# Big Fictional Gun Illustrations (Now 45 Illos!)



## HellHound (Aug 12, 2004)

Long ago, I ran a CyberPunk website that included a lot of gun illos that I cobbled together using photoshop from real guns. They looked pretty darn cool and made me happy.

But they are 72 dpi, which means I can't actually USE them for anything but my website.

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So, last night, I finally dusted off Corel Draw and started making new firearms for my d20 CyberPunk setting.

I'm still not quite happy with them, but here are the first ones from the set. The masters of these images are 8.5 inches wide at 300 dpi, which is the good news. They also look pretty sweet printed out.

Now I just need to master my mad Corel Draw skillz.

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If anyone has suggestions for gun designs, or Big Fictional (ballistic) firearms they want illustrated, drop me a line here!


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## HellHound (Aug 12, 2004)

Here is a series from the venerable kings of the submachine gun, Heckler & Koch.

This series was H&Ks first attempt at a top-mounted helical magazine for their subguns. The series is no longer in production, as no police agencies or military organizations bought into the concept.

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As for the illos - I like the increased detail in these compared to the first set, however, I had a MUCH harder time applying shading to these, so I gave up on it compleletely and left it as a raw illustrator style b&w image. I'm more pleased in some ways, and less pleased in others, when compared to the Cameron & Sooch assault rifles above.


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## Arnwyn (Aug 12, 2004)

Ahhhh, BlackHammer. Good site - those weapon designs were slick.


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## HellHound (Aug 12, 2004)

Thanks, I was really proud of those illos.

If I had high-res images of the original guns, I would just go through and remake them all at 300 dpi for use in print.

Alas, I don't have that option.

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Here is a set of guns I designed for my site ages ago, the Arcadia Machine & Tool 1159s. Arcadia Machine & Tool is famous for the creation of the Automag series of heavy handguns in the 20th Century, and were one of the first companies to attempt a caseless feed handgun in conjunction with the Ruko ammunition company with their proprietary 11.5mm caseless round.

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Again, the detail is nice, but I think I'm going to go for a little less detail and a little more shading on the next set I do.


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## HellHound (Aug 12, 2004)

Okay, I'm a lot less happy with these two.

I decided I would try shading again, and I like the 'clean' look better now. It doesn't help that this particular design is quite... well... uninspired.

 :\


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## C. Baize (Aug 12, 2004)

Nice ones, HH!


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## HellHound (Aug 12, 2004)

Here are three more Vektor subguns.

And these are a lot more 'inspired' than the last ones, and I think they look better without the shading.


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## HellHound (Aug 13, 2004)

In the early 20's a small armoury out of Mexico started selling weapons designed directly after the classic Uzi, without even trying to file off the serial numbers. 

The SwanSong Uzis have advanced cooling shrouds for extended autofire, an assault grip in the front, and the main grip and magazine well moved backwards to take advantage of a smaller overall blowback action. 

At heart, it is still a classic Uzi.

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Also from SwanSong, the Uzi support combines the upgraded features of their normal Uzi imitations, and pairs it with a 30mm one-shot grenade launcher. 

_Yes, I designed this after playing the Terminator 2 arcade game. _

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I'm happier now. I've given up on the crappy shading and will stick to straight up b/w illos for the guns. These are pretty good, and the Vektors above are exactly what I was hoping for. 

These two also called for a stylistic deviation from the ealier guns, because they just didn't fit comfortably in the frame without shrinking them a lot... so I let the magazines dangle down out of the frame.


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## Galethorn (Aug 13, 2004)

I like the H&K SMGs, the Arcadia pistols, and the second set of Vektor ones best. In fact, I like them enough that I'm going to use them for a game I'm doing not too long from now, which is going to take place on a semi-terraformed mars in the mid 2200s. If you don't mind, of course.


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## HellHound (Aug 13, 2004)

Of course!

As a footnote, these and many more will be appearing in PDF format soon enough as PL6 firearms, and there will be more!


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## Henry (Aug 13, 2004)

I'm applying for the gullible award today.

When you wrote _"A mexican arms company in the 20's reproduced the classic Uzi,"_ my first thought was _"waitaminit, UZI's weren't around in the 20's!!!"_

Then I realized WHICH 20's you were speaking of.   

Those are some sweet designs. I could easily visualize someone producing something like those 11.5mm pistols even today, in a 10mm model.


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## HellHound (Aug 13, 2004)

One more for this morning...

