Guillermo Del Toro is fresh off a huge night at the Oscars and the sequel to his Pacific Rim is right around the corner, so WOW does this feel like the right time for a look back at Pan’s Labrynth or what?!

[CineFix]

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!