Chainsaw Man (Hero of Hell) Costume

Halloween is coming soon and what better way to keep away the devils then by becoming one yourself!

The Hero of Hell variant of Chainsaw Man is a form that only appears in the manga as of yet so I won't go into extreme detail of how he appears, as we wait for the anime to catch up. But I will say this pretty much same Chainsaw man you know and love only now in a slick black color!

When I was planning what to make for Halloween this year I was looking into doing a character from Chainsaw Man, but I wanted to be a bit different, I looked into doing some of the other hybrid devils from the manga but when I saw the hero of hell variant I fell in love. The key differences in (HOH) and regular Chainsaw man are the more organic look, he has a more rounded face shape, spikes protruding from the back of his head, and flesh instead of metal on the sides. As well as a major palette swap trading the bright reds for a sleek black look.

The helmet itself is rather easy to wear it has a detachable backplate so you can slip your head in it to wear, and you can see really easily out of the teeth. The Chainsaw arms (Which I go over how to make) are also really easy to wear as they slide on and off and protrude out of your forearms. With other Chainsaw man designs I noticed that they follow one of two manga designs for the chainsaw arms, they either cover the elbow and go all the way around the forearm or they protrude out of the forearm. My design protrudes out of the forearms so you can have a better range of motion when wearing the chainsaws.

Overall Chainsaw Man (HOH) was such a fun project to get to work on and is the culmination of months of design and building to fully to together, so I'm super excited to get to share how I put this whole project together. Without further ado lets get into the build process...

1.) 3D Printer

2.) 3D Slicing Program

3.) Plywood sheet (You will need a sheet large enough to cut roughly 8 chainsaw bases from)

4.) PLA Filament

5.) Paints (White, Red, Black, Brown, Yellow, Silver)

6.) Neodymium Magnets (12x)

7.) Caulking Silicone

8.) Hot Glue

9.) Spackle (Or Wood Filler, whatever you use to fill in layer lines you need it)

10.) Dremmel

11.) Super Glue

To make the head base for Chainsaw man and the Chains for the chainsaws I used 3D printing. I modelled all the parts myself and I've uploaded them here so you can download the files to make this for yourself.

Thingiverse Link: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6267681

I highly recommend using the full scale helmet as a way to measure your helmet before printing. I used a 3D model of a mannequin head I found on Thingiverse to measure my head inside of the helmet but if you have a different method you prefer do that. I also highly recommend having a few cm allowance on both sides of the helmet, it makes it easier to wear when we add the magnets in a later step. And even with me measuring my head the fit ended up being very tight on my head which is good for the seamless look but hurts to wear for a long time.

As for the print prep, I printed the whole of the head in 8 separate pieces, and glued them together. Unless you have a massive printer and really don't care about filament costs you could print the whole helmet in one go, but printing split is by far the easiest option.

There's no real specifics on what slicer settings I used. You can use the exact same settings I used or tweak them yourself. I just recommend keeping the infill light as the helmet can get quite heavy to wear for long periods of time even at 5% infill.

CURA Settings I used:

Layer Height: 0.08mm

Infill: 5%

Walls: 2

Supports: Tree

(Just a side note real quick: Some of the photos will have some portions of the Helmet painted, I go into detail on how I painted the whole thing on a later step this was just me experimenting with paints in the moment so you don't have to worry about it)

My prints came off of the print bed a bit scuffed so they required a lot of work to make them look clean. The first thing I did was apply spackle across the armor portions to fill in any layer lines that appeared from the print, as well as fixing any holes caused from printing errors.

Make sure to have the front round part of the head as smooth as you can possibly get it. This part is meant to look super clean and smooth so you don't want to have any layer lines showing. The spikes and armour plating on the back of the head should also be as smooth as you can get them as they will be fully exposed. The main body of the helmet (Areas without armour plating or spikes) will be covered in silicone later so you won't have to worry about getting that super smooth.

Once you have your prints prepped and sanded we can start gluing them together. The whole helmet is only 8 pieces and they glue together among the seams. I just used a hot glue gun and cleaned up the edges when that dried, then went over each seam with superglue to reinforce.

Once you've glued the whole thing together cover the seams using spackle and sand that down. Particularly on the front and back of the helmet where the armor plating is so the whole thing looks like one cohesive piece.

Finally we're going to cut out a chunk of the helmet to fit the chainsaws better. There's already a hole for the chainsaws but to make the chainsaws angled better I cut a hole from the top of the initial chainsaw hole, all the way up to the top of the armor plating

Now once you have the whole thing printed and put together you may be noticing that you can't actually put it on very easily if at all. The neck hole should be too small to fit your head in. The way to remedy this is to make the back of the helmet detachable. The way I did this was by marking out a line on the side of the helmet in a "U" shape weaving in-between the armour panels on the back of the head. Then I cut this out very carefully with a rotary attachment on my dremmel.

With the backplate now a separate piece you can add magnets to the inside to connect the pieces that way you can slide the helmet on and off really easily. I didn't include any proper slots to add magnets I just melted some of the helmet and hot glued the magnets into place making sure that the magnets in the main body and the backplate lined up. Once glued in with hot glue I'd recommend adding an extra layer of super glue on top of the magnets to make sure they are extremely secure.

