apocalypse – Fampocalypse

Today we’ll be looking at how I created a flame thrower prop. In the wasteland, a good flamer thrower is an invaluable weapon against the horde, but proper flame throwers are hard to come by. But fear not, with a little Macgyvering you can build your own!

While I was perusing a local thrift store, I came across a larger than average caulking gun. It looked pretty old and beat up, and metal. It was a good starting place.

To fill the trough, I needed something that would fit snug and look like it could hold the pressurized fuel. I had a bunch of empty spray paint cans lying around, and they fit snug as a bug. First step was cutting off the top of one. I made sure it was super extra empty so I didn’t get a nasty surprise when I cut into it.

Have you ever wondered what that thing rattling around inside a spray paint can is? Turns out, it’s a marble! When knew?

I cut the top off for 2 reasons. One was so that two cans could fit together, and two was to be able to use the top as the end of the flame thrower. I needed a nozzle for the end, and I happened to have a smart water bottle lying around, and I like the look of the tip.

As providence would have it, the tip fit EXACTLY onto the spray paint can top. It snapped right in. Didn’t need glue or anything. Tender mercies.

Next I wanted to paint the cans to help give them an industrial/dangerous feel. I masked them off with masking tape and then painted them yellow.

For the pilot light, I had a lighter lying around with a bendy neck, like this one:

I took it apart, being careful not to blow myself up. I sanded off some of the black paint, drilled a hole in the caulking gun and attached it with a nut and bolt.

I found a sink hose at a thrift store. There was already a hole in the back of the caulking gun where I removed the plunger thingamajig, so I fed through a bolt and glued it into the end of the hose.

Final Touch was to add some grip tape to the trigger and fore grip, glue in the tanks and nozzle, and give the nozzle a bit of rusty paint, and give the whole thing a touch of dirt. Mutants beware.

So back to the computer. I’ve actually been spending more time on the computer than on costumes. I want to kinda walk through the progression of the background image for this year’s picture, and how it progressed from a concept through completion.

Without further adieu, feast your eyes upon this masterwork of draftsmanship and design. Behold the flowing lines. Marvel at the intricate detail. Feel the warm tones brighten your very soul.

Sorry, I was thinking of something else. This drawing is pretty crappy. BUT. It’s good enough. We see that we have a city street with a bust stop, a broken down car, a lamp post that is covered in vines, and the street is cracked and there is grass and trees taking advantage of said cracks. You will see that that stays pretty consistant throughout. And while the location remains the same, it does end up with quite a different feel than what I originally had in mind.

The “feel” in question I had originally though of as very similar to Fallout. Here’s a promotional image for Fallout 4:

As you can see, the guys at Bethesda are really great at world building. There is tons of detail everywhere, lots of visual story telling, and the world looks very “lived in”. However, it’s all very…. brown. So as I was working on this, I remembered that I hate that about Fallout. It’s great at first, but after you’ve spent 50 hours exploring the wasteland, it starts to wear on you. And as this picture will eventually be hanging on my wall, I’d like something a little more pleasing to the eye. So I decided to go green. I’m so woke.

So with that in mind, here’s the first 3d blockout of the scene, complete with vegitation, including grass, trees, ivy, and ferns. Usually that would be something you add at the end, but since it’s so integral to the feel of the image, I put it in early. If you’ve been following along, you might notice the bus station and street lights I modeled in an earlier post. No textures yet, just getting a feel for the scene. The buildings are mostly just cubes, except for the one on the left, and the skyscrapers, which have a little more detail but are still just placeholder. But I’m liking where this is going.

Now we’ve fleshed things out a bit more. I’ve added some detail to the building on the left, in the form of some stairs and a doorway. I’ve added some ivy to the lamp post on the left. Playing around with the street some more. Still not happy with it. We’ve added a fire hydrant, a swing set and a climby dome thingy, some stop signs, fleshed out some of the buildings some more, added a brick texture to our apartment building. It’s coming along.

I textured another building, a added a different type of tree to the scene, textured some of the car. Added a skeleton to the passenger seat of the car. Things are looking good, but the ground is really still bothering me. The ground is literally half the image, and it’s the closest thing to the camera, so it’s gotta look good. I modeled some clovers, and I felt that was a step in the right direction. Then I was messing around with the texture on the closest chunk of street, and I liked it, but it wasn’t not enough. Something was still wrong.

Luckily I figured it out. So I did some thinking, and I realized that for trees to grow that big in the middle of the street, it would have to be decades after the collapse. in that time, there would be tons of leaves built up with no one to get rid of them. With all that mulch turning into soil, you’d end up with a veritable forest floor. So that’s where I went with it. I looked at lots of reference of hardwood forests, and I came up with something that I’m really happy with. There’s leaves everywhere, clovers, and sarsaparilla, which is that leafy ground cover plant you see everywhere. Now we’re talking.

I decided to go a little darker with the mood by making it overcast, and an angry looking sky. I set up a system that randomly generates the plants at render time. It looks better and is uses significantly less memory. Once I get the photos of us done, I may tweak a few things, depending on the composition turns out, but for now, I’m calling it done. Put a fork in it.

Tag: apocalypse

Flame On

The Digital Backdrop