Gunlance Complete

It's finally done..
The Iron Gunlance G!

It's big.

And now, with this, my biggest, most complex, and best looking prop completed.. Let's have a look at how it came to be. This is particularly important for me because this prop was the culmination of everything I've taught myself over these past few years of making costumes and props.
 



In short, this project was powered by math. More so than anything I've ever made, this project could not have come out as good as it did without math. I painstakingly calculated the scale and took measurements of the Gunlance on my PSP screen, careful to make sure that the angle was the same and that I was getting consistent results.

From there, it was just a matter of consistently cutting and piecing together all the necessary parts. During this process, I taught myself something very important that allowed me to shave off several hours of work time: Stop worry about this inner bullshit when you're going to cover it all. There was no need to refine and clean up all the glue and shit when I was going to cover it all in posterboard, primer, and paint.

Keep that in mind.

Anyways, with the main structure of the bodytogether, it was really only a matter of fitting everything together around it. Many mistakes were made and then corrected, and integrated into the final product. Despite my meticulous calculating, I failed to account for certain things, like the height of the body being at an angle, reducing the actual size of it. But, I made it work.

It all came together pretty easily from there. At least, that's how my photos make it look. There was a ton of tweaking, fixing, and reinforcing going on, but I just kind of got it done in bursts. Made a cylinder, chopped it up badly, added the indents for that revolve look.. made another cylinder, shoved it on the back.. reinforced those innards, made some holes.. etc etc.. made a box and slapped it on a tube.. Not much happening..

Then.. BAM!

It kind of came together rather quickly. Also, I started covering the cardboard parts in posterboard, which for me, was just a bunch of old signs from my work. The handguard is actually a plastic display sign for the PSP section, but we didn't have a place to put them, so I took them home and put them to use.


Everything after this first assembly was fine tuning and detailing and painting and magneting..

At this point, I was iffy about gluing certain parts together before I had other parts in order.. There was actually a fair bit on anxiety about that. In fact, there were several points where I thought I had a part done, only to go back and reinforced it, rebuilt it, and then slop more gesso over it.

Hesitation was a bad thing. This thing may have been done much earlier if I weren't so afraid of fucking something up. This last week was a whole lot of, "Screw it, I have the time, I'm not doing anything til tomorrow, and this shit isn't going to paint and seal itself"

But, anyways.. At about this point, my best friend and truest bro came back from college and insisted I come over and we do an old fashioned gettin' shit done cosplay night. So, In about 24 hours time, I made the shield. During that time, we watched numerous Godzilla movies, Mars Attacks, Sin City, and several other great movies.

The shield was pretty easy. I measured it. I cut it out. I added the curves by running a piece of armature wire through a strip of cardboard then gluing it in. Works great, by the way.

By the end of the weekend, the whole thing looked like a shield, but it wasn't ready. I added the trim, the pattern, more reinforcement along the back, and some rivet details once I got home. I used a copious amount of Elmer's glue to seal on the top layer of poserboard, because that was much more cost effective than wasting a ton of hot glue.

Protip: Binder clips are fucking awesome.

From there, more detail work. I added the fancy details to the front of the Gunlance barrel and began on the Bayonet, which was a superb piece of work on my behalf.

The whole thing is cardboard, layered up, 3 layers on each side, then wrapped along the edges in a thinner cardstock, then slathered in hot glue. I laminated it in hot glue to get a texture I accidentally created while working on another prop. When painted, the whole thing has a very rough and bony texture, which was perfect, and I would have never thought to do it if I hadn't accidentally fucked up another prop.

And from there.. All painting. well, painting and making mistakes.. But mostly painting. So much painting. Glopping on gesso like crazy. Gesso, by the way, is a type of primer that can go on pretty thick. It's great for covering up cracks, gaps, and minor errors, and on top of that, can easily be sanded down to smoothness and perfection.

Also, Gesso dries white. So, that's why the whole thing was white for a while.

For the paints, I used Rustoleum Hammered metal. 3 different kinds (a dark grey, a silver, and a bronze) and I carefully mixed and overlayed them. Got a pretty great effect in some areas and it adds to the overall appearance by not being a solid color.

And the last thing to do.. The bayonet. This was completely hand painted. I spent a few hours carefully working out the colors and layering them in some interesting ways... I had no idea what I was doing, but in between dry brushing and wet brushing different colors on, I came out with something awesome.

 Then I hit the whole thing with some sealant and left it to cure over night. I'm really proud of how it looks all together.

 

And that's pretty much the jist of it. I had to oversimplify some parts of the explanation because of the length of this mess,  but if you want to see more in-progress photos you can always check out my Gunlance Progress Photobucket or leave a comment with any questions you have.