I started this one last night, was done everything but the trigger, and then managed to crash the program... without having saved a backup.

So I started from scratch this morning.

Bah.

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The evolution of the MP5 line, using the grip as the magazine well, the MP10 line was introduced in 2010 and is the lightest variation of the line to date. It uses a bolt-restraint system to control the rate of fire and keep recoil under control.


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## HellHound (Aug 13, 2004)

Thanks Henry. I'm a gun-nut. I love firearms. I read about them non-stop, and know painfully too much about them... which I hope is reflected in my designs which incorporate design elements from a lot of exisiting firearms but puts them together in new ways - the goal is to have believable yet fictional guns.


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## HellHound (Aug 13, 2004)

I couldn't resist, and obviously, neither could Heckler & Koch.

The MP10 was such a small sub-gun, that it was only a matter of time before someone tried to make it smaller.

The MP10K uses a smaller magazine and a shortened front end, completely removing the foregrip. The end result is a machine pistol with all the style and looks of an MP series H&K subgun.

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And that's enough for this morning - I have to get back to work on my Shape-Memory Polymers chapter for New Tribes.


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## HellHound (Aug 16, 2004)

Here are some 10mm automatics from Cameron & Sooch. 

Cameron & Sooch developed the Elite as a special operations firearm as well as a general purpose automatic. The name implies that the firearm is more than just functional, but it doesn't really live up to it. The Elite is a sturdy and functional 10mm automatic with an 11 round magazine.

The operations model of the Elite features a longer structure and barrel than the Elite, and is designed to accept a proprietary suppressor. Also included is an extended capacity magazine that clips into the base of the magazine well, increasing the capacity of the firearm to 16 rounds.

Finally, there is a machine-pistol edition of the C&S Elite (which is probably my fave picture out of all the guns I've done so far in this thread).


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## HellHound (Aug 16, 2004)

Once I discovered that E.N.World was down... I was going through withdrawal.

On the first day of withdrawal, I illustrated these:

Olin, a U.S. firm best known for shotguns, developed this primarily polymer-framed assault rifle for internal security and for outlicensing to other security companies. It has seen some use by South American corporations and border security in South Africa.

With such a rugged design of their own creation under their belts, it was inevitable that the design team at Olin would attempt to mate the PT770 with the action from a shotgun. The PT12 is the result, and is capable of controlled burst fire with reasonable recoil due to the bullpup construction and the heavier construction in this system than in the PT770.


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## HellHound (Aug 16, 2004)

So, once it had fully sunk in that ENWorld was down for more than a few hours...

I illustrated some more guns. 

Paladin is an armoury based in England in my setting. The Model 3 SMG was their primary product and first entry into the military and police market.

With the success of the Model 3 design, Paladin designers went back to the drawing board to rebuild the gun in a more compact package. The end result is the Model 3 Short, with shortened front end and an additional 'assault'-style foregrip.

The Paladin Model 4 actually predates the Model 3, design-wise. The design was ready, but did not go into production, in 2021. The Model 3 was designed entirely using the systems developed for the Model 4. The Model 4 proper only went into production in late 2027.


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## Ferret (Aug 17, 2004)

Can you do some of the weapons from Fallout 1 / 2?

In particular, the p90c.


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## HellHound (Aug 17, 2004)

Ferret; I wasn't planning on producing pics of guns from the real world. The FN P90 is covered by Weapons Locker by Wizards of the Coast, and I would assume it is also in Ultramodern Firearms (but I haven't checked that book in quite some time, and can never remember what was in which book now). The p90c is just a P90 loading 10mm instead of the proprietary round loaded into the normal P90.


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## Ferret (Aug 17, 2004)

Oh, ok, I kind of knew that but I didn't know you weren't doing them. What about some of the made up weapons from fallout like the Gauss gun?


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## ledded (Aug 17, 2004)

Nice stuff Hound, and thanks for sharing.  I like the designs you've tossed out so far, keep 'em coming.


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## HellHound (Aug 25, 2004)

Here's a retro throwback... a cut down m-16 style assembly (including a standard m-16 receiver group) with a VERY short gas action, folding stock and foregrip. 

End result is a gun that looks cute, kicks hard, and shoots fire a good 8 feet in full auto from the unburned powder in each shot.


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## Stone Angel (Aug 27, 2004)

Yeah nice work there double H. Some good stuff. Now as good as Poutine? Well we can't have all the answers on this earth.

The Seraph of Earth and Stone


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## HellHound (Aug 27, 2004)

Thanks for the comments, crew.

