Jayce Talis, Arcane S2

[BHE Photos]

I'm currently elbow-deep in the Con Crunch for Anime Milwaukee next week, and my big new cosplay is Jayce Talis once he has his manly/Daddy glow-up.

As a bearded Cosplayer, I always appreciate bearded characters that aren't joke characters, and Arcane is full of options. As an engineer and a hobbyist blacksmith, Jayce appeals to me quite a bit.

For the build:
Originally I planned on building this in two different phases. Phase 1 was going to be for AMKE, and it was going to be the casual attire he wears underneath the jacket and breastplate:

Then Phase 2 was going to be learning Blender and designing the armor pieces myself (since the files weren't available anywhere that I could find), with a goal of having it done/ready for C2E2. The intent was to really lean into sewing and sew the dress shirt and vest myself, and even attempt the jacket.

I did buy a basic vest pattern and sewed a practice vest which turned out rough but acceptable:

However, I then procrastinated for way too long on making adjustments to the pattern, so I have pivoted to a different path, and I will instead be altering some items. This is arguably the path I should have started on, since it will be easier to build the sewing skills in bite-sized pieces.
I found this shirt on Amazon:

The color is a decent match (from what I can tell, he's wearing something similar to forest green) and has the type of collar I want for this. Since the vest and shirt are so similar, I bought two of them. I have removed the sleeves and pocket from the one that will become the vest, and I am going to add gold trim/piping and a piece of scarlet floral patterned cloth to the shoulders. I will also remove a few of the upper buttons probably.
For the shirt that will remain the shirt, I have removed the collar and the pocket. I will probably cut away the top 3 buttons or so, to prevent it from showing under the open vest buttons. I will also add some scarlet to the inside of the sleeve cuffs.

I will be making the belt with leather and a 2" strip of scarlet nylon. I'm undecided about how I will make it tighten though.

The Corrupted Hammer file was purchased from a designer on Cults3D and most of the pieces (8 for the hammer head alone) were printed on my Neptune 3 Max. That printer has been throwing a tantrum lately, so the prints came out rough but acceptable. Because of the size of this prop, I have purchased some carbon fiber tubes to act as the handle.
The original intent was to make the hex orb light up and the hammer pieces open up with the actuation of the handle lever, but I think that will have to be saved for a "Version 2" of the hammer, because realistically I don't have time for that before AMKE. I also want to cast the handle out of aluminum bronze for strength and a more realistic gold look, though I may also pursue electroplating.

Last night I finally got around to gluing and welding the hammer head pieces together. Due to the size of this thing (over 10 pounds already), I used a combination of CA glue along the large interior flat surfaces, metal staples (a first for me), a 3D pen to fill gaps where prints warped (also a first for me), and a wood burner to weld the pieces together. It feels pretty sturdy, and I'm not worried about the pieces breaking apart. The hex core/orb gets fully enclosed within the head, so I can't attach the two sides until I have the orb done. I ordered some translucent blue resin that I'm going to print it out of, then I'll have to wrap it in something to protect it for when I am painting the rest of the hammer head. Once I get the two halves stapled and welded together, I'll be coating it in UV Resin per my usual finishing process. Thankfully I won't have to do a ton of sanding since this is supposed to be a rough surface finish.

I also ordered a set of pants that should look close enough and a pair of brown boots to go with it. I don't currently plan on making the leg braces.

Phase 2 was supposed to wait until after AMKE, however I made the decision to see what kind of price and timeline would be involved with commissioning a Designer to model the armor. I reached out to the Designer that made the hammer file (they had also done the Judgement Paladin files that I bought and made last summer) and found out that it was cheaper and faster than expected, so I now have a set of files for both pauldrons, the wrist armor, and the breastplate. With a week left until AMKE, I think I can knock out a decent full rough draft and then revisit and upgrade some of them in time for C2E2, with a goal of a final version ready for DragonCon.

