Berserk - Guts - ALA 2014

I got talked into making Guts' Berserker armor by my friend Champ. I told him it would be easy cheesy lemon squeezy because it was the same plate done 50 times. I was a bit wrong. I cranked it out in 3 weeks, but they were pretty painful weeks to be perfectly honest. Enough of me and my hubris getting me into trouble. Let's get on with the build.

Guts' armor changes minute to minute, moment to moment it seems during the manga so I decided on these references to work from. I leaned more towards the figure with small clear ups with the manga. 





Big thanks to Mikhail Klakotskiy for this pic. It really helped with patterning and proportioning the sword. 



First was to pattern it all out. I started with the shoulder.


From these I cut the shoulder and glued the ends with super glue.


From there you can heat them to get a nice curved shape.



I made a 2nd set and glued it to the 1st. Guts' entire chest is just a repeating shape starting from the shoulder.



I had to write a MatLab script to do some lifting for me on the shoulder. Essentially I resolved the shoulder into a set of vectors, then derived the angle using the dot product.

TLDR. I used math.





Had to bondo the seems.





Little trick is to put masking tape on the INSIDE of the armor to stop Bondo from getting in. So now the inside is fairly clean. I think the masking tape is still there since I was too lazy to remove it...



Made the bicep armor similarly to the shoulder. Gluing pieces end to end then heating for the curve.





Chest was done the same as the shoulder. That first shoulder pattern was the pattern for the whole chest. Guts' whole upper body is just a repeating plate. I can't stress how easy that made my life.





Added a plate in the middle to close it up and made the stomach the same method. Glue PVC end to end then heat. Noticing a pattern? Guts is nothing but repetition...



Started making the jaw for the collar. PVC foam.



Filled it in with Apoxie Sculpt.



Attached to the chest with a 1/4" thick piece of PVC foam. I wound up bringing the jaw section a bit more forward on its stand. I don't document it but I did do it.



Crotch armor was made the same. Glue PVC end to end then heat. Getting tired of me saying that yet?



Sanded down the edges.



Test fit! See if all the proportions are good.



Starting on the leg armor with a pattern. More repeating plates.





Cut them all out. Glued end to end, heated then glued together.



Cut a very small dart to the top of the leg pattern to give a subtle compound curve and ride the curvature of my voluptuous thighs.



Made that weird stripe he has on the thigh by doing the same gluing end to end method then twisting it a little bit. It was a weird shape but I really liked it.









Knees I couldn't figure out so I just brute forced my way through it by using Apoxie Sculpt. There are better ways to do this. Not really recommended.





Second test fit! Starting to look like something!



I didn't bother documenting the shoes or shins because it's more of the same repeating plates nonsense.

The mechanical arm was made using PVC and it fully encloses my arm. Had to make it quickly so not much documentation. Sorry! Googly eyes for detailing and I used a pattern from Amethyst Angel's Edward Alric tutorial for the fingers. I'll include the pattern below.







Probably the most useful part of this build. The Dragonslayer. That big beat stick of a sword. I actually printed out a pattern to get the correct taper.



Cut out the pattern then glued the wood shaft to the PVC foam.



Put up the walls perpendicular to the face.



Closed it up with another plate and started gluing the spines that would support the actual blade.



Applied the blade edge piece from PVC foam.



Closed it up with another PVC foam plate.



The whole point of the hollow design was that I could 1 hand the sword. Algerot Blacksmith made and gave me a Guts sword when I visited Mexico and it was SOOOO light.



Applied Bondo to the seams and sanded it down. Added the ONLY detail to the sword using more PVC foam. The chain link is from Sun's shotgun nunchucks.



Sculpted the pommel with bondo and more PVC foam.





Primed then painted silver.



Painted the inner part the same matte black the armor would be painted.



Btw I painted the armor. The bicep section of the mechanical arm is PVC foam with elastic joints. Mostly so it wouldn't restrict my movement.



Thanks for reading! It was a pretty tough costume to crank out in a few weeks, but it was a ton of fun!



32 comments:

  1. I've already commented on Facebook, but you did amazing work with this. Also, I'm really glad to see I'm not the only one to use Amethyst's patterns for finger plates in a pinch. Inspirational, through and through.

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    1. Yeah I always wondered what happened to that lady. Hers are the tutorials that inspired mine and what made me really want to give back to the cosplay community like she did.

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  2. You are amazing. I also make all kinds of costumes, but you are really amazing

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  3. I'm interested in following your steps to make this cosplay, I had long wanted to do and just found this page, cleared my many doubts as to make the armor, but I can not find where or in what type of sites to find the PVC, I would like you could me provide that information.

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    1. I provide it in the "Materials" section of this site. GL!

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. A Stella Artois fan, I knew there was a reason I liked you.

    Oh, and nice Guts costume too. ;)

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  6. Amazing work brother. Truly amazing work. It's my dream to create a BERSERK short fan film and star as Guts. I'll be doing COSPLAY next year and I find your work inspiring. Carry on brother.

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  8. Is their a slightly more detailed tutorial for this outfit just curious I really want to attempt this. Amazing work btw!

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  9. Is there any way you could make or sell that to me?

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  10. Is there any way you could make or sell that to me?

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  11. Do you have patterns availible for the armor plating and Dragonslayer?

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  12. is this for sale? are do you have pattern to make one? thanks

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  13. is this for sale? are do you have pattern to make one? thanks

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  14. this is 1 hell of a set and i realy want try and make 1 for my self. is ther a chance you have patterns to help me get on my way?

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  15. how much would this cost? I'd love to have my own armour

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  16. I hope I can make a Guts cosplay like this one day also!

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  17. how thick was the foam that you used for the sword?

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  18. It is difficult to buy cosplay swords in USA at lowest prices so that's why I am also looking for it can any one provide me ??Buy Cosplay Swords

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  19. Hey, how thick was the pvc foam you used for the dragonslayer?

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  20. Great work I can only wish I had yor talent I have been looking for this armor but not been successful I can only wonder how much wold be to have one made

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  21. Could you make available the models of each piece of armor with the downloadable measures for myself to do?

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  22. Will you someday post the patterns to help us?

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  23. The printable patterns would be such a huge help

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