Optimus Prime Ion Blaster
In early 2012 my friend Rose once again approached me to make her something. This time she wanted a replica of Optimus Prime's Ion Blaster from Transformers Generation 1. It would be a more human-scale verions as a 1:1 scale would be over 10 feet long. It also needed to break down for transport as she intended to take it with her to Botcon at the end of april.
As usual when it comes to props based on a cartoon show the details of the gun change every time it's shown. To start out Rose drew me a basic design with the features she wanted that I could scale from.
Once we had some measurements worked out I went to the hardware store to look at PVC fittings. The sizes of available fittings are what really dictated the overall size of the gun. As it is it wound up being a bit larger than I wanted but I was stuck with what was available. $75 of tubes, couplers, reducers and adapters later and I had the basic parts.
I split the tube portion of the gun into three sections with reducer couplings making them seperable. The rear section had an indent part cutout with a chopsaw. All sections were glued together with PVC glue. Rounded edges were added with Bondo and sanded down. Once the seems were smoothed out the whole thing got a coat of black spraypaint.
The boxy details were built from foamcore then clad in thin styrene. A handle was cut from a piece of wood, clad in stryene and then bolted onto the barrel.
Everything got a coat of black spray paint, then a coat of satin black followed by a satin clear coat.
Pics from the convention, that's Dan Gilvezan the original voice of Bumblebee!
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