40 foot animatronic anaconda from the movie "anaconda" on display

[rlemmon]

The 40 foot animatronic anaconda from the movie of the same name was recently on display at the California academy of science recently. Anyone else want one? Would be cool as hell for halloween. I had heard they made two of these for the movie. I'm not sure if this is the smaller one or not. Here's some pics and videos of him.









This one is great after 54 seconds when is has its skin on.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

I wonder how much time/money difference there ends up being between building something complex like that versus doing it in CG.

[rlemmon]

I'm a pretty big fan of this movie and from what i remember the animatronics were 10 million dollars to build. I believe that's the price for each of the two snakes that they built but i may be wrong. According to the internet movie data base the cg was $100,000 per second of film. I would say it was pretty damn good cg especially towards the end of the movie when the 2nd larger anaconda comes down from the rafters and goes apeshit. Some of the attacks towards the beginning were a bit off. You can also clearly tell when your looking at the cg vs the animatronic snakes.



What i wonder is why they didn't reuse the anamatronic snakes for anaconda 2 (aka anacondas) They were all cgi except for one quick scene where one pokes its head out of a tunnel/hole in the jungle and gets decapitated. I loved the first movie because I'm a special effects geek and it was one of those so bad its really good types. In the second one they hardly showed the anacondas.

it was more about them searching for the blood orchard for a pharmaceutics company and having an occasional giant snake problem. As for anaconda 3 and 4 which were made by the syfy channel they were total crap.

[Mikezilla]

As usual I cant see ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. Im huge into practical effects, I think they are exponentially better than stupid CG effects. The only time that is necessary is when you cant do something with live action effects, like a huge fight sequence or an army of something that would be impossible to do practically. I think the animatronic snakes look way better than the stupid CG ones. There was so much motion blur on em anyway you could barely tell what it was anyway... 

I would choose a guy in a rubber suit over a CG character anyday of the week.

[Dartful Dodger]

The CG is why I want to see some movies.

Red Tails looks like the movie Pearl Harbor should have been.

[Mikezilla]

The CG is why I want to see some movies.

Red Tails looks like the movie Pearl Harbor should have been.

True, but like I said, they couldnt have done those type of dogfights in planes today, so CG is necessary in that regard. I hope its not cheesy. Pearl Harbor should have been awesome. Thanks Michael Bay for ruining an event in american history. They were just a rival studio trying to capitalize on the love story and money printing of Titanic.

[Nephasth]

Dethklok-Better Metal Snake(w/subtitles)

[Howard_Casto]

Most CG work is crap.  The only reason it's so popular is because crappy cg is generally a lot cheaper than good practical effects, at least for large, inhuman creatures.   

To this day I think the only films that ever really did cg right were the jurassic park films and that's because they had the good sense to NEVER use full on cg in a close shot.

[Mikezilla]

Most CG work is crap.  The only reason it's so popular is because crappy cg is generally a lot cheaper than good practical effects, at least for large, inhuman creatures.   

To this day I think the only films that ever really did cg right were the jurassic park films and that's because they had the good sense to NEVER use full on cg in a close shot.

Im with you on that. Terminator 2 is also up there. Its funny, considering they were among the first movies to employ CG.

[Ginsu Victim]

Dethklok-Better Metal Snake(w/subtitles)

You win for busting out the Dethklok.

I'll take practical over CG any day.

[Howard_Casto]

Most CG work is crap.  The only reason it's so popular is because crappy cg is generally a lot cheaper than good practical effects, at least for large, inhuman creatures.   

To this day I think the only films that ever really did cg right were the jurassic park films and that's because they had the good sense to NEVER use full on cg in a close shot.

Im with you on that. Terminator 2 is also up there. Its funny, considering they were among the first movies to employ CG.

T2 had soem impressive cg, it's one of my favorites as well.  Then again how exactly do you make an unrealistic "liquid metal man" or a realistic one for that matter. 


Actually it's not suprising at all.  At the time cg could only do very basic things, and it was quite expensive, so they were forced to only use it when practical effects absolutely, positively couldn't achieve the effect they needed.  Now cg can do a competant job of emulating most practical effects at a fraction of the cost.  It's just laziness and cheapness, pure and simple. 

[MaineEvent]

Also a big f'ing serpent
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/520381964/titanoboa-50ft-electromechanical-serpent?ref=live
They are making this here in Vancity and looks like still looking for some $$