What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Since we’ve been spending a lot of time focusing on League community creations, we
thought it’d be a great time to touch on cosplay, as there are a lot of insanely talented
cosplayers bringing League champions to life.
To be a little more specific, we’re going to focus on prop weaponry, as one of my favorite
things to see is people bringing awesome video game weapons to life.
First on our list for today is Jayce’s Mercury Cannon by Jaspers Cosplay.
The first thing that really jumps out at you about this prop is that it’s absolutely
huge—it’s made to scale, so it stands at human height.
The primary building material is worbla, a popular
material used by cosplay prop makers, although he also used toy lightsabers for the spokes
poking out of the top.
According to Jasper, it weighs in at about 60 pounds and disassembles into 4 separate
pieces for transportation.
Jasper had originally intended to design it to be able to transform, but unfortunately
ran short of time in the run up to PAX.
One of the most impressive things about the Mercury Cannon is the lighting; using a combination
of LEDs and layers of blue-tinted cellophane to get the perfect blue glow.
A cool tip he shared for emphasizing the glow was to mount the LEDs sideways and give them
a reflective backing, and you can really see the difference it makes because the glow looks
seriously vibrant and realistic.
Awesome job to Jasper, you can find links to his work in the description along with
all the other cosplayers we feature today!
Continuing with our theme of obnoxiously huge weaponry, next up is Kalli Mack Cosplay with
Poppy’s Hammer!
Kalli Mack created the hammer out of an array of simple materials—foam for the hammer
head, a combination of cardboard and PVC pipe for the handle, and worbla for the mounting
point between the hammer and handle.
It measures in at over 2 meters tall, although apparently it’s not completely to scale,
as with a human-sized Poppy the hammer would have to be over 3 meters!
Most of the detail was added through a combination of painting and weathering to give it an authentic
look, and some extra thought went into making it possible to slightly shorten the handle
since some conventions do place size limits on props.
As with the Mercury Cannon we featured previously, the hammer doesn’t weigh too much and can
be broken down into a few pieces for storage, which is pretty impressive considering how
solid it looks from the pictures we’ve seen.
Make sure you check out Kalli Mack cosplay’s links in the description.
Our third design comes in from Minus10DegreesCelsius with her take on Master Yi’s sword.
Unfortunately there’s not much information on how she crafted the sword, but from the
worbla tag on Instagram we’re expecting that was a key ingredient!
One of the really impressive things about this sword is the shape and shading—from
a distance, you could easily be fooled into thinking it was some kind of painted metal,
as it holds a sharp edge really well.
All the other details have been matched with Yi perfectly too, making this a super clean
design.
A lot of Yi cosplayers go with the green-LED route for the glow, which makes it all the
more impressive that Minus10DegreesCelsius managed to get a similar effect with nothing
but some skilled painting.
Although a lot can be said for simple designs, our next feature is the exact opposite.
Robb Props & Cosplay is pretty well known for his prop-making handiwork, and his Viktor
cosplay is no exception.
The staff itself, or Hex Core as it’s known in game, is a metal staff with a spinning
ball of energy on the top that changes color as Viktor improves his gear.
To emulate the character as closely as possible, Robb wired up his staff with LEDs and motors
to give him full control—he can spin it at variable speeds, cycle through all RGB
colors, and even trigger his basic attack animation and sound effects!
Robb created the staff with PVC pipe for the base, along with 3d printed moving parts and
of course, lots of electronics.
In addition to the staff, Robb also wanted to create Viktor’s signature moving laser
arm!
He 3D printed the hand with 2-axis wrist control, and then laser cut the housing for the elbow,
shoulder and base, enabling 5-axis motion via huge servo motors.
Of course, the robot arm wouldn’t be complete without an industrial grade red LED in the
palm—unfortunately not a laser, but conventions tend to be unhappy with that kind of thing.
This is probably the most complex cosplay we’ve ever seen, and we didn’t even touch
on the mask and included voice changer, but since we’re focusing on weapons we’ll
have to leave it there.
This is probably one of my favorite cosplayers of all time, so huge respect to Robb for making
it happen, and make sure you check out his facebook page and show your support!
Our fifth creation today is Jinx’s weaponry from the Firecracker skin, made by Nadyasonika.
Both Pow-Pow and Fishbones were created for this cosplay in their Firecracker skin variants,
and the detail is pretty insane.
You can tell that a lot of time and effort went into shaping and painting the models,
and it honestly makes this cosplay look super professional.
