Bioshock Infinite Machine Gun barrel shroud.

I recently started a new project in building the Triple R repeater machine gun from Bioshock Infinite. I have had several questions on how I did the spacing for the holes in the heat shroud. First thing I did with the tube for the shroud was to make sure the ends were squared off, so that when I stood it on a level surface, it would make a right angle with an L square. Next I took a piece of paper that would wrap around the tube and have both ends just meet, and folded it to make eight evenly spaced folds, I used that to make eight marks around the diameter of the tube. Using those 8 marks and the L square, I made 8 lines along the length of the tube for the 8 rows of vent holes to be cut out with the hole saw. Once I measured out the spacing between the holes along the lines, I used a little plastic cap with a hole in the center of it to draw the pattern on the tube. Lastly I just cut the holes and cleaned them up ! HERE ARE SOME PICS !

Mass Effect M-12 Locust SMG

This is my newest project, The M-12 Locust sub machine gun from Mass Effect. I really like the design of this gun in the series and started off to make my own.

After gathering reference material for a few days, I made up a blueprint to scale and made some copies so I could cut some up to use as patterns. I started off my cutting a basic frame out of MDF with my bandsaw.

I cut out most of the outer pieces in separate parts so they would form the proper channels and panel lines later when attached

Some of the outermost details and panels were made from Styrene and Sintra, here I also have started making my bevels and shaping the curves in the gun.

The spine bevels on the rear stock was formed with Apoxiesculpt, as was the finger grip on the front grip. Smaller panel lines along with the grooves on the bottom grip and rear spine were made by hand using needle files and crossing my fingers, seemed to have worked !

I did a few coats of high build primer , started the application of spot putty, and started building out the front barrel assemblies. The main barrel was a pvc pipe connector turned down on a lathe to give it a slight cone shape, then I cut the notches in by hand. The smaller barrel was a tube wrapped in styrene that had the recesses cut out already. Much easier than trying to carve them in later !

Here I am well on my way into painting , The grips were masked off first and sprayed with Rustoleum textured paint, then painted over with a satin black. The white stripe was painted on and then I scraped chunks out of it with my hobby knife, scuffed up a bit and the whole thing was coated in a flat clearcoat before weathering.

   Weathering was pretty straight forward. I just painted flat black acrylic paint into all recesses, cracks, and panel lines, then wiped most of it back off with a damp wad of paper towels. I also used the dirty paper towels to dingy up the whole gun. This project was my first real foray into drybrushing and I learned a lot doing it. I feel I went overboard with the silver drybrushing on some parts, but overall I am very happy with the learning process on this.

There are more pics of this and many other builds on my Facebook fanpage at Vector Sigma Creations

I have been posting a lot more thoughts on Twitter lately, Please add me for fun, hijinks, and general misbehaving geekness !   @weaselhammer

Casey Jones Mask

I have always loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles , way back before any movies or cartoons Started I was hooked on the comics.  MY favorite character besides Donatello was Casey Jones and I have always wanted a mask replica. My friend Alan made the Pepakura mask first for me, he always does really good pep work, and this made my job so much easier! The Pep model  had no name to give credit to, and I cannot find who the creator is . I have had the file on my computer for quite a while.

  I coated it on the outside with polyester resin. This sealed it and helped it keep its shape for the next steps.

I slushed the inside with Smoothcast 321 urethane resin to give it some thickness to work with, then I took a sander with 80 grit paper and knocked down the high spots.

With just a little bit of body filler and spot putty, it took shape fairly easily. I wet sanded it to 1,000 grit before painting it  with white enamel.

 All that is left is the leather straps to hold it on and a golf bag full of blunt objects ! Easy build !

Dragonball Z Scouter

This is a prop I have wanted to make for myself for a long time. My blog is soon to pass 9,000 hits and to commemorate the occasion, I felt this was the perfect opportunity to tackle this build. I did most of it in one day so it was pretty easy.

I kinda went off this pic for reference, but since pretty much every scouter in the series is a little different, I basically just made it how I wanted it

  

IT"S OVER 8,400 !!!

