Destiny: Dreg's Promise

I made Dreg's Promise on sort of  a whim. I always like the "sidearm" in-game even though it wasn't super-effective in PvP! I just always thought that it would look super-cool in real-life, prop form.

I decided to start 3D modeling it and see where it took me.

A few beauty shots. I need to re-photoshop these. They're way too sharp. Eck!

Screenshot from in-game:

 

I saved tons of time and effort by starting the modeling process by using Destiny STL Generator which is a fantastic site that pulls all the low-poly models from the Destiny Armory website (now gone because Destiny2!), and spits them out in STL format. 

The great thing about starting with a low-detail version is that all the (official/accurate) proportions are already figured out. It took many many hours to get all the proportions of Hawkmoon and Monte Carlo correct before I could even start creating the details.

Here's the low-poly model from Destiny STL Generator  You can see how unrefined and low-detail it is

(Shaded)

(Wireframe)

And here is my finished, high-poly model. I basically re-modeled each part with much greater detail:

(Shaded)

You can see how much denser the mesh is here:
(Wireframe)

Next of course, came the 3D printing. This is the only pic I took of the Dreg's Promise parts. You may also notice the printed parts of Bolt-Caster sword which I still haven't touched (9/6/17)

 

Stop me if you've heard this before (lol), but I didn't take many pictures while I was working on it.

 I will say though, that there's not much to see while I'm filling, priming, sanding. I think everyone kind of gets that part right? I basically only took pics of the pertinent parts of construction. I've saved you time essentially! You're welcome! Though if you're reading this I'm most definitely taking up more of your time than if had I just posted loads of pics you could scroll through. Haha.

Here I wanted to be able to pop these more intricate and delicate parts on and off as I built the gun. This helped just get these parts out of the way when rough fitting and painting the parts later.

It may seem a bit convoluted, but I used the drill press to ensure that the screw head went into the cap perfectly straight and perpendicular. It paid off because this bolt screw thingie here lies up perfectly and screws in straight!

At this stage I had to figure out how to make a mechanism to release and catch the front end of the gun when "reloading"

 

I picked a discreet place for the button (at the top of the grip just under an overhang), and started improvising from there. It ended up working pretty well. The tough part was making sure the button-press action through the horizontal rod translated through the vertical rod sufficiently enough to hold the barrel assembly in place.

 

Instead of 3d printing 8 of these spike thingies, I just made a mold of two of them. 

 

Finding the right colors ended up being quite a challenge. I ended up using acetone several times to wipe off entire paint coats to start over on the big barrel cover part (seen near top of this pic below) 

After many paint tests, I ended up with two orange shades. The base coat was a more saturated orange, and the top coat was a duller orange.
After the base coat dried, I sprayed the duller orange over top of it and dried it with a hair dryer. Next I rubbed off the dull orange in some of the high spots and areas that would be prone to wear.

It's clear from the reference images that the base color of the gun is a dark brown and the orange was painted on top of that. Rather than doing a lot of time-consuming masking with tape or mustard, I just painted the dark brown on top, going into all the panel lines and crevices as well as created some scratches and paint chips.-This is more clear in the final images farther below.

 

First shot of completed Dreg's Promise

This prop I think is my favorite so far. It just looks so cool to see this alien gun in real life!
It was a real hit when I brought it in to display at work and when I posted that first image (on the bench) to Twitter. I got so many followers and likes. It was really bizarre. I barely made a dent on Twitter with Adam Jensen! I honestly don't get it.

The unfortunate thing is that this is a one-off 3D print. I can't make more of these unless I do what I did with Monte Carlo and tear this a part to make molds. After writing up this post (many months after actually completing the gun), I'm kinda motivated to do so. We'll see I guess!