Biography

American special effects wizard and miniature model-making virtuoso. McCune partnered John Dykstra as head of Apogee Inc. between 1978 and 1992. He was chief model maker for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) (in which he also had a small acting role as a Death Star gunner), the pilot for Battlestar Galactica (1978) and 80's classics Spaceballs (1987) and Ghostbusters II (1989). McCune created the iconic Millenium Falcon model, the X-Wing and Tie Fighter models, as well as bounty hunter Boba Fett's helmet. He is credited with putting the finishing touches to the famous droid R2 D2, originally designed by John Stears. For Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) he worked on the Klingon K'tinga Battlecruiser and the V'ger model. In 1992,taking over the lease and some of the remaining infrastructure from Apogee, he set up his own company, Grant McCune Design. In the capacity of miniature effects supervisor, he put his stamp on a number of seminal blockbusters, including Speed (1994), Batman Forever (1995) and Daylight (1996). McCune Design eventually folded in March 2016.

McCune held a degree in biology from California State University in Northridge and began his career as a laboratory technician. Much of his free time was spent creating models and dioramas. In 1978, he was selected by George Lucas to work on Star Wars, on the strength of his collaborative effort in creating the Great White Shark model for Jaws (1975). An expert photographer, McCune provided a brief insight into his work during a 2009 interview, stating: "The most important thing is what you see with your eye. Movies are a lot different from reality. This is because you've isolated the viewer's eye to a certain spot-you can't look anywhere else. If you're a photographer, you get the idea of what you need to do by analyzing what it is that needs to be set and where it is and how much detail it should have. All the best people who ever worked for me were first good with the eye".
- IMDb mini biography by: I.S.Mowis