Rakshasa + DMR Build — FF7 Vincent Themed!

[gazihsah]

Thought I'd finally sit down and write up a thread for what I wanted to put together for late-April: a Rakshasa build themed around Vincent Valentine, from Final Fantasy 7, smooshed together! Somehow. I've sketched up a few initial ideas for what I had in mind, and for what I want it to generally look like.

I was originally thinking of just going with his traditional cloak design since I've already made that in the past , but figured it could potentially look out of place if I didn't redesign something to fit the overall look of the armor better.

The full build will (hopefully) be:

• Rakshasa core (by Aguilar Workshop)
• Trailblazer helmet (by Aguilar Workshop)
• DMR (by OddWorks) [went with the DMR due to it being a personal fave, though, might make something smaller down the road that'll be easier to travel with]
• A red cloak that's reminiscent of the sniper veils that Jun wears (likely going to be 2 different textiles to match Vincent's silhouette, while still feeling military-esque)
• Likely make some soft pouches (gotta have pockets in a cosplay.)

I'm using my Bambu A1 printer, and used PolyLite CosPLA (ver. B) filament for the DMR, but ran out of my 5kg roll shortly after, swapping to Overture PLA+ after finding that for a decent price.

So, what's done so far?

I've printed out the DMR in full! There's still pieces I need to glue together, and seams I'll be filling with epoxy resin, and I'll need to do more passes of filler primer + spot putty before I get going with the paint.

I'm still printing the last 2 pieces of the helmet, but I'm going to fiberglass reinforce the seams of the top bucket together ( the top bucket was too big to fit on the print bed if I hadn't slice it into smaller, printable pieces).

Aaaaand the other major milestones I still gotta hit are:

• Size the Rakshasa pieces in Armorsmith to fit...
• ...Print and sand prep those pieces off
• Reinforce the pieces with fiberglass resin at the seams
• Paint All The Things™
• Make a visor (not sure if I'll either vaccum form it, or use a flat plastic sheet, or just buy it)
• Wire up fans and audio for the helmet
• Maybe add lighting for the armor where appropriate (depending on whether I con crunch too close to the sun)
• Find patterns for molle pouches, and sew them
  

 

[N8TEBB]

Yooo this is such a dope idea!

 

[gazihsah]

It's been a month! Somehow! Super busy with other stuff, but almost got everything printed!
I'm waiting on a pair of gloves to come in, test fitting the hands, and then the forearms and shoulders around how those all fit together.

I was able to throw on everything from the thighs down except the knee pads; waiting on elastic bands to come in before I can secure everything else.

The shin guards don't sit quite right in the photo, but they should sit fine once they're secured with elastic bands as planned.

I also thought about going with a different pair of boots (since the yellow stitching kinda stands out), but I figure since the armor here will be gold anyways, it should be fine anywho.

Otherwise, I'm stuck sanding for probably the next month - I did a rough, 80grit pass of *almost* everything. I picked up an electric foot sander (sounded weird to me too lol), and that's drastically sped up the process since that came in last week. Still gonna do a pass of 120grit, followed by 180 grit, before I finally hit everything with some coats of filler primer, followed by 400grit and 600grit.

 

[YTunz]

Dude I remember playing through Dirge of Cerberus back on the PS2! Looks like your making good progress, and I can't wait to see how it turns out!!!

 

[gazihsah]

Dude I remember playing through Dirge of Cerberus back on the PS2! Looks like your making good progress, and I can't wait to see how it turns out!!!

Thanks!! It's getting there! I wanna paint what I have printed right now sooo bad, but I know if I break up my painting, certain panels might turn out differently from each other, soooo, patience it is lol

 

[YTunz]

Thanks!! It's getting there! I wanna paint what I have printed right now sooo bad, but I know if I break up my painting, certain panels might turn out differently from each other, soooo, patience it is lol

How are you going about painting it? Rattlecan, airbrush, or regular brush?

 

[gazihsah]

How are you going about painting it? Rattlecan, airbrush, or regular brush?

