A friend (and fellow RPF'er Jose Robles ) and I started talking about future build ideas on Facebook one day, and he mentioned he wanted to give Grey Fox a shot. I instantly saw an opportunity to expand on my foam building skill set (I'm terrible at coming up with challenging ideas for my own stuff) so I asked if it would be alright if I gave it a shot for him in exchange for some shout-out style recognition to help build some buzz around my upcoming business, and possibly a few beers the next time we hung out.
Long story short, everyone likes free stuff so a deal was struck. :cheers
He dug up a lot of screen shots and found a picture on Deviant art of a roughed side-view line drawing (Turns out the original artwork is from fellow RPF member Escher. Big thanks to him for that!). Using this to play with I got myself situated in InkScape and vectored the cannon with a little more precision to make it easier for me to understand how it went together...
From here I printed off a 1:1 scale side view on some cardstock, and went to work cutting it into manageable pieces to build. I had a lot of leftover foam and various fiddly bits that needed some purpose, so I went about using up some scrap foam floor mats.
Since this is my first scratch build, the picture above is the product of about 3 different attempts to get it right. Angles and hill/valley cuts don't always make themselves readily known to get clean edges when you don't have a Pep plan to work from...I ended up redoing pieces a few times till I finally had a grasp of working with foam in 3 dimensions from a 2 dimensional drawing. Practice does make perfect...Or in my case...Close enough for government work. Then it was just a matter of cutting out pieces of foam, test fitting them, adjusting where needed, and gluing it up...
Of course, at this stage I couldn't help try it on...You know...Just because...
With the rough shape done, it was time to start adding all the little bits that make it "pop" (hehehehe...get it, pop! Because it's a barrel...Man, I kill me...).
...Then I added some 3mm foamies to fill in the barrel bits (and yes, that's a water bottle cap on the end...Budget build yo!), the rear forearm "shroud", and the clip/magazine/whatsit under the foregrip....
Once I was happy with the overall build, it was time to add some little details with the Dremel and my hot knife.
Next came two coats of Plasti-Dip to seal it up...
Another 2 coats of Rust-oleum Hammered finish gloss black is going on now (You really can't tell there's a difference, otherwise I'd post a picture)...Tomorrow should be a weathering and clear coating kinda day and this bad boy is just about wrapped up...
*********EDIT AND UPDATE***********
Paint and Weathering COMPLETE!
Stage one is just a single pass of gunmetal silver acrylic along all the edges (this also helps hide seam issues if there are any...)
Stage two is going back over all the areas again to bring out the color. I tend to blob mine on and then play around with it with the wrong end of the paint brush in places where it's slightly heavier than everywhere else...
Which gives it this (IMHO) cool effect
Then it's dirt and grime time...I make up my own filth color with yellow, brown, and a metallic black acrylic paint concoction. Swirling it all together makes for some pretty convincing dirty spots. A quick heavy brush-on followed by a wipe down with a clean cloth leaves just enough behind to give it that used and abused feel.
Couple of beauty shots while being worn and static (apologies for the horrible cell phone photos and my kitchen floor back-drop).
In case anyone is wondering, this one weighs in at right around 6lbs ready to wear. The entire body of the cannon is hollow, and I left the end of the barrel removable to add lights or sound if the person wearing it decided they wanted something like that.
Thanks for watching!
Long story short, everyone likes free stuff so a deal was struck. :cheers
He dug up a lot of screen shots and found a picture on Deviant art of a roughed side-view line drawing (Turns out the original artwork is from fellow RPF member Escher. Big thanks to him for that!). Using this to play with I got myself situated in InkScape and vectored the cannon with a little more precision to make it easier for me to understand how it went together...
From here I printed off a 1:1 scale side view on some cardstock, and went to work cutting it into manageable pieces to build. I had a lot of leftover foam and various fiddly bits that needed some purpose, so I went about using up some scrap foam floor mats.
Since this is my first scratch build, the picture above is the product of about 3 different attempts to get it right. Angles and hill/valley cuts don't always make themselves readily known to get clean edges when you don't have a Pep plan to work from...I ended up redoing pieces a few times till I finally had a grasp of working with foam in 3 dimensions from a 2 dimensional drawing. Practice does make perfect...Or in my case...Close enough for government work. Then it was just a matter of cutting out pieces of foam, test fitting them, adjusting where needed, and gluing it up...
Of course, at this stage I couldn't help try it on...You know...Just because...
With the rough shape done, it was time to start adding all the little bits that make it "pop" (hehehehe...get it, pop! Because it's a barrel...Man, I kill me...).
...Then I added some 3mm foamies to fill in the barrel bits (and yes, that's a water bottle cap on the end...Budget build yo!), the rear forearm "shroud", and the clip/magazine/whatsit under the foregrip....
Once I was happy with the overall build, it was time to add some little details with the Dremel and my hot knife.
Next came two coats of Plasti-Dip to seal it up...
Another 2 coats of Rust-oleum Hammered finish gloss black is going on now (You really can't tell there's a difference, otherwise I'd post a picture)...Tomorrow should be a weathering and clear coating kinda day and this bad boy is just about wrapped up...
*********EDIT AND UPDATE***********
Paint and Weathering COMPLETE!
Stage one is just a single pass of gunmetal silver acrylic along all the edges (this also helps hide seam issues if there are any...)
Stage two is going back over all the areas again to bring out the color. I tend to blob mine on and then play around with it with the wrong end of the paint brush in places where it's slightly heavier than everywhere else...
Which gives it this (IMHO) cool effect
Then it's dirt and grime time...I make up my own filth color with yellow, brown, and a metallic black acrylic paint concoction. Swirling it all together makes for some pretty convincing dirty spots. A quick heavy brush-on followed by a wipe down with a clean cloth leaves just enough behind to give it that used and abused feel.
Couple of beauty shots while being worn and static (apologies for the horrible cell phone photos and my kitchen floor back-drop).
In case anyone is wondering, this one weighs in at right around 6lbs ready to wear. The entire body of the cannon is hollow, and I left the end of the barrel removable to add lights or sound if the person wearing it decided they wanted something like that.
Thanks for watching!
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nice job!
