Kel Tec Sub 2000

Thanks to Canadian gun laws, this has a 470mm long barrel...

     The Sub 2000 is a rifle that fires 9x19mm or .40 S&W. That's right, a rifle that uses pistol rounds. All the while the same company makes the PLR-16... which is a .223 caliber pistol... Yep, the same caliber fired by civilian AR-15s.
     Kel Tec CNC Industries made this rifle to accept Glock, Beretta, SIG, and S&W Magazines depending on caliber. The 4 pound (empty) rifle is mainly made of a synthetic material called Zytel, while the more important components are made of a high quality steel. The predecessor of the Sub 2000 was the SUB-9 which was released around 1997 but was made of aluminium and was more expensive to make. Other competitor pistol caliber rifles are the Hi-Point 995 carbine, a 9mm rifle that weighs around 6.6 pounds, which is about the weight of an AK system, and is quite large, and the Beretta Cx4 Storm, which is a pound lighter than the Hi-Point, and can be ambidextrous for the left hand shooters. The biggest detail about the rifle was what happened when you push down the trigger-guard. That's right, it folds in half!

     This rifle works great for hikers and backpackers, the rifle itself is light and compact, the long barrel and large sights provide good accuracy, and the pistol ammunition is generally lighter than carrying a shotgun or larger caliber rifle for protection in the woods. A while back, my dad took me to a gun store that had one of these, boy are they small. It may have been just the one available at the moment, but folding the rifle requires a small amount of care, the front sight connects to a catch located in the butt plate, and you have to make sure it goes in for it to be secured.

 I modelled this rifle mainly because it was featured on a video of my favourite YouTube shooter: Hickok45. This rifle was easy to model, but hard to texture. The frame and fore end took the longest time to texture while the front sight took the longest to model. The texture of the magazine release features the Beretta grip, because of this, I specifically modelled a Beretta brand Magazine, as opposed to just importing a previously made Glock magazine from the Glock 22.

M67 Grenade Crate

Grenades are addressed "To Whom it May Concern"

 The M67 High Explosion Fragmentation Hand Grenade (or "grenade" for short,) is  wee ball of composition B explosive fun. It replaced the M26 (Lemon) and the less reliable Mk II Pineapple grenades in the US Military.
  I don't know much about the M67, it's not really my forte. It's not like us Canadians can go buy these to take to the range and chuck them about. Well we probably could get some blue training ones or those chunks of metal you find at military "surplus" store.

    I actually modelled this for a completely different thing, see for one of my classes, some lighting thing, we were given a scene and was told to add Mental Ray lighting and model one extra fruit. Now Pomegranate in French is "Grenade" (pronounced differently but still...) and the Mk II grenade was called nicknamed "Pineapple", while the M26 was called "Lemon". You can hopefully see where I'm going with this. So I modelled the M67, even though it's nicknamed "baseball" I still thought it'd be ironic or something. After modelling and texturing the grenade, I figured the humour would be lost when the instructor marks the assignment so in the end, I quickly modelled a pear and plopped in in.

Enviroment Reel 2013

     Here is my Reel that I made at the Visual College of Art and Design (VCAD), if you've seen the previous posts regarding the Reel, then you should know what it's about. But here's a refresher;

     The first scene is some sort of warehouse that currently houses a Militia or rag-tag group of individuals who have stockpiled many surplus and sporting firearms.

     The second scene is a militaristic bunker run by some mercenary or privateer group. Since they are better funded, they can afford better gear.


     I'm still planning on fixing up both scenes and continue working on another scene that's more "verdant"...



Here on Vimeo

 http://vimeo.com/70193244

Here on YouTube too

http://youtu.be/GIdykIOUMEQ

Cheers

Mike

Taurus Judge

Taurus Judge: .45 Colt and .410 Bore,

    I think I first saw the Judge on YouTube, Hickok45, one of my favourite shooters, was playing around with one and I just thought that this revolver was the coolest. A revolver that can use a .45 Colt Cartridge, which is like a .45 ACP but with a longer casing, and a .410 Bore shotshell (proper name for the shell as opposed to 'gauge'), which comes in quite a few different loads such as buckshot, birdshot, slugs, and... other things that'll fit in the hull...

   In the US, there's a wee thing citizens can get called a carry license, Canadians can get one too only if they have a valid reason and there is no way they can have an officer protect them. Valid reasons may include a Ninja T-Rex with Predator's gear hunting you down, then and ONLY then could Canadians carry for self protection. Anyway, the reason why I brought up the whole carry thing is because of a small debate of whether or not the Judge would make a good carry gun.
    Because of the short barrel, the spread of birdshot and buckshot would be big, and loading slugs would essentially be the same as loading .45 Colt. So why wouldn't you just carry a semi-automatic that'll hold more rounds? Granted, the Judge has shallower rifling in the barrel that helps reduce the dispersion of the shot, but then that alters the performance of bullets or slugs, and Taurus does make the Judge with a 6 1/2" barrel. Most people carry pistols because they can't carry a rifle for self protection, so the premise of having a "shotgun" in their holster would lead some to believing in using that. Thankfully, various ammunition manufacturers have started making 'self-defence' loads in .410, for example; the Winchester PDx1 which holds a mix of buckshot and several 'disks'. The disks are most likely an attempt to simulate the expansion of a hollowpoint bullet.
   Taurus then released the 'Public Defender' model which has a smaller frame. On the other end of the spectrum though, is the Taurus Raging Judge... Now that's a beauty... This Judge comes with a frame from a Raging Bull, meaning longer barrel, bigger grip, and a ported barrel.

   You may notice that there are two different coloured Judges up there. Yep, the ones on the right are the run-of-the-mill stainless revolver. But the ones on the left is the special edition "El Juez" version. This one comes with gold plated hammer, trigger, and cylinder release. Only 1000 were made, so needless to say... they're sold out... The reason why it's called "El Juez" meaning "The Judge" in Spanish, is because Taurus originally started in Brazil.

    Never modelled a revolver before, while wanting to keep the prop low-poly, I still had to have the important parts of the firearm look weird or cube-y... The cylinder took the longest time to figure out but after that everything fell together.