Project Yasuo: 02 - 3D model of the blade

As soon as I decided to  make a costume of Yasuo, I immediately started on a 3D model of his sword, using the reference pictures available on the net. Yasuo uses a long katana with a characteristic sword guard and pommel matching his overall visual "wind" style. Getting good and detailed pictures of the sword was hard so I had to improvise a bit here and there. There is also some minor differences between the splash art version and in-game model version.  I decided to base the blade on the splash art.

Yasuo Sword

The sword guard consist of 3 different parts, while the sword pommel is only one. Overall 4 separate pieces needs to be printed. However before simply exporting the object and push the print button, some thought process goes into setting it up for a good print. We all want the print to be as pure, accurate and exact as possible. All sort of things can go wrong, and especially to this object for following reasons:

• Size: The parts, especially the sword guard is large, larger than I imagined it. About 26cm across. This is without doubt the largest object I've ever printed. This will test how even my print area is and how the plastic will stick to the build area evenly.
• No flat surface to stand on: This is a huge issue, as without a flat surface to "stand" on, it opens up a whole can of possibility for things to go wrong.
• Slope: The slope of the object for some areas are really gentle, and might leave some very visible layers.

Preparing the objects for printing

Let's focus on these two objects first, the sword pommel and the largest part of the guard.

As you can see, there are (barely) any flat even surface for the object to stand on. Printing with support pillar is not really something I'm a big fan of because in my experience are too unreliable. If they fail (which happens frequently in my case) then there is a large chance for the print itself to fail.

So to find a way to be able to print this without support pillars is fortunately simple yet genius:

Split the mesh down in the middle.

Place the splitted parts with the face up. One should obviously be mirrored.

Print and glue the separated parts together.

Here are the layouts I used for printing. By placing them like sideways, and face up, there are plenty of flat surface which gives absolute great adhesion to the print bed. However The sword guard was too large, spanning 26cm across while my print bed is only 20,5cm. Solution was to cut off the "tail" and print it separately.  Then glue them all together afterwards.

I'm going to wrap it up for now, and I promise you unlike the project corvo where I posted a bunch of renders then left you all in the dark, that I have already printed the sword parts. An update will be coming on how they turned out! See you for now!

-W

Project Yasuo: 01 - Introduction

Yasuo, The Unforgiven

Now where did this idea spring from?
Being a cosplayer I want to cosplay something from the ever so popular Leauge of Legends game, it was when they released the new champion at the time called Yasuo, I decided to give it a go. I've up to this point found it hard to pick a champion to cosplay, (as well picking a champion to play as always) but I figured why not go for this one.
The splash art looks great and his outfit calls for a cool silhouette. It isn't the most jaw-dropping character, but it looks flashy enough and he features an unique sword and cool looking armor. I imagine making it wouldn't be too difficult. And best of all, wouldn't take too much time to make. At the time writing this, I deeply regret believing that.

Anyways, this is related to me sitting down and crunching out those props and costume, with lots of pictures documented and thought and effort put into it, I see no reason not to share it here on Yas.. I mean Yoshplay!

Let's collect our reference pictures:

Uhh... that's all the reference pictures I could find.

Some important things to point to take notice off, there is two versions of him, one in-game version shown at top, and one splash art version displayed below. Most noticeable between these two are the obvious color of his rope belt, and the material of his armor plates. Then there are some minor differences of his decorations. I won't go in those details, but I prefer the deep red brownish belts, and the metallic surface of the armor plates and will be basing my costume on the splash art design. I just prefer the overall more detailed and "realistic" approach to my costumes.

The list of things to craft are:
1 x sword 
1 x sheat
2 x clothing accessories (pants and poncho)
15 x armor plates
1 x large rope
2 x small rope
1 x bamboo flask
2 x large leather belt
20 x small leather belt
1 x giant wig

For now I will focus on getting the sword and armor done, the two hardest and most interesting part of his costume in my opinion.

Come back for some progress!

- W

A silent year later

My 3D printing workshop is alive and working, well almost!

An apology for my absence

I've been quite busy and lazy to update the blog, my last entry was over a year ago, which I admit is pretty bad. I will get to why on a later point, but I will first take the time to address to those who deserve it the most:

Over the past year of my absent, my inbox has received numerous emails from people wondering exactly what happened to PROJECT CORVO. Inquires go from simple hi to questions about commissions and selling the 3D files. I guess this is what happens when someone build a hype. I remember I was in the same shoe and felt quite hyped myself when I heard about the 3D printed mask for the first time. So hyped that I bought my own printer and spendt weeks modelling the mask.

First of all sorry to disappoint , not much progress has been made on the corvo mask, none at all in fact. This is due to the project being pushed back by other projects! When will I start? Around next year if at all. My own hype died but I still want to do it someday, but not just at the moment. Sorry about that!

Level up!

For the good news; despite the lack of a 3D printed mask. My Makergear M2 model has gone through some extensive printing since my last update. I guess about 4-5 rolls/kg of PLA filament have been burned up. It's not a high number for a year, but trust me if I could, I would be squeezing out alot more! I've had some minor and a major setbacs which led me and my printer to a dry for over 5 months.
I have new and numerous projects started up and I'm about to update the blog with lots of juicy pictures and what I've been up to the past year. From this I've gained some better understanding of the way of how to work with Fused Deposition Modeling and think when setting up  models for a print. I'm confident that the Corvo mask is more or less 100% print-able! I juuuuust need to sit down and do it one day.

However not everything have been smooth sailing. 3D printing with plastic using extrusion method has its drawbacks. Drawbacks which often comes due to the nature of FDM. I can honestly say only 60-70% of my prints comes out well. The rest 30% did not work for various reasons.
As mentioned, I will dedicate an entry about that a later on. In short I can say 3D printing as the current FDM technology stands, it won't be for everyone. It might sound exciting and mind blowing but not everyone will have the time or willingness to understand the amount of work which lies behind a good quality print.

Anyways, for now, I'll just like to re-introduce my blog, and keep it updated and healthy more frequently.
Thanks to those for contacting me and all my readers for showing their interest!

-W