Mass Effect 3 Cerberus Harrier Assault Rifle

With the V2 M-96 Mattock molds completed back in 2012, it was only natural to give one of its cousins a shot, and this would look great with my hornet smg build.  I started and completed this personal build in 2013 but never got around to a photoshoot or a full write up.

Reference from Troodon80 via Deviantart. 

This build would have been a lot more work if I didn't have an M96 mattock resin kit to start with. Although, every piece had to be significantly altered or rebuilt from scratch. The only piece that went unchanged is the upper outer barrel.

It helps to have half of this build technically finished already. I started with a kit that had a bit of sagging on one side of the receiver. This was perfect because I had to cut out most of the receiver sides anyways.

I drafted out the areas that had to go. 

I used the circular cutting bit. It created a lot of resin dust and vapor, so a respirator was a MUST. Angling the disk and being patient allows you to do some pretty surprising cuts. 

I began making the new edges out of MDF strips

I hacked off a few more areas and kept going. Its much better to "frame" these areas rather then dry and do it all with bondo. Also I needed this prop as hollow as possible.

The tip of the receiver is almost completely different, as well as the "tail". More hacking for that. 

The tail extensions had to be glued perfectly straight or it would show up as an obvious error when the shiny paint came on. 

Next I cut out a center channel in the stock, and hacked off the butt plate as well. 

Its important to make notes on your parts so you know what direction to glue them. 

I lost a tiny but of thickness/rigidity to the butt plate when I cut it off, so I spend en extra few minutes making new parts. 

With the stock mostly completed, I checked the geometry against the tail and cut an ABS pipe to shape. 

I used the same technique up top and salved some of the resin bits I hacked off earlier. 

Jumping around a bit. The lower outer barrel had its front and top bits hacked off. 

I made some MDF bits for it. 

More MDF, more styrene. 

I made the sides of the carrying handle as multi-layered, flat parts. Then I hacked them up to glue at an angle. 

The back half tapered gently. The front has a few angled bends in it and is much more complicated. 

I had to get this tapered bit the perfect angle and perfectly symmetrical or the carrying handle wouldn't line up. 

The tip of the carrying handle doesn't taper much at all. Heres a comparison with the mattock carrying handle. They are completely different and don't share any parts/sections at all. 

I cut out notches in a layer of 1/4" MDF. Then I laminated it to another layer, and beveled the sides. The result is this, if you measured right. 

I did another, similar part for the back half of the carrying handle. The whole thing is hollow, light, and rigid. 

Loosely taking shape with a test fit. Now that the main sections have been blocked out, it was time for some fine tuning. Somehow, this thing is even more massive than the Mattock. Which is already ridiculously huge.

Since a large channel in the top of the receiver was cut out for electronics, it was easier for me to back the sides of the receiver so that I could glue some MDF bits in there to hold up the bondo that was about to be smeared everywhere. 

All of that body work paying off. 

The flash hiders were made from taking two of the Mattock's upper barrel ones and hacking the tips off. Then, these circular cut bits got laminated into shape. I later drilled out the tips for LED lighting. 

Another test fit with one of the flash hiders being almost completed. 

I went back and cut out some of the receiver sides for these MDF inserts. 

After being blended and primed, I backed the inside with some styrene detail. Then I added some strips of  clear polyethylene that had been sanded to 400 grit to diffuse the LED lighting. 

I masked off the LED sensitive areas and did some more filling/priming. Coming right along, you'd lever guess this used to be a Mattock. 

This section isnt lit in the game art, but I didn't care and wanted to light it. It was a problem though, since there was no accessibility. I hacked off the tip, and dremeled the inside of the walls until they were relatively flat and about 1/4" thick. 

I didn't have the energy or the room to fit 4 LEDs pointing outward in there, so I did two facing up with foil everywhere to bounce the light where I wanted it to go. I also had to include holes and wiring for the barrel tip to be lit. Special thanks to my friend Derick for helping me out with this electronics mess!

