My first ever gun prop was a success! This was made roughly over a two week period using,
EVA Foam (5mm and 2mm) from CosplayShop.
Contact Cement (glue) also from CosplayShop.
Rubber Tubing from B&Q
Blue Clear File Not exact item (example)
I am so happy with how this prop has turned out and its defiantly my best one yet! I’ve learnt a lot through making this and whats really stuck with me is how useful blueprints are in cosplay. I will be using them for every prop I make from on!
Biggest thank you to Cosplay Amino user Beariore for sending me their blue print they made for their Ana cosplay!
I discussed with Beariore and they’re happy for me to give out the final blueprint that they altered from an Original Blueprint made by u/babomazer by adding line-work, scaling it and converting it to PDF.
Below is the blueprint unscaled.
If you would like the scaled PDF blueprint that I made/used for my cosplay then please contact me via direct message on either Instagram, Twitter or my Facebook page. You can find me @NiverasWings on all of those sites!
The PDF version I used is scaled to best suit my heigh, I’m 5’5. Another important thing to note is that its made for A4 paper as opposed to American letter paper, please keep that in mind before contacting me. I’m very busy at the moment and don’t have time to custom scale this blueprint on request.
Besides! I have a tutorial for doing exactly that using the Biotic rifle as an example, so Check it out!
Construction
I started by scaling and printing out my blueprinted and then taping it together. I taped it using masking tape on the back as it was stronger and not transparent and then for the front I used cello tape as it was transparent and wouldn’t effect any of the lines.
This was then cut up into separate pieces based on how I had decided to construct it. I did this by laying the full pattern out and with a pencil I drew how many layers I’d need for each piece and then divided up the patterns into manageable sizes that would work and fit together well.
I’ve seen the combination of patterns and their sizes done differently from other cosplayers I looked at for reference but this is how I did mine. The red outlines represent the large patterns I cut out first, these we traced to foam and then cut into smaller patterns for internal details.
The layering ranged from one to five layers depending on the area and pattern. For example the cover over the top barrel is just one later of 5mm foam while the butt of the gun is five layers of 5mm foam with an additional two layers of 5mm foam detailing the top triangle.
I’m currently painting the gun but once thats complete I’ll try and add an image here that shows how many layers each section was as well as foam thickness. And if I’m feeling extra kind I’ll outline all of the details I put in too which helped me simplify the design.
I then traced my patterns out onto the foam and cut everything out gluing them together with the contact cement. This was my first time using the contact cement and boy dose it have a strong smell to it!
Work in a well ventilated area or open some windows!! The trick with contact cement is to apply a thin even coat on the contact points (marking these out does help), leave it to dry for two or so minutes and then bind it together. If the glue is slippery and the contact points aren’t sticking you haven’t left it to dry long enough!
And soon enough the base gun was there.
This was when I laid out my mop handles which would form my barrels for the gun later on. This was a huge boost of confidence and gave me an idea of the scale I was working with.
I then drew out an outline of what I wanted dremeled, this was only 0.5cm and I marked along the outside of the foam with a pen to give me an indication of when to stop dremeling. You can vaguely see these markings in the below picture.
This was all glued together with contact cement, I applied it everywhere there might be contact for these pieces as I wanted no chance of it falling to bits.
Next I started adding details on top of this with the 2mm foam and some 5mm foam in places. I used the blueprint as a guide for this.
Next up I added another small layer to the gun extending the pattern down slightly because I trimmed too much earlier in the build
. You can see this gap in earlier pictures. I had to use a little bit of hot glue in the gap just to firmly hold things in place and also ‘fill’ the gap in where it was exposed on the edge.
I also swapped out the foam I planed on using as the pipe for some rubber tubing. Which I think is such an improvement!
Next up I made the canister thing as the bottom of the gun. I used the blue print patterns for this but just made the sides ever so slightly wider so they could be glued at the seams without shrinking in size too much.
There’s air trapped inside it with the smallest hole in the seam so when you squeeze it it makes a hissing sound, I find it wayyyy too entertaining.
This was followed by another ‘mop-up’ (see what I did there mop-up instead of mock-up, I’m hilarious)
This made me so happy!! There was light at the end of the tunnel yet!
I also fixed up the lower barrel mop end with some clay as it broke a little when I stomped on it to free it from the mop…
And somehow it came together and looked pretty damn great!
Next was putting the gun together, because I knew id have to take the gun on the tube I wanted it to be detachable so that I could take it apart to travel on the tube.
Originally I had wanted the gun to assemble with magnets inlaid into the foam for a seamless and sturdy finish. Unfortunately with the con only being two weeks away at this point and me not being able to find magnets in sizes that would fit/strong enough/reasonable price this changed to a good old friend of mine.
No magnets? Industrial velcro it is.
So heres how I attached everything with velcro,
I’ve used coloured outlines which will match the opposite sides of the velcro to each other, hopefully this makes understanding how it was put together easier.
I had a strip of velcro (toothed side) running along the top of the rifle (red). This is where the barrel would connect to.
There was a patch (toothed side) just below that (blue) which is where the cover folds over and connects to.
Then below that on the front of the gun is a circular patch (toothed side) (green) where the lower barrel would attach to.
A close up of the two lower velcro placements can be seen below.
To put it together I would first get the lower barrel and stick it to the main rifle piece using the green velcro patches. The lower barrel piece also has two support beams(? I have no idea what to call them) which can been seen in pink and yellow (both soft side).
When connected through the velcro in green the gun now looks like this.
The next piece is the cover, this is the blue piece that literally just covers part of the barrel which is saw as a great opportunity to use as a weight to keep the barrel in place.
The light blue velcro (soft side) will attach onto the barrel.
The dark blue velcro (soft side) seen previously, will watch onto the base of the gun.
The pink and yellow velcro (toothed side) Which is actually just one strip attach onto the ‘support beams’ mentioned earlier.
Below is a better picture of how it all attaches before being put together.
Watch was my drawing quality takes a turn for the worse.
Are we still following?
Ignore the pink line line with the light blue at the bottom it was a mistake. Basically the cover just folds over connecting with the velcro along the way. The light pink line of velcro (toothed side) on top of the barrel is where the scope will attach later on. Theres a line of velcro (soft side) along the bottom of the barrel which attaches to the line of velcro on the base gun, this is seen in red.
The scope then attaches to the top of the barrel seen as the light pink lie in the previous picture.
Which looks like this! Yay!
And you’re all done!
Finish it off with a shoddy paint job and you’re good to go!
But in all seriousness I love this prop so much its defiantly my favourite to date!
If you want to know how to draw your own prop blueprints (with no fancy photoshop) I have a tutorial all about that Which you can read here! And if you want to know how to scale and print those blueprints I have a another tutorial for that here!
I haven’t posted in a month and I am so sorry about that, it was such a rush to get all this done then I was away at the con wearing Ana and now work is super crazy every night!
I plan on having the last construction post for Ana to be up for next week maybe earlier and then I can start talking about new projects which I been saying I would do for months .. Ha ha.
Anyway back on board with regular posting! I love you all and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask!
Thank you for reading
-Nivera
Nivera Gilbert 