Aliens: M41A Pulse Rifle (Brown Bess or Olive Green) perhaps not Brown Bess after all? (light tests and prop pictures and recent Savage video)

[Sahare Studios]

The surviving non black pulse rifles were all repainted in Aliens colors after they were black in A3. I assume they got the color wrong. A lot of them also have aftermarket casted shrouds and not the originals. If you look on page 1 you can see that all the black A3 pulse rifles show a very cracked OD color underneath.

I mean this is definite proof of OD:

I don't know man. I'm just going by what I am seeing. The propstore screen used props placed next to Adam's Humbrol Brown Bess pulse rifle are obviously a different color. They are dark green as opposed to reddish brown. Going by the screen used items shown on prop store Humbrol Brown Bess is not the right color. Unless the prop store can say they were repainted at some point which is highly unlikely.

Of the colors in your post, the closest to me looks like a color in between RAL 6014 and RAL 7013. In fact Roman says they used the RAL 7013 in the movie as opposed to Brown Bess. Where did the Brown Bess thing even come from?

Edit: Also the post by Roman isn't accurate regarding the Snow Wolf. That Snow Wolf Pulse Rifle is the Olive Drab version not the "Brown" version. They never made a "Brown" version, the other color they have is Tan, which that one isn't. I have that rifle in OD. The Tan version is considerably lighter and more skin colored. Very close to the MIG 0111 color you listed.

Thanks I'm already a member of that FB group

 

[ghostryder]

The surviving pulse rifles were all repainted in Aliens colors after they were black in A3. I assume they got the color wrong. A lot of them also have aftermarket casted shrouds and not the originals. If you look on page 1 you can see that all the black A3 pulse rifles show a very cracked OD color underneath.

I mean this is definite proof of OD:

View attachment 1887428

That particular rifle (Delta) once had an erroneous olive drab paint color post production - in fact, it was painted several times:

 

[Sahare Studios]

Fair enough. What about these:

Lets be realistic. Were all pulse rifles originally Brown Bess and painted Olive Green after Aliens before being sprayed black for Alien 3?
Were the welder and motion tracker shown by Prop Store also erroneously repainted Olive Drab after being Brown Bess in Aliens?

Or were they simply Olive Drab to start with. Why do the rifles look the exact same color as the olive drab military tshirts the marines are wearing in the cornbread dining scene.

Even the posts on the M41A FB group you linked has started to confirm that they were most likely Olive Drab this past year as opposed to Brown Bess.

 

[ghostryder]

Fair enough. What about these:

View attachment 1887430

Repaint. Not original to production.

View attachment 1887431

That's a vacuform shroud. Since it never existed when Aliens was made, no logical reason to gauge color.

View attachment 1887432

Same as above. Vacuform shroud. One of the "frankenrifles" reassembled by Bapty with incorrect rivets and other inaccuracies if you're going for an "Aliens" original.

View attachment 1887433

That's the "Eta" bent stock Pulse Rifle - vacuform and other frankenparts - not original to Aliens.

Lets be realistic. Were all pulse rifles originally Brown Bess and painted Olive Green after Aliens before being sprayed sprayed black for Alien 3?
Were the welder and motion tracker shown by Prop Store also erroneously painted Olive Drab after being Brown Bess in Aliens?

Or were they simply Olive Drab to start with.

Even the posts on the M41A FB group you linked has started to confirm that they were most likely Olive Drab this past year as opposed to Brown Bess.

Post # Aliens: M41A Pulse Rifle (Brown Bess or Olive Green) perhaps not Brown Bess after all? (light tests and prop pictures and recent Savage video) shows several of the stunts (including my own) as they look right now, today - none of them are olive drab.

 

[Sahare Studios]

Ok. Then we assume the Prop Store screen used welder and motion tracker were repainted as well?

Or this stunt rifle:

 

[ghostryder]

I can't speak to the welder and tracker, as I haven't seen them in person. And I'm not saying this about those props, but there's been PLENTY of other case of Aliens props being repainted over the years for a variety of reasons. The stunt rifle you posted came from the same batch as the others and looks that way because of the lighting conditions. I can assure you it's the same exact color as the others when seen in person. All of this said, since no one sees color the exact same, maybe if we were together looking at the same exact prop in person, you *would* see it as OD, where to me it would appear more brown.

Again:

 

[Xhiwar]

Hi there!

That‘s my Facebook post about my paint samples. It‘s correct that it‘s the „olive“ Snow Wolf I mistakenly called brown, I just wanted to point out that it isn‘t the „tan“ version. I included it to show as wide a range of reference color as possible.