I sealed up the bit I had just hacked off, and continued to install these all around the gun. Somehow. There's only two circuits in there, so if something burns out I'm pretty screwed. 

The rule of camera phones: The worse your camera is, the better the LED's look. 

Home stretch!

Pew Pew! Thanks Eric for touching these up. 

For humanity!

More stuff here. 

Thanks guys!

Mass Effect 3 M-25 Hornet SMG

So, whatever photo deficiency there was in the last post was, this one will more than make up for it. Sorry if you have 56k!

I started this sometime after PAX, and worked on it in-between commissions. Then I did a flood of progress while waiting for silicone for another project.


This is my favorite SMG from all of the mass effect guns so I wanted to give it a go.

The reference I used was provided generously by this dood: link to dude.

Here's the concept shot. I'd like to thank Brian Sum from Bioware for the dimensions.

Complex bevel: 45 degrees to 30 degrees to 20 degrees. No dremel involved!

Top rail beginnings

Side panel

Progress:

Did I mention the grip is friggin tiny? (yes, this is the correct size.)

Main body parts coming together

Middle layer

(note my ummm... "precise" inner drafting for the cuts)

Little recessed detail thingie with complex bevels around it.

Test fit

With removeable magazine action! Too bad it doesn't distribute beer.

Did the little bits near the barrel tip, as well as the barrel tip itself.

As well as the "spine" of the grip, and the bolt housing. You can see here that I deleted the bolt on the left side of the gun, despite there being two on the reference. Just didn't make sense and it bugs me.

Then I added a few details to the top rail, and enlarged some of the bevels using a dremel to take down the hard edges, and hand sanded 80 grit and 150 grit for the rest. It went rather fast, but I have the whole rest of the gun to go. There are a ton of fillets and bevels all over the place.

I used PVC to make the rounds on the rear of the "carrying handle" 

Then the voids were covered in styrene.

Heres some kind of detail made carefully in styrene.

Finishing up the beveling on the front end: 

More styrene details

The priming adventure

First pass, lookin good!

Just about done, I left the hard part for last. The little dimples on the sides, and the annoying little circular inserts

The dimples seem to angle in on a plain from the back, and turn into fillets as they meet the forward edge of the recess. I decided, of course, to use styrene. I made little risers, and then made little templates to cut the sheets. ( Want to play a fun drinking game? re-read this post and take a swig when you see the word "styrene")

To acheive the greatest mating surface area, I dremeled the little edge of the styrene to meet the angle it rests at. 

Heres a view installed, looking down the side

Fun. 

A few more passes. Did this on both sides, mind you. Kind of hard to keep the fillet constant. 

You can hardly tell the dimple is there (1/8th inch deep, just like the design) but it was worth it. Heres a picture of the first screw plug insert. 

Masking the grip. Getting much faster at cutting custom masking strips. 

Orange stripe thingie. If you have one of these near your magwell, you might want to get it checked out. 

Last circles cut out on a scroll saw, then sanded. The thin styrene ring was dremeled. 

I've never seen the top of the magazine removed, and I think mass effect guns fire conventional rounds nowadays so I decided to have a modern looking magazine tip. (its removable) 

I modeled it after an MP5. Styrene. 

Stencil drafting

Painted and weathered. I took too much off this side, so I re-did it. 

CAM aircraft lettering decal set. Works pretty good for the little stuff. 

Done!

My friend Kai who goes by kommissar on the Replica Prop Forum connected me with Rana McAnear, who you might have seen around the cons dressed up as Samara. They modeled the in game character after her, so its as canon as it gets! I loaned her the hornet for a cross-promotion.

On the left is Corey Gaspur, lead combat designer of Bioware at sdcc 2012. The next day I shipped it to Eric Jarman so he can cast it and run around nekked with it. Man, everyone gets to enjoy it but me!

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