First I made a frame of sorts out of Sintra, cut a hole for the recess area and made a little box to be glued under the whole so I could add the vent piece later

 

 

 I then made a pattern for the sides from cardstock and traced those on to thin styrene sheet to wrap around the frame, and glued them in place

I used cardstock again to mock up the lens and the lens arm to make sure it would fit my face good

I then made the lens arm from Sintra and styrene and glued it in place. I left a slot in the tip to slide the lens into and used a screw to fasten it. this also allows me to adjust the depth of the lens. I also cut some strips of Sintra and shingled them on top of one another for the vent. This was painted separately and glued in later for a clean look.

 I used Eva foam for the ear padding. It was the right color and easy to cut and shape into what I needed. Inside is a plactic earpiece that hooks onto the ear kinda like a bluetooth headset. The scouter looks huge on the foam head because the dummy head is way small.

I tried tinting the lens blue by soaking it in hot water with blue fabric dye, but unfortunately since I used a dense acrylic instead of PETG plastic, the lens didn't take the color at all. I used a Prismacolor marker to do it red for the picture, rubbing it in with a paper towel to keep it from looking too splotchy. I will make another lens from the proper plastic later and try again.

Iron Man / Boba Fett crossover helmet

 This project idea came about while goofing off with 2 builds,  I had taken  an Iron Man faceplate that I recently finished from a pepakura model done by my friend Alan, and rested it on an unfinished Mandolorian helmet for a picture, and this is how it started !  I was inspired by all of the really cool projects coming out of the As You Wish Helmet Project and wanted to do something like it on my own. Unfortunately, I had no idea that one of the well known artists selected for the project had the same idea, only our 2 helmets are very different.

Basically, I took my Iron Man Mask and did some basic trimming, the mask was made a little bigger than normal, so it matched up pretty good. I then heated it up a little and epoxied it to the Mando helm.

 Here I have done the basic filling and sanding using ApoxieSculpt and Bondo

 I cut out "ear" holes for the ear pucks that I made

 The Ear pucks just plug in to the holes for easy mounting

 I shaped a piece of styrene with a little heat and trimmed it to finish off the top vent/scoop

After drawing the rough shape of the scratch marks, I used a dremel to carve them out

Then I scored the panel lines in with a hobby knife, and carved them in with a hobby saw, a hack saw blade would probably work as well

I had to fix alot of spots where the polyester resin didn't cure properly. I carved them out and filled it in with body filler.

After several coats of filler primer and lots of sanding, I wet sanded the helmet with 1000 grit before painting it dark hunter green. During this project, I always considered the "balance" between Boba Fett and Iron Man asthetics. I chose to do Fett colors, but keep it glossy like Iron Man usually is

I transposed the gold and red in Boba's helmet to keep the iconic Iron Man gold faceplate. I painted the "ears" red to maintain a Boba color scheme

I did the cheek bones in navy blue, that was kinda tricky to mask off properly

I decided to do the Fett kill stripes and masked those off

And here it is assembled ! I brushed in black acrylic paint into the scratches and wipe the excess from the surface

 My camera phone can sometimes make the perspective look off and distort the picture a little

 My Boba Fett helmet was my first real prop build, and here it is with my newest build. This picture was taken while it had the bright red ears, I repainted them the darker red in the other pics after this was taken.

I hope you like it and thanks for looking !

Boba Fett / Iron Man crossover helmet wip

For thos who  are unfamiliar, the "As You Wish" movement headed by Art Andrews of the Dented Helmet and The RPF is raising money for the Make A Wish foundation by having a large group of talented artists make unique helmets from a raw Boba Fett helmet cast which will all be auctioned off at Star Wars Celebration in Orlando this year. There have been so many awesome and inspiring builds from this fundraiser that I wanted to make something along those lines also. This is not  affiliated with the "As You Wish" fundraiser, just inspired by it. Maybe one day I will be lucky enough to be asked to participate.  Here is my work in progress of my Boba Fett, Iron Man crossover, I will post another full blog on it when I finish it. Progress can be seen on my fanpage www.facebook.com/VectorSigmaCreations