“How are you with massive Dinosaurs?”
The classic OOTB phone call - Hi, it’s Gary here, I’ve got a project you might be interested in…. excellent. Thankyou Gary Woods! A what you say? Giant robot dinosaur? 2 of them? But of course!
And then, the introductions to Pinnacle in the USA - Francis Rochon and Andrea McNeely - and away we went, taking some STL files and creating two monsters. 1:1 scale, over 6m long.
Internally, they had a steel armature, and then a CNC milled polystyrene body. On to that, we grafted numerous fabricated and 3d printed components, dozens of feather blades and glowing purple eyes, before an extensive scenic painting session with Tabby and Robert to bring it to life. The whole way through the project, racing to keep up with workshops around the world also making the same Clawstrider sculptures - 12 in total!
CLAWSTRIDERS
Starting with an STL file was a help, but as it was an animation file, it lacked detail and solidity. Lots of intensive modelling followed, giving us something we could use to lay out a steel armature - and some files we could give to our favourit 3d milling company, Baker’s Patterns in Telford.
After that, there was a frenzy of 3d printing, hand carving, more 3d milling on our own CNC, and just over a week of paint effects and finishes to give the beasts some life. There might even have been some poly carving with a shovel.
Then, off to Waterloo to install one of them, while the other headed to Paris. As far as we know, it’s still on the loose…