How I Build Things

Adding effects to someone else's prop:

So I was at a build party. I was introduced to

Britfang Cosplay. He makes AMAZING outfits. They all look incredible. He can take $10 of stuff and make it look like millions. It boggles my mind. Anyway he made a Rocket Raccoon outfit. And he was making ALL the guns. I saw one. I think he mentioned it would be cool if it could look like it was shooting plasma. Ok. I can do that. I thought about it for a few days. I messaged his wife to see if it would be ok to ask him. I wasn't sure how someone else would take it. His wife, who is also awesome, said YES. So I asked him, he said YES. So more messenging, links, planning. I have what you see below.

The gun is MASSIVE. The green thing is a 1 foot ruler for scale. This is the biggest prop I have ever worked with. And I get to do stuff to it. So before I started anything I actually had the owner (Britfang) pose with it. I wanted to see how would he use it. What areas will be totally exposed, and what area will be totally invisible. Basically where can I hide stuff. Also He wears gloves with this outfit. Really nice gloves. I was allowed to borrow one. So I can make sure I can manipulate it, or basically turn the lights and fans on and off.

I started by carving out the area I thought I would need.

I then painted that area black with some poster paint. The foam is green, and I din't want any green showing. So lots of poster paint.

I painted the switch I had to get up with Hugo to get the color exact. The below switch is a DPST switch. Basically with 1 flick of the switch it can run 2 separate circuits. Which is good because the fan wants 6 volts. And I am afraid that many volts will burn out the LED's.

I painted the wires.

Below is my test of the wire routing. The way this person poses with the gun you don't see the right side of the gun. So I cluttered that side up with wires.

I made a little mount for the lights. Basically 2 led assemblies from flashlights. I wired them up in parallel. They were built to run of 3 AAA's. I ran them off 2 AA's.

I then carved out even more of the gun to make the fan fit. This is a fan from a r400 ibm laptop (fru # 45N6140) . It is fairly quiet. I think in the noisiness of a convention, it will be fine. It puts out a lot of air.

Here is how everything looks jammed in

I don't know if the photoexplains it well. But I hid 6 AA's in the 'hand shroud' of the gun. The batteries are right where the hand hold the gun, so it balances well.