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Progress Level 6 brings us the miniturized grenade... and Olin wasn't content with the small single-shot mini-grenade launcher that became the standard for these 30mm wonders.

Thus... The Olin Assault 30mm

Later designs incorporate a magazine instead of rotary feed, but the versatility of the rotary feed has kept the rotary model in production to this day.


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## Bloodstone Press (Aug 27, 2004)

Jason, 

 E-mail me at jalger At bloodstone-press DOT COM.... 

 BTW, your e-mail address should be easier to find!


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## Aristotle (Aug 27, 2004)

These look really stylish. Aside from your good understanding of firearms, what tools do you use, or what is your process? I'm very interested in learning how to do what your doing here.


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## HellHound (Aug 27, 2004)

Aristotle - at first I tried using Adobe Illustrator, but I still can't wrap my head around that program. So instead I went to my old backup vector graphic program - Corel Draw 9.


In Corel Draw, I well... just draw the guns as I want them to look.  Most of them are just a series of boxes really, with some minor tweaks.


In some cases, I lay out the original graphic of a gun as a bitmap in the program (especially when drawing guns that I had done before usign photoshop for my cyberpunk website), and draw the vector boxes over the photograph. This helps make sure that certain aspects of the guns in question remain true to the proper sizes and scales of a real firearm. When I don't do this, some of my illos have definite scale problems. For example, look at the latest one (the Olin grenade launcher). Looking at it now, I realize that the Rotary Cassette is too small... after all, those tubes are slightly larger than 30mm in size, makign the grip of the gun REALLY long.


Anyways, once the design is done, I export it as an Adobe Illustrator file (because Photoshop can use illustrator files, but not Corel Draw files), and import it into Photoshop. The key here was learning not to just copy-and-paste the image over, since it would come out at a low DPI instead of the 300 dpi needed for print work.


Once in Photoshop, I drop the gun image onto a file with the already existing background, give it a 3 pixel black 'stroke' and then a drop shadow. Then I save the 300 dpi image, and then make a much smaller copy at 640 pixels wide which I save in jpg format for use here.


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## HellHound (Aug 27, 2004)

The Mark 2 of the Olin Assault incorporates a magazine feed instead of the cylinder feed. The upside is it is MUCH quicker to relead, as a grenadier can carry several pre-loaded magazines. Additionally, the assembly is much thinner than the model 1 with the rotary cassette, making it easier to carry and use. The downside is that the grenadier cannot select from the grenades in the magazine, and must switch magazines based upon the situation, instead of just selecting the appropriate grenade for the job from within the cassette.

The Mark 3 (not pictured here) takes the Mark 2 design, and adds a three-shot burst mode for direct-fire situations.


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## Cergorach (Aug 27, 2004)

HellHound said:
			
		

> Aristotle - at first I tried using Adobe Illustrator, but I still can't wrap my head around that program. So instead I went to my old backup vector graphic program - Corel Draw 9.



YESS!!! I'm not the only one with that problem ;-)
When i moved from Corel to Adobe i had absolutely no problem wit the transition from Corel Paint to Adobe Photoshop, but from Corel Draw to Illustrator is still a problem, and it's been years since i migrated.

But to be honest, these days i don't draw in vector graphics anymore, now it's not so difficult to work on high resolution images (gotta love a fast cpu and lots of memory).


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## Warrior Poet (Aug 27, 2004)

Excellent illustrations, particularly the Arcadia handguns!  My compliments!



			
				HellHound said:
			
		

> ... This series was H&Ks first attempt at a top-mounted helical magazine for their subguns ...




What does "helical" mean in the context of a firearm magazine?  The way the cartridges are arranged?  The action of the feed?

(My poor high school physics education, lo those many years ago, left me with little helical knowledge outside of your basic spring.)

Thanks, and thanks for the illustration showcase:  you do outstanding work!

Warrior Poet


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## Camarath (Aug 28, 2004)

Warrior Poet said:
			
		

> What does "helical" mean in the context of a firearm magazine?  The way the cartridges are arranged?  The action of the feed?



 I believe that the bullets would be arranged in a spiral around the inside of the tube above the barrel and that the bullets would feed down into the action from above.


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## Steve Jung (Aug 28, 2004)

Camarath said:
			
		

> I believe that the bullets would be arranged in a spiral around the inside of the tube above the barrel and that the bullets would feed down into the action from above.



Yeah. That's basically it. A cut-away can be seen here.


