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Handmade Steampunk Rayguns From the F/X Guys at Weta
An anonymous reader writes "Wired is presenting a gallery of artwork that inspired Weta's collectible rayguns, plus exclusive photos of the retrofurist sidearms. The article offers more than just images; each weapon has a description of where they were inspired from, as well as possible uses. 'In this illustration by Greg Broadmore, a hunter poses with his latest kill and his elegant retrofurist rifle ... "I started drawing these things just for fun," says Broadmore. "I did dozens of designs, all really stylized and Flash Gordon looking. I remember those black and white serials playing on TV as a kid and the imagery always stuck with me. Really hokey, but really scary and weird at the same time. And, of course, if you're a fan of classic rayguns you'll see the influence of the old toy rayguns. The Buck Rogers disintegrator pistol -- of course directly referenced in Han Solo's blaster in Star Wars -- is iconic, and that original raygun, along with many others, inspired me massively.'"
I was just talking about steampunk and am sending a friend the pilot of Amazing Screw On Head right now. Wish they'd make the damn series...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Where's the orange plastic blob at the barrel end?
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
evil lair
a beowulf cluster of these
???
profit! (world domination)
I'd rather see a sci-fi use a firearm, like Firefly did and Battlestar Galactica does, than have them insult my intelligence with the twisty, curvy, spiky, doo-dad-ly junk we've been fed the last fifty years. I mean, for artistic reasons, every show is going to want to have the iconic BFG every now and then. For humour value if nothing less. You see this in Firefly sometimes. But weapons exist for one reason, to make it easier to project force. I don't look back at "ray gun" designs with fondness. I see a bunch of catering to the lowest-common-denominator intelligence, let's make things look as funky different as possible just to make them look funky different. It was a tool used by bad writers and bad producers who didn't have content that was distinctive enough, so had to be distinctive with bling.
inquiring geeks want to know if they work or not. :)
Did an entire generation of people fail to learn basic words like 'archaic' and 'anachronistic' in high school? Maybe 'mechanical' was also missing from the vocabulary list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_Gun
Beyond the images in the article, I just did a google image search for "buck rogers pistol" and don't see anything significantly relevant to Han Solo's D-44... if anything, it reminds me just how little they changed the Mauser Broomhandle to turn it into a blaster.
-l
Along with a few work colleagues I met Richard Taylor here in New Zealand a year or so back after he'd just returned from the Academy Awards in LA. He showed us a metal carry case which contained a couple of these guns and mentioned in passing that he'd carried them with him on the flight home. I had mental pictures of the ATS guy sitting behind the LAX baggage scanner going through a "it's a gun, no wait, it's not a gun..." endless loop.
I heard that Weta's F/X team was originally going to give Frodo a laser gun to blind Sauron. They had to retract it though because of the Geneva Conventions.
Something witty goes here.
I'm building a Van de Graaff generator from which I'ma try accelereating an electron beam, or bolt. It won't of course be portable, but it would be fun if I could fling plasma a meter or so away from the VDG gen. With some metal sheets I could build a rather large air-gap capacitator that I could first charge with the VDG and then tap to a coil to pull the free electrons from the VDG.
:D
Okay, maybe a bit sci-fi, but I'm having fun building the VDG regardless.
All rites reversed 2010
What the fsck is "retrofurist"? It's even in TFA. I'm guessing they meant to say "retrofuturist", but being lysdectics they had an excuse to use this abbrevion...
I wish more artists would embrace realistic fantasy.
It sounds like an oxymoron, but it's the difference between a movie only kids could enjoy, and something adults would want to go see too.
The first thing that struck me about those pictures is that nobody would ever, ever, ever use one of those contrived contraptions in a battle. A weapon in a science fiction flick can shoot lasers, warp space, or spray hot grits, but no weapon, fictional or real, can have that many protrusions. You'd never get it into, our out of, a holster. Every branch and bush would tear it out of your hand. And a gun with a glass bulb as a functional unit? Are you kidding me? The reason the guns looked so awesome in Star Wars was because they were made from real guns. Many of them were made from, or based on, real, practical designs. The science fiction element was that they shot laser beams.
There's suspension of disbelief, then there's suspension of common sense. Not the same thing!
Rant over. Please return to your scheduled fawning. 8)
Sorry, but I find those toys far less impressive than these: http://www.glbarnes.com/
These are some of the most steampunk-ish actual working devices I've seen. Some are fancier than others, with the more ornate models looking like they came right out of Myst. They aren't movie or vidgame props, they are some of the most powerful and accurate (and expensive) air rifles in the world -- and all hand-made by Gary Barnes himself. Although not technically (or legally, in the USA) considered to be firearms, these air rifles have been used successfully for hunting deer, wild hogs, and in at least one case a buffalo.
Han Solo's weapon is simply an augmented Mauser C96 pistol.
It's capitalized in the article too, which made it needlessly hard to parse.
This article's been out for five hours and NOT ONE /.ER HAS USED THE WORD "PHASER".
(Well, until now.)
Are all the trekkies getting hammered and watching Boston Legal these days?