Unfortunately my printers have ALL decided to work against me, so yesterday I dealt with 9 different print failures across 4 different printers. I am hoping that when I get home today, I will have the first pauldron and half of the upper breastplate waiting for me on their build plates, and not another set of spaghetti.

For the jacket, I ordered this one:

I will probably end up removing the buttons and sewing in a piece of brown fabric or leather to the inside of the lapel area. Then I'll make the belt/straps necessary to hold the pauldrons on.

The goal for the end of the weekend is to get all of the armor pieces printed and the hammer pieces up to the point of being primed and ready to paint. I also want to have the belt done and the vest done. Then next week (Mon-Wed) will be about post processing the armor, assembling the hammer, and handling the rigging.

Plus I still need to look at my other cosplays for the Con and fix whatever is broken.

 

[BHE Photos]

Mar-04 Update:

All armor parts were printed by the end of Friday. Post processing for layer lines went okay for most, though I rushed the breastplate and it shows (tried to just use filler primer and then decided to add resin on top later which then cured poorly and pulled up the primer).

I also rushed the top coat on several parts and ruined the gold rattle can that I had laid down first (didn't let it cure long enough and ended up with a ton of flashing and pulled up paint).
In the interest of getting things done in time, I opted to hand paint the pieces with acrylic paint (to avoid the need for taping off sections).
This turned out okay, though not nearly as clean as I would have liked. Using brushed on paint is not my forte.

However, despite the odds, I did get them all painted to a "good enough" level and got a layer of clear coat down before I went to bed. I am missing one tiny detail piece for the chest that must have gone to wherever my 10mm sockets hangout, so I'll have to reprint that tonight, but it'll be super easy (barely an inconvenience!).

The hammer has finally been (almost) fully assembled. To connect the handle pieces (30mm OD/28mm ID carbon fiber tubes) I printed some 6" connector pieces with grooves in the side for adhesive and sized for a press fit (used 10 walls and 10% honeycomb infill for strength). On the lower two handle sections I glued both ends and for the hammer head section I only glued one end (using 2 part epoxy). This will give me approx a 30" top section and about a 50" bottom section. I haven't put them together to see how securely the two sections hold with just a press fit, I may drill a hole and add a bolt/nut to allow it to be locked in if I have to worry about them separating while carrying it.

The hex core in the center was a challenge, and the two sides ended up splitting apart after full assembly because the core sticks out a bit from the head and makes contact with whatever I lay it on. Since the opening in the head is too small for the parts to slip out though, I'm just going to ignore it for now.

To hold the two massive halves together, I used about at least a dozen hot staples, which are quickly becoming my favorite way to connect pieces. Unfortunately I can't staple from an interior surface for this prop so it made the surface finish a bit messy in that area (especially since I had to fill about an 1/8" gap with my 3D pen), but since it's an organic shape it's not as noticeable as a helmet surface. I smoothed down what I could with my woodburner and touched it up with paint.

I taped off a few sections and added the teal blue (thankfully none of the gold peeled up this time) and was able to put clear coat on it as well. Tonight I will add some reds and darker blues to give it the extra details it needs. I'll probably save the weathering for after this weekend's Con.

These last two evenings will be focusing on the vest, jacket, belt, and the straps needed to rig the armor.

 

[BHE Photos]

Jayce Talis AMKE after actions and C2E2 roadmap:
(Will add photos from my phone when I have time)

AMKE After Action Report:
I wore the casual/dressed-down Jayce cosplay (no jacket or armor, just the shirt, vest, and belt) for the photoshoots I had on Saturday of AMKE. I also wore the bracer to kind of drive home the fact that I was Jayce and not some random character in a green vest.

From the very first shoot, I had issues with the belt. The belt is a two-piece belt: the thin front piece (4" wide) is what tightens around my waist with a standard belt buckle. The larger back piece (6" wide) sits on top of that, with a piece of leather that initially had snaps on one end to hold it over the belt. The snaps repeatedly came undone and just aren't strong enough for the stress being put on them. Between photoshoots, I replaced the snaps with rivets and just fed the smaller belt through the loops, but even the rivets didn't want to hold, and I had to replace the loops entirely to give it a bit more wiggle room.
The larger back piece also kept shifting backwards and drooping since there was nothing holding it up/forward.

