Sea of Thieves "Launch crew" Eye of Reach

The 'Launch Crew' Eye of Reach is a weapon in Sea of Thieves. This Eye of Reach was available for purchase from the Weaponsmith's Shop in Outposts as the one month release celebration.

Sea of Thieves itself is an action-adventure video game developed by Rare and published by Microsoft Studios. The game allows players to take the role of a pirate sailing the seas either solo or as part of a crew of up to four players.

When I first saw the Launch Crew sniper I fell in love and decided to go ahead and get to work on it.

Firstly I got as many photo references as I could , that way I could make a 2D blueprint in Adobe Illustrator and transfer the pattern to the wood I was going to cut the body of the riffle of.

Once the pattern was transferred to the wood I cut it on the band saw and got to sand and shape the body. I began with the belt sander to quickly get the overall rounded shape so that the details could be later sanded by hand with 80 grit sandpaper.

All the details were later carved with different bits with a Foredom. Once the body was finished the "metal" parts were cut from 1/8" and 1/4" pvc board and shaped on the belt sander. Using the heat gun I curved them to the desired shape and later on added the damage with a hot knife after using the Foredom. For the trigger and the hammer parts I 3D printed it with my CR10; those parts were designed by Josh Tavena from beardless.props.

In order to hold the body, the stock and be able to disassemble later for travels and shipping, it was held by 2 removable bolts hidden under the bent pvc part, which was held by another bolt with a carved pvc top, glued to hide the actual metal bolt. Irony!

Adding real rust to your props!

In order to achieve the rusty metal look I followed a process I learned from Harrison from Volpin Props (check his book out, he has amazing painting techniques for those interested). First, I started by coating all the parts with primer , followed by a black base coat, painted with Rustoleum Hammered Silver paint and then weathered with acrylic paints. After they were dry and ready I added a coat of matte clear coat to seal the paint, then left 24 hours for full cure.

Once that's cured, start off with Ferrous Iron Powder (gray powder, not the red one) if not the gray one it’s already oxidized and won’t rust again, hence defeating the purpose.

-For me the best way for the powder to stick is to make a small mix of glue and a base color like orange/brown and apply it to the area you'll want to rust.

-Quickly add the power and get it to stick in place.

- In order to activate the rust you'll have to create an unholy mix (try not to smell this unless you hate yourself) of 50/50 vinegar and hydrogen peroxide, with a few drops of lemon juice and iodized salt. Mix this up and you have your own mixture to rust anything you like!

- Spray it over the rust powder and wait a few minutes until you see it bubble up. I like to wait a bit until it dries up enough to take a napkin, dry it a bit and spray more if needed. But I recommend to just leave it overnight and then remove all the excess. Repeat until you're happy with the results.

-Once you're finished its *really* important to coat with it matte clear coat or it *will* continue to rust until its just a black rock. Past experiences talking over here.

In order to get the desired color of the wood, I applied several coats of wood stain until I had a color that worked for me. I don't have my pictures of this process because to be honest I totally forgot to take them. But there's not much to it, I take a chip brush and some paper towels and apply and remove the stain excess until its all even.

Using Adobe Illustrator I designed the bottle label. I was lucky enough a friend was able to find the original font used in the bottle which saved me a lot of time of tracing and designing a font. Later I printed in normal paper and applied it to the bottle with spray glue.

In order to get the cracked effects on the bottle (an apothic red wine bottle we actually drank at the shop, thanks Brian!) I used the rotary tool with a diamond tip to carve the "cracks" on the bottle.

For the leather strap part I first used eva foam, sanded on the edges to create the 2 different tones.

Later i found the stress caused on the strap was causing the paint to crack, so I went to the original idea which was to use an actual leather strap. I dyed it with light leather dye and sanded the edges as well to create the 2 different tones.

The leather strap holds the bottle in place with several industrial velcro pieces attached to it. This was a nerve wracking part since in order to be able to travel with it i couldn't permanently attach the bottle, which for me, was the ideal solution. It worked amazingly and actually lasted trough the whole convention without moving one bit.