Big Fictional Gun Illustrations (Now 45 Illos!)

Nice stuff Hound, and thanks for sharing. I like the designs you've tossed out so far, keep 'em coming.

Here's a retro throwback... a cut down m-16 style assembly (including a standard m-16 receiver group) with a VERY short gas action, folding stock and foregrip.

End result is a gun that looks cute, kicks hard, and shoots fire a good 8 feet in full auto from the unburned powder in each shot.

Yeah nice work there double H. Some good stuff. Now as good as Poutine? Well we can't have all the answers on this earth.

The Seraph of Earth and Stone

Thanks for the comments, crew.

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Progress Level 6 brings us the miniturized grenade... and Olin wasn't content with the small single-shot mini-grenade launcher that became the standard for these 30mm wonders.

Thus... The Olin Assault 30mm

Later designs incorporate a magazine instead of rotary feed, but the versatility of the rotary feed has kept the rotary model in production to this day.

Jason,

E-mail me at jalger At bloodstone-press DOT COM....

BTW, your e-mail address should be easier to find!

These look really stylish. Aside from your good understanding of firearms, what tools do you use, or what is your process? I'm very interested in learning how to do what your doing here.

Aristotle - at first I tried using Adobe Illustrator, but I still can't wrap my head around that program. So instead I went to my old backup vector graphic program - Corel Draw 9.


In Corel Draw, I well... just draw the guns as I want them to look. Most of them are just a series of boxes really, with some minor tweaks.


In some cases, I lay out the original graphic of a gun as a bitmap in the program (especially when drawing guns that I had done before usign photoshop for my cyberpunk website), and draw the vector boxes over the photograph. This helps make sure that certain aspects of the guns in question remain true to the proper sizes and scales of a real firearm. When I don't do this, some of my illos have definite scale problems. For example, look at the latest one (the Olin grenade launcher). Looking at it now, I realize that the Rotary Cassette is too small... after all, those tubes are slightly larger than 30mm in size, makign the grip of the gun REALLY long.


Anyways, once the design is done, I export it as an Adobe Illustrator file (because Photoshop can use illustrator files, but not Corel Draw files), and import it into Photoshop. The key here was learning not to just copy-and-paste the image over, since it would come out at a low DPI instead of the 300 dpi needed for print work.


Once in Photoshop, I drop the gun image onto a file with the already existing background, give it a 3 pixel black 'stroke' and then a drop shadow. Then I save the 300 dpi image, and then make a much smaller copy at 640 pixels wide which I save in jpg format for use here.

The Mark 2 of the Olin Assault incorporates a magazine feed instead of the cylinder feed. The upside is it is MUCH quicker to relead, as a grenadier can carry several pre-loaded magazines. Additionally, the assembly is much thinner than the model 1 with the rotary cassette, making it easier to carry and use. The downside is that the grenadier cannot select from the grenades in the magazine, and must switch magazines based upon the situation, instead of just selecting the appropriate grenade for the job from within the cassette.

The Mark 3 (not pictured here) takes the Mark 2 design, and adds a three-shot burst mode for direct-fire situations.

HellHound said:

Aristotle - at first I tried using Adobe Illustrator, but I still can't wrap my head around that program. So instead I went to my old backup vector graphic program - Corel Draw 9.

Click to expand...

YESS!!! I'm not the only one with that problem ;-)
When i moved from Corel to Adobe i had absolutely no problem wit the transition from Corel Paint to Adobe Photoshop, but from Corel Draw to Illustrator is still a problem, and it's been years since i migrated.

But to be honest, these days i don't draw in vector graphics anymore, now it's not so difficult to work on high resolution images (gotta love a fast cpu and lots of memory).

Excellent illustrations, particularly the Arcadia handguns! My compliments!

HellHound said:

... This series was H&Ks first attempt at a top-mounted helical magazine for their subguns ...

Click to expand...

What does "helical" mean in the context of a firearm magazine? The way the cartridges are arranged? The action of the feed?

(My poor high school physics education, lo those many years ago, left me with little helical knowledge outside of your basic spring.)

Thanks, and thanks for the illustration showcase: you do outstanding work!

Warrior Poet