Tank Girl Bazooka/Rocket Launcher Design Picture 2

Even before I decided to take the pictures I've been sharing recently where I recreated one of Brett Parsons' most famous Tank Girl pictures, I'd had the idea of making some new guns for my Tank Girl arsenal. I liked the ones I'd done before, but didn't think they quite captured the spirit of the character. She's a big personality, so she needs BIG guns.

I browsed through some comics and it was then that I came across the bazooka/rocket launcher artwork. I knew on the spot that I was going to have a go at copying the weapon, and not only that, but that I would try to display it in exactly the way it appeared in the picture. It was a long journey, but as you may have seen, I did get there.

The first stage was coming up with a plan. I knew I wasn't going to be able to come up with a perfect replica, so I designed a kind of mashup between the Parsons gun and a more traditional bazooka. The next step was collecting materials, mainly from Poundland and thrift stores (my go to places for these kinds of projects). This is what I ended up using...

1) A piece of plastic pipe for the main body.

2) Some smaller pieces of pipe for a scope.

3) A couple of toy guns for the trigger and other parts.

4) A plunger button from a bottle of moisturizer (actually I used 2 of these if I'm being precise, as I broke the mechanism cutting the first one down to size and had to replace it).

5) A clockwork shark to mount on the front.

6) A juggling baton for a rocket.

7) A vacuum cleaner extension tube to hold the juggling baton.

8) Some straps and clips.

9) One of my old cuddly toys.

10) A crocheted eyeball.

11) A metal dog tag.

12) Some pieces of ribbon.

13) A wide checked shoelace.

Once I had all this, I painted the main parts with matt black spray, so they would match. This took a few days, as I had to do one side at a time and redo some bits that weren't covered properly.

Next up was fitting everything together. I'm not a big fan of glue, as it usually comes off over time, so I used screws and bolts wherever I could. One tricky piece was the plunger button. It didn't sit very well on the top, so I mounted it on a wooden block. The baton I was using as a rocket was too small for the pipe, so I came up with the idea of mounting it inside a vacuum cleaner part.

I added another coat of black paint to fix the damage I'd done making bolt holes, etc, then gave the gun a distressed look with a dusting of acrylic silver paint (this needed to be applied very lightly, so the black would show through).

Then it was time for the decorative pictures. I cheated and used stickers for some of these, as I kind of suck at precision painting and didn't want to mess everything up, though as it happened, the stuff I did paint turned out pretty good. I only knew what one side of the original gun looked like (often a problem when making props based on pictures in comics), so I freestyled the other side.

I sprayed some fixative over the top to protect it, and added the shoelace and other trinkets, and that's pretty much it. It's not a full tutorial, as I think part of the fun of doing this stuff is figuring out the details and a lot is going to depend on what materials you are using, but it should be a good starting point.

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