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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."
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.
McClune was obviously working as directed. Lynch just wanted naked chicks in his movies and thats out of the jurisdiction of the effects guy.
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Weren't they uncredited in the movie Jaws because the robot hardly worked when they wanted it to?
Must have been the inspiration for the Millennium Falcon.
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...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...
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Don't beat yourself up. One can love a work without knowing its artist(s).
Say 'goodbye' as he would appreciate -- http://www.r2d2translator.com/.
I hated the CGI R2 in the prequals. CGI is good for some things but it can't fully re-create a remote controlled robot with real world physics etc., it just looked wrong, too clean too perfect and the motion seemed too 'cartoony' - I've yet to see a real robot that can move like the CGI R2 did.
Long live real R2 droids.
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.
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