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 2 M-96 Mattock Heavy Rifle

I made this rifle for someone who wanted to start a mass effect prop collection of sorts. As such, they gave me discretion to choose which rifle from the Mass Effect universe that I wanted to do. I chose the Mattock, and wanted to stay as close to the concept art as possible. I chose it because it is arguably the most complicated rifle in the mass effect universe that still looks like it was made by human hands. I like a challenge. And headaches, apparently.

Here we are:

As always, I chose MDF as my medium. This is the beginnings of the carrying handle.

Layering the foregrip.

Side panels

Working the layers of the grip before laminating them together:

Coming along:

Panel line after Panel line.

Okay, I'll admit. There's a little bit of plastic in here.

Reinforced trigger guard

A little more plastic....Those triangular cuts are not in the game model, but I felt compelled to make them since they are on the concept art.

Scope housing. Kind of a pain.

All primered up and complete, minus grip grooves and small details.

This part was hand carved with a dremel. Had to make the other side identical too.

Installed, filling the seams.

Purdy. I love the results of filler primer.

I'm just teasing you guys with this picture.

Kabam! I'm back to being my own photographer again. I think its an improvement over my M-29 shots, which I did myself. You be the judge.

The logo was made by cutting out a polystyrene stencil, spraying over it, and cleaning it up.

Now if I could only make time to actually play the game...Hmm.

Thanks for looking!