Attack on Titan/ SnK 3d Maneuver Gear

You will need the following tools :

- styrofoam
- a cutter
- paste and tissue paper (paper maché)
- webbing (1.2m or depending on your sizes) to hold up the boxes
- hot glue+sticks
- UHU por/g styrofoam glue
- dark,light and silver acrylic paint
- card(-foam-)board
- screws ( at least 3)
- Spray paint grey and or metallic
- some black wire or rubber band used as the cables
(- duct tape)

Styrofoam is your friend!! :D
You can carve out all the shapes and details out of a block of this foam to get your mechanism pieces from side and back. Once you carved enough, use a little bit of sanding paper to get it more accurate.
NOTE: don't use hot glue, normal glue or spray paint on this now . it will melt down your styrofoam immediately!! D:
Cover your pieces with paste and tissue paper and let it set till it is completely dry and hard. A hair blower can help with the time issue or you can simply make a break or something else. When everthing is dry you can start paining :D

Picture 5
To create the bottle tanks, we were lucking in one of the office supplies stores (also check out artists and architectural stores). We got ourselves some plastic pipes to transport your blueprint with and cut them! One half of a plastic ball with the same diameter glued on top gives you a good shape.
I drilled in some wholes to put in those T-shapes plastic pipes. I did have some at some, but you can get them at a hardware store!

Picture 6
The centerpiece and platform of the engine. This piece is light PVC and can be easily cut and deformed after you put some heat on it(hair blower or heat gun). Form it like in the next step, so that the small pieces are pointing to your wastes' sides and the big plane is slightly tilted.

Picture 7
Tthe small platform of the engines steamer is positioned at your lower back and it's supposed to be hanging a bit diagonal. The screw in the middle of it will help fixing the steam engines part to it - use your hot glue here!

Picture 1
Round side pieces of the engine. An old cardboard pipe or even the leftovers of silk ribbon pipes are useful to do these things. We added ring shaped pieces of this cardboard,cut with a cutter, to give it more 3 dimensional appearance. Covering it with paste and tissue paper to make it look smooth and easy to paint. The paste hardens everything,too!

Picture 2-4
Some details of the side pieces of the engine on your back.

For the boxes you will need 2 big sheets of styrofoam/kappa board (70x100cm; around 5mm thick)

Picture 1
Use a ruler to mark and carve in the straight lines that will be bend to form a box!
Example: 10cm-25cm-10cm-25cm

Picture 2-4
foam sheet construction to slide in the extra sword blades.

Picture 5
The boxes parts need to be painted - spray paint is way easier and faster and I believe in this amount cheaper then using acrylics and brushes. So We set up a little painting area on my balcony. PLEASE NOTE!! when using spray paint it is a) highly recommended to use a mask, b) very very handy to have some old cardboard underneath and c) you can create a silver-ish metallic look by base coating the pieces in dark grey/black and then add silver spray on top.

Picture 6-9
Attaching time..here you will use some screws!
The boxes are almost ready to be closed. Before you do so, add all the details you want to be added. It is way easier to do so then working on the closed boxes. Indeed, use a screw to add the webbing to the box .This way it is still flexible and turnable. The big clip you see on top of the red-black-red piece will be used to hold the boxes at the right hight of your legs and still give you the chance to walk normally. You clip those into the harness of your tight.

Picture 10/11
cutting out some extra sword blades;adding details and coloring them. they will be put into the slides of the boxes(better glue some in!!) :P

I moved with all the materials and stuff into my universities workshop. I was a little bit nervous,but when I get started working-with materials, machineries and tools - I feel...I feel great!! :)

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The swords are made out of 3mm plywood. Because the handles need to bigh thicker I made them out of 3 layers: outside-blade-inside! (pic2)
the middle one and inside piece of wood needed to be altered a bit, so the bicycle break would fit smoothly into the wood handle!! (pic. 3/4)

BTW - I used a print out pic from the refences of the handle to test meassurements. the ones fitting my hand guided me as a pattern for the wood work to be ahead!! You can download picture9 of this step to do so,too!

Using a bend saw to roughly cut out all the pieces and wood glue and clamps to bring them together.(pic.4)

Picture 5
once the glue was completely dry I could take the swords to the sanding machine and sand off all the bumps and larg and pointy edges. I added some details with a Dremel/hand carving tool and smooth some edges into round shapes.
Details are made out of foam and left over ieces from the bicycle break. The handle also needs some grip! I used the silikon kitchen matress stuff from IKEA for this. Made myself a paper template, transfered it onto the silikon sheet, cut it out and spray painted it.(pic6))haha you can see my supernatural shot gun prop in this picture too XD)
Using some contact adhesive to glue the handles onto the wood. You can use a heatgun instead,too.
Wires(hollow and leight) were added later from Lindwurm.

SWORDS DONE!

Let me introduce you to Freddie and Mercury - Lindwurms (a close friend of mine) personal soldier gear from the super strange, but cool anime Attack on Titan!

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Please Note - I sadly can NOT do COMMISSION on this piece if you are not from germany. This is because of the impossible way of shipping this light weight, kind of fragile thing. I am sorry.
Still, I edited the tutorial with more photos and description so it is easier to follow the steps. Good Lick

I can finally show you the gear in (cosplay) action!
This is the lovely Pola Cosplay with Freddy and Mercury.

Looks cool,doens't it? :D


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for more cosplay, design and work in progress/tutorial related stuff, check out my other instructables or visit me on facebook via Kion Cosplay <3

I have been asked many many times if I woulddo commission for this gear. I'm sorry to tell you that this is not possible.

Thinking if it would be any helpful to create a template for you to craft it?I'm not so sure

If you would like to know some more detiled information of the process of crafting the gear I am happy to help as good as possible :)