10 August 2014

Jean Vingeanne - Intermezzo: The Gun

As some of you might have gathered from the postings to-date, the gun is arguably the most pro- blematic aspect of this kit. I am completely on-board with the fact that this is an alien trapped sometime at the turn of the 19th c.; but unless his weapon is some sort of field-issue for alien SR teams made to appear like an Earth weapon, then we are faced with serious problems. Before listing the perceived issues, I would point out that this problem arose in the design of the model, not in the source illustration.

In no particular order. . .
  • The length of the gun. While Watt's gun is admittedly over-sized, it is still plausible. The hyper-exaggerated length of the kit weapon is problematic in any number of ways:
    • implausible
    • distracting
    • potential production issues
    • etc.
  • The lock. This is where everything goes wonky: 
    • The lock is on the left side of the gun. To quote Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny: "Oh yeah. . . you blend!"
    • At first glance, it appears to be a some sort of flintlock--but with no flint, no jaws, no pan. The original design is more suggestive of an early caplock, but little if any of this was translated in the 3d rendering.
    • The lock appears top be bolted to a sheet of . . . sheet of what???--; not inset in the stock itself.
  • In the interest of complete candor, the barrel is obviously hemispherical. Hopefully, enough diversionary details and paint can camouflage this "eyesore"; but there was/is no way I was/am going to rebuild the entire gun!
I will hopefully be able to "illustrate" the corrective work done to bring this firearm "down to Earth"!

No comments:

Post a Comment