Saturday, February 1, 2014

Destiny: Ghost


As with the Thorn hand cannon, I took the finished-out 3D printed version and created molds.










Pulling a cast of the Ghost proved to be quite tricky. There were many failed pulls, but eventually I got the method down. It's still tricky, but I know how to do it. I made a video showing how I slush cast the Ghost here:











Initially, I thought I would hold the two ghost halves together with pegs and holes. I needed something where I could open and close it so I could install the electronics.This didn't work because the pegs ended up being too weak.




I ended up using some rare-earth magnets. This works great, but watch your fingers when you're closing the halves it'll snap'em pretty hard.







Here, I've started working on the electronics. After I tried a few different ideas with various LEDs, I ended up using a cheap 9-LED flashlight and hack-sawing the top off. In the picture below you can see the orange-aluminum flash-light top and the blue lighting gel I use to turn the light blue.




I used a piece of lexan plastic for the "lens" and I had some vinyl stickers cut for the shape of the occulus.



Here's the flash-light top.




Here, I have it all wired up with a toggle switch which I will mount on the back half of the Ghost.





The 9-LED flash-light ended up being blindingly bright which is cool, but not very practical. I ended up placing some light-diffusing sheets between the "lens" and the blue gel...



...which toned it down to acceptable levels.

I also made an "Intrusion Ghost" variant:


Here's the whole family, including the ghost that comes with the Ghost Edition of Destiny.
The ghost edition ghost is a bit smaller. It's kind of like comparing a baseball to a softball. I feel like the scale I chose is closer to what it looks like in the game.