I also never said that they used RAL7013 in the movie. Ian Mutch said that they used a generic „Braungrau“, which makes sense as they needed much more paint than a few humbrol tins.

The main point of my Facebook post was that it‘s impossible to show the „true“ color under all lighting conditions. I definitifely believe that under the right lighting conditions, Brown Bess (or Braungrau) will look OD. See the last pic of my post, where even a slightly blue tinted LED panel managed to make most brown tones look OD.

There certainly is more evidence that the original color resembled Brown Bess rather than OD (even though it most likely wasn’t Humbrol Brown Bess). The RAL7013 also seems to vary wildly between manufacturers, so it‘s not easy to simply say RAL7013 is correct.

In the end it seems to come down to personal preference. I personally believe that the original color was more brown(-greenish) than OD, but the HCG shroud was very brown. Of all the color samples, the SMS Blaster Brown seemed nicest to me and came very close to what I see on screen but also in reference pics. The RAL7013 is a tad too light, but does seem like a solid alternative.

Cheers!
Roman

 

[Metalalien]

Well I will say again. Aliens was made before post color correction we see in modern films. The paint they used on the props and the Aliens themselves were certainly chosen to make them appear correctly on the film stock used with the lighting that was pre planned for each scene. The Aliens for example being painted brown... but appear blue on screen.

The pulse rifles could have been painted candy apple red on set for all I care. On screen they appear OD as intended.

 

[ghostryder]

Here's the screen matched British Larkspur radio part as it looks today, Wed., Dec 11, next to its appearance inside the sentry gun crate seen in the film. Definitely more brown and not olive drab.

We know it's *not* olive drab, since the top part was unpainted by production and left the original vintage British military color common to all Larkspur equipment at the time.

You can see several nicks in the production paint job that reveal the vintage olive color from the late 1940s:

 

[Metalalien]

Which goes along with the point I made. The props were painted to look right on camera. Painted brown to look OD on screen with the lighting and film stock chosen.

So the real answer... which will not end this disagreement (4 decades and counting).. is the answer is they are both brown and OD. So you chose the color you like best.

 

[IceDog]

The eternal discussion continues, I love it

 

[Treadwell]

Painted brown to look OD on screen

Pure speculation.

 

[Dogsbody2]

British Cockpit Green maybe?

 

[Metalalien]

Pure speculation.

 

[septic]

Compare the color of the pulse rifles to the military issue tshirts all the marines are wearing. Those tshirts (as far as I know) were never made in brown but are all olive drab. The rifles look pretty much the same color.

And speaking of speculation ... has the marine t-shirts being military issue (rather than 'Production Made' / a random commercial product) ever been confirmed? Citation if possible, please.
The sub-text here being can we even trust that the t-shirts are OD?

Also, I happen to own a very nice [as in it's super hard wearing; it's probably 30yrs + old now] brown-y / coyote brown ish Bundeswehr t-shirt, from back in the day (I remember there was a massive influx of Bundeswehr kit that flooded the army surplus stores in the 80s/90s, so it is conceivable that marines t-shirts were in fact brown ... to be fair, I do think that the marines t-shirts were OD / some shade of green, but again ... citation needed.

 

[Alien]

I found this thread because I'm currently in the process of 3D printing a Paul's Boutique rifle and am going to paint the shrouds (the natural brown PLA color is not really close enough) but wanted to find alternatives that are close to the original brown bess color in rattle can form.

This doesn't look green to me... it's a Polaroid of Apone's costume taken in sunlight during production. The second shot shows Frost's costume. Notice that the olive drab web gear looks green, while the light housing and flamethrower look brown. Maybe Harry Harris can do clearer/larger scans if he still has access to these Polaroids. I'm sorry though, but the original movie Pulse Rifles were not green, nor do they even really look green to me in film. I was looking at my HCG brown bess resin gun the other night in my room and the shrouds look remarkably similar to the way the 10 hole did in the film.

I'm going to swap the 3D printed parts for metal parts and then build it into a live firing pulse rifle using a semi-auto lightweight Thompson M1. I plan to chop the 16" barrel to pulse rifle length and thread it to attach my Obsidian 45 suppressor, so that'll be interesting.

Edit: I like that it says I am a new member despite joining 20 years ago. =D

 

[ghostryder]

lol, oooops - wrong thread

 

[Alien]

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[ghostryder]

 

[Alien]

lol, oooops - wrong thread

It's too late...