Gundam 0083 90mm GM Rifle

I had some major surgery at the beginning of the year and decided I needed to make something during my recovery. It had to relate to my other projects, and be relatively easy. I needed to be able to do most of the work from home, as I wasn't supposed to be driving much. I settled on a Gundam rifle.

Some Gundam rifles, especially from the Universal Century timeline, are based loosely on real weapons. In this case, I chose one based on the L85. I love bullpups, but the L85 is ugly as sin. The Gundam rendition is pretty cool though! Luckily, I scored a Chinese made airsoft springer on ebay that was broken and didn't have a magazine or any accessories or about 15 bucks. Perfect.

Since anime guns vary in look between drawings and screenshots, I settled on the Master Grade Rifle that came with the GM Custom. It was my favorite take on the rifle, and resembles the L85 most closely.

Basically, I had to merge these two rifles.






 The stock had to be hacked down, with the "wedge" shape eliminated. The cheek guard was not salvageable on the airsoft version, as it was far too flat and rounded. The entire sight and carrying handle assembly had to be scratch built, as well as the top and bottom of the foregrip. The magazine would have to me custom made, and the magwell moved back further. Lastly, the grip had to be relocated and the misc. plates and details made.


I stripped out all of the internals, and the "weights" (some are lead bars, some are compressed sand wrapped in a rectangular wrapping. The cheap airsoft springers are notorious for having these.) I hacked off the top of the foregrip first and scratch built the receiver extension out of styrene. The vent holes were covered as well.

I got sidetracked and made some hand armor while I was at it. As I said, I was making this from home, so here's a progress shot in my workshop (The kitchen)

I continued by wrapping styrene around the edges of the carrying handle frame. I also covered up some sections in the front of the foregrip that got hacked off. You can see the tons of screw holes that will need to be filled in later.

I visited the shop (against my doctors advice) and cut out a few MDF parts all at once. The buttpad was one of the first. here it is installed with the now wedge-less receiver. The magazine was made out of styrene, and the misc. detail bits molded into the receiver were cut out or relocated.

Some more MDF and styrene details on top of the foregrip being blocked out.

Some tedious styrene wrapping.

I wanted this thing as light as possible, so I even made the cheek guard parts layered for minimum weight.

The grip was lowered and all the odds and ends started getting filled in.

A few more details, screw holes, and gaps before paint!

These were taken my my friend Eric from the ever popular Impact Props!

 

I painted the rear sights and some inserts black to give it a more modern look.

Thanks for looking! More projects here: Zprops

Planetary Tech Station Terrain Set

The Tech terrain set was a lengthy process. I spent about 2-3x hours on this set compared to the previous one.

I first decided what thickness I wanted the set to be. Like last time, I used a 1/8th inch piece of MDF as the base, but decided I wanted a clearly visible grid. I decided that building a grid on top of the panel would be easier than trying to scribe an even grid.

Each detail section is built on a small, roughly 1.5 " x 1.5" piece of styrene. I was initially going to make 8 different detail tiles, cast them, and glue them to the panel. I think I ended up with 12+ different ones though. Here were the first six. The grey round part is cast from a mass effect gun part and then modified to blend in. The brass is...brass.

I got a consistent height by layering three pieces of styrene together for consistency. A smaller layer of styrene was used for the final, detail layering.  I could have made the raised detail larger/deeper, but the result would have been a higher cost. Certain details had to be cut out of the top layer before gluing them to the bottom layers, such as the inset details on the semi circle bits.

I had the idea for coasters ahead of time, so I figured I'd make the molds for those first, and then use really thin casts as bits for the full sized panels.

I glued the masters (Blue-ish grey bits) down to the board, then filled in the rest with casts of the masters (White bits and brown-ish grey bits)

With that ready for molding I moved onto the turret. I initially decided on an incline face for the barrels, but changed it later. the entire turret is carefully scribed and sanded styrene, with the side bits on the top cast from a section of detail from a panel mold. It kind of reminds me of the details on a Bradley tank turret.

The Barrels were made from brass rod, and bits from leftover super glue bottles.

For the large turret, I really wanted a distinctive/unique look. I sketched out what I wanted and get to work. For this I had Star Wars (Of course) and the Gundam universe as my main inspiration.

Almost done with the base piece:

These were the first casts. (ran out of ink, but they were getting painted anyways)

They were painted over with grey primer, and then colored with a color called "Camouflage Grey".
I mounted them to some wood along with some painted up tiles, and the results are spectacular!

If you like these sort of projects, you can see more at my [ main website.]

Gundam Assault Carrier Spacecraft

So, like, a long time ago (well it seems that way to me. hmph.) I went to college and majored in industrial design. I really wanted (still do) to be a toy designer or to be somehow connected to the collectibles market.

As you can imagine, I got pretty bored of the housewares and more mainstream stuff we were instructed to design there. So, for my graduation project (a two quarter project where we get to pick a design category and direction that we want) I chose to do something inspired by one of my favorite companies, Bandai.

The project was from start to finish: design goal > research > ideation > refinements > control drawings > presentation/final model.

This was long before I knew I would be doing props after college (or blogging about them at all) so I have no pictures as far as the "prop" itself goes. Speaking of which, I consider this to be a prop so here it is. Deal with it!

It was designed to go with Bandai's Gundam action figure/model kit line, as well as compliment other sets in the same line.

First things that popped into my head. 

I really like the middle right one on page 3 but it would have been a bitch an a half to make a model of. 

Some refinements and new aggressive shapes.

Chosen design direction

These are the features I wanted. I think it translated pretty well into the model, although I never finished those little magnetic bridges.

She sure do look purdy.

Slots and keys hold this together, as well as a bunch of tiny rare earth magnets. The production version would obviously utilize tabs.

This is the "cityscape" arrangement of the parts. Had I finished the bridges and made a few more of these, I could have had the ultimate geekfest. 

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