Fallout 3 – Worbla Thermoplastics

This tutorial was shared with us by Chrisx Design and shows the steps she took in creating her Pip Boy 3000.

——————–

In the honor of the new Fallout 4 trailer, here is the tutorial for how I made my Pipboy. Later I also built a Laser Rifle.

I have long wanted to make a pip boy 3000 and suddenly I had an extra smartphone at hand that could be used for this purpose. Also, very fast test makeup of my costume ;)

This is a fast build and some details could have been crafted a little cleaner, but I still love it.

Cardcoard is the way to go
As always I start off with a piece of cardboard as a base.

Where I gradually add strips of foam to create the basic shape, 2mm and 4 mm foam.

Roll it together

To make it more sturdy I covered it with worbla. You can skip this, but it also makes it easier to attach more details later. (If you don’t want to use worbla then cover the entire thing in wood glue to get a less porous surface.

Next up I made a case for the phone.

To get some of the transition shapes I used clay which was later covered with worbla.

With a marker I add the layout of additional details.

A few more details added with worbla and red LED.

As you might see, some of the details are not quite straight, so I used a sharp knife and trimmed the edges.

Also added several screws to bring out a more manufactured look.

Woodglue and gesso is used to even out the surface and prime it for paint.

Silver spray paint

Basic weathering
I used watered out acryllic paint to smear the prop in with. Wipe off the most and the paint will lay naturally in all the cracks. I did not have a photo of this, but here is a photo of me weathering the Easter egg shaped like a pipboy

You have a “clean surface”

You smear it with acrylic pain and wipe it off

No weathering vs all weathering.

In the end it looked like this, better photos will come ;)

This tutorial was shared with us by Chrisx Design and shows the steps she took in creating this awesome large-scale rifle.

I really, really wanted a retro futiristic rifle in my living room and lucky for me Volpin props is sellig blueprints for a Fallout 3 AER9 Laser Rifle. And in my state of sudden nostalgia for the game I really wanted to build one too. And I buildt mine without power tools and mostly out of worbla. But you can also read Volpin Props tutorials on here.

As I had no deadline for this I worked on it randomly, spending almost half a year completeing it. Here is the tutorial for the Pip Boy 3000
I got the blue prints printed to scale. For the lower rod I used a wooden flag pole with different plastic tubes and foam to create the different circumferences.

With foam, foamboard, cardboard and worbla I started the build. This will be the tip of the barel.

Started again with cardboard sandwitched around foam to build up the main shape of the stock.

Cover with worbla to make it more sturdy.

Adding details with worbla

I used different bottle caps as molds for some of the round parts.

Back to the barrel. The innter structure is cardboard and everything is again covered with worbla. It is wasy to attach parts together when everything is worbla as this material sticks very well to itself.

I used foam mats and clay to build up the back part of the barrel.

More small details were added. I used a sharp knife to get clean edges. Small screw were also added to give a more machine produced feel.

The forstock was again built out of foam and covered in worbla. To get the details right I figured it would be easier to build it seperate and then attach it when done.

All parts together, this ended up being quite a large prop.

Even though a worbla covered Laser rifle looks cool (or unique… or boring) I need a little paint. First the entire prop was primed with wood glue. Then I painted the entire gun in a silver base paint.

The barrel was painted green and tubes yellow.

All the base colors are now in place and we are ready for details and all the dirt and grime.