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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.'"
These aren't toy guns, they're art pieces. No self respecting artist is going to make them "safety compliant".
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.
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.
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.
Well, steampunk is easier to write than "An archaic Victorian-era style mechanical device, with obviously modern/post-Victorian elements such as computers/lasers/etc"
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Well, at least we don't say "tard-speak."
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)
Where's the orange plastic blob at the barrel end?
If I put a blob for you, would you still hand a $1500 art piece to your kid to "shoot" around?
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.
trendy tard speak or not, as soon as I heard the term "Steampunk" I knew exactly what they were talking about.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Considering you're the only one who has ever been annoyed by having a concise, unique word to describe something...
I'm thinking it's you.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
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.
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 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.