• M-12 Locust (ME2 Kasumi DLC SMG) Art Project
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Over this summer and last I've been working on a model of the M-12 Locust, a gun from Mass Effect 2 in the Kasumi DLC, the gun that shot two Presidents. (If you've played ME2 but you're wondering who this Kasumi person is I advise you to go download it or look up her missions, she was intended to be in the original game but got held back and apart from her and her mission being awesome the SMG you get on her mission is, in my opinion, the best in the game.) This is kind of a step by step of how I made the model and how it turned out, keeping in mind that I have no experience with model-making. [I]I entirely understand I didn't do this the best or easiest way. I guarantee I did things that anyone with vague understanding of woods, paints and glues would pull their hair out over.[/I] I also know jack all about guns, I made this for the enjoyment of it and understand that even the in-game design of the gun is realistically ridiculous. (If you give Kasumi this gun to hold in-game by the way, as I did when I was studying the model, she holds it like a pistol, with neither hand on or near the actual trigger.) That said it turned out pretty well in the end, and I'm proud of it. Here is everything (with the exception of a longer ruler and sanding paper) that I used in the making of the gun: [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/HTcAqC3.jpg[/thumb] And here are the reference pictures I used, this is what the gun SHOULD be looking like. [url]https://hostr.co/NHbyqYnX1wdK[/url] [url]https://hostr.co/r32XdubuebVE[/url] [url]https://hostr.co/BlCsNW3tJnx9[/url] [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/Cu6BW80.jpg[/thumb] The entire model is MDF, I drew the design to my assumed measurements and cut out two outlines from the MDF sheet and then stuck them together with epoxy resin to give the gun an actual weight and depth. Then I had to trace out all the risen components of the gun and cut them out too, making sure both sides would be identical. The later MDF pictures contain a few more components where I've sawn the piece in half to turn it into a half-block, and I also later sunk a single piece of wood in to be the trigger. The bullet already inside the gun is where I simply dug down into the MDF with a stanley knife and whittled it out until I had a rectangle I could sink a cylinder of wood into. [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/mJcuPvb.jpg[/thumb] [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/g6yiNgj.jpg[/thumb] [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/JPiM5GS.jpg[/thumb] (I know that's not how you hold the gun, I'm getting it all in shot..) This is where I stopped working at the end of summer and let this poor thing sit in the garage for a whole year. Basically it's really scary knowing the next step is to spray paint something and potentially ruin it forever, plus there were always small things that I knew I could get just a little bit better with some more sanding and care. Eventually you just have to bite the bullet and paint it all. [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/biWFn0p.jpg[/thumb] One of the problems with using MDF when painting is that you are literally working with pieces of cardboard crushed together, meaning that while the surfaces are smooth and it's fantastic for modelling the sides will drink up any liquid you put on them, it simply vanishes into the wood like a sponge- as you can see the white spray paint didn't have much of an effect on any of the guns sides. This meant I had to seal them with something, and I, like an idiot, used Polyfilla for bathroom tiles as oppose to a slightly different Polycell product - a dry dust that would have taken minutes to apply to all the edges. Instead I laboriously scraped polyfilla (it's like white frosting) over every edge of the gun as smoothly as I could. Fortunately this did also work in sealing the gun and I could paint it afterwards- still, stupid. I was using white as a base-coat, but if I did this again I'd definitely use a dark blue for the spray since the blue areas of the gun ended up being far too obviously painted with a brush, and it turned out the silver paint looked best over a dark surface anyway. (you can see in the picture below just how crap my silver paint looked over white, I later painted all the silver sections black to make the silver actually work.) [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/d7V3J7w.jpg[/thumb] [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/5wLIAwi.jpg[/thumb] Got pretty worried at this point over how patchy and crap the blue paint looked. I learned I was supposed to be using the thinnest possible coats to try and erase any trace of brush-strokes, and eventually this worked out enough for my satisfaction. I also didn't use the straight blue paint that I bought since it looked pretty crap, I ended up mixing it with the black paint to give a much nicer dark blue which doesn't quite match the same shade as the ME2 model, but is as good as I was