Week 4 Guns

Hooo boy. I am tired from this challenge. Doing guns was a project I've been wanting to do for a number of reasons, so I really wanted to go all out and do my best on this one.

I looked at models of actual guns first, then referenced concept art from Mass Effect, Halo and District 9. It makes me feel bad to reference other concept art, everything I've heard sort of frowns on doing that, but I'm not very familiar with gun design so it seemed like I good way to help me with the approach.

I talked a little about this on my blog, so here are my thoughts on the subject from there:

I wanted to design something futuristic and cool. When I think about guns, I think about them from the standpoint of a player of video games. When I pick up a gun in a game I want it to have that awesome factor. If you use a gun in a game you're usually unleashing some serious righteous (or sometimes senseless) fury down on someone, and the gun should reflect that whether it is a pistol or a shoulder-mounted nuke launcher. Guns should have some menace to them, they're tools for killing. The setting in my mind was future, but nearish future. I figured the sort of person who might use these guns could be military or possibly a freelance professional.

Here are the roughs of the guns that I started with, done in blue pencil:

It's hard for me to retain the feel of clean lines when I scan things in...

While I did use lots of different images as references, I worked hard to make the silhouettes and shapes unique. It was not my intention to copy anyone, I hope that it doesn't look too much like the work of others.

I really wanted to make the images look crisp and refined like the gun concept art I see from professionals, but it was my first time trying it and I obviously have a lot to learn. Here is how it ended up coming out:

Color, texture.

...It doesn't look terrible, but it doesn't look very polished, either. If anything I think I gave the guns too much wear. Also I would like to add numbers and branding to them, but I haven't gotten there yet. Maybe I will come back to it tomorrow.