#fox's blaster

Fox’s Blaster (Super Smash Bros Ultimate)

This is my first finished prop and I am incredibly proud of it. It is not my first prop because I’ve started a few in the past and just never got around to finishing them either for complications, not enough skill, or just boredom; but it is the first prop I’ve completed. I intend to finish all those other, but I just wanted to ride the motivation for this one and it certainly paid off.

For anyone interested in how I made it, please continue reading.

(Tried to edit which messed up my post so most of the pictures are unreadable. Trying to fix, but connection is shoty. Check out someones reblog to see all)

Step 1: References and Drafting

First I needed to get some reference images for the blaster. Thankfully, Smash Bros has a convenient in-game camera mode so I was able to zoom in and take screenshots of the blaster in any frame of gameplay. 

I briefly considered making the blaster able to open up like in the second image above, but I had no idea how to do that and figured it’d take too long to figure it out, let alone actually make a prop capable of that. So, I decided on a single piece prop with nothing moving. Better to keep things simple when you’re starting out.

Now I had to draft outlines for it. I use Rhino 3D for all of my drafting, whether 2D or 3D.

I imported my reference images and traced them as best I could. Unfortunately, since there’s no option to turn off perspective in Smash, some dimensions were a bit off, but hardly an issue.

Before I went any further, I needed to make sure I had the right scaling, so I made a mock-up. Since I needed the handle to fit my hand, I made it out of layers of PVC foam board and just used cardboard for the rest of the gun.The sizing was actually perfect by coincidence, but I needed to determine the best thickness. I tried out a few thicknesses for the handle with different numbers of layers and found 5 layers of 6mm foam board was perfect. 

Next I made a 3D model to make sure all my dimensions looked right when put together.

Step 2: Materials

Before I did anything to start making the physical prop, I had to plan out all my materials and cuts. I did some adjustments to my traces so that a length wise cross section would fit into several pieces of equal size. Below, to the left of the yellow lines, are one of each kind of cross section I need. There are 7 total layers. The largest pieces are within layers 2-6, comprising the main body of the blaster and part of the handle, as well as support for the laser-sight barrel. After those are the two outer layers for the handle which will have some beveling, and then layers 1 & 7 include a few smaller pieces to add bulk to the two bulging sections at the top of the gun.

The section to the right of the yellow lines are for planning out how many cuts to fit into each board of material (For some reason I doubled a few layers on the right sheet, not sure why).

Materials (everything in the finished product):

6mm PVC foam board (celtec)

1″ PVC pipe

1.5″ PVC pipe

PVC cement

Spray paint

Acrylic paint

Tools and disposable materials:

X-acto knife

Straight-edge of some kind

Sand paper, both fine and course versions

Blue painter’s tape

Brown paper

PVC pipe cutter (any kind of saw will also work)

Thumbtack (or something with a fine point)

Large piece of cardboard (painting surface; can use whatever you don’t mind being spray painted)

I spent some time debating what I wanted the blaster to be primarily made out of. I had worked with PVC foam board before and I knew it was high quality and would provide a good weight to the prop. I also considered EVA foam which I’d just heard about at the time, or just plain cardboard. PVC foam board was the best choice, though I does take a few passes with an X-acto knife to cute through 6mm, but if you’re patient it’s worth it.

Step 3: Cut and Assemble

Now comes the tedious part.

Since I had digital plans I printed out full-scale outlines of each part. I then taped the sheets down on the PVC boards and used a thumbtack to poke the corners of the outlines and leave small impressions in the board. Then with a straight-edge I used my X-acto to connect the dots and cut out each piece.

Below is layer 5, i.e. the middle most piece of the blaster.

The PVC board is pretty dense, which adds to it’s quality, but like I said I had to run through each line several times before cute when all the way through. Do not rush this part. I may have been a bit too anal about it, but I did not want any mistakes at all.

Some pieces required beveling. I do not have any kind of table saw or other tool made specifically for beveling so I did it all by hand with my X-acto knife. This requires even more patience than the last part. Once you cut too much, you can get it back on and look the same. I recommend listening to some music or have a show play in the background, just be careful with the knife and always cut away from yourself.

Once all the board and pipes where cut I cemented everything together. You can see the other parts which have beveling. Again, takes a long time, especially when it’s circular.

What I found is despite my best efforts, not all the parts where exactly aligned and flush with those next to it. this part was 0.5mm too high here. This one was 1mm too thick there. I spent a lot of time sanding everything down so the edges were all aligned. I didn’t get everything perfecting flush due to my limited tools, but I was happy with it. This actually killed two birds with one stone because I would have needed to sand it down anyway so the paint would hold onto it better.

Step 4: Painting

Now for the fun part.

The base of the blaster is black so I can paint the whole thing a black coat, but for the grey on parts like the outer handle I’ll have to tape sections off to protect the black.

As you can see, the only thing I taped off from the black coat was the Star Fox emblem on both sides of the barrel. Since it’s small with lots of curves and made of tape, I had to be delicate with cutting it.

But I think it worked out. Just a little tap residue to wipe off.

The grey was fun because of how I had to weave tape between all the joints and crevices. As you can see, used brown paper and taped that on, rather than cover the whole thing in a layer of tape. Just tape along the edge of the paper and attach.

Lastly, the finer details, i.e. anything orange or blue. I did all these details by hand, again using painter’s tape to make sure my lines were exact. Don’t forget to sand whenever you put on a new layer of paint. I forget to sand for the orange on the picture below the first time and the acrylic ended up peeling off. Sand so the paint can grip onto something rather than a smooth surface.

And voila!

Pretty damn close to Nintendo’s replica (below), don’t you think?

From start to finish, this took me about 2 months in my down time. 1 month drafting and obsessing over how every detail needed to be replicated perfectly, and 1 month of actually building it. I should have paid a little more attention to the spray painting, though. I’ve never spray painted before I had trouble figuring out the right distance to hold the can, and some of the grey paint found it’s way under some edges of the tape, but not a big deal. And maybe some time spent to texture the handle.

Overall, I absolutely love it! It’s got a great weight to it, feels wonderful in my hand. I don’t think I’ll ever cosplay as Fox, but this has been a wonderful use of my down time rather than just web-surfing and video games all the time. I built something with my hands. There’s nothing quite like it.