RE: The Hudson Colonial Marines Armor From Aliens depicted above -
Greetings Willie, Wow. Wonderful to see those photos. As you know that is a set of Aliens Colonial Marines armor that Terry English brought with him from the U.K. to the U.S. in 1996, that he displayed at the San Diego Comic Con in the Icons booth. He along with Syd Mead made an appearance at our booth.
At the time, it was the last set of original armor that Terry kept from the film. I owned a set of Hick's armor acquired from the remains of the Alien Wars attraction in London. ( < this find is an interesting story. ) Terry was making limited edition replicas for some collectors for between 3K to 4K at the time. And they were gorgeous. Difficult to tell them from the originals they were so accurate.
Terry told me that one Saturday morning during the filming of Aliens, the actors, Jim Cameron and Terry went to a local junk shop in the UK and Jim said to the actors: "I want you to personalize your armor with Terry." Look around, if you see something buy it and decorate your armor. Or tell Terry what you want painted or wriiten on your armor other then your character name. To make it appear as if you have actually worn it a while. Like you wore it in battle and have personalized it over time."
Icons displayed my Hero Pulse Rifle from Aliens which is shown to the right. ( Which was an actual decativated 45. Thompson, weighed a ton and the bolt action was incredible ) And the bar on the right as you may know is a pole affixed to the back of an original T-2 Endoskeleton loanded to Icons by Danny Simon of The Licensing Group.
I don't know if anyone will care about the following but I will post it just in case. As Terry English is a great artist as well as human being.
As most RPF members know Terry is a Film armorer who fabricated armor for films such as Excalibur, Batman & Robin ( Mr. Freeze's costume ), Gladiator, The Messenger, the Harry Potter films and most recently Clash of the Titans. He also restored historical armor owned by the Queen in the Tower of London.
Terry and I became dear friends through his mutual association with Planet Hollywood 20 years ago. As he sold them many pieces and ended up as a creative consultant in many ways.
I produced a 15th Anniversary exhibit of Excalibur ( I was and am a huge fan of the film )at the Southern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire in 1995. Terry lived with me and my lady for 9 weeks at the time in Studio City, Ca. and we had a lot of fun and laughs. His stories were awesome. He was always building things on my patio. Designing, making art out of nothing. He could take a broken door or a rock and make a work of art. A true artistic genius.
Terry had just finished working on the film First Knight and we attended the First Knight World Premiere ( Terry's experience on First Knight is a story in itself, as they did not use his beautiful armor designs and used the V neck chest armor. He was broken-hearted by this ) at Sony Studios. Terry brought a beautiful model adorned in custom armor with him as his date. When we went to pick up an executive from Planet Hollywood in the limo on the way to the premiere, and I informed the exec on the phone that Terry had a model on his arm dressed in armor he said he would not ride with us to the event. We pulled up in the limo, he stuck his head in and he let out a gasp. As she was beyond stunning. He could not stop smiling. When we climbed out of the limo the press photographers went bonkers and the next day a photo of Terry and the model was in the Hollywood Reporter. : )
Terry eventually mentored a few young prop / wardrobe makers here in Los Angeles during Batman & Robin who I introduced him to. And Terry taught him his mostly private techniques in creating Film armor. They ended up creating a L.A. based SPFX shop together. Sadly things went south for various reasons, and Terry left the company. This took a lot of U.S. business away from Terry evidently.
Terry does make appearances at conventions and is a very friendly, gracious and warm person. If you haven't met him I hope someday you will soon.
