The original inspiration for this scifi gun concept was Jack's rifle in Oblivion, which was a modded version of a Remington Adaptive Combat Rifle. Similarly, I used the Remington ACR as a base from which to generate ideas. Further inspiration came from the weaponry of games like Doom 2016 and Killzone 3. Both of these titles feature heavy and intimidating guns with great visual styles, which I hoped to achieve in my own design.

I began the project with a round of sketching to explore some preliminary ideas based on the Remington ACR. Narrowing the ideas down to one, I refined the sketch slightly in preparation for modelling. I knew that I would need to make some changes to the design once it was in 3D space, but as long as the proportions felt right and it captured the essence of what I was after, I was happy to proceed.

Once inside Blender I used the sketch as reference while I blocked out the main shapes and added extra dimensionality to the design, ensuring that the gun had enough weight to feel like a relatively heavy weapon, but not too much that it looked unwieldy or exaggerated. I wanted this to be believable as a futuristic assault rifle that would be mass-produced and used by troops on the battlefield.

Some problem solving was required at this point as I had to establish the main sections of the gun before doing any detailing. The design features several parts that would need to be kept as separate objects, later defined with different materials. Just like the rifle from Oblivion, the main body of the gun would be housed in a protective shell, enclosing some sections and exposing others.

When I was happy with the assembly of the blockout model I moved onto detailing each piece. I referred to real life guns for a lot of this stage, borrowing shape ideas from various assault rifles, submachine guns, and handguns. I exaggerated a lot of these shapes, using repetition and scale adjustments to get a model with lots of details.

Detailing the shell was a case of mimicking angles and shapes throughout the design to tie it all together. Using section cuts helped to bring extra details to the shell, while also adding realism and making the gun seem more functional. During this time I'd been thinking of some backstory for the gun, generating ideas such as the gun model, it's manufacturer, soldiers who might have used it etc, so I designed some custom decals and applied them to the gun.

I had two ideas for the colour scheme so I got to work on the textures. I wanted to present one as a clean display model, and the other as if it had been recovered from a battlefield, the materials worn and distressed. In both cases I used procedural textures, and modelled a couple of scenes to display them in.

The final thing to do was some post-editing to the renders: brightness & contrast adjustments, film grain for a cinematic look, vignettes, and colour grading.