshots of the film, he made a near-perfect copy of the falcon out of sculpey. He then made a mold of the model and cast it in resin, in order to attain a more durable version, which, after painting, is indistinguishable from the original. Even after he put in this much work, he wanted his copy to have the weight of the original, so he sent it off to be cast in bronze instead of resin, but due to shrinkage caused by rubber molds, the final bronze piece ended up around 3/4 of an inch smaller than his first sculpture. Adam is ultimately unsatisfied with this final product so he expressed a desire to do a 3-D scan of one of the original props form the film, in order to make a 100% accurate version of the Maltese Falcon. Almost
Even after going into painstaking detail about his processes, his true "message" was delivered in his last line: "But really, if we're all going to be honest with ourselves, I have to admit that achieving the end of the exercise was never the point of the exercise to begin with, was it.". Almost saying that it's not the destination, it's the journey. Adam has a way of fascinating everyone listening with his topic, despite their ties with the topic. Despite this, his delivery was a bit rushed, and he seemed like he was trying to shove as much information as possible into his time frame. He used slides and props fairly effectively, showing photos of his build processes, as well as showing the finished bronze casting of the Maltese Falcon.
https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_savage_s_obsessions
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