Welcome to the Dune Special Edition Project

This is a project I have been slowly working on over the last few years with the goal of ultimately replacing many of the "outdated" special effects shots in David Lynch's 1984 version of Dune.
The project initially began as an endeavor to build a "proper" ornithopter - one with flapping wings, that neither the movie or the mini-series managed to achieve. However, with the advent of the "fan-edit" the scope of the project has expanded with the goal of updating the effects in all those places in the movie where I feel things could be significantly "improved."
Although I am currently working on this by Myself, it's a large undertaking and if there is anyone interested in helping this project along, feel free to contact Me - We might actually be able to get this project completed with a few more skilled and enthusiastic people!

Regards
Sasha Burrow

If you are curious about My professional work, I have been working as a VFX artist (Among other things) at The Asylum for the past 6 years, including visual effects on all 4 Sharknado films (Mainly stuff blowing up!).
CLICK THE LINK TO SEE MY CURRENT SHOW-REEL

DUNE Special Edition: Showreel March 2010

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

"Spotter" Ornithopter



The "Spotter" is a small ornithopter that circles or hovers over a working spice harvester watching for "worm sign", the tell tale approach of one of the giant native sand worms that can easily lay waste to an entire harvester in moments.

While mentioned in the movie by both Dr Kynes (In a delete scene) and by Duke Leto (during the rescue of the spice harvester workers), the "spotters" are not seen on screen.

I've created several designs & models for the spotters so far but have been unhappy with all of them - as they really didn't match the design aesthetic of the film -

UNTIL NOW...

Found an image of a model on a website that while different from the main ornithopter seen in the movie, to Me seemed just right - that combination of similar but different enough.


So I modeled it up to match the design of My regular "Special Edition" ornithopter" and I am quite happy with how it came out so far. (Though My hypervoxel dust cloud is really lame!)


Monday, August 9, 2010

Interview with DUNE producer Rafaella De Laurentiis



Link to the original Spike TV interview where producer Rafaella De Laurentiis discusses the fabled original running time of Dune.
Rafaella De Laurentiis Interview about Dune