AMIE robot form The Red Planet

G

GaryArm

Member
I am only new to the Forum and don't know if this has been touched on before but

has anyone out there consider doing a reproduction of the robot AMIE from The Red Planet ?


I would be very interested on the thoughts of the community to such a project
But I must warn you that the prop on set does not match the digital one even though they scanned the prop after we built it

cheers

Gary
 
there was a "practical" amee and a very different digital version. the practical can be seen, briefly, at the very beginning being loaded into her "cargo hold". then when V.K. and S.B. pull her out. and at the "explosion" scene very briefly. the rest of the film was all digital. my AMEE head sculpt is based on the digital version as there is so much more reff material. but it is slow going LOL
 
Is this digital? not sure were this come from
amee__blackmesa__ed__wip_2__by_darth_biomech-d5hzmz0.jpg
 
OK now the back story is that an all mechanical spider robot that could do the entire film had been built.
But the powers that be dropped it, as there was such a negative responses to the spider theme on The Wild Wild West.

I was brought in as part of the team to build a new robot being designed by Sid Meed. We had a week to build it so they could scan it in to make the digital version.
We were given full size drawings of the front, side and rear of the robot to start fabricating, But they were for three different droid designs.
This led to a lot of confusion for us to work out its look, then we were receiving daily up dates of art from Sid with major changers so we had to keep remake many parts.
The look was very compromised from the early Meed art that had some very dynamic posses.
We were carving some of the part out of green foam and then resin coating them to give a hard surface for further detailing. These part were then used as masters to make molds, fiberglass or vac-formed parts were produced as there was to be more than one unit needed to fulfill filming needs.

In the end our prop AMEE was cut to I think three scenes and the digital AMEE did the bulk of the movie.

Gary
 
I like that photo sean!! and yes that's the digital version im sculpting. this is one of my fav sci fi movies because of AMEE, nice to hear some back story to this thanks for sharing!!
 
This Is cool guys. I think AMEE was one of the best robots out there. probably to me because it had such cat like quality's. If i could ask one question. it would be .


Are there any picture's of the practical AMEE?
 
agree'd sean. I have a couple old pic's on my comp. tower but its in storage. but take my word as a RED PLANET fan the final screen used AMEE is a lot better. I love the cat walk also, as seen on screen versus the "gorilla" unfold etc. they used for test unfolds. again, I have those saved on my comp, but I cant get to them anytime soon. im sooooooo looking forward to anymore/all info GARYARM can provide on this subject!! plus any other prop's he might have worked on, pre production pictures etc!!! arrrghhhhhh!!!! and a woo hoo!! im tuned in to this thread......:love
 
OK MikeJ I don' remember doing anything with the battery, this could be a laps in my memory of the time,
or it happened after I left the show to another commitment on the T.V. series Farscape.


On Red Planet I had a difference of opinion with one of the bosses so I left and then they didn't give me a screen credit.


As for photos of the prop, I don't know if I still have any. They may have been lost in my last move.


I can tell you that it was not a happy set, with the two male leads at each other's throats and even tacking out restraint orders against each other.
It got so bad that they would only act with the others double. So there is a lot of optical work to get them in the same scene.


Even with everything that has happened I still have a fondness for AMEE and was interested how others felt about Syd's creation.


I really regret not keep some of the art work that Syd Meed did of AMEE as that was fantastic.


I don't know if I will ever get around to rebuilding her, I have too many personal projects in the wings


Cheers Guys


Gary
 
Well I am not going to put names to them,
but I can tell of one time when Actor 2 arrived very late on set, Actor 1 says "This is unprofessional turning up this late"
Actor 2 responds with "you want to talk unprofessional, I just seen your dailies".
The crew had to separate them.


But this is getting away from the subject of this thread AMEE
 
LOL I skip around a lot, besides finishing the belt tool, battery and the w.i.p. helmet. I also started the amee "backpack" piece and chest plate..... I plan on doing a full build... its just very very hard to get proper dimensions to fall together only using screen caps. but I will (eventually) post a new W.I.P. thread with everything sculpted so far...:wacko im also working on the darn boots.....ugghhh love this stuff!!! GaryArm if you can "find" please post any pic's or tell more R.P. stories...and welcome to the RPF!!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hi guys
The prop AMEE stood upright, just over 6 foot, but I think they fudged the digital AMEE proportions to get more dynamic images.
Originally she was going to have her own wings, but they must have been dropped with script changes, I do remember making them.
Near the end of filming, one actors wanted the script changed so his character didn't die ....ah ..too late to change.
As there were no actual blue prints, just some concept art from Syd, and as the digital AMEE was in the film the most, we may have to recreat her from fraim grabs. From what I can remember, the prop AMEE may not be the best source for data with all the changes they made to digital AMEE.
Unfortunately with all the robots I have worked on over the years, the details are a bit mixed up.
But I will be giving it some more thought and update any more info if I can.
What I really need to do is find some time to sit down and watch The Red Planet again, I haven't seen it in years. I don't know how well the film has aged.
cheers
Gary
 
Thanks for the link Sean.
I had a look at the work already done and am very impressed by the model.
Just steering at it, elements of AMEE are coming back to me, like the wrist section was a bit more substantial, the body was more enclosed and the limbs were shorter.
The head at first look, appears correct but there is something that dose not play true for me.
The problem I think is I am remembering the original prop.
Can the real AMEE please stand up?
Anyway I would still love to have a copy of that model.
Does anyone know if they finished the project?
 
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