Samus Aran's Arm Cannon From Metroid
by Namisuke in Craft > Costumes & Cosplay
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Samus Aran's Arm Cannon From Metroid
This tutorial will demonstrate how to make Samus' arm cannon with optional lights and sound. This was a prop I created for my Samus Aran (Metroid Prime) Gravity Suit.
I recommend watching some tutorials on building with foam first (such as Evil Ted Smith on YouTube) and some LED soldering and safety videos for some basics first.
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Supplies
EVA foam in 5mm and 2mm widths
Car vinyl or paint (I got my vinyl from Wish.com)
Contact cement (I recommend LePage brand indoor version)
Worbla's Transparent Art (or something comparable)
Orange translucent vinyl
Dremel (or other sanding tool)
LEDs in red, orange, and yellow
Wire
9V batteries
Switches
Soldering iron
Solder
Safety goggles
Resistors
9V and coin batteries
Scissors
Cutting mat
Blades
Optional:
MP3 player
Small speaker
Draft Your Patterns and Build Your Shapes
If you choose to add LEDs to your Canon, make sure to cut a hole where they should go (shown in picture). Cover that hole with a strip of clear acrylic or Worbla's Transparent Art covered in the orange translucent vinyl. You can also choose to use any kind of orange plastic you can find. I repeated the steps until I had my Canon built up.
for the round pieces on the sides, I had to stand down two layers of 5mm EVA foam that I glued together. If you use vinyl, you'll have to cover that piece with contact cement, and when it dries, use a heat gun or hair dryer to heat a vinyl and pull it over the round edges. You will need to cut darts in the vinyl to fit around some edges. See my other tutorial on how to cover foam in vinyl wrap.
I added an optional removable missile to my blaster by again following the shapes that I referenced to make a pattern and adding magnets to attach it. Again, I used your Worbla's Transparent Art and orange vinyl to add pieces that would glow with LEDs. I used Worbla's Finest Art to create a sturdy base for it so it would attach nicely to the curve of the cannon. This needs to be heated with a heat gun in order to take shape.
Inserting LEDs
After I soldered my lights together, I used hot glue to make sure that my connections didn't touch by gluing them to white 2mm EVA foam in the pattern and spacing I wanted. This made them a lot easier to slide into place and glue down. I made sure to leave a lot of slack for the wire for the front light so that I could glue it in properly. I hooked everything up to 9V batteries, and therefore needed resistors (orange orange brown, to make things easy) to ensure the LEDs didn't burn out.
The small missile has its own LED system with four yellow LEDs and a coin battery (no resistors needed).
The images provided are a good reference for how to set this up.
Adding Sound
I wasn't able to upload the video of the sounds here, but they're available on my Instagram at BrainstarCosplay.