able to achieve. Several coats later it looked like this. [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/3vAVlif.jpg[/thumb] Much better, right? Here I started working on the details, for example I'm still missing a freaking barrel of any kind and I somehow need to get lettering onto the gun. For the barrel I actually took apart and repainted two detachable pieces of a sonic screwdriver I was given since they were the best things I could find to fit what I wanted, even if they were a bit small. I made holes in the side of the gun and stuck them on eventually with a mix of wood glue (these pieces were entirely plastic) and superglue. I also added a red strip since I'd given up hope of putting an actual LED there or some reflective plastic. The lettering above it was simply painted on - I used some duct tape to cover above and below where I'd be writing and then straight up painted it on after tracing what I wanted in pencil. I did this on both sides and was pretty relieved at how they came out. [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/z0VAWkO.jpg[/thumb] The CR2 lettering on the tail of the gun couldn't just be painted straight on even with some duct tape, so here are all the practices and planning I did before finally just putting it on using a sticker stencil. [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/Xd9or4J.jpg[/thumb] [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/C9xan0G.jpg[/thumb] I experimented with several shades of black/white/grey before deciding to just keep all the lettering black. It's not the same as the ME2 model but it looks a hell of a lot better in real life as black than white did. In the end I only used white for the stripe across the gun, and used both sand paper and tape to give it a worn, cracked appearance. [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/RvgvcFK.jpg[/thumb] [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/uLJJopn.jpg[/thumb] [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/JDeGAZ2.jpg[/thumb] As final details I also took some bolts (I wanted screws but couldn't get ones small enough to actually screw in, nor could I remove the screw head) and stuck them to the gun in two places. They're supposed to be silver but it looked so stupid and non-subtle I painted them black instead. You might not notice them in the final pictures but they are there making it look subtely awesome. Finally after all the small touch ups on the paint (which is agonising because you can only do one side at a time) I only needed to give it a varnish coat to protect the paint. Unfortunately I knew nothing about clear-coat spray paint going into this and I seriously fucked it up several times. I didn't take pictures at the time because I was too horrified that I might have permanently ruined the thing I'd been working on for two years, but here are the not one not two but three stupid things I did with the varnish spray. - I freaked out when it wasn't clear. The first time I sprayed it on the spray collected in the thicker places as a white-tinged coat and I was so scared it would dry white that I tried to scrape some off. This stuff is like glue and what I actually succeeded in doing is totally messing up the coat, causing huge wrinkles in it that cracked the paint. I then had to tear off ALL of the clear-coat when it had slightly dried (it was like pulling off rubber), damaging the paint as I went because otherwise it was clear where there used to be a coat and where there wasn't. Had to repaint all those cracks and wrinkles which meant the middle section of one side of the gun is a lot darker than the rest and still cracked if you look closely. - I didn't realise what actually caused the wrinkles the first time was layering on the coat too thickly. If you spray tons and tons of paint on at once it wrinkles up and cracks the paint. I didn't tear it all off this time but did file it down with sandpaper and repaint the affected areas. - If you try and spray the sides it's only going to run down, bead on the bottom side of the gun, and leave you with weird risen bumps on one side. Yep. I kinda sanded those down too, but some are irremovable. So that sucked. Eventually I got it back to a decent clear coat and I'm happy with the finish now, even though I can see where I fucked up with it. Eventually for the sides I just sprayed the paint into a dish and painted with it using a brush. Here are the last pictures of the shiny, shiny gun. Notice the darker middle section in the first picture to see where it cracked up. And also here's one of me holding it to give a size reference. How'd I do Facepunch? [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/5p7fXfc.jpg[/thumb] [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/47emlNA.jpg[/thumb] [thumb]http://i.imgur.com/VY44vKo.jpg[/thumb]
round it off with and angle grinder or belt sander, but overall it's off to a great start!
well, I once glued popsicle sticks together and made a stack of glued popsicle sticks. Checkmate, OP. Seriously, though, this is looks amazing!
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