Props Continued! The gun!

In terms of detail and parts to put together this has been a relatively complex exercise, and this week went very slowly in terms of working out what order to do things in and how to fit them together!

 

 

So to follow on from last session - here are all the separate pieces that I finished last time! We have the main body of the back, the main front barrel, the handle and trigger piece, the front 'fin' that goes on the front barrel, and the uncut but measured out front barrel.

 

 

The first order of business was to start getting the main pieces connected! For the front barrel it was a simple matter of cutting a groove into the body of it to slot the trigger piece into. For the main body mass it was slightly more complicated and I had to use the hot wire tool to cut out a thin strip to slot the trigger piece into, making sure it lined up with the barrel without making the groove too long and have it fall apart. There is a smaller section that fits onto the front barrel and slots into the trigger bit, I have made it from blue foam and cut it from a cylindrical piece using the hot wire tool, but that will be one of the last pieces I put on so I haven't got a photo of it yet.

 

As the next pieces to make I decided to concentrate on the back panels, working from the inside of the gun out. As there are some very fine details to be put on at the end, I decided to use the yellow foam as it is more dense and you can create cleaner cuts and lines with it.

 

Above are the finished panels and below are the panels on the gun. To save a bit of time since this is the last session that I am going to be able to focus on the gun, I used a glue gun to stick on the panels!

 

After cutting the dowel for the front barrel, I then moved on to the rear outer sections, being the circular shapes. I used the yellow foam to make these, again because they are better for detail work. After marking the exact shape of the pieces and cutting away the main excess of foam with a scalpel, I found that using one of the smaller hand graters, rather then shredding the foam as it would with the blue foam, on the yellow worked to create a quick smooth line that was much more effective and created a cleaner effect then using the scalpel.

 

Here is the gun at the end of the session - as you can see it is a vast improvement on last week but I will admit to being dissapointed with my work in terms of my working speed this week and that is something that I am going to work to improve on as the weeks progress!

 

Next week we are going to start casting work, which I am intrigued to learn about as this is something that I haven't yet had any experience with.