Monstrous Makings

Posted on August 4, 2021August 4, 2021 by Monstrous Makings — 1 Comment

Iron Kingdoms Cosplay Part 3: Gun Mage & Mechanik

I debuted the Gun Mage costume a month ago at the first Saturday night D&D session at the fantastic Nerdy Coffee Co. but it has taken me this long to sit down and write it all up. The team at Darkblade LARP did a fantastic job on the leatherwork and after some back and forth the parts all fit perfectly.

First up we have the Gun Mage costume:

And then the full Mechanik costume:

And just because 2 costumes wasn’t enough variety I’ve started working on some more parts. I’m currently playing a Rhulic Dwarf Mechanik with a Repeating Pistol and a Mechanikal Arm in a campaign so I figured I’d start there. Whilst looking around for Mechanikal Arm inspiration I found the picture of the Khador Mechaniks Chief from the Warmachine game and noticed the head on his ‘Jack Wrench looks like a ratcheting socket set, so I started to build a new head for my wrench too. The socket heads are going to be magnetized so they will be interchangeable and they will also fit into the Slug ammo loops for ease of carrying.

Next up was the repeating pistol and for that I went to thingiverse to try and find a revolver to suit. I ended up with a Destiny gun that kinda looked the part but didn’t have a functional interior, so I downloaded the files and got to work of making it all work. The first prototype is done and the hammer and trigger mechanism works, I just need to get a few more parts printed to test the cylinder advancement system. I’m also working on adding runes instead of the detailing on the original files. It’s also scaled to fit in the Magelock holster and to use the same bullets for maximum cross purpose.

Now to look into working on the Mechanikal Prosthetic Arm, that’s gonna be a fun one.

Posted on April 12, 2021April 12, 2021 by Monstrous Makings — 1 Comment

Iron Kingdoms Cosplay Project

With the release of the Iron Kingdoms Requiem Kickstarter I was suddenly re-invigorated for the Iron Kingdoms. So much so that I have decided to create a costume for cosplay events at my local FLGS, Nerdy Coffee Co., and possibly further afield.

I have always loved the Iron Kingdoms and creating a costume to fully imerse myself in it (and possibly DM some Requiem games at the shop) seemed like the next logical step for me. I am hoping to work with a local seamstress for the soft elements of the costume but I have already started on the harder elements, guns, swords/wrenches, and armour panels. I just couldn’t resist. Also I’ve decided to over engineer everything, as I am apparently want to do with lots of my projects.

So I have a look through the Iron Kingdoms artwork for some inspiration and I’ve always loved the way Black River Irregulars Captain Colby Sterling looks but as a 6ft 3in man with a full beard, pulling off that look would be quite difficult, so I’m going to blend her and Rutger Shaw together to create something a bit unique. I also figured I could probably create 2 characters out of one costume with a few variations in equipment etc so I have some variety.

For the 2 different characters I have decided to work of a Gun Mage and a Mechanik (which with minor alterations could also be an Arcane Mechanik) so the first thing I did was plan out the weapons. Slug Gun and ‘Jack Wrench for the Mechanik and Magelock and Sword for the Gun Mage (and just because I can I’ll be making this one Mechanikal with glowing LEDs etc)

I decided early on that both the guns would have working trigger and hammer mechanisms along with a break open design and removable bullet/slug too. I know that’s one way to bite off more than I can chew. I scoured thingiverse for a working system that I could rig into my designs and got to work. The Slug Gun was created from scratch around the mechanism but the Magelock was adapted from an existing design. After a solid day and a half’s work I have the stl’s mostly where I wanted them to be and I had started printing parts to test the mechanics.

With the tests a success I forged on printing parts and as of this morning they are mostly finished printing, just the stock on the Slug Gun to go which still has about 24hrs left on the print. I’ll grab another pic of that once it’s done. I printed most of the parts at 0.12mm layers heights, not caring about the print times as much as saving myself as much cleanup as possible. And this is where I’m up to, the easy bit is done, now comes the hard part of sanding and smoothing all the parts.

Slug Gun firing

Magelock Firing

Posted on June 21, 2020June 21, 2020 by Monstrous Makings — Leave a comment

Cosplay Nomad Pistol Part 1: Scaling and Printing

A month or 2 ago one of the Infinity: The Game community contacted me say he was planning on using my 28mm scale weapon files that I make for tabletop conversions to make him self a Cosplay variant of the weapon and I was intrigued.

I decided to give it a try myself and picked the recently released Nomad Pistol to try, it’s my favourite pistol so far and I wanted to start small.

I took some measurements from the file and my hand and initially settled on scaling the file to 50x the 28mm file. To test the size I cut the file in half and printed a few layers from the middle of it.

This turned out to be huge and needed shrinking again. 75% of the first print (so 3750% for the original file), printed another 2 layer slice and this was a much better size. Also fit on the build plate in one piece.

After settling on the size I took the file into Microsoft 3d builder to slice it in half and add holes for pieces of filament to align the halves afterwards. I then used Cura to slice the files ready to print. Using the Adaptive Layers feature in Cura I ended up with a layer height between 0.12mm and 0.28mm depending on the angle of the part.