Now that the helmet is split into two parts and is wearable we have to hide the seam for the backplate. The way I did this initially was I superglued some toilet paper over the seam and cut down it across the seam. This significantly decreased the size of the seam and made it easier for the next step.

Once the seam is covered in toilet paper I went over the entirety of the main body (The fleshy bits not the armour parts) with a layer of hot glue. This added lots of rigidity to the helmet (But in all fairness could probably be skipped all together if you apply a thicker layer of silicone in the next step). To make sure the hot glue was even all over I melted it lightly with a blowtorch, though a hair dryer would probably work if you were more patient than I was.

Finally to finish off the helmet we'll apply a thin layer of silicone to act as synthetic skin. I just got a tube of caulking silicone and poured out a little bit at a time onto a plate, then I would dab the silicone using a sponge onto the areas of the helmet where there was meant to be skin. I made sure to go heavier over the seam for the backplate because if you layer this on thick enough the seam becomes virtually invisible.

Now for the iconic part, the CHAINSAWS!!!! I used a modified version of SKS Props' Chainsaw Man Template to get the sizing for the bodies of the chainsaws. However I made a few significant changes to the arm chainsaw template, instead of putting the arm hole in the middle of the chainsaw I put it on the end. (It changes from time to time in the manga but this is one of the ways it was drawn + I just find it easier to wear like this) I also made the arm chainsaw's thinner, I don't have an exact amount I made them thinner by I just eyeballed it until it looked good.

(The head chainsaw template is the exact same as the SKS Props one)

SKS Props Template: https://www.sksprops.com/templates (Scroll down a bit until you see the Chainsaw man Template)

Now to assemble the chainsaws I traced the modified templates onto a plywood sheet. You only needed to cut out 4 arm chainsaws and 2 head chainsaws. The reason for this is to make them thicker to wear and so they don't flop around as much. Once you have the chainsaws cut out you need to add an arm hole for the arm saws. I just traced the rough shape of my forearm onto the back of the chainsaw and cut that out.

Once you have all the pieces cut out you can start gluing the pieces together. To cut down on weight while increasing thickness. I glued some cardboard in between each chainsaw body. Once you have it all glued together you can touch up the edges if things don't line up perfectly, since you want the chainsaw bodies to be mostly flat for when we glue on the spikes.

Now to glue on the Chainsaw Spikes, it's a pretty simple pattern it goes Big saw, link, and Little saw, across the entire thing. The edges can be a bit difficult but I found that you can just glue them on and it mostly looks curved. Though if you want to go the extra mile you can use a hair dryer to heat the 3D printed spike and bend it to shape. (I didn't do this but you could if you wanted to)

To attach the "Head Chainsaw" (Which you should only do after its painted!) I placed the chainsaw into the hole we cut out of the head and once I had it in place glued it down to hold it still where it came into contact with the head. The hole in head is actually a lot wider than the chainsaw is so to account for this I took some popsicle sticks and wedged them on both sides of the hole to prevent the chainsaw from moving. Then you can glue the popsicle sticks in place for an area of extra contact. Finally you can finish off the head chainsaw by layering on a thick amount of hot glue over the seam to add a final area of support for the chainsaw as well as hiding the popsicle sticks.

My favourite part of any project like this. Painting was done in layers so the helmet doesn't look too flat anywhere. I painted the armour parts of the helmet in a maroon red coat, building on top of that with a mix of matte black and brown paint. Then the flesh part of the helmet was a simple matte black spray paint. (The Silicone helps to add a little shine to paint so I don't recommend gloss or even semi gloss to paint the flesh).

The teeth are painted with a white base coat. You want this to be super thick and non water soluble, so it doesn't run when you do the yellow gradient. Next you want to get some yellow paint and water it down and lightly put it on the base of each tooth and drag it up with a dry paintbrush. This creates the subtle yellow of the teeth. Then you can add some watered down brown paint at the base of each tooth to add some extra grunge to everything. And finally finish off the teeth with either a coat of gloss protective spray (Or if you're cheap like me super glue). To add that wet shine to the teeth.

Finally there is the chainsaws, there's no definitive way to paint these only a rough sort of technique I used. I found that 90% of painting the chainsaws is eyeballing it until it looks "Grungy" enough. The way I painted each chainsaw was I covered the whole thing in a silver base coat. Then I went over each chainsaw in a layer of watered down brown paint and dabbed it off with a paper towel. This left uneven rusty looking splotches which add to the dirtiness of it all. And to finish each chainsaw off I used watered down black paint on the spikes all the way around and dabbed that off with a paper towel. Not all the paint comes off and any paint that seeps into the recesses stays there and makes everything look a whole lot dirtier.

And with that you're done! Now its time to rev up those chainsaws and take to streets as Chainsaw man the Hero of Hell!

Thank you so much for reading I hope you enjoyed reading how I made the Hero of Hell come to life. A lot of effort went in to making this costume and writing it up to share it with you all. So if you decide to make one for yourself, please share photos I love to see what you guys are able to make.

And with that I will leave you all with a Happy Halloween and Happy Hunting as Chainsaw Man The Hero of Hell!!!