Top: In-game model
Bottom: My prop
Sanding, filling, priming the 3d printed parts.
This is a lot faster and smoother than trying to clay up the entire area
I just used hot glue to quickly put down registration keys and ridges.
First half of cylinder mold.
Cylinder and "power cell" molds.
Main body mold.
To create the mother mold, I just decided to pour about 1/4" of resin on top of the cured silicone.
It's a bit wasteful of the resin, but it's way quicker and more convenient than cutting plexi-glass.
I didn't take a bunch of pics of the steps leading up to the next few pics. I poured the cast solid since it's a thin part, then I tried a few different methods for trying to get the gold in the recessed areas.
In this pic, I think I hand painted gold into the recesses and wiped away the excess. I didn't care for that method so here I'm trying something else. I've masked off the areas that will remain black.
The result is that all the stuff that should be gold is gold, but here I have a giant gold section through the middle that really needs to black. I ended up hand painting the black back over the gold. Since the recesses are so deep, I didn't have to worry about getting black in the gold areas.
This is the cylinder and the cylinder arm. I had the idea to try using rare-earth magnets to hold the cylinder in place that way there would (literally) be some wiggle room when the cylinder swings out to release the power cell.
Some final pics:
