Build Plans: How to make a big f@%king gun

POSTED BY Erik Beck, 27 August 2007

How to make a big, f@%king gun

by Erik Beck

Hey, everyone, and welcome to the technical blog for Episode #16 (BFG laser). Another awesome viewer submitted request. Send in your laser-filled videos and remember you can submit your project ideas here!

Shopping List

1. Plastic CD rack.
   (This cheap, flimsy thing must have made a horrible CD raft, but it made an awesome frame for our blaster.)
   
   
2. Big and little water bottle.
   (Check out the video, all these plastic water bottles have interesting textures and patterns.)
   
   
3. Two old plastic thermoses.
   (Again, this very cheap, used piece of plastic has cool textures.)
   
   
4. A thermos cap.
   (Or so I think. I saw this orange piece of plastic on the shelf at Urban Ore and thought: "That's the barrel tip of my blaster!")
   
   
5. A slide projector.
   (I used this, because it has a big lens on one end, and I thought it would look cool as a high-tech targeting computer.)
   
   
6. The pistol grip from an old camera.
   (Another lucky find at Urban Ore.)
   
   
7. Spray paint.
   (Silver, black and copper.)
   
   

The gun

This was one of the quickest and most satisfying builds. What I should have done first was attach the pistol grip to the end of the CD rack frame. I foolishly saved this for last, which made it much harder. So the first thing you should do is screw the pistol grip (which already had mount holes) to the frame.

Next, remove all the straps and handles off the water bottles and thermoses. Wipe them down, because glue doesn't work well on dirty surfaces. Flipping the CD rack over, start sticking the bottles in place. Then using A LOT of hot glue, secure the bottles to the frame and each other.

The paint job is very similar to the Jetpack episode. Start with a base coat of silver. Then do a very light, speckled coat of black. This should create a really nice, textured, weathered-metal look; like a real working weapon, as opposed to a super shiny "Star Wars" type weapon. I also painted one of the water bottles and the projector thing copper, then gave it the same light coat of black.

The last step is gluing the remaining water bottle and the "targeting computer" to the top of the blaster.

The bells and whistles

So as I said in the episode, you're going to need more then a hunk of plastic to make a movie. You're going to need some computer graphics. For muzzles, flares and explosions, check out Detonation Films. For lasers, blasts and other fancy moving graphics you really need a program like Apple Motion, Adobe After Effects or Photoshop. There are lots of ways to make lasers; here are a few links I found with helpful tutorials.

Neat film-strip tutorial on using Photoshop for making lasers

Some good stuff over at Creative Cow

Wow, I couldn't find as many laser tutorials as I thought. I'll keep looking and add them above, but we just might have to buckle down and make a Weekend Extra on Lasers. If you know how to make lasers why not make a video tutorial and send it in. You'll get "mad Indy Mogul cred!"

Check out this build in action, from Episode 16 of Backyard FX