Now this is the piece that I have *really* been anticipating - the master patterns for the cannons in the film were completely created by my hands, so it's pretty cool to see a licensed replica produced from something that I made. Plus, it was another one of those pieces that while working on it, I was thinking "gee, I wish I could have one of these for myself..."
And now, about a year and a half later (and after 5 days of stupid FedEx shipping it all across the State of California and back
Idiots...), I finally have one
The replica is surprisingly heavy, and has a nice heft to it - it's actually heavier than the hero guns, which were ultra light weight fiberglass. It also has a sliding foregrip feature and the power charge display lights up in sequence, just like the hero guns did, but that's about it (which is enough, I guess).
On the heroes the rear grip could pivot, and when you pulled the foregrip back to "c o c k" it, that would activate the charging display. A press of the trigger would release the grip (which was spring-loaded) and the display would turn off. That was all engineered by the clever and talented Bob Mano in the mechanical department.
It's not quite the same on the replica... you have to push in a switch on the right side and then pull the foregrip back to activate the display.
Then to turn it off, you have to press the switch in again and push the grip foward. Unfortunately, the trigger doesn't do anything. And unfortunately they didn't put a diffusion layer over the LEDs, so you can see the individual bulbs through the display.
Originally the power charge indicator was going to be on the side of the cannon, and was simply going to be comprised of bar segments.
But the Strause Brothers wanted to use the Predator glyphs that had been created for the film, and that were being applied to the Pred armor and cases by the sculptors. The sculptors had considered the glyph sheet that we received from Production to be the equivalent of an alphabet sheet, and had been stringing together words and phrases on the pieces that they were working on. I was originally going to make the display say something, but Alec wanted me to try to match the glyphs as closely as possible to what was shown in an animatic for a scene near the end, where the human character "Dallas" is using the handheld cannon. These glyphs are what I ended up with - they corresponded on the glyph sheet to AJFRW. I was going to make it say OK POW!
I did however put my family name and "ADI" along the back of the grip
Geek immortality is mine!
And now, about a year and a half later (and after 5 days of stupid FedEx shipping it all across the State of California and back
Idiots...), I finally have one The replica is surprisingly heavy, and has a nice heft to it - it's actually heavier than the hero guns, which were ultra light weight fiberglass. It also has a sliding foregrip feature and the power charge display lights up in sequence, just like the hero guns did, but that's about it (which is enough, I guess).
On the heroes the rear grip could pivot, and when you pulled the foregrip back to "c o c k" it, that would activate the charging display. A press of the trigger would release the grip (which was spring-loaded) and the display would turn off. That was all engineered by the clever and talented Bob Mano in the mechanical department.
It's not quite the same on the replica... you have to push in a switch on the right side and then pull the foregrip back to activate the display.
Then to turn it off, you have to press the switch in again and push the grip foward. Unfortunately, the trigger doesn't do anything. And unfortunately they didn't put a diffusion layer over the LEDs, so you can see the individual bulbs through the display.
Originally the power charge indicator was going to be on the side of the cannon, and was simply going to be comprised of bar segments.
But the Strause Brothers wanted to use the Predator glyphs that had been created for the film, and that were being applied to the Pred armor and cases by the sculptors. The sculptors had considered the glyph sheet that we received from Production to be the equivalent of an alphabet sheet, and had been stringing together words and phrases on the pieces that they were working on. I was originally going to make the display say something, but Alec wanted me to try to match the glyphs as closely as possible to what was shown in an animatic for a scene near the end, where the human character "Dallas" is using the handheld cannon. These glyphs are what I ended up with - they corresponded on the glyph sheet to AJFRW. I was going to make it say OK POW!
I did however put my family name and "ADI" along the back of the grip
Geek immortality is mine!
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