Home-Made Cowboys and Aliens Gauntlet Weapon
I started working on this piece with only a few screengrabs from the trailer, and a couple of publicity stills that I found on the internet.
I started trying to draw it, but since we were going to make an open version it was just for basic reference when sculpting the gauntlet itself
After a failed attempt at modifying some PVC pipe, I decided we should make an armcast.
last minute supplies on a sunday and poor technique resulted in a less than perfect cast, but I started by pouring some foam around this plaster arm.
the duct tape is covering some thin foam that hopefully will allow me to cut the gauntlet off of the arm
I put the whole thing in a box with the fist end up to puur my foam around
after a few minutes I had this, and began sawing away the excess foam and cardboard
here it is roughly in the shape of a gauntlet
and with a little more detail.
at this point I decided it was too difficult to work with on the arm and cut it into two pieces with a hacksaw to remove from the arm
then I put it back together and started trying to smooth it out with bondo body filler.
after a LOT of sanding and a temporary mold, I decided it was the wrong shape and added a small straight section to make it more oval
then I started woking on the guns
and to take a break we made a holster for the revolver
here some more progress has been made on the gauntlet and I have also created the handle and bottom guns. The right side gun I could not find any reference for, so I had to make it up entirely from shadows that you can see in a few trailer shots.
here was a rough assembly test.
and after a day of detailing, I decided that the guns were ready to mold
here is the molded gauntlet, rotocast in urethane resin so that I could start the final assembly
I put a piece of aluminum inside the handle for strength
and cast one sided hollow guns for the light effects. The bottom is a piece of styrene that I will paint black.
here's a front view of one of the guns. The top detailing is the best I could figure out from the trailer.
It was at about this stage that the Slurpee cup was unveilled. Argh!
here I test the tubes and lenses I made by shining a flashlight through them from the back.
here are the guns and lenses complete. The lenses were clear plastic, maybe polycarbonate, scrap I got from the plastic store. I ground them on a sander until they fit in the ends of the gun tubes.
I wanted to paint a brass color, but had to settle for Rub n Buff gold and silver
another paint test
now the guns are painted and weathered with a little black wash
so I started putting everything together with some superbrite LED's from Sparkfun.com and a blinky LED controller I salvaged out of a toy knock off light saber.
adding the tubes and lenses made a very nice result I think
here it is completely assembled - I added an LED in the handle to make the two dots. It seems like they are there on the real prop - something I noticed in one blurry picture on the web.
for the flat LED's I used a blue bar graph from Sparkfun, sawed them apart and sanded them to different thicknesses before gluing it back together.
here's a night shot
and here are some pics of the final product, all weathered and damaged, ready for Comic Con!
There is a tiny pushbutton switch on the corner of the handle, so my fingers are holding the switch down in these final pics.
here you can see the tiny battery holder inside the gauntlet that I salvaged from the blinky toy.
here is a really short video of the lights
thanks for looking!
-cris