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## HellHound (Aug 28, 2004)

Well, it seems the whole "helical feed" situation has been covered in my absence...

So here are some rifles.

I like the Mk 1 Longbow... but I should probably shorten the magazine in the Mk 2, as it makes the gun significantly taller in profile than the Mk 1.


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## HellHound (Aug 29, 2004)

These two are SMGs based on the Longbow design. 

They are both chambered in the 10mm handgun round, but this can be confusing since the base rifle design is chambered in the European 10mm special operations round. 

The "shortbow" is not an actual C&S design, but is an aftermarket modification to the Longbow-10 design, further shortening the subgun.


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## Olive (Aug 30, 2004)

I'm really looking forward to this book... I intend to buy pretty much everything for the d20 Future game, and I'm wanting more in the way of futuristic ballistics!


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## HellHound (Aug 30, 2004)

Thanks for the kind words!

I too, am looking forward to the release of this book. 

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Here are two more that I particularly like. The SD model especially so. The integral silencer gives the wielder something to hold onto. The TX model is so back-heavy, that the user has to place his second hand above the grip assembly, underneath the sight assembly / carrying rail, to facilitate autofire.


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## Olive (Aug 30, 2004)

HellHound said:
			
		

> I too, am looking forward to the release of this book.




So when's that going to be again?


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## Aristotle (Aug 30, 2004)

HellHound said:
			
		

> Aristotle - at first I tried using Adobe Illustrator, but I still can't wrap my head around that program. So instead I went to my old backup vector graphic program - Corel Draw 9.




I haven't used any sort of image design software in quite some time, but I recently acquired a bundle that had Photoshop and Illustrator in it... so I thought I'd give your method a quick go (and 7 hours later...)

I used a stock photo from a website. I don't know *anything* about guns, and I'm not nearly confident enough yet to try and design my own guns from scratch.

I'm still not sure exactly how to manage DPI and image size to get a decent image for print, web, or otherwise. I did the best I could for now...


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## HellHound (Aug 30, 2004)

VERY nice job. Looks like an honest-to-goodness MP5K - a lot more detail than I usually put into my pieces too (but then again, I'm currently down to about 90 minutes per piece).


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## Ferret (Aug 30, 2004)

The TX model look cool. Which is quite good coming from me, as I don't like the look of most guns. But it is very cool.

I have some idea (not requests, I don't need any pictures) what about having the magazine loaded towards the barrel, between the barell and the trigger (if you see what I mean) Or a 1X5X5 magazine (The same kind of shape as the slabs of choclate) that loads the bullets directly into the barrel directly with the width of the bullet of the magazine slid into the gun.

Just some random ideas.

Ohhh have you see this site?


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## HellHound (Aug 31, 2004)

Thanks for the praise!

For the suggestions, Ferret, are you referring to the Ingram Model 99s, or for firearms in general?

And yeah, That is one of my many firearms resource sites. Purty.

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Here's a sniper rifle based on the Dragunov SVU (the bullpup edition of the famous and highly-praised Dragunov SVD rifle). The Dragunov PIR (Product Improved Rifle) is a respected and very protable marksman rifle that comes chambered in a dozen different calibers.


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## HellHound (Aug 31, 2004)

Here are three new subguns from my fictional UK manufacturer, Paladin. The design proper is classic WWII era SMG, but kind of 'kicked up a notch'.


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## HellHound (Aug 31, 2004)

Here's a Chechen AntiMaterial Rifle, circa 2018.


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## Ferret (Aug 31, 2004)

The suggestions are in general, the Ingram Model 99s look great as they are.

What about a magazine of shotgun shells that go into the back, to reload you pull back part of the gun alowing one of the shells into the barrel. It should make it fast to reload and shoot.

BTW I have no exerience with guns, so if something I say sounds silly, it's not my fault, blame my imagination.


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## HellHound (Sep 1, 2004)

Here's a rifle in the same design style as the Ingram99, but a little less radical in overall design.


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## Geoff Watson (Sep 1, 2004)

Here's a big fictional gun:





What stats do you think it should have?

Geoff.


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## blobsticks (Sep 1, 2004)

Damn Jason... I didn't realise you could draw too!!

These are really good!

So you can write, draw, edit etc........ you're a one man creative machine!!


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## HellHound (Sep 1, 2004)

I can't draw worth beans, Scott, but thanks. What I can do is fake it using vector-drawing software when it comes to guns... I could probably do space ships in the same style too.

