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Hypercats — Strange Futuristic Sci-fi blaster
Published: 2012-11-30 01:15:33 +0000 UTC; Views: 2971; Favourites: 28; Downloads: 28
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Description
My wife wanted a gun to carry around this weekend for Teslacon, but her costume is more cyberpunk than teslapunk and she wanted something brighter and more future-y. I painted this one in an afternoon with some rattle can bumper chrome and Krylon X Metals. Good stuff, but it goes on really spotty.
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Comments: 30
It's true, it does loo like a fishing lure, but it also looks to me like a combination of that, some fancy sportscar, and Deckard's car from Blade Runner merged into the form of a small gun. Pretty cool in my opinion.
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Thanks! Making it a Blade Runner spinner would be a pretty crazy mod!
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NOW you tell me! I have a sheet of stick on faux "rivet heads" and could have easily done this gun in iron, blue steel, and rust colors and made something more industrial.
Welp, now I know what I'll be doing with the next Dart Tag gun that I find. 
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You're welcome, it was a pleasure to contribute to the fantasies of someone
Anyway, I like your blaster C:
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I'm usually not a big fan of NERFs, but this paintjob is done AWESOME.
I like especially how you managed to flash out the mesh textures on the grip and frontend.
Chapeaux!
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Thanks! This whole series of "dart tag" guns have a lot of potential if you know how to bring out the qualities and little details of the original. Take a look at my favorites, there's 3 other Nerf Dart Tag guns that were done by other people that turned out really well.
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You are quit right. Basically those NERFs are a cool thing.
However my resentiment feelings towards them might come from being sick of people defining themselves as steampunk via there NERF Mavericks.
Everyone has to have a Maverick poured over with golden paint to be steampunk. Although there are of course also quite some masterfully modded Steampunk Mavericks out there, I still felt repelled by the general mass (ab)use of this NERF as defining Steampunk, while there can be so much more.
But, thanks to you, I might get over my NERFophobia ending up modding one myself. Especially the speedswarm you used, would fit very well to a future costume project I have in mind.
Maybe you could answer me two questions concerning this:
1. Did you flash out the mesh structure in the grip and infront via drybrushing or did you use another technic?
2. Are those side plates (your pink/blue parts, orange in the original) removable separatly and if yes, is the structure seeming to continue underneath those plates really molded there?
Thank you very much for your help and inspiration!
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I just got back from Teslacon, where the attendance was 1400 people ALL in full costume. I did see a lot of Mavericks, I saw some shitty ones and some good ones (got some great ideas too!). I used to really hate them, but I now have mixed thoughts about Mavericks.
Yes, it's the "Sidearm of Choice" for steampunk, but it's also a very solid blank canvas to be creative. I saw some that had fancy electronics, vacuum tubes, wires, and power boxes. I saw some that were just holstered as a sidearm. As much as I hate seeing every steampunk costume with a Maverick, I also have to recognize that it's become iconic and synonymous with steampunk the way Light Sabers, Sonic Screwdrivers, and Proton Packs are with their respective IPs.
That doesn't mean that every single one you see is going to be customized to not look like garbage. I saw a Longstrike that was literally just copper and gold paint and just looked like a stupid blur of orange and yellow
I want to make tons of parts for customizing Nerf guns. Barrel attachments, scopes, slides, adapters, ironsights, tesla coils, vacuum tubes, etc. From a business standpoint, the Maverick is a good gun to make a full assortment of accessories for, since it's 1)stupidly common 2)stupidly cheap 3)compact enough to holster 4)profile-neutral enough to drastically change with added parts. I think the Strongarm is going to seriously replace the Maverick as far as HvZ and people actually using it as a Nerf gun, but that'll either drive the price of used Mavericks down even lower, or make them more available as a "cheap HvZ starter gun". Either way, they're probalby not going away, they're just being moved from one demographic to another. It's hard to tell if there's actually much of a market for Maverick parts though. I saw a quite a few dealers at Teslacon selling painted, unmodded Mavericks, so I know there's a huge supply of painted ones, but not much demand.
Personally, I'd prefer to have a box of 15 Recons than 15 Mavericks. It's a more neutral shape, and more accessory-ready right out of the box. The Mavericks are great for Steampunk because of their size and the cylinder, but that's about it. Recons are great for pretty much anything. I like how some of the new N-Strike elite look, but I don't see a steampunk application for them yet. They're more future-tech.
Question answering!
1. I took some metallic blue testors paint and did a heavy drybrush to make the mesh hexagon pattern pop out more. The brush was pretty much parallel with the surface and I just lightly pressed the paint onto it, being careful not to get any on the lower surface.
2. The blue/purple/silver shell is separate parts, and were yellow plastic on the original. I didn't take this one apart, it was a quick paintjob for personal use, but I'm sure that they come off if you want to completely strip your gun down to it's parts.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
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Sorry for the delayed response. But I didn't wanted to just send a quick note after your long response.
Nice to hear, that I'm not the only one not being fond of all those "steampunk" Mavericks.
I really laughed reading your description of the Longstrike you saw. It reminded me of a Maverick from a friend, who didn't do it himself but let a "friend" paint it for him. He even paid him 25 Euros for the job! And well, what should I say... it had the same "cool paintjob" as the Longstrike you described.
Best of all: I met that "friend" afterwards on the Con and he, seeing my stuff (and this was only my first 1.0 version), went quite pale and asked me if I do comissions..