Unfortunately there’s not much information on how she crafted these two amazing weapons,
but the colors and details are so accurate that it looks like they have been lifted straight
out of the game.
Another awesome cosplay, and two insane prop weapons!
Sixth on the list today is DarkGodMaru with this insane Thresh cosplay.
It’s not a perfect replication of Thresh’s original skin, but it’s close enough that
no one would likely notice the difference.
There’s no info from the creator about exactly what materials he used on this project, but
on previous projects he mentioned using urethane foam, vinyl and spray paint to get a detailed
metal-like effect.
The scythe, chain and lantern were all likely created this way, and it’s impressively
realistic.
Although the colors and designs don’t exactly match Thresh, the scale seems to be pretty
perfect, and that goes a long way to making a cosplay look convincing.
Scythes are surprisingly intimidating weapons when you see them IRL, but of course with
Thresh it’s important that you focus on drawing attention to the lantern, so I’m
sure a lot of effort went into giving it that glowing appearance as if it was brimming with
souls.
Make sure you check out DarkGodMaru’s other amazing work on DeviantArt, you can find the
link down in the description!
Our next real life weapon is Darius Axe, created as part of a genderbent Darius cosplay by
Riot Jynx!
Jynx works as a producer and creator support for Riot Games, and has been cosplaying for
over 20 years.
Unlike the other props and cosplays we’ve featured today, I actually had the pleasure
of seeing this one IRL, and it is just as insane as it looks here!
It’s pretty amazing what talented people can create with only a few materials—everything
you see here is created from EVA foam, worbla, some wood glue and a lick of paint.
One of the really cool things about cosplays with detailed weaponry is that you see details
in the design that you hadn’t noticed before, and so it’s really cool to go back and compare
the prop axe to his in-game axe and see how closely it all matches up.
Riot Jynx did an awesome job making it mirror the game as closely as possible, and it’s
easily one of my favorites on today’s list.
Lucian’s guns are up next, created by KADU-OUT!
The most impressive thing for me about this cosplay is that he actually started working
on it after seeing Lucian’s concept art, and completed the cosplay before Lucian had
even released.
Unfortunately we haven’t found any details on how KADU-OUT created these awesome guns,
but from looking at his other cosplay work in progress posts, he seems to favor working
with EVA foam as with a lot of the other cosplayers we’ve featured today.
He seems to have also used some kind of translucent plastic or screen to diffuse the light from
the LEDs, and it gives a really awesome glow that makes them seem almost surreal rather
than realistic.
That actually suits the character a lot better though!
With champions like Darius or Jinx, you definitely want to make the weaponry look as realistic
as possible, but for champions that use magical powers or ancient relics, they always look
best if you can get some kind of paranormal look to them.
KADU-OUT managed to do exactly that, and it’s a big part of what makes these guns look so
good.
RagingShadowCosplay is up next with this killer Mecha Kha’Zix cosplay.
It’s always impressive to see accurate cosplays of really inhuman characters, but although
the whole cosplay is awesome we are of course going to focus on his weapons.
Kha’Zix uses a combination of his curved claws and spike projectiles to consume his
prey, and RagingShadowCosplay used a couple of different techniques for each.
He mentioned having access to a lot of different resources thanks to his job, so he experimented
with different designs and materials until it all came together.
He originally intended to use mostly foam to keep it lightweight, but despite that the
wings actually added a lot of weight on his back which meant he needed to use worbla for
the chest to give extra support.
Using painted plastic cones wired up with LEDs, he managed to get a really sweet looking
glow for the spikes that match up with the game really accurately.
As for the claws, it’s just shaped and painted foam to keep things simple and lightweight,
but they still look awesome!
Our last real life League weaponry today is another Kalli Mack creation, this time with
Redeemed Riven’s sword rather than Poppy’s hammer!
She went through a ton of different materials trying to create this masterpiece as it was
her first big cosplay build.
This meant experimenting with wobla, resin, foam, polymorph, different fabrics and electronics—not
to mention paint.
The sword itself looks absolutely insane, the scale and details are pretty much perfect,
although it apparently ended up being super heavy to the point where she could barely
lift it!
Something that a lot of newer cosplayers tend to struggle with seems to be properly weathering
weapons or armor to make them seem old and well used, but that doesn’t seem to be an
issue for Kalli Mack since she did a great job giving Riven’s blade the battered and
broken appearance that it has in game.
Anyway that’s the last cosplay weapon we wanted to show off to you guys today, hope
you all enjoyed it and make sure you show your support to the creators, you can find
links to them all in the video description.