Splatoon Splattershot Pro Cosplay Tutorial
Okay so, @ pkmnbreedertianna asked me to do a tutorial on how I made my Splattershot Pro. I want to preface this by pointing out that I am brand spanking new to cosplay. This was the first prop I built so I was definitely learning as I went. I also ran out of time, took a bunch of shortcuts and left parts off of the prop. As it stands now I still view it as a WIP. I also took progress photos for myself never intending to make a tutorial out of ii so the photos aren’t especially instructional.
Point being? This is about to be the worst tutorial ever. But if it helps anyone it’s worth typing out.
So for anyone not overly familiar with Splatoon, here’s the Splattershot Pro I was making (but filled with purple ink of course):
And here’s what I ended up with:
Cut for length, click to see how I made it;
So I guess I should start out with a tool list. Here’s what I used:
Styrofoam cone (approx 35cm tall)
EVA foam (the thick stuff and the reaaally thin stuff)
Contact Adhesive (Selly’s Kwik Grip for my fellow Australians) aka contact cement seemingly everywhere else
Craft knife (and a blade sharpener)
Ruler/sharpie/all those lovely measuring things
Palm sander
Various bits and grits of sandpaper
Dremel rotary tool
PVA glue
Heat gun
Sika Fine Surface Filler (also called putty? idk everything has different names in Australia)
Primer (I used rust-oleum flat grey)
Acryllic paint (I used Jo Sonjas)
Clear Coat (I used Dulux dura max)
Lots of other bullshit I scavenged from around the house
Respirator & safety glasses [I got enough foam in my eye to be a total mum about this. do the safety thing]
You don’t have to have alll these things to make it work. I know cosplayers are brilliant at building stuff using like $5 worth of craft supplies. I splurged because I’m in a position where I can and I wanted to make my life easier (and trying to do it with a hot glue gun was ruining my life). I also could only access EVA foam that was patterned on one side so I constantly needed to sand it down with the palm sander and dremel. Did I mention that I was making this up as I went along? Because this is literally all this was. I went into it having no idea how to achieve it, so I broke it down into little parts I thought I could do, leaving the hard shit til later, and that’s how the whole build went. I started with this:
The styrofoam cone was the starting point of my Splattershot and what everything was built around. I used the palm sander to sand it into a roughly more splattershot-pro-shaped cone. So rounded the edges and made it narrower.
I definitely should/could have kept going to make it narrower but I got so sick of the everything everywhere and my hand hurt yaaay. Sand until you hate it then move on. I coated it with a quick 1:1 mix of PVA to water just to stop all the lil bits flaking off and to make it easier to glue to later. I was still planning on using a hot glue gun at that point and was worried the heat would melt the styrofoam so if you are hot gluing it you might wanna be pedantic about the coat of the foam. Not a problem with contact adhesive.
Next I started on the foam work. I pretty much freehanded everything by looking at the ref and making paper templates, holding them up the the cone and seeing if I thought the were about the right size. This part here was the basis around which everything was built:
I made this by cutting 12 triangles from EVA foam (approx 5x8x8cm). I cut the sides on a 45° angle to make them easier to join, then used the contact adhesive to make 3 individual square based pyramids. For the base I simply traced around them onto thinner craft foam, cut it out and attached it with contact cement. I allowed them to dry overnight, then used my dremel to sand down two of the opposing sides on each until I had a flat surface around 1cm in width. I then attached them all together as seen above with more contact cement and gave it another 24 hours to dry.
Once that was all good I attached it to the small end of the foam cone. Meantime I also made these lil brace bits for the main portion of the gun and stuck them on.
Now comes the part I really started making shit up cause I’d exhausted the two bits of the gun I had any idea how to do. First comes the main nozzle part:
I first made the little sight bit by cutting out a strip of foam, cutting out the nooks and then adding a layer of craft foam for the detailing of it. For the main nozzle I started off by cutting out two circular bits of foam (I did this by using my heat gun on a circular metal cookie cutter until its really hot which makes it push through the foam easy) which I attached using a piece of egg carton. Real primary school level crafting here.
I then wrapped it in craft foam. To get the right size I wrapped an entire sheet of foam around it, held it in place with pins, traced borders, removed pins, then cut it out. I used the heat gun on the foam to keep its shape then glued it in place with adhesive. Lastly I formed the tip by gluing three circles of foam and used my dremel to shape it.
Next came the grip and overall supporting structure. So at this point it’s a bit wobbly and I realised I needed something better than foam. I had some of those layered cardboard corner pieces used for packaging my treadmill or something. I cut one rectangular section for it and glued it from the top of the pyramid pieced until about halfway down. When you look at the Splattershot Pro you can see the base is in two sections of different angled pieces so I aimed to get the support piece to roughtly match that front section. In the background you can see the trigger/grip piece I cut from the cardboard.
Here’s a better look at it (kinda, it’s a photo I was faffing around with and sent my friend while being a sleep deprived potato).
So I used the corner piece of that packaging cardboard and gut out the grip and trigger out of one side, and shortening the other side where it would attach to the Splattershot. I then cut out pieces of EVA foam (minus the trigger) to attach to both sides. I then cut out pieces for the detailing. Once that had dried I again used the contact adhesive to attach the grip along the central support piece and gave it 24 hours to dry.
Progress pics are pretty scant for the rest of it because I had 2 days before I had to fly out and everything else was a messy rush. The hand pump section was done using 5 sections of foam to make a kind of 3D half decagon shape?
I started with the two side bits by cutting out a long rectangle of foam. I literally held it up to the side of the splattershot, marked with a sharpie where I wanted it to go and cut it to shape. I attached these pieces, as well as a thin rectangle as the central piece that ran from the front of the trigger to the start of pyramid piece. So w something that looks like like: \ _ /
Yep?
I then measured the distance between those trips of foam and filled in the gaps between the sections with more strips of foam. To get the right shape to make the joins I cut the foam at a 45° angle. In some places I had to use the dremel to bring that angle down further. There’s not really a trick to it, I just measured, cut, tested the fit and adjusted where need be. I added some detail to it with thin strips of craft foam, then made the pump part using the exact same technique (but shorter). There’s a few other bits I made like the bit on top and the section under the back brace that are really easily just cut out of foam and stuck on. I also cut out some little semi circles to put between the nozzle and the pyramid bits.
At this point I realised I wouldn’t have time to do a decent job on the hose section of the gun. I’d started it, but to make it look good it was going to be a rush so I left it off until next time.
Then all that was left was prep and painting, something I had not enough time for so it definitely could have turned out better and I’ll probably strip it back to redo at some point. First I used the surface filler to fill in all the gaps, then sanded it down. This really needed to be done a few times and you can definitely still see all my seams.
After it was sanded back I gave it a quick blast with my heat gun to seal the foam, then painted it with about 4 coats of a PVA/water mix. I started off with about a 3:1 ratio of PVA to glue and gradually moved to thinner and thinner layers as I went on. Ideally I would have sanded and done more coats but, time, so I moved to spray painting it with primer and left to dry overnight.
Down to one day before I fly and I flew through the rest. I used red, blue, grey and purple acrylic to paint the Splattershot. The purple section is the part of the gun that matches the colour of your squids hair, so you’d want to pick the colour that matches your cosplay. After that I sealed it with the glossy clear coat and was left with what you see in the above picture. Hopefully that’s of some help to anyone trying to build one!
