Fallout 3 AER9 Laser Rifle

A few weeks before ArcadeCon in Dublin I was asked to build the AER9 Laser Rifle from Fallout 3 as part of a cosplay costume.  I had experience with building guns before and I'd see how other prop markers had created this rifle in the past so I took on the commission.  The only problem was the time limit.  ArcadeCon was fast approaching and I was without my normal workshop.  Luckily I had seen how papercrafter  Mousemuffins  had built the Hellboy gun and thought to myself, I could make it out of card.  So I did.  Metierials for this build where sinple enough.  Several sharp knives, 6 tubes of super glue, 3 sheets of 2mm hard card, a sheet of plasticard and a block of balsa wood.

To start with I looked up the design of the Laser rifle and found the blue prints.  From there I work out the scale of the gun in Photoshop and planned out how I would go about making it.  I knew that I would need a thick spine for the person to hold onto as well as to make the gun sturdy as possible.  I drew out the shape of the spine onto the card and use that as a template to draw and cut out 5 more.

This was pretty much the most tedious part of the whole build and took about 2 days to get them all cut out.

Once they where all cut out I aliened them up and superglued them together.  I used a full tube and made use I got ever corner.  There was slight irregularities when they were aliened, but that was to be expected and I would sand them down later to get a nice smooth finish.  The centers was also cut out so that I could fit a cross cut of card down the middle which would help keep the blocky shape of the gun stable and give me something to glue the sides onto.

Once the spine was set, I went about make the sides, top and bottom which would make up the exterior of the gun.

Since I would worried about weight, suing balsa wood was best choice for the details such as the handles.  As it is easy easy to cut and shape.  I cut out 6 strips from the plasticard to add some grip detail to the from handle.

The back handle was cut to shape and glued in place.  I would sand out a proper grip pattern into it later, before painting.  As the main body was finished I move on to adding the front detail.  This consisted of making it larger by adding a block of card to the front as well as cutting out and attaching the front extrusion that would hold the center pipe.

The back of the gun, whoever, was much more complex.  I started by cutting out a section from the gun which would house the "power core" of the gun. At least I think that is what it is.  Once again I added a block of card to bulk it out  The housing and the power core itself was cut and shaped from balsa wood.  A lot of raised detailed was added using 2 or 3 strips of card glued together.  The pipe under the gun was 2 lengths of 5mm and 4mm plastic tube with some shaped balsa wood for the ends.  The pipe on the top of the gun was a lot more difficult due to its shape.  Leaving it in boiling water softened it up enough to curve it, but it was not perfect.  I've still yet to come up with a way of bending pipes that creates the desirably effect.

The front and back detail was just a simple manor of cutting card to the right size and shape.  Gluing them was tricky as they where so small, but there is nothing the adding of more superglue can not fix.

This was also when I used my dremel to sand out a proper grip shape for the bank handle.  It was the one modification that the client want made to the gun, as he thought its normal shape was too unwieldy.  I used Polyfilla to smooth out all the seams and join lines through out the gun.  As well as fill out any flat areas.  Then, armed with 400 and 800 gauge sandpaper I spent hours going over the body until I was happy I could move onto painting.

Now on to painting.  Since the gun was set in the Fallout universe it had to look old and worn.  So I got to try out a few different weather technique that I had learned from fellow prop makers.  Plus my own experence while paint the Heavy Bolter . I started with a base coat of black.  Then coated the main body in green.   I dabbed on silver paint, mixed with black, layer after layer till I got the effect of worn out metal.  The same technique was use on the body to dirty the bright green until it resemble something that had been  left, uncleaned for year.

More weather was added in the form of scrape mark along the metal body as well as the edges been scuffed with white paint to show wear and tear.  The pipe on the top as well as the power core where done in a bright yellow, which was then aged in the same manor as the green of the body.  I always worry when I start to paint a project that it is not going to tun our right, but then I start weather and I realise there is no such thing as a wrong look for weather.  It''s suppose to look messy.  I normally end up have to step away and say "it's done" otherwise you could just keep going and going.

And here we have the finished piece with a nice instagram filter on it.  Just to give it that gritty look.  

I'm quite pleased with how this one turned out given that fact that I only had two weeks to build it and I was working with card, something that I had not used to build something of this scale before.  Yes there was a few mistakes made but you learn from them and remember to plan further ahead next time.


-Matty

Imperial Psyker Staff

Playing in a number of LARP's you get ideas for costume ideas all the time.  This staff was build for a friend of mind who plays in our monthly Dark Heresy LARP.  He's playing an Imperial Psyker so it made sense to build him this staff.  I took the design from the Dark Heresy core rule with no read changes.

