Captain Mal’s Papercraft Pistol [Gallery]

Okay, so Malcolm Reynolds never would have made it if his weapon were really papercraft. But this piece, designed by Leo Firebrand of  Firebrand Creations, pays tribute to captain of the good ship Serenity and served the additional purpose of testing out some new craft skills:

Up till now I have tried to find projects that had very rigid geometry since it’s very hard to do subtle curves with paper. I have been playing around with some different techniques and decided it was time to tackle a project that would test them out.

It wasn’t an easy build, as most satisfying projects aren’t, but once the technique of carving the pieces from floral foam and stretching dampened paper over them proved effective, the mock-up pistol took shape.

I used this same technique throughout and I am quite happy with the effect. I also had to really make sure to sand and keep all the edges of my cuts flush with the model since the final gun had to look like a single piece of cast metal. I even built a working trigger assembly based on a flintlock mechanism and a removable clip. I sprayed the final painted model with a semi gloss finish to really give it that metallic gleam.

There are some in-progress shots available, too, if you’d like to see how the project played out. For our part, we think that’s some gorram fine work.

Thanks for sharing, Leo!

Spinners: A Rube Goldberg Machine Made from Fidget Spinners [Video]

From Kaplamino:

I already used two fidget spinners tricks in the previous video, but they were very simple. I knew that it was possible to do much better, because this object has a lot of potential for chain reactions and can be used in many different ways. So I made a video with 10 of these tricks, in one shot again. I hope you’ll like it :)

[Kaplamino]

Seize the Moment: An Animated Version of an Inspiring Speech by Stephen Hawking [Video]

Back in 2015 at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, Stephen Hawking gave a speech which he named “It Can Be Done.” In tribute to the passing of the man, After Skool created this white board animation that illustrates the speech.

There are few scientists that can be said to have touched the public imagination. Physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking is one such scientist. He spent his life seeking the answers to the biggest questions in the universe. This video is a tribute to his courage and wisdom. Thank for everything professor Stephen Hawking (8 Jan 1942 – 14 March 2018)

[After Skool]