Constructing the high-poly - Gun

As stated prior, as I work on both the high and low poly model at the same time, there is no real way i can provide a truley flowing timeline so we'll start with the gun that took a slightly differant turn.

Before i could do anything, i spent a lot of time researching mad-max weapons and found that in most cases they were designed to be heavy hitting, ammo efficient and created using the scraps of any weapon or piece of machinery they can get their hands on.

There are some exceptions to this, with the weapons from the bullet farm favoring something more automatic but this wasteful mindset is very few and far between.

With my vehicle practically being a mobile fortress of armour, i thought that nothing would be more fitting than an artillery gun but many options i found would either be illogical for the madmax universe or in theory break the vehicle whilst in operation.

With this all taken in to mind, i ended up fixating on the Finish 20mm sled gun that by default fits in perfectly with the 70's technology often showcased in madmax.

I looked at a lot of differant models but ended up deciding on this one in peticular for the design of the barrel/ front end.

I had to adjust the barrel lengh in most areas for the gun to fit nicely within my vehicle but simply made the barrel look like the bi-product of crazed engineering, giving me a multitude of ideas for reciever.

Starting with the barrel, i ensured that the rough geometry i wanted for the low poly was used before adding both the crease tool and extra geometry.

 The crease tool made this a lot easier but this is where i re-discovered a few bugs i met over summer. When combining two objects with creasing, only the first selected object retails creasing or in the worse case scenario, the geometry is exploded out in a horrendous, unfixable mess. This can also corrupt the object, corrupting your file or simply destroying the geometry when you try to re-start maya. Nastly stuff.

Now for the reciever, i followed the real-steel partially but due to some pretty awkward reference and wanting to add some mad-maxy, artistic license, I re-created the body of a civil war, hand cranked machine-gun, even modelling a functional magazine hold/ release.

It may not look all too logical but in theory its functional.

 For the trigger i thought to myself, why not have some fun. In madmax, they would use what was functional and avaliable, not abiding by gun design principles. They're vehicle enthusiast right? With this in mind, i decided to out the handlebars from an old bike on the rear, using jumper cables as a firing mechanism. Would it be done in real-life? No, it would be horrendous but it damn well fits in perfectly with the crazed world of mad-max.

The full construction;

Without smooth preview, you can see that the work for the low poly is probably 70-80% already there due to my methodology;