The build was not that hard.  The head of the staff was 4 pieces of half inch wood glued together, then cut and sanded into shape.  Extra blocks where added to the top and bottom to add depth.

The Imperial Eagle, which sits on the top, was carved out in two pieces.  The bottom piece held the wings, which were sanded down for more depth detail and then the top piece was glued on top.  I learn this trick from the last time I made an Imperial Eagle, were it was made from one block, which made sanding out the wings so much extra work.

By far the messiest part, and the most detailed part, was carving out the two wax purity seals that would be attacked later.  The seal on the left was modeled after the one which came with the Space Marine collectors edition game for the 360.  This involved a lot of dremeling.  Hours of it. Just to get that "pressed into hot wax" look. The seal on the right is just a skull, because it's 40K and skulls are always welcome.  When I try this again I shall need to get better heads for the dremel.

 I attached bolts to the head for the lump details and then positioned the eagle in the center dowels.  Then just a quick spray of black undercoat topped off with a nice shiny gold.

The staff itself was easy enough.  There was only a few pieces of detail which need to be added to it.  A bottom was add, which I believe was a wooden door knob, and two dividers to show where the hand grip would be.  It took about 6 coats of varnish to get the wood as dark as I wish it to be.  The hard grip itself was just a strip of red velvet wrapped around.  I also cored the center of both the staff and the head piece and used a .5mm threaded steel bar to give the connection point between the two more stability.

The two purity seals when given an under coat of black then dark red then dry brushed a light red.  Strips of cloth where hot glued to the back.  There would be protection warding that the Psyker would have written out to keep him safe.  Sadly these where cut out and glued onto the staff the night before the event it was need for so nothing was written on them.

The finished head of the staff.

 The event in question was a book signing at our local Games Workshop by Dan Abnett and Graham McNeil, pictured below.  In this photo you have me, in costume as an Imperial Priest.  Pretty much everything I'm wearing I made myself for my Dark Heresy character.  The guy playing the Psyker was late so I just carried it around myself as it fit in with my look.  This was a really enjoyable day.  Everyone though that  our costumes looked amazing and the staff was later signed by both the authors there.

I'm looking forward to making more Imperial props.  Being a gamer it helps to make items for what I enjoy doing and it's always nice when I get complements from other gamers.

Wizard of Oz Event Design 3D layout.

The second project of the year was to design an event that would be held in the chapel in IADT with the result being out design would be pasted onto a production house and they would build what we have designed.

We were tasked with picking a theme for the event. Measuring out the chapel where the event was going to happen. Create a 1:1 scale floor plan of the chapel within AutoCAD. Draw up a number of rendered concept perective drawings of how the chapel would look when finished and finially create a 1:1 scale model of the finished event, coloured, textured and lit in 3D Studio Max.

I choose an anniversary showing of the movie The Wizard of Oz with a live orchestra playing the music. Turning the chapel into a walk through of the movie's sets. Starting with Dorothy's house, the Scarecrow's field, the Tinman's tree and the Lion's forest. With the seating area being inside the Emerald city and the Wizard's throne at the front where the projector screen will be.

This was the first step was the layout created in AutoCAD. This is the 1:1 scale model of the floor plan of the chapel. All of the added detail is everything to do with the event that needed to be built.

A large amount of concept work went into the creation of each section of the event. Each part was made up of the key elements of each scenes from the movie so that the people attending would feel that they had just walk through the The Wizard of Oz before sitting down to watch it. The sections where to be built in much the same way that the sets of the original film would have been made. Painted backgrounds on canvas, bright over the top colours. Again, this was to add to the feel that the audience were in the film as they walked through.

This first sketch is a colour pallet of how I wanted each section to look before doing the larger drawings. It also helped me work out what colours worked best as I tried recreated the colours used in the film as much as possible.

Here we have the fully rendered sketch of the Scarecrow's field and the Lion's forest. Ending in the field of poppys which was just outside the gates of the Emerald City.

The entrance of the chapel was made to look like Dorothy's house with the yellow brick road on the ground in front of people as the walked in. This lead left to the Scarecrow's field, pictured about, then right to the Tinman's tree. Back left again and along the Lion's forest before heading straight into the Emerald City.

The walls of the city was make up of the shops that could been seen in the film. The backdrops where once again going to be painted canvas screens, the same all of the other walls, depicting more of Oz in the background. Here we have the gates of the city, the seating arrangement as well as the Wizards Throne at the back wall.

In movie screen shots were used to create a number of the textures of the 3D models. Mostly the backdrops, as well as the trees.


