Creating Mauvika’s Sword from Genshin Impact

Cosplay is all about combining passions! I’m a huge fan of Genshin Impact, love working with EVA foam, and always enjoy adding as many LEDs as possible. I’ve already tailored a few of my favorite cosplays, like Yelan and Beidou. However, my attention was recently caught by the gorgeous design of Mauvika, the Fire Archon of Natlan. On top, her massive sword, A Thousand Blazing Suns, is also incredibly beautiful! I’m also working as a content creator, and it just so happened that HoYoverse reached out to me for an official collaboration. They asked me to create a few creative videos promoting the release of the new Fire Archon to my community. So Mauvika’s sword was the perfect project for this collaboration – what a great coincidence!

Step one: The Blueprint

Now, my main reference for this project was Mauvika and her sword, which I luckily pulled in Genshin Impact. However, we also often work with the official 3D models from HoYoverse, which they upload to aplaybox.com. It’s an incredibly helpful website for getting 3D models from all HoYoverse games. You just need to google a character’s name in Chinese letters, enter it in the search bar, and download the model. It’s a bit more challenging since the website doesn’t have an English version. Luckily, Google Translate is your best friend here!

Having the 3D model was also incredibly helpful for creating the blueprint. A detailed drawing of a weapon isn’t just great for understanding the overall look and all its elements. In addition, it’s also perfect for figuring out the correct scale. Now, while the print already looks massive in the photo, it was actually scaled down! If you compare it to the screenshot above, you’ll notice it’s much smaller than the original reference. But “only” two meters in length just felt more natural to me.

By the way, if you also plan to build Mauvika’s Sword, check out the blueprint in our shop!

Step two: Foam crafting

In Genshin Impact, Mauvika’s Sword features a burning, rocket-engine look in the center and glows in bright yellow and orange. I absolutely loved this design, and my goal was to bring it to life as authentically as possible. It was also a great opportunity to hide the PVC pipe running through the middle later on. Following the blueprint, I first built up the core using a thick pipe for stability. The sword turned out massive and needed quite a bit of strength in the center, so for this part, I mainly used several layers of 10 mm EVA foam . Afterwards, I installed LEDs around the rocket-engine core and along the edges of the sword. Finally, I covered those edges with 10 mm LED foam . Both types of foam, as well as the contact cement glue, are available at cosplayshop.be in Belgium – though Amazon also offers some high-quality foam options.

And here’s one of the videos I created for HoYoverse — it shows the entire process of building the sword base.

@kamuicosplay I finished the light up base of Mavuika’s sword from Genshin Impact! The sword is mostly made out of EVA foam and a PVC pipe and I used almost 300 LEDs to create the light effect! All the wires, electronics and the battery are actually hidden inside the grip. How to you like the result so far? Next step is adding all the details! 😊 AD | Play Genshin Impact, link in my bio/linktree! @GenshinImpact_En #GenshinImpact #Mavuika #StandWithMavuika ♬ Originalton – Kamui ✨📚

After around seven days of full-time work, the foam build of Mauvika’s Sword was finished. We sped up the process by using a C02 laser cutter  instead of cutting all the foam pieces manually with a box cutter. It’s the same technique and the same idea – just faster and more precise. However, having a blueprint with all the vector files ready for the laser cutter was an absolute must. So in the end, using a laser cutter might actually make things more complicated rather than easier.

Step three: Installing the electronics

If you’re curious about the electronics, I can highly recommend my Book of Light and Sound Effects. While I didn’t use any sound effects here, I still programmed an eye-catching light effect. Once I stomped the weapon on the ground, it interrupted its pulsing fire animation and lit up in bright white. For this setup, I used my standard build with an Adafruit Prop-Maker FeatherWing and a Feather M4 Express , connected to an digital RGB LED strips  with a total of 300 pixels. You might also want to check out my YouTube tutorial alongside the book. I actually use this setup for most of my projects, as it’s perfect for creating all kinds of light animations, sound effects, and physical or motion triggers. Warning: Getting into animated LEDs is highly addictive!

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Step four: The Paintjob

Now, the paint job was a tiny bit stressful – even though most people would imagine painting to be relaxing and chill. My husband Benni and I usually go with airbrush painting using Vallejo airbrush colors . This allows for a smooth and especially fast application while keeping the light-up areas translucent enough for the LEDs to shine through. However, this technique has one catch: once you’re done with one section, you need to cover it with tape to apply the next layer of paint. That tape, however, can damage the paint underneath and should stay on for a maximum of 12 hours. And Mauvika’s Sword was massive, full of details and with two sides to paint! This step turned out to be both a marathon and a sprint at the same time!

@kamuicosplay Mavuika’s Sword is finally done! 😱 We used airbrush colors and a lot of tape to apply plenty of different layers of yellow, orange and red. Painting everything took us three full days, but the result is so worth it! Absolutely love the vibrant colors! Plus, the LEDs still shine nicely through the translucent foam! How do you like the result? 😊 AD | Play Genshin Impact, link in my bio/linktree! @GenshinImpact_En #GenshinImpact #Mavuika #StandWithMavuika ♬ Originalton – Kamui ✨📚

Our equipment here was a basic airbrush compressor  with a high-quality airbrush pistol . Benni also made a detailed and beginner-friendly video on how to get into airbrush painting if you’re interested. The most important products were probably Frogtape  and Tamiya tape, which I applied section by section. It took us several hours to finish just one side. And once we were done, the realization that we still had to paint the other side hit pretty hard. After easily twelve hours of painting, we were finally done, at six in the morning! Only the details were missing, which Benni then added by hand using acrylics with high pigmentation  and some fine, flat quality brushes .

The result turned out super pretty – but it definitely cost us a lot of energy.

The final Result

Finally, Benni and I were incredibly proud of the final result!

Mauvika’s Sword, A Thousand Blazing Suns, looks like I grabbed it directly from the Fire Archon’s hands in Genshin Impact. I also think the size is just right, even though it’s much smaller than in the game. In the end, it’s far more important to be happy with your piece than to create something perfectly scaled to the insane proportions of a fictional character.

And if you want to follow all the steps and especially appreciate the gorgeous fire LED animations, please check out the full making-of video on our YouTube channel. Mauvika’s Sword is only one of many props and costumes we’ve created in the past, so feel free to check out our portfolio as well if you want!

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