The bracer was fine, but not super comfortable (realistically I don't think any of my bracers are).

At 3pm, I wrapped up my last photoshoot and was able to change into the full cosplay. The chest armor was easy to put on at home, but I apparently trimmed the straps a bit too much (I leave them long when first making them and then trim them once everything is done) so it was hard to actually get the straps through the buckles. The chest armor was mostly fine once it was on, though it did sag down a bit by the time I was done wearing it. Not a huge issue, but has room for improvements.

The shoulder armor was the most problematic. The pauldrons go over the trench coat, but the coat is left open, so I can't run any straps across the chest. I initially made a shoulder harness that had one strap running across my back and then loops that my arms would go through, and the pauldrons were attached to those loops with Chicago Screws. This worked really well for when I was test fitting them in my living room wearing the shirt, but the coat added a lot of bulk that made it really difficult to actually put on and the pauldrons did not like staying in place. I kept having to find a wall to push against and shift them into place. By the time I made it back to my hotel room after the Arcane meet-up, both pauldrons had drooped off of my shoulders and were barely hanging from my biceps. Also, the left pauldron (the smaller one) looked fine when worn over the shirt, but was comically small when worn with the trench coat.

The trench coat as a whole works okay for the look, but is still shorter than I'd like, and is made of wool. I would not want to wear this to a summertime Con, and would absolutely die if I wore this to DragonCon.

The hammer worked out pretty well. At 13.6 pounds total and about 7' tall, it's a beast to carry. I had to be careful going through doorways, and there are marks on my boots from where I would rest the bottom piece when I was going up/down the escalators. I added some red/blue details to the hammer head to give it that "corrupted look" that turned out decent. I did have one of the detail pieces break that sits above the lever and below the hammer head (gold swirly bit shown in the previous post), but that wasn't super surprising, as that is the part where I most often would grab to hold.
The press fit of the hammer head section and the rest of the handle is actually surprisingly snug, and I had no issues with it twisting or slipping. This may change over time as I assemble/disassemble it for transport to Cons, but for now I'm not worried about it coming apart when I don't want it to.
I actually assumed that my hammer was super heavy, but there were 5 or 6 other Jayce cosplayers with hammers at the meetup, and the one I talked to said that his (the Season 1 version) weighed 20 pounds (it looked like he probably had a lot of electronics inside his, and the handle was likely much heavier compared to my carbon fiber handle. He claimed that one of the other guys had a 50 pound hammer, though I didn't actually hold either of them to directly compare.

Overall thoughts:
Successful rough draft/first wear. Lots of improvements that need to be made, but I'm happy with the amount I got done in time for this Con.

C2E2 Roadmap:
C2E2 has an Arcane meet-up (one of the few official ones) on Saturday. I will be in my Mark IV in the morning for the 405th meet-up/photoshoot/show of force/fireteam patrols of the Con floor, and then change into Jayce for the Arcane meetup. There was at least one Cosplayer at AMKE that chased me down to make sure I was going to be at the C2E2 Arcane meetup so she could get some photos with her Victor cosplay that she would be bringing.

Jayce updates/upgrades for C2E2:

• Fix/improve belt
• Larger left pauldron
• Better coat
• Better pauldron mounting
• Improved vest
• Add wig
• Add gloves
• Improved chest armor rigging

I have already reprinted the left pauldron at 115%. I will have to see how it looks on the trench coat to see if I'm satisfied with the new scale, I may push it to 125%. I am going to try to rattle can the paint job on this one, since I have the time to actually let the paint dry/cure this time before taping it off.