The vast majority's going to be rattlecanned, but I'll be doing the gold armor/plates likely with a layer of brass pigment powder, then sealed with rattlecan clear coat, and then rub n buff over top that.

I've done it before for my actual Vincent cosplay (the gold looks more saturated in most light), but it's easy to go too heavy with it. Since I’m not sure how it’ll look with the rest of the armour, I might try something more normal, so I'll probably test with some failed prints Soon™

 

[gazihsah]

Took it easy over the holidays, buuuut got a fair bit done over the past month!~
If you don't feel like reading...all of this, there's a TL;DR right next to the most recent progress pics of where I'm currently at with it, so, yeah.

Earlier in December, I got around to filling gaps and print lines with body filler, and then sanded it down with 40grit -> 80 -> 160 -> 220grit passes
Once everything was sanded down to 220grit, I then went in with filler primer and wet sanded it all with 400 and 600 grit passes.

I...then accidentally dropped the helmet, carelessly tossing it around, excited from having finished sanding it. The top bucket part was printed in 2 pieces, since my Bambu A1 only has a 256x256mm print bed, so that's what gave out (and took the longest to get seamless). BUT lined it back up, and tried "welding" together the bucket pieces with a soldering iron — I'd previously just only glued them together with Craftics #33. The soldering/welding technique seems to be *very* rigid - I tried twisting the pieces around to see if it held, and it seems better! (I also have the upper body strength of a twig, so, time will tell).

Once I was back on track with sanding, I worked on getting base coats of black down!

With the base coats down, I started with the gold parts, using Vincent's 7 Rebirth design as reference for which armor plates got the gold treatment!
I start by going in with a layer of brass pigment powder, since this is an under layer (I imagine a shiny gold powder would look too bright for my personal liking), applying very light amounts of it with a paint brush.

In the above photo, the shin armor on the left has the black base coat, with the small piece on the left treated with the pigment powder.
Once I have all my pieces brushed with the powder (wear a respirator - this stuff sticks around in the air really well, especially if you're not careful with not flinging it), I seal it with a layer of satin clear coat.

Then once the clear coat's dried, I then go in with gold rub n buff - a little goes a *very* long way. Since the container of the rub n buff I had laying around from the last time I used it had dried out naturally, I just rehydrated it with a little bit of water, and it was done in no time. And of course, I hit it with one final layer of satin clear coat.
These pieces don't get a layer of silver undercoating (for subtractive weathering), since I'd imagine these being gold armor pieces, wouldn't necessarily be gold painted? More of a personal choice here anyways, and it's what I did with my regular, non-Rakshasa'fied Vincent cosplay in the past, so, c'est la vie!

Aaand in between waiting for all the paint and clear coat to dry, I cracked at the visor for the helmet!

At first, I applied the red mirror tint to a thin sheet of PETG like you would normally apply tint to a window, which is what you see in the left photo. It's...fine, ish. But after a few days, the bubbles that I hadn't pressed out still hadn't dissipated, and it had quickly set in that I suck at applying tint, and I have a newfound respect for car tint appliers.
So. I kinda just went the easy route, and just...set the tint in front of the PETG sheet, without applying it normally. Taping the tint and PETG sheet together. And it works! It feels like cheating after having tried to correctly apply tint the first try, but, grumble grumble work smarter not harder grumble.

And that's everything I have done so far! I'll be hitting all the pieces that're still black with graphite powder, and buffing that in so it has a silver shine, then sealing that. I thought about just using metallic spray paint for this step, but I personally like the sheen that the graphite powder can have, and how much I can tune that, based on how much graphite powder I add and buff.

I haven't cut up the harnesses/straps to keep the armor on my body, but I'll be doing that before moving onto doing The Nice Paint that'll be the coat you see - I figure that once I see where the straps go and sit with it all on my body, I can get better idea of where exactly I'll want to subtractive weather.

TL;DR - I applied body filler + filler primer, sanded, painted a base coat, did the gold pieces and made the visor. Woo!