Very surprised that (after mentioning our costumes where from Fallout) Michael Hogan remembered being the voice of the guy who starts you off in Fallout New Vegas.
Victory at 1:30 in the morning!
All I’m missing from the Pimp-Boy 3 Billion are the gemstones and meter that I will have to apply later today. Might need to touch up the paint in a few spots, I honestly didn’t check.
The wiring going to the 9v battery was shorting out and it took me an hour to troubleshoot and fix it. Work is gonna suck so bad today. I’ve functioned on 4 hours of sleep before, though… It’s just been a while.
Anyway, better pics to come once I fully wake up.
I reblogged this picture back in June, and found out recently through my friends at Multi-Pass Productions that I can get this exact helmet from the guy who casts them.
Come February, I will have it and can begin work on an NCR Veteran Ranger costume!
Check out this tutorial from my friends at Multi-Pass Productions on how to make a Rebar Club prop from Fallout: New Vegas!
Also check them out at www.facebook.com/MultiPassProductions
Vault Dwellers unite! Geek Media Expo in Franklin, TN - 10/27/12.
I’d seen pictures of Chris & Amy’s Vault suits online and from a distance at DragonCon and AdventureCon, but never gotten to talk to them until GMX. Their suits are absolutely amazing, and they are both super cool people!
Chris made a badass shish kebob that I am really jealous of. Every detail of it is exactly how I had planned out in my mind to do one. I didn’t carry my sniper rifle in because the crowds were a little tightly packed, and big props seemed to just be getting in the way. Plus the guys doing weapons checking were taking forever and had no clue how to peace-bond weapons. They put about three or four on my scoped magnum, to which I went to the bathroom and snipped all but one.
Check out more from my fellow vault dwellers here:
How to make a Fallout sniper rifle prop gun for about $30!
While I at Dragon*Con, I met some great folks named Fran & Collin (tumblr users woggywoowoo & hobomechanist) dressed as NCR rangers. Fran had a sniper rifle that looked very spot on to a Fallout rifle, and was kind enough to pass on what she made it from and where she got the base gun.
So I got a Jakks Pacific Max Force Shadow Hawk 100 on amazon.com for about $25 shipped:
Oooh, it even comes with free safety glasses.
After analyzing the picture I took with hers at Dragon*Con:
I saw to cut off the top and bottom pieces on the barrel. I used my Dremel to cut those off, filled the bottom holes smoothly with Kwik Plastik, and again used my Dremel to buff off any text that was visible on the gun. I then glued the sumbitch together (it comes in three sections).
Next, I spray primed it with flat black (use whatever $1 can Home Depot/Lowe’s sell) a few times, then hit it with spray silver metallic paint (the good $4 Krylon stuff), and then hit it thoroughly with the cheap flat black spray paint again.
The multiple paint layers are necessary because next I used a $2 sanding block (the one that has coarse to fine all around it) and went crazy on it. I did it the same way I did the scoped pistol I sanded on (but it was already painted at the factory). This gives it that great worn out look.
Be sure not to sand too hard or too much, or orange and white will show through. This did happen to me, but I just used some acrylic flat black to touch up those spots (it doesn’t have to look neat and perfect since you are wearing it out to look post-apocalyptic).
For the final touch I added a small strip of old silver duct tape (that I yet again hit with the sanding block severely) to cover the etched in directional arrows instructing how to put the gun together, and then used some Fuller’s Earth to dirty the gun.
You can get Fuller’s for $12 on eBay ( http://r.ebay.com/cJQWKF ) and that much will get you WAY more than you could need for even two full costumes with guns).
This stuff is great to dirty up your entire Fallout costume… it is the same thing most Mad Max and Sandtrooper cosplayers use. You can create a combo mixture of all three colors for some great dinginess. My brother Jeff has Sandtrooper armor, and told me this trick: spray whatever you want to coat with hairspray (not spray adhesive, because it will forever be sticky) and then blow, sprinkle, or rub on the Fuller’s. You can get a lot of different textures out of this stuff, and when you get each part how you want it, hit it with more hair spray to seal it up. The next day I came home to find all the dirtiness was solid and would not come off on me.
I’m very pleased with how this prop turned out. Thanks to everyone who showed me how to make it along the way, and I hope this gives people some ideas on how to make Fallout rifles easily and on a budget! This will be my prop to carry around GMX this weekend.
I am still compiling info and pictures for a PipBoy build post. Only thing that sucks is that I didn’t take progress pictures, so I might just make another for it.
If you have any questions feel free to message me!
Fallout at Dragon*Con
At 2011 Dragon*Con, I hardly saw any Fallout costumes.
At 2012 Dragon*Con, the few Fallout costumers I met were pretty frickin’ awesome, but none knew of a Fallout meetup of any kind. I saw many others when not in my own Fallout costume that looked amazing too.
I’d love to see dozens of vault dwellers, a full gang of Tunnel Snakes, NCR rangers, Legion armies, a full Brotherhood of Steel lineup, and tons of raiders, all in one area.
How do you go about making a semi-formal con meetup for photos, fellowship, and shop talk?
Where does one even begin?
UPDATE:
I guess next year I will just try to reach out to all the nice folks I’ve met at DragonCon and on Tumblr and try to schedule a convenient time for everyone to meet. This was my first year for costuming at DragonCon, and it made the experience so much cooler (technically it was a lot warmer, but ya know).
So after I made a few iPhone 4S cases, I decided to try my luck at selling one on eBay to hopefully raise some gas money for the trip to DragonCon next week!
Plus I wanted to be make my favorite iPhone case available to the rest of the world. This is exactly like the iPhone case I’ll be carrying while in my Lone Wanderer costume.
Click the picture to go to the auction for a very limited Fallout Vault Tec iPhone 4/4S case from Viva Las Segas!
Close-up of my Pip-Boy 3000 replica. Took me about a month total (after work & weekends) to get as far as I did on it last year before Halloween. I am currently working to add LEDs to the front, and a working knob as well.
If anyone out there is interested in constructing one, I am totally willing to help with whatever advice you may want. I would also appreciate any prop-building tips!
I just want to get it looking good for Dragon*Con. Anybody out there going this year?
