Nerf Gun Mod: The Mass Effect Paint Job

This off-brand Nerf Gun was given to me just in time to paint for a Mass Effect costume.

There were a few things that I wanted out of the gate. I already had a color scheme to follow from the rest of the armor and that I wanted a 'just out of the fray' style of wear and tear. And lastly, I didn't like the moving clip of the gun, mostly because it stopped working correctly and kept falling back to neutral. I started by taking out all of the mechanics of the gun and discarding them since I wasn't going for a functional gun. Then I primed them with a plastic spray primer.

Then I taped off the main body of the gun and sprayed it 'smoke grey.' The spray job isn't the best because it isn't a plastic paint, but the weathering later will cover it up. It actually gave me a good guide to where the weathering should be.

I used normal acrylic black, cobalt, and white paints for the rest of the base color. I don't like buying grey acrylic since I can mix any shade with black and white. There are still spots of primer showing that will be covered in the weathering stage.

To weather this gun, I used a wash of black and a little brown. Dirt and grime isn't just black. For this heavily used theme, just brush the wash on and wipe it off with a rag or paper towel after a few seconds. What is still in the nooks and crannies is your dirt. This is a comparison of a washed half and an unwashed half.

All of the gun is washed at this point.

After the wash, I use silver enamel paint with a dry brush to paint on where the paint has been chipped off in places such as hard edges that will hit the ground, cover, etc.

And the final, assembled gun. The green inside is fine, since I'll just tape black paper inside the hole in the top and bottom.

And there it is. I hope you enjoyed it, and maybe even want to try it yourself. There are tons of resources out there as well as cheap materials (water guns from the dollar store) for you to get started. Until next time.