Here is somebody who builds rayguns out of scrap. Perhaps these are more to your liking. I believe one of them is a functioning pea-shotter!
http://claytonbailey.com/galleryrayguns.htm
Makezine published an nice article about these some time ago.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
These rayguns are fantastic pieces of art, of a kind you rarely see. I saw them at the Weta stand at an expo in Wellington - they were only on display then, not for sale - and they really look like the business as imagined by 1950's science fiction. They seem a little used, covered in mysterious spikes and weird tubes. And it's real glass and metal, as far as I can tell, hand-welded etc. Theres a good sense of humour in the marketing too.
Pretty amazing to see so many cynics completely miss the point on Slashdot. This is one thing I thought most geeks would be right into. Humorous yet artistic rayguns!
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
... the Hitchhiker's guid to the galaxy. You know, the ones which have a right end and a wrong end, and random spiky bits sticking out the wrong end.
How do they get the metal finish to look aged and rough like that like that?
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http://www.wetanz.com/holics/media/2/20070219-Gol
"The VDG is safer than a Tesla coil, so for a newbie like me it seems like just the ring thing."
That's only the case because the VDG creates such a small current. If you start storing it, you're increasing the potential for a lethal shock. A square foot or so of capacitor can easily store enough charge to kill you, depending on the dielectric. At 30 KV or so, the discharges from my homemade HV capacitors sounded like gunshots - I got complaints from the neighbors.
As for your other idea, I'm not convinced that it'll work the way you think it will. You probably won't be able to move enough charge onto an object to make much of a magnetic field when it moves. The amount of electrons "flowing" in a DC current is very very high. Take a look at the definitions of the Ampere, and the Coulomb to get some idea of the quantities involved.
That's why they're in the special effects business. Making molded plastic look like 50-year-old weathered metal is what they do. I'm sure a Google search would help you find more info, but the basic gist of it is to combine multiple layers of paint, using techniques like dry-brushing, washing, and splattering.
And that is because ST was never centered around guns and warfare. ST:TNG especially was as pacifist as it could possibly be, and the weapons were the plot devices of last resort, and even then they were "set on stun" so that nobody's feelings are harmed. Most of the conflicts, or challenges, or battles were won by ingenuity and tactics and science rather than by application of a larger BFG that the opponent had.
And THAT is why i miss Deep space nine.
They did swing quite a few "BFGs" and more or less dropped the whole pacifist theme.
What the weapons look like depends largely on what the creative people want to present.
For example, compare the phasers used in Star Trek V and VI with those used in The Next Generation. Both were produced in the same time period by the same studio using most of the same creative and prop people.
The V/VI phasers look mostly like handguns (except with the barrel mounted over the hand grip, instead of forward of it.) They're beefy, black, and serious-looking. The director of Star Trek V (William Shatner, actually) wanted to show Starfleet marines checking their weapons, fitting magazines, and generally preparing for serious combat.
The Next Generation phasers look like a cross between a remote control and a Dustbuster. They're straight, beige, and domesticated. The actors had a terrible time aiming the things on-screen, and the SFX people had to do all sorts of odd-looking corrections to make sure they actually "hit" what they were aiming at. Virtually all the time, whatever aliens the main characters were up against had more serious-looking weapons.
The reason for the difference was that, in Kirk's universe, Starfleet was a bunch of rough-and-ready cowboys. In Picard's time, it was a much more disciplined peacekeeping-and-exploration organization. The weapons portray the creative philosophy at the time.
And before you say this is an unrealistic approach to combat, ask one of the early F-4 Phantom II pilot who was sent into combat with missiles but no gun.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
just don't do it in my backyard - or near anything interesting
More directly referencing the Mauser.
Mother of pearl looks great, so there's always been a "bling" element to its use. However, you should know that mother of pearl as well as ivory, bone, stag horn, and other decorative grip materials for pistols did, indeed, have a functional use back in the day.
Pre-1900, a number of pistol shooting competitions were a big deal, with near full-page coverage in major newspapers. There was a lot on the line and any small advantage was eagerly desired. Generally, the big matches took place over several days and competitors were prohibited from making sight adjustments during the match. To prevent anyone from making adjustments, the pistols would be impounded at night so they couldn't be touched. At the highest skill levels, competitors discovered that a radical change in humidity could make common wooden pistol grips swell or shrink overnight. When that happened, the recoil characteristics of the pistol changed and point of impact changed. That was a very, very bad thing.
Mother of pearl didn't absorb atmospheric moisture. It was stable. Today, we tend to use plastic, micarta, or laminated wood (in less critical applications) on target pistols or we shoot indoors so we don't think twice about moisture absorption. And I only know of one informal shooting sport that prohibits adjusting sights during a match, so lots of wood gets used today, too, since we can correct for any problems it causes. Back in the day, though, the stability of grip material translated directly into a stable point of impact. It could be the difference between winning and losing. Mother of pearl is functional.
As nice and groovy as these guns are, they've been nosed around for about a year now.
"How fine you look when dressed in rage."
Do a search for the Buck Rogers Disintegrator Pistol (featured on the first Foo Fighters album cover) and check the silhouette. That gun was designed after the silhouette of a Mauser C96 pistol (a weapon contemporary with the original series). Han Solo's blaster has basically turned the Mauser into a Star Wars version of that classic Ray gun ( and StarWars references those old Sci-Fi serials on every level as George Lucas always acknowledged). In terms of a chicken and egg situation though, of course the Mauser came first but I don't think thats the point of the quote.