It's time again for this year's Desert Bus for Hope! If you haven't heard of it, it's a yearly charity event put on by the wonderful people over at Loading Ready Run. It benefits the Child's Play charity, which gives video games and toys to children in hospitals and domestic violence shelters. I am proud to say that this is my second year of donating my work as prizes to be auctioned off. This year, I made a set of props based on the Batman Arkham series of games. Included is a Batarang, Gel Gun and Grapnel Gun. Each prop has is own paint and weathering effect. The batarang has layered paint brushed away using steel wool. This gives it the appearance of having edges made with a grinding stone as seen in Batman Begins. The grapnel gun sees the most wear and tear in Batman's arsenal, so it has dry brushing scratch effects with metallic paint. For the gel gun, green paint and shoe polish are used to add residue from the gel and grime. The props are made primarily of 3D printed PLA plastic. They are coated with an epoxy resin for finish and durability. The gel gun has a glass bottle with a colored glycerine/water mixture as the gel.
First up is the batarang. Layered paint worn down with fine steel wool. It is Rustoleum grey primer and Tamiya Mica Silver underneath with Tamiya Black Metallic on top.
Next up is a redo of one of my first props, the Explosive Gel Gun. I redid the 3d model to incorporate design elements from Arkham Knight. The body of the prop is 3d printed and assembled using Weld On 3. The finished parts were then coated with XTC-3d for durability and finish. The gel chamber is a re-purposed alclad II bottle filled with a dyed water/glycerine mix. Grime effects were done using green paint and black shoe polish. The green paint was applied using a micro brush, and the shoe polish was applied and wiped down using a rag.
Last for the set is the iconic Grapnel Gun. Like the gel gun, the body is 3d printed PLA assembled with Weld On 3 and filled in with Bondo. The handle is painted in matte black and the body is in Metallic black. I used a technique called dry brushing to add the scratches. I used small amounts of Tamiya Mica Silver with an acid brush on all of the corners and lines.
And that's it. Here are a few more pictures of the completed set.
And out the door. Kinda sad to see them go.
