Fenian Needham Conversion

The trapdoor with the absurd lore! So after doing two big projects, and with a third in the pipeline, I wanted to do something simpler in between. Something short, sharp and sweet, but still unique and worth practicing. Luckily @pichusimperialinsanity. suggested something pretty cool and a boomstick I'd never heard of: The Fenian-Needham rifle. Originally a US made musket, about 7,500 of these bad boys were purchased by the Fenian Brotherhood and converted into a breech-loaded cartridge rifle with a side-loaded trapdoor and chambered for both .58 calibre and .577 Snider... which works as long as the bullet doesn't slip past the extracter and breech-block and down into the barrel. Why? So that the Fenian Brotherhood could restock on enemy ammo as they invaded Canada amidst the American Civil War in order to annex it and re-trade it with the UK in exchange for Irish independence. Only the invasion failed and the Canadian army was pre-empted... twice. Seriously, the history of these rifles is bonkers and I'd highly recommend watching Ian's video on it @ForgottenWeapons: https://youtu.be/uvZfHkiYHII?si=_d91DpVxW1wuiBuQ Also shoutout to @jeanp.8682 for their live fire video. It was an invaulable reference: https://youtu.be/hX0niULfF0U?si=qoTcbxp5IfyL6aPM Otherwise, not much else to say on this one. I thought it'd be good pacing and posing practice. Also, due to how interesting the right side of the weapon is, I thought I'd also try my first leftie viewmodel, which was definitely fun, even if as a righty it did feel a bit odd and it took a while to get going. Also I somehow had two versions of this animation with different areas of polish and graph editing, so I spent an embarrassing amount of time cohesively merging the two WIPS. Made in Blender 4.3 and rendered in Cycles at 60FPS at 250 samples and a noise threshold of 0.01. Also only done in standard definition instead of 4K simply because I forgor. Song: Rosa Azul - Flying Method by Lapix And that's that. Thanks again for the suggestion. Otherwise the next video will either be a big project for a franchise that's near and dear to my heart, has been suggested several times on the channel and will be some good general animation practice... or some sort of stylised filler if I can't finish it before I leave the country. Either see you soon or see you later. Have a good one!