But generally speaking, it would have to stick to basically geometric designs.

Writing, Wireframe Illustrating, Layout and Cover Design. Still no editing, I suck at editing. 

Geoff, that is one wild MonkeyGun. Where is that from?


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## Geoff Watson (Sep 2, 2004)

HellHound said:
			
		

> Geoff, that is one wild MonkeyGun. Where is that from?




It's from the Shadowfist card game.

The card is titled "We Need Bigger Guns!"

Geoff.


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## Olive (Sep 2, 2004)

HellHound said:
			
		

> Here's a Chechen AntiMaterial Rifle, circa 2018.




What's an antimaterial gun?


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## HellHound (Sep 2, 2004)

Antimaterial rifles are very powerful 'sniper' rifles that were designed to take out sensitive hardware at long ranges. They are an outgrowth of the old Anti-tank rifles from WWI and are used to disable communications setups, HQs, and light armored vehicles with long-range precision fire of very high caliber ammunition.

Most modern AMRs are .50BMG rifles like the Barett (although it looks like the .308 Lapua Magnum version of the barrett may replace the old .50 BMG). Some are of higher caliber, using 14.5mm soviet rounds and even 20mm cannon rounds.


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## Ferret (Sep 2, 2004)

HellHound said:
			
		

> Antimaterial rifles are very powerful 'sniper' rifles that were designed to take out sensitive hardware at long ranges. They are an outgrowth of the old Anti-tank rifles from WWI and are used to disable communications setups, HQs, and light armored vehicles with long-range precision fire of very high caliber ammunition.





Is that the why the magazine is so long(fat)? Can you do older style guns? Flint lock style? Or is cyberpunk modern?


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## HellHound (Sep 2, 2004)

Yeah, that's why the magazine is so long, the rounds in question were designed for heavy machine guns or small cannons. 

CyberPunk as a style is set in the early 21st Century... 20 minutes into the future. It is the setting of Max Headroom (the TV series) and Blade Runner (movie).


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## Ferret (Sep 2, 2004)

I haven't seen either, is it basicly modern day setting. No magic.

I must have been thinking steam punk.


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## HellHound (Sep 6, 2004)

Here's a handgun I put together tonight when I should be in the process of reading and editing E.N.Arsenal - Two Bladed Sword.


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## Krieg (Sep 6, 2004)

HellHound, keep up the good work.

I do have one small critique...a lot of your weapons feature magazines that enter the receiver at unusual angles (ie not perpendicular to the barrel). If those weapons are using anything even remotely close to current cartridge based ammunition then they will be unable to load the rounds properly.

Just something to think about.

BTW I stumbled across a site that has some photo-shopped "future" weapons that you might find interesting. Some of the images are actually pretty neat...

http://www.warwickcompsoc.co.uk/~draconas/archive/




			
				Geoff Watson said:
			
		

> It's from the Shadowfist card game.
> 
> The card is titled "We Need Bigger Guns!"
> 
> Geoff.



Hey that looks almost as ergonomic as the OICW prototype!


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## HellHound (Sep 6, 2004)

Krieg - yep, it seems to be a halmark of sci-fi weapons, though, doesn't it?

The worst offenders are the H&K slimline models (and the magazine proper takes care of most of the problem, but it does lead to some feed problems), and the Ingrams that defy the normal Ingram design, and use a fairly complicated feed system with a ramped bolt assmebly to strip and load rounds into the chamber.

As for the link, yeah, I'm still active in the CyberPunk community and have seen the site a few times, the webmaster in question is archiving the guns that other people have posted since my site went on line.  The BlackHammer CyberPunk Project was the first CPunk site that was using photoshopped weapons galleries, and in the next three years, nearly a dozen other sites popped up using the same techniques as me. In fact, one of the guns in there -is- one of mine.


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## HellHound (Sep 19, 2004)

For the book, I added some other drawings of the rest of the Ingram 99 line (which seems to be a fave)

One is a 'standard' model, with ugly foregrip... the second is a carbine edition for sale to civilians.


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## HellHound (Sep 19, 2004)

Oh, and I see i posted the Vektor Ultimate earlier on this page, but didn't include the export model.


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## HellHound (Oct 15, 2004)

A few new designs based on a binary propellant firearm concept 

These designs, and a few more, can be found in my latest release on RPGnow - BlackHammer Firearms 1


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## Ferret (Oct 15, 2004)

How does a binary propulsion system work? I like the last pic  .


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