Evolve: Val's Medgun

This project came as a commission of sorts. It was while I was working at Turtle Rock Studios that I began working on my Dues Ex: Mankind Divided version of Adam Jensen. The biggest problem I had with that costume was my complete lack of sewing skills. I needed to figure out how to make the "shirt" that you can see in the abdomen.

Fortunately, I would meet a fellow artist at Turtle Rock named, Lindsay Meesak Ordnorff . She was also into cosplay and DID have sewing skills. Like expert-level fashion designer skills! 

As it turned out, Lindsay was working on a Val costume and needed a prop of the Med-Gun. I think you can see where I'm going with this. We basically decided that I would make her the med-gun and she would make me my Adam Jensen shirt.

This was right before I got a 3D printer of my own, but co-owner at Turtle Rock had one and was willing to print out the 3D models.

I was given access to the original in-game files (I started at Turtle Rock about a few weeks before Evolve launched). Then I started breaking up the model into printable parts.

These are the only pics of the final med-gun:

(Pull trigger to activate lights and the spinny thing that's in the back cap)

 In-game screenshot:

It's kind of hard to tell but inside the back cap is a disc with holes in it that lights up and spins while the trigger is pulled. I wanted to try to replicate this action...

...So I got a small motor to mount the disc thingie on.

Testing the El tape lighting that would go in the front slotted detail areas.

It spins! Way too fast though. Hmm. TBH I don't remember how I slowed it down.

El tape went in to light up the spinny thing.

And here we go! Prime, fill, sand! 

Gluing the permanently affixed parts.

Front part with El tape wiring ready to be routed.

Developing the trigger mechanism using a microswtich

Lots of wire routing. I left the front part of the gun hollow to house all of it.

This is how I made the electronics accessible.

Some magnets and metal pegs would hold it all together nicely.

Destiny: The Last Word

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.

It was a little wonky setting up the mold for the grip.

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.

 Which ended up working out great.

Some final pics: