Behind the Scenes: X-Shot Longshot

The nearly finished Longshot was renamed by the owner of the gun "Failsafe"

Foam blasting to me is more than just getting out there and playing the game. I love all aspects of the hobby, as do many LARPers who use foam blasters as well. Today we are going to look at the very first blaster I ever painted: the X-Shot Longshot. This was painstakingly made for a client who is deeply in love with the hobby and wanted a blaster that had more of a shotgun-style foregrip, including his favorite color, purple. He also wanted it to work as a prop for the post-apocalyptic LARP in our area. Knowing about the character helps me as a painter tell a better story with the blaster as well. As such, here is his design brief: His character is a cyborg who was turned into that without consent. He broke free from his captors. They tried to use this very blaster, the failsafe for Project EX-0; now, EX-0 uses the very failsafe meant to end him as a failed experiment as he wanders the wastes.

Stock Image of the Type of Longshot I modified for this project.

Here is your text with the spelling, punctuation, and capitalization corrected. I kept all your words and phrasing exactly as you wrote them:

"As with all projects for painting blasters, you have to take it apart and sand the shell so it can accept a spray primer. While not the most glorious part of the project, the prep work here is important work that has to be done for the end product to be what I envision, and it can take much more time than you think it would. I always recommend taking pictures as you take it apart, and if screws are different sizes, label them so as not to give yourself heartache later on down the road. After this is the priming. For this one, I primed it white as I wanted the green to be very bright—almost toxic-looking. Something I feel I did fairly well with the end product! After that, I painted and then taped off all the areas that are green—many of the locations having to be hand-cut as painter's tape can't wrap around some objects like screws, etc.—and went to work painting the metallic purple over almost all the parts, outside of the safety bits of orange.

The key for anything with paints and art is layers, layers, and after that, more layers. The build-up of effects is what gives it the best look overall. This, however, is a time-consuming process. While I won’t go into every detail, there are several layers of oils to give it a grimy, dirty look, small brush marks for molded screws, and finally, painted 'micro-cracks' in the shell. I did learn a few things doing this, like I should have left the green to do last, just taping over where I wanted them to be. But that is the fun in art: learning as we go!

The reason I should have waited is that I had to go back over some of the green areas with the airbrush again to give the glow effect, and I could have done that in one pass if I had thought through the steps a bit better. Live and learn. However, I won't do any project if it is not the best I can do, so I gladly went back over the green. I also used neon purple and various shades of purple to reach the end result as seen at the top of the page. It was around this same time that I started on my Outlaws and learned the trick with hockey tape; thankfully, I found out about that before I gave the blaster to the client and was able to add that detail. Sadly, however, I failed to take a picture of the final product with the keychains saying 'Danger' and the hockey tape weathered on it as well. With a satisfied client and more learning experiences under my belt, I felt 'The Failsafe' was a very large success when it comes to custom-painted blasters. If you're interested in your own custom blaster, please reach out to me at Foam Hounds or pick up one of the premade ones I have for sale there!