GRUD! Bringing law to the lawless is a hard job!

It has been a veeeerrrrry long time since last posted on here...partly due to laziness and partly due to it being easier just to post projects on various forums instead..but hey, here's some more for anybody that's still bothered to read about my nerdy activities.

Since I first heard about it's existence I've been obsessing about the reboot for Judge Dredd, simply entitled "DREDD" and despite a lot of worrying and speculation it did NOT dissapoint. Hands down film of the year for 2012 and one that I've been dreaming about since I was about 8 years old. If you haven't seen it, do it immediately and if you don't like it, never speak to me again :D

so..as soon as the first images appeared online I've been exhaustively collecting any and all reference material I could get my clammy little hands on and decided I'd have a go at recreating the iconic Lawgiver handgun.

It's clearly based on a Glock pistol as can be seen from the grips in this leaked on-set photo

It just so happened that I had a cheap spring powered replica to begin making templates over..so it was straight to photoshop. Here's my first, rather simple, attempt at drawing them up in photoshop way back in early September.

But after discovering more images of the gun, particularly screencaps from some of the trailers and behind the scenes vids I refined the design quite considerably...

It was then time to get printing and cutting to see how the templates worked in the 3rd dimension...it wasn't a bad start and the original prop design is so well done that it's relatively easy to get things to work...relatively....

Happy with the basic dimensions being correct I then moved on to tackle the easiest part first..the magazine. I'm using sheets of styrene for 80% of this build as it's easy to cut and durable enough to handle as a completed prop once it's been reinforced internally.

It was then time to move on to the other parts, lots of little fiddly cut outs...then to start assembling the parts in an almost kit like form...

As I had designed it all in photoshop to realise it in 3D with tops, bottoms and back and front was quite a challenge and I had many failed attempts at heating and bending the styrene to give the squareish curvature of the top section...let alone the bottom shape..but more on that later...I finally, after hunting high and low for the correct length and width, settled on the spine of an old Illustators agency catalogue..haha! it was damn near perfect to bring the flat parts to glorious 3D life...and from there it went full throttle...I also decided to make it a firing prop an acquired another replica Glock but this time, for a few extra ££'s, got an automatic gas powered BB gun to replace the rapidly deteriorating through glue and scalpel cuts springer.

With some old steel tubing for the barrel and a little bit of milliput to sculpt the more difficult parts it's coming along nicely...the culmination of all this hard labour leaves me with the following..it's in 6 parts :- the main body, the front shroud/vent, the rear receiver (that will move when fired), the saddle at the back of the handgrip, the barrel and the magazine that fits together something like this....

There's still a loooong way to go, I'm having the serial number plate laser etched and am awaiting delivery of an LED screen to attempt a recreation of this...

but I'm happy so far with the 75% finished piece, after all the optional extras it's just a paintjob away from me taking law and order back to the streets of Mega City One.

Oh and while I had a lull in activity on this I acquired something nice from a friend in the US that I proceeded to prep and paint into something AWESOME!

I AM THE LAW! or will be when I finish this epic build!

Until the next update, keep it geeky...

I ARE NERD!

Pedro Von Blondle

This posting is respectfully dedicated to Michael VK - The Yoda to my Skywalker