For the belt, I am going to connect the inner and outer pieces on one side and leave the other side free for adjustment. I'm not entirely sure how I will do this (I still want to be able to tighten it), but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. I ordered to stronger rivets (actual brass rivets instead of the cheap double cap ones I've been using), so I can make stronger connections. I will also add the gold trim to the belt with strips of EVA foam, and I would also like to add the buckles (though they will be non-functional). I also need to add a lining to stop the little bits of leather from rubbing off on my pants/vest. I'll probably just use spray adhesive and some cloth, though sewing it would definitely be best (I could hide the stitch line under the gold trim).

Trench coat improvements: I ordered two new (cheap) trench coats that I will experiment with. Both are longer, and at least one is a polyester instead of wool, so it should be lighter. With thinner material, it should be easier to add the leather straps to get closer to screen accurate.

Pairing with the new coat, the pauldrons in the show attach to leather that is sewn to the shoulders of the coat. I hope to recreate this and be able to move away from trying to make a custom shoulder harness. Ideally the pauldrons will buckle directly to the coat. I'm undecided about the method of buckling, since I like to stick with more period appropriate buckles/snaps (as opposed to the 1" plastic buckles I use all over my Mark IV armor). I don't think I trust the snaps I have currently, though I may look into buying more robust ones.

Vest improvements: The vest in the show has a red (or maybe red and black) felt piece that is over the shoulders. I purchased some floral print red fabric that I want to use, but while Con Crunching realized that it was going to be a nightmare to figure out in a single evening, so I opted to skip it. I would like to revisit adding this in, since it is one of the more recognizable parts of the vest.
I also want to add the oblique piece. I might buy yet another shirt (to make sure the color match) and cut that up to use.
For the front of the vest, I want to add the gold clasps. These would be non-functional, and probably get sewn/glued over the button holes.
I am technically still missing the red trim that runs alongside the gold trim all over the vest, but I already added gold trim to the very edges. If I decide to get ambitious, I may use the extra shirt mentioned above as the new base of the vest and cannibalize the current vest to cut out a template for the back felt piece and to give myself a reset of the vest for adding the red and gold trim.

The undershirt needs red added to the inside of the sleeve, so I'll add that at some point.

Gloves are pretty self-explanatory. While I do eventually want to learn how to make my own leather gloves, I'll likely just purchase some from the thrift store for now.

Wig: While my current haircut is relatively close to the Season 1 Jayce and I think I can do "good enough" without a wig (and I'm absolutely not growing out my hair again), this is a Cosplay that I intend to milk for as long as Arcane is full of hype, so I am going to go the extra step and add a wig. I have ordered one from a website that sells styled wigs (because I tried styling a cheap wig from Amazon for a Gojo cosplay and it went very poorly). Unfortunately due to having a big head, I had to order the large size that takes 15-25 days to finish. I paid for the express shipping (5-8 days), but it still means that having the wig in time for C2E2 is questionable. I may still end up ordering a cheap Amazon wig.
I am also considering ordering some yellowish contacts to wear to fully complete the look.

Chest armor rigging: currently I have two straps that run from the top of the armor, over my shoulders, cross my back (x-pattern) and then attach like belts at about the lower rib area of the armor. I think I am going to make a more robust x-brace/harness for this. I am thinking a rectangular leather piece that will sit on my upper back, and each corner will have a ring and strap that wrap around to the front to connect to the chest armor, perhaps with clips at the top and the same belt buckle style at the bottom. This will allow me to "hang" the armor over my neck when putting it on, versus the current system of having to hold the armor against my chest with one arm while trying to get the first strap connected with the other. The straps in general also need to be longer, and then probably some belt keepers added for tucking away the excess. This is fairly low priority, but also a pretty easy upgrade.

This Cosplay is my main priority over the Mark IV, Judgement Paladin, and Soldier Boy, so it will see the bulk of effort over the next 3 weeks. I may revisit the entire paint job depending on how I like the new pauldron. The currently brushed acrylic isn't terrible, but I'm not a huge fan of the gold and I would like a darker green (the show is a bit ambiguous about whether his armor is hunter green, the more traditional blue, or possibly even black). The rattle can gold I have is way shinier, and I would prefer to use that.
I will probably also add some padding to the underside of the bracer to give it a slightly more comfortable fit.