40K Tech-Priest Mechanical Arm costume piece

I was commissioned to create a full arm costume piece for a LARP been help at a gaming convention, called Gaelcon.  I was given free range when it came to creating the design of the piece as the guy knew I understood the 40K design elements.

This was a quick build as I got the finally go ahead two weeks before the convention, but I've built these pieces before so I knew I could do it.

The whole arm was made out of 2mm craft foam, with each piece hand cut out. I started with the gauntlet, using a wooly gloves as the base. Each piece was blocky, showing it was good solid metal :

Damaging up the arm was done to show that it this was used, in day to day life, as very little in the 40K universe is very clean & shiny. The extra detail of nuts & caps, on the fingers, gives a better metal feel.

Second was the lower arm. I wanted this to have the feel of layers & depth. Showing that there are working pieces underneath:

 

The next step is once again damaging. This involves taking a dremel, crafting knife & sandpaper to the foam & wires. Not damage is too severe as some of it is going to be lost during painting:

Lastly the upper arm. This I made to be just a simple overlapping armour pieces, to give the feel that it can move but there is also more, important, working pieces underneath:

It was tricky to get the shape & measurements just right for this one so that is would sit correctly on the person, it's why I made it flat first before heat gunning it into shape:

 
Once all the pieces where finished & heat gunned into shaped I added elastic straps, to the inside, so they could be worn without people seeing how they are held on.  Once the glue was set it was onto the third phase, painting:

 

Each piece got a base coat of black then metallic silver was dry brushed on to highlight all the damaged areas.

Then I just kept going over & over the model with darker & darker shades of the metallic sliver, eventually using small amounts of pure black acrylic paint, to weather & dirty the prop to show it is well used & worn.

Lastly I dabbed on some white along the edges & deep scar marks for extras highlights & some brass paint for "metal on metal" damage weathering.

Here is all three pieces layout:

& here it is on the happier customer:

The fit was perfect, which was the one thing I was really worried about this build.  I learn a few things while building this which I am going to use them when I build the Winter Solider arm, which I really hope is soon.



-Matty

Golden Blaster Award statuette.

I was hired by the organizers of this years EuroCon, Shamrokon, held in Dublin on the 22th-24th of August, to create 4 statuettes for their annual short Sci-Fi film festival, called the Golden Blaster. I worked with one of the heads of the con to create the look of the blaster.

Each aspect of the blaster had mutability designs done of them, & he choose which he liked best. They were then collected all into one design, had it okay'd & then set about creating.

The master prop was build from balsa wood as I've worked with it on other similar project like this in the past, so I'm comfortable working with it. The fin, body & handle were all carved out of the material separately & then glued together.

The nozzle & back end were then carved up & attached, then the whole body was covered in polyfiller, sanded to a smooth finished & primed.

The next stage was to mold the blaster as I needed to make four copies of it. This is always the scariest part of prop building for me & the messiest. If anything goes wrong during this part of the build it will damage the master prop, but it will also cost me a fortune in materials. Seeing the shape of the blaster this had to be a two part mold.

I clayed up and boxed in the first half. This can normal take between two & three hours to set up as you make sure that the clay is level, you got the mold at the halfway mark & all the edges are perfectly done so that there will be no silicon leaked. I used Supersil 20 Silicone for the mold. It is a 10:100 mix silicone & one that I have used before & I've always been happy with the results.

Happily, after 12 hours of curing, the mold turned out perfect. It was then a simple matter of, cleaning up the master prop, reapplying some poly-filler that had come off in the clay, flipping everything over & casting the second half.

I then did a test cast, using the fast cast polyurethane 1:1 resign I have used many a times in the past. I sloshing some of the resin around the mold to both clean it out & see how well it nozzle preforms. Once I was happy with that it was a simple matter of casting four of the blaster, priming each one and then  painting them up. Three of the statuettes need to be gold & one silver. I found a wonderful spray paint called "Hardcore", which comes in a multitude of colours as well as chrome silver & shinny gold, which is the look I wanted.

Once the painted had cured I coated them all in a few layers of Gloss Varnish to seal them in & brought them down to a trophy shop the Con directors where using to have their bases fitted. The next time I saw them was at the convention on display.

I was pleased with how these turned out & with the positive reaction people had when they saw them at the Shamrokon. I''m starting to feel like making prop ray-guns could be my main field of interest over the next while =]

-M

Dark Heresy LARP Boltpistol

This was a personal project I build for a month Dark Heresy LARP I game in.  Been a LARP, costume is encourage and I knew my next character would have a Boltpistol in game so I wished to make one for my costume.

I went for balsa wood as the making build material for the pistol. I knew that it would be a bit delicate but it was the easiest material to work with so it was a chance I was willing to take. This scale is correct to what you would find in the RPG books, which is hugely over sized. The pistol is 4inces across and 13inches long.  I had build a HeavyBolter before so I knew how to go about making the base structure for the prop.

 

The pistol grip was the only real tricky part of the build. Getting the size and shape just right so that my hand fit around it naturally.

An extra layer of wood for the detail of the body, the grip sanded down and the magazine fit in nicely.

I made the mag separate as I want to be able to make a mold of it and cast a few extra ones to carry with me at the LARP.

Bolt pistols are normal coloured red or blue on the upper layer so I went for red. And seeing as how this is a weapon from the 40K Universe one always needs a add a skull or two.

A metal finish was added to the rest of the gun. This involves getting an old worn out brush and specking on silver paint in a few layers. It quite fun but takes a number of layers of paint to get looking right.

& here is the finished piece:

I know that more detail can be added to it & I will at a later time but I'm happy with how this guy turned out

-M