But of course you are right. From a simple salespoint the Maverick would be a perfect starters to get a business of cool mods and upgrades for NERFs running, because the points considering the Maverick you already mentioned and because there are already enough people out there wanting to be Steampunk but via the shortcut of simply buying the finished stuff.
At least I can't count the times I was asked at Conventions by people "where can I buy this or that gadget that you are wearing".
Well, what a disappointment to them, when I've told them that it is all made by myself and they have to do it as well...
At least for me, this is one of the basic spirits behind steampunk, doing it yourself and producing unique stuff. Even if you don't feel that you have the craftsmanship for it, try it anyway. Although I'm talking bad about those Mavericks, I still do prefer to see a bad selfmade item than a flawless massproduced bought one.
And besides, no one was ever born as a finished master.
Yes, the Recon is definitly more neutral, but you are right, they feel a bit more modern than Steampunk. However, I'm sure even a Recon can be turned steamy. I.e. I think the main squarish body of it could probably do good as something in an old powerhouse style.
Btw, I couldn't stop thinking about your speedswarm and I really think I will do it as my first NERF project as it really fits perfectly in style to one of my future steampunk costumes. Bad thing is, this costume is momentarely at the bottom of my list not planned before 2014. Restraining myself so long concerning the Speedswarm will be now really really hard... damn you!
And thank you very much for answering my questions. You were most helpful.
And I have another one:
what kind of paint did you use for the used-look metallic and brass parts?
So much for now.
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Yeah I'm pretty impressed with the Steampunk community, there was some seriously advanced stuff at Teslacon. Here's some photos:
[link]
[link]
We figured "okay, 1400 people, maybe a few hundred will be in costume, let's just throw together something in a few days and check it out". Nope. Everybody was in costume and the majority of it was pretty high quality. I talked to this guy Jake for a long time though, it was his first con of any kind and he came with some friends who had intricate costumes. [link] He said he just threw some stuff together because he didn't have anything fancy. He LOVED the gun though. This is probably the type of people I'd be trying to market to - entry level and intermediate people who want starter guns, have a fancy costume planned but don't have time to make a gun, or want to make their own gun but want to buy the parts from me. It really is a strong DIY culture, but not everyone can make every aspect of their costume.
I also had an idea for the Speedswarm and Swarmfire tonight: buy some pinstriping brushes, paint it flat black, and put some nice red pinstripe details on it.
The metallic paints I use are Testors model paints. I like how the metals are kind of flat, have a lot of pigment, and drybrush easily. The metallic underneath the blue/purple is Plastikote Bumper Chrome because I ran out of Rustoleum metallic silver and had a full can of Bumper Chrome to use up.
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Woah. The pics of the Teslacon were really fascinating. Never have I seen so many Steampunks around!
Well, I guess in the US there is much more base and a bigger convention culture in general than around here.
Yes, as I said, I do believe there is quite a market for such things out there.
I.e. I just saw this weekend on a small scene market (goth/steam) a Maverick (what else? ) simply painted in brass, copper and iron (not very well done, we would have sorted it immediatly into the "shitty" folder I guess 
Thanks for the hint with the colors you used.
I just found a picture showing the yellow shields on the swarmfire removed, showing that there are large cutouts in the shell below, meaning, I will have to sculpt some of it new, but also offering the opportunity to show some inner mechanics through.
Well, we'll see...
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Good luck with that Firefly! Let me know if you have any more questions.
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Thanks for your help so far.
Will do.
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So we took it to the convention tonight, and we're totally convinced that two of them glued together would make an awesome little Halo 3 Needler. I want to try it now!
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I would need to look at them together before I could say that just cause of the profile of the needler is not exactly 2 guns connected like that. I am interested to see what you come up with though.
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No, it's not a perfect replica, but Nerf guns usually aren't. Just having the colors and the shape at the con was enough for people to say "yeah that DOES kind of look like a needler". Usually at cons, people don't have the reference art on hand to make comparisons. :3
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True but when you mentioned it to me I did look at it and could not see how two of them could work and when I did look up a ref picture the profile would not be perfect for one (which I think is more doable)much less for two connected. Again would love to see how you do it though. Maybe I am wrong and it will turn out great. But right now I do not see it personally. You have done great jobs with replicating some video game props already so it makes me wonder what you will do.
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not a bad looking painted gun
the spotty thing is the rattle cat nozles there crap
its better is you can use a spary gun to put the paint down even if you have to cut the can open its worth it just to get the better finish
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I totally agree, the blue and purple were different brands of spray paint with different nozzles. The purple went on as a more even mist and allowed me to make a more even gradient color. The blue came out more like big drops. But since the blue is what I use on the tediore, unless I want to switch to a lighter blue auto body rattle can, I have to learn to make it work for me.
I really didn't have any direction or goal for this gun, the wife picked out the gun and said "paint it to look like future cyberpunk". I still think it looks like either a ghetto fabulous hair dryer, or a fishing lure. :3
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it dont matter what u think of it as long as the boss likes it
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Exactly! She loves it. I don't know if it'll look good in photos, but it'll look interesting which I think is more important for driving traffic to the hypercats website. Especially if every other gun at the convention is a copper painted Maverick.
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I thought it was a fish at first in the thumbnail. Really pretty though
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I know! It looks like a fishing lure! RAPALA Edition Nerf Blaster! I should draw a big eye on it.
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hahaha big googly eyes.
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