Benares, Honkai Impact 3rd
Benares is a nine foot tall, ten foot wide, smoke breathing armored dragon built in 20 days for her debut at Anime Expo 2019. As one of the main boss battles in Honkai Impact 3rd, Benares is a massive and imposing opponent, capable of crushing the player character with massive claws or swatting at them with her tail. During one game battle, Benares teleports in to fight through large black portals in the arena stake. We were tasked with bringing that experience to life.
The miHoYo booth at Anime Expo was constructed with reinforced bracing to support the roughly 250lb heft of our sculpture, which breaks down into four main components for shipping and crating. Benares acted as a photo backdrop and an accessory stage element to several miHoYo cosplayers who interacted with the crowd at AX and performed dance routines on the booth stage. Audience members were invited to play Honkai Impact 3rd and compete for the highest score in the Benares boss battle stage.
A team of three artists flew from our Atlanta studio to install Benares on site, a process which took only four hours despite never having rigged the statue vertically before. We’ve included a few behind-the-scenes build photos to really illustrate the scale of this project. As a testament to the stability of our construction, she even weathered two Los Angeles earthquakes while installed at the convention!
