R2-D2 Creator Grant McCune Dead At 67

CBC reports on sad news for Star Wars fans: "Grant McCune, a special effects artist who earned an Oscar for his work on the 1977 film Star Wars, has died. He was 67. McCune died Monday at his home in Hidden Hills, Calif., of pancreatic cancer. McCune created scenes with miniatures, models and special effects for dozens of movies, including Spaceballs, Ghostbusters II and 2008's Rambo. He began in special effects in 1975 when he and friend Bill Shourt were hired to make a giant white shark model for Steven Spielberg's Jaws. They got no credit for the film, but McCune caught the eye of the film community and he became chief model maker for Star Wars, where he created R2-D2 and many of the creatures that populate the film."

Comments

Re:Tag 'slownewsday'

[TrisexualPuppy]

Actually, he was quite the inventor. You should look up just how he pieced R2D2 together. It's not as trivial as it seems. For instance, Artoo's "head" is not a true dome. It is actually a "flattened" dome which proved quite hard to turn on a lathe. He even had to invent his own technique just to make this part.

So what you're saying is without merit.

Last time I worked with McCune...

[Thagg]

...was on the movie US Marshals. As part of the film, the plane holding the prisoner escapes after a 727 crash. Grant McCune built a 1/3 scale 727 fuselage for the film, it was amazing!

His shop at the time was chock full of every type of model and rig that I could imagine, and several that I couldn't, with his crew of model makers feverishly working on the next projects as ours was finishing up.

At the time he kept his Oscar under a stocking cap on a shelf in his office. Legend has it that he would occasionally pick up the hat to make sure it was still there. I suppose he wanted it close, without it creating a spectacle (as a real Oscar inevitably is)

RIP Grant. Good times...

Re:Tag 'slownewsday'

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

That whole sequence is the reason R2 didn't look right. He was put into an absurd situation and expected to come out heroric.

That's not "CGI's" fault, that's what the director approved.