Some inspired design for my Mandalorian Mercs costume

darxide403 (57)in #starwars • 7 years ago

To give a little more context to this tale, let us first back up to May of this year.

A man, who allegedly suffered from mental illness, attended the Phoenix Comic Con, dressed as the Punisher. He was armed with a plethora of REAL weapons, and claims that his intent was to kill Jason David Frank of Power Rangers fame. You can read more about it here

Moving forward, many comic expos have tightened up the rules of prop weapons, since many cosplayers are so good at creating life-like pieces that their prop guns look as real as a fully functional weapon.

On the official Mandalorian Mercs Costume Club forums, it was suggested that anyone attending comic cons have their own home made melee weapon props as a replacement, so as not to violate the new, more stringent rules (ie: something immediately identifiable as NOT being a gun)

Skip forward to this past weekend, where I joined a facebook group for fans of Mandalorians, and members/aspiring members of the Mandalorian Mercs.

One of the group members was displaying some 3.75" action figures that he "kitbashed" together to create new characters.
(Kitbashing is when you take pieces and parts of other figures and put them together to create a new one)

The piece that caught my eye was this one.

I have no idea where this weapon is from, but it looked awesome! Upon seeing it, I was struck with some inspiration to create a similar piece for my own Mandalorian kit. I loved the curved blade look, and immediately had a design in mind. A custom made melee weapon for my costume? I love the idea!

I wanted to incorporate the Mandalorian skull symbol (aka the "Kyr'bes" or "Mythosaur skull' - shown bottom right in black) into the handle of it. So I opened up Illustrator and started plucking away! After a couple hours, this is what I came up with.

When I was done, I couldn't help but notice a slight similarity to a Klingon bat'leth from Star Trek, and had to giggle at myself. That wasn't the intended outcome. Still, I rather like the design I made.

I am thinking I will probably cut the "blade" piece from 6mm thick plastic foam sheets, and use 3mm sheets to make the skull decoration itself. Once I get it started, I'll share the work in progress!