My thoughts on Fan Art and Tips for PB2 Weapon Artists

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My thoughts on Fan Art and Tips for PB2 Weapon Artists

Postby DoomWrath » 28 May 2019, 21:16

Art is good, whether it's a 1500s musket or a 2500s space laser. It's good to be creative and I like seeing what this community can do. - But there's been a lot of discussion about the guns people are creating and wanting to submit to be added to the game, and I'd like to throw in my two cents. I'm not sure if this would be better off as a reply to an existing topic (eg viewtopic.php?f=117&t=22856) but with so many essays that are honestly far too wordy for their own good, I'm just going to start another topic on a related but slightly different subject.

I apologise in advance for the blogposting, but a while back I moved a lot of art topics from the 'Still Art' section of the forums to the 'Other Art' section as the 'Still Art' section is for art related to PB2, and the 'Other Art' section is for anything else, and I felt that renditions of guns from before the Great War to modern times weren't relevant to PB2, a sci-fi game set in the future with alien technology, lasers, railguns, and plazma cannons. I just do not feel that a gun from the 1940s, 1970s or 2000s with some glow effect pasted over it is PB2 related art.

The obvious XM8 clone in PB2 is pretty silly in my opinion, but the game was released shortly after the XM8 was all the rage. That gun was set to be the next infantry rifle of the pizza saucing US Army and every game left right and centre wanted a piece of it. It looked sci-fi and cool, but was dropped and now looks dumb and dated. No need to cite a G36 in a plastic shell as a reason why your rendition of a crappy commercial civilian market shotgun should be in PB2, regardless of how good that rendition is.
We'll just have to pretend the CS-RC is an advanced caseless rifle and bears only resemblance to the XM8, and just suspend our collective disbelief.

Some tips for people wanting to make guns that fit PB2:

- Don't design your guns backwards: Aesthetics are important and with a video game or art project you can take some liberties with the aesthetics of the gun you're making, but at its core a gun is a machine, and machines are 100% for function. Work out what you need to have to make the gun function, then wrap it up in a nice aesthetic shell.

- Ergonomics: Guns generally have a few fixed components that can't be changed whatever you're designing, from laser blaster to rocket launcher. These are the parts that interface with the person using it - this is easy in PB2 as every enemy is humanoid, with two arms and an upright stance. You'll need a grip and trigger or button for the shooting hand, a second grip or area that can be held if the gun is longer or heavier than a sidearm, and some kind of buttstock to steady the weapon and control recoil if the gun has any. A rifle will recoil, a railgun will recoil, and a plazma cannon will recoil, but a laser or beam weapon won't.

- Don't date your guns with old tech: Don't cover your space gun in standard RIS rails. That stuff is heavy and mostly useless, it was out of date in 2015 and really only has purpose as an optics mount, everything else is better mounted with something like MLOK or some attachment system YOU come up with. How about micro electromagnets?
The same goes for slapping an obvious ACOG clone on your space gun. It's obvious the sight is from 2004 and kills the design.

- Inspiration: As hard as it may be, do something unique. The AR-15 platform is the undisputed pinnacle of military rifle technology right now, but it almost certainly won't be in 100 years. So why take a gun that's already worse than the AR-15 and try to add it to PB2? Instead look to other sci-fi media for inspiration. Halo obviously has some similarities to PB2, and the guns in Halo are nice and space age. Or the Alien franchise, or District 9 for example. The Borderlands franchise (especially 2 and the Pre-Sequel) is excellent for more traditional guns. Look at their E-Tech stuff.

- Function: As previously said, guns need specific parts to work, and the shape of these parts is determined by their function. Think about why something would be the shape it is before making it that shape.
The AK-47's magazine doesn't curve because it's pretty, it curves out of necessity to allow horribly tapered cartridges to stack effectively. And the curve is a big downside to the magazine when trying to store magazines on your person.

• Rifles need a barrel, a bolt, space for the bolt to recoil, a reciever to house the bolt and fire control group, a grip and trigger, a magazine to hold ammunition whether cartridges or some super futuristic compact caseless ammo, and some kind of sighting system (it's the future, make a cool optical sight), and a gas or recoil system to cycle the gun. Decide where all this is going to go, then work out your aesthetics.

• Laser weapons will need a laser emitter of some type, a power source like a battery or external cable, some kind of handgrip and activator button or trigger, and all the additional electronics to run the laser. Maybe some kind of cooling device too.

• Railgun: You'll need an accelerator rail (duh), a projectile magazine, a power source, the usual grip/trigger/optics, and some way to get the projectiles into position to be fired by the rail. Maybe a manual pump like the Lite Railgun? Maybe a revolving mechanism? Maybe some kind of electronic bolt? Be creative.

• Plazma Cannon: Same deal. Something to generate the plazma, then something to make it move fast enough to hit an enemy. Accelerator rail, or chemical explosion like a gun? You may need a power source too, and the usual ergonomic bits.

While there's no need to follow this religiously to make a cool looking, believable gun, the takeaway from this is you should be aware that guns are a functional machine and you should consider that when coming up with a shape. Even alien guns with unknown technology still have working parts somewhere inside.

Overall, make cool space shit. We can suspend our collective disbelief over an XM8 clone and a generic shotgun/pistol in PB2, we can't if the game is chock full of niche civilian guns and military weapons from the last century.
Anyway, if you have any tips or tricks to making sci-fi or futuristic guns, share them here.
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DoomWrath
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Re: My thoughts on Fan Art and Tips for PB2 Weapon Artists

Postby Roxxar » 31 May 2019, 00:25

i primarily agree with the gist of what you are saying (functional, futuristic-themed weapons), but i dont think its realistic to try to build the gun from hypothetical modular bits and pieces

of course a gun will need a grip, a barrel, and a body/receiver. i think those are pretty self-explanatory. but smaller details like triggers, foregrips, and stocks imo can be omitted if creative design need be or if you're lazy like me (i.e. alien weapons dont have "triggers", railguns arguably dont have typical buttstocks, etc). i would suggest to any artist to not feel limited to this level of technicality; while it of course can look good and most fanart/drawn guns will have them, dont stress about it.
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Re: My thoughts on Fan Art and Tips for PB2 Weapon Artists

Postby DoomWrath » 31 May 2019, 14:08

Roxxar wrote:i primarily agree with the gist of what you are saying (functional, futuristic-themed weapons), but i dont think its realistic to try to build the gun from hypothetical modular bits and pieces


I don't think it's necessary to plan out every little module and part, but if you're designing the 'body' of a weapon it's important to be mindful of what would go inside, and keep that along with ergonomics in mind when drawing it.

Roxxar wrote:of course a gun will need a grip, a barrel, and a body/receiver. i think those are pretty self-explanatory. but smaller details like triggers, foregrips, and stocks imo can be omitted if creative design need be or if you're lazy like me (i.e. alien weapons dont have "triggers", railguns arguably dont have typical buttstocks, etc). i would suggest to any artist to not feel limited to this level of technicality; while it of course can look good and most fanart/drawn guns will have them, dont stress about it.


Definitely - as I said there's no need to follow the guide religiously, but keep it in mind. If you don't draw a trigger because PB2's scale is small and it wouldn't be visible anyway, that's perfectly reasonable, but when looking at the design it should be obvious fairly quickly where the trigger/firing button/etc is.
Naturally with the really alien stuff some of that does go out the window. Arm cannons and such are impractical for humans, but for an android or alien with integrated aiming modules in their heads, they make sense.
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