How To Make : Lightning FFXIII Gunblade

Naomi has been cosplaying as Lightning from Final Fantasy XIII for two years now, due to the first MCM event that she went to was last minute she didn't have enough time to make Lightning's Gunblade.

This gunblade was made in just over 5 days, due to this Naomi is going to re-paint the Gunblade before the next expo.

The tools which were used when creating the gunblade are:

-Craft Knife
-Thick Card
-Craft Foam
-Plastic Tube
-Strong Glue or a Glue Gun

-Silver Spray Paint

-Red and Black Acrylic Paint

-Dark Grey Acrylic Paint.

The measurement for this Gunblade was 50" long. Here is the template which we used for the outline of the sword. We started off by creating the general shape of the blade first. 

After creating the template we then started to draw the blade on to the card first, and then the same with the handle.

 Once we had the first layer to the Gunblade we then repeated this process two more times so in total we had 4 layers for the sword. However the two outside layers for the handle we made the pieces a little bit longer to give the sword some strength and to cover up the joints in the middle.

After doing this we then coated the sword in a papermache, however the sword was still a little flimsy and needed alot of reinforement. we did this by adding an addition piece of thicker card to the sword which you can see here:

Despite doing this the sword didn't support its self properly and we had to improvise a way to support the handle of the sword. We decided to cut a whole through the middle of the handle and add a thick plastic pole, which gave the sword the support that it needed. 

After these sets were completed a final coat of papermache was applied and then we were ready to add the detail. We did this by using the previous template which we cut out the shapes of the detail and used these to created the detail from thin blue craft foam. For some of the detail a few layers of the shapes was required. The piece for the handle easily covered the plastic pole.

This is the sword after all the building work was complete. We added another layer of papermache over the foam detail to protect the foam from the spray paint and to also harden the foam to stop it coming away while we were at the expo. 

After the papermache layer was dry we then coated the gun in a silver spray paint, and then used reference photos to add the additional colours on to the Gunblade. 

Due to Naomi's sword being made the week before the expo. she has decided to give it another coat of papermache and to repaint the Gunblade.

Here are some photos of Naomi in her cosplay at MCM Manchester 2012.