Destiny - Hunter's Knife - Final Update

Hey Folks,


Here's the conclusion of the Hunter Knife build from Destiny

So it's come time to paint. This is were I have the least amount of experience with prop making, being so relatively new to the scene, I've only had the opportunity to paint several pieces. I used to do some model painting for Warhammer 40K, but that knowledge has long since passed, it's been ages.

Let me first discuss what I'm using. With this piece I wanted to get it as close to my reference image as I could, but still wanted it to pop, so painting a myriad of grays was a thought, but metallic is always nicer. I had thought about going the flat black route, but at that point much of the detail gets lost. I found this nice metallic spray paint (pictured left most) at my local Home Depot, but it was just a little bit too light for my liking. I stopped by Michael's to grab some random bits and bops, and saw what I thought was a nicer silver spray paint (second from the left), but it turned out to be a transparent black. This was perfect because I could get my nice metallic color and effectively blacken it to the darkness I preferred. I bought some generic Matte clear, because I'm not a huge fan of gloss and a blade that's been 'used' typically isn't new and shiny. The last two are acrylic paints and these will be used to Weather the blade once the major painting is done.

I should mention that in this post, I will also discuss the way I created the wrap for the handle, but that will be after the paint, so it may be a little lengthy like the previous article.

Unfortunately, I don't have a nice spray booth or area were I can really set one up, so for this piece I hung it from my garage door by a coat hanger to do most of the major painting. (picture of the set-up is above).

So as before, before I casted the piece it went into primer. So this is the original cast now in primer, lightly sanded and ready for the first coat. I'm not too particularly careful with painting this as the haphazardness lends itself well to the overall weathered feel of the blade, so if a little shows though, that's cool.

Here's a close up detail shot of the color that the metallic spray paint produces against a gray primer. Pretty rad in my opinion.

So after some transparent black, this is the darkness I was really looking for. It's still got the metallic sheen, but it not 'new'.

Weathering was the next step, and to be honest this is the first time I've tried it, so I had some mixed results. I started with the silver acrylic and applied a layer on the blade side to show that the blade had been used so the black was worn off. (this is common with guns that are blued, the wear parts show through to bare metal) With a basic bit of silver on the piece, I added some around the finger grooves and then switched to the black acrylics to add a depth of grime to the piece.

You can see this grime very nicely in the photo below.  Although not photographed in the original paint line-up. I also used some primary color acrylics (red, blue, yellow) to make a rust color and sorta patina'd the blade towards the middle. I think for the first time It came out pretty good. Most of the paint was applied with a paper towel by blotting it on. excess was removed with a wet cloth. I did try to use a fine paint brush, but it developed too much of a hard edge. So I assume with practice I'll be able to do more with that later. After I had the weathering where I liked it, I used a matte clear to seal in the detail, if you will. I only used one coat, but I believe I will shoot another over the wrap and final detail work tomorrow.

Finally, the hand grip. On my reference image the material was pretty difficult to pinpoint for me, it seemed like thin strips of ace bandages, but my dad was looking at it one night and came up with a great idea to use flat shoe laces. I purchased a 72 in pack of generic black probably 1/4 in wide shoe laces. Cut one of the pointy ends off and sealed it with super glue. Wrapped the handle for the desired effect and weathered it with paint, using the same techniques this time primarily with a mixture of silver blue and black.

To be honest the above picture does not do this piece justice, when I get around to setting up an area to photograph my work I will reupdate it, this piece came out great! I added a little bit more black to the destiny logo to give it more pop and viola.

I hope you guys have enjoyed this build, it's been a lot of fun to do, and I've learned a lot along the way.

As always if you have any questions, feel free to ask, I would also love to hear any feedback.

Cheers,
Kevin