When creating the gates of Oz, at the end of the yellow brick road on, I used forced perspective to make them look taller than they were. The conductor of the live orchestra stood on top of the gates dressed in the gate keeps outfit with would add to the feeling for the people attending that they where in Oz.

Two ariel performers, dressed as Glinda and Elpaba would be suspended above the audience in hoops. This was done to use the whole place of the chapel. As flying is a big part of the movie I felt that it could not be left out and this would be a wonderful way of having two of the main characters within the stage.




The Wizards throne would have a fan flame turned on, as well as a number of smoke machines with would give the proper atmosphere of menace. Once again I used forced perspective on the door of the Wizards throne to give the feeling that this is a huge part of the Emerald city. the fans and lights would be turned off when the film would start and the projector screen would lower from the ceiling above.

Mudbox 3D Crab

First project of college was with a program that I'd never used before, which made it all the more fun, Mudbox. Pretty much the same a Z brush but this one works side by side with 3D Studio Max for loading models. Our project was to create, in 3D, an animal from the Natural History Museum. The model was to be as photo realistic as possible in both detail and texturing. We had 7 weeks to do this project and I'm really happy with the way my model turned out, especially since it was my first time using this sort of modelling technique.

This is the original low rez model in 3D Max, fully texture and posed with the normal map created in Mudbox placed on it. I'm really happy with this way this turned out and I shall be using Mudbox again with any future 3D project. Below are the step I went through creating all of it's detail and texturing in Mudbox.

This is how the model look when it was taken from 3d Max into Mudbox. Still quite detailed when it comes to it's joints in it's legs as I come from an animation background when it comes to building 3D models. So I know how to setup joints for them to be able to work when it comes to skinning. Now we didn't have to skin these models but I still built it that way as it was no extra trouble for me, and would make it easier later on when I got to the higher detail levels.

The joints and legs where the first place I started working the detail into.

It seem the more you worked on it the less and less noticeable things changed

Here we have the last layer of detail worked into the surface of the crab. This was at about 14 million polygons and was where I got all of the hard body detail on the claws and shell to really pop out.

And lastly we have the texturing. Mudbox is a wonderful program to work with as I could paint right onto the model or take the texture map into Photoshop and work on it there. I used both of this techniques to creative the texture, partly because I know my way around Photoshop really well and partly because the computer I was working on couldn't handle Mudbox at times so painting was just to slow.

Heavy Bolter part 2: Painting

Once the Heavy Bolter was finished is was time for painting. This was the part I was dreading the most. Sure a few coats of black and silver here and there and she would have looked the part but to get the model to really pop I knew that I was going to have to go mad on the detail to give it the proper worn metallic feel to it. I started off simple with a few coast of primer and a black base coat.

Then silver was use to high-light the barrel, breach and the handles. I through gold would work well on the grips to give them the right Warhammer 40K feel. Then came the problem with working on such a large scale model. Flat colours. This is where internet research came in really handy. Reading some other other prop masters blogs I learned about speckling to give models a use metal look.

So I got the most beat up looking brush I had and using a mix of silver, black and blue, when to town on the Bolter. From what I had read inconsistency was the best way to make the effect look real. It was weird at first painting the model like this. It felt like I was just making a mess but over the course of the painting it all seem to fit together and when I stepped back the over all look fitted. Now this was the first time I had done anything like this so I was not expecting it to be a master piece when I'd finished, but I was happy with it. Once the was done there came the second stage of detailing to give it a rough worn look. White paint was used along the edges to give the impression of scraps and ware on the Bolter.

The barrel and breach needed blacking to show gun fire and the releasing of the shells. This was done along the same lines as the scraps marks on the edges of the Bolter. Again I had the feel that I was messing it up the hole it I was doing this until I stepped away and I could take in the whole effect.

I was at a loss as to what I would paint the raised detail at the back here as most of the pictures I'd see just had then plain silver but that didn't feel right to me so I added some more gold, a spot of red and yellow strips to show that these are all working parts of the Bolter.

And with those done the Heavy Bolter was finished. I added alot most scrap marks to the back of the Bolter as that would be pressing up against the armor of a Space Marine so it would ware more.

And (almost) finished. I say almost because there is still two piece of detail I want to add to the model. The crest of the Deathwatch and a purity seal. Because I moved house during the last stages of the build I never got around to making either of them. But now that I'm settled in I have the time and space to get them made. I'm setting a deadline of the middle of October to have these done, painted and attached as Gaelcon is on that bank holiday weekend and I want to have it on display for that convention.

And here we have one of the chaps down at my local Gamer Workshop ready to fight the good fight for the God-Emperor.