For 2017 Anime North I've decided on a very difficult costume build. The toughest I've attempted yet... previous costumes I've made have been the Combine (this year, Metro Police, for halloween), Tetris (Pyramid block, halloween), 3D Pacman (random school fun, halloween), and now I want to go all out.
I want to build a Samus suit. Gender neutrality in mind, I'm going to go all out to make it happen with whichever suit I DO choose. So I'm torn between a few ideas:
Classic Fusion Suit or any colour variant (my personal fav):
Which would be made from referencing papercraft from
this model, would be my first choice. It's organic looking, beautiful, and in my opinion, the best Samus suit in terms of associated story and gameplay and function. I would love to move around in the fusion suit.
Second choice is from Metroid Prime 2, the Light Suit:
This one may be much, much harder to find models for (other than from Nintendo themselves) and making papercraft starter models from, or simply modeling it myself from an existing Metroid Prime model (I can't find a Pepakura file distinctly for it).
I want to use a combination of materials... but primarily Wonderflex if possible. Any kind of two part epoxy material and plastics that are heat moldable or at least shapeable and easy enough to work with are fair game.
The suits will be lit up. They will feature lit up HUD and glow wire (literally
GlowWire) for a lot of it, but a lot will also be responsive under ultraviolet light intentionally.
If I can manage it, besides the baseline design, I want to make an amazing arm cannon. This means mounting a high powdered heat sink near my hand that will shoot compressed gas (or some other method for firing a straight line of gas) with a powerful LED behind it, and ideally, some kind of mechanism to show the charging cannon expanding. This is optional though... at a baseline level, I just want a flexible (or fairly flexible) suit that does true justice to the series, portrays it very well, and looks good in all lighting conditions.
I'm looking for anyone with cosplay experience here. I need advice and insight into how to make each part and for maximum flexibility, and especially in terms of materials to be used, because a suit that is SUPER flexible and durable (almost like foam rubber) would be awesome, and I wouldn't mind going through the trouble of creating molding casts for those if It were required.
I understand Samus is femanine. I am 5"6.5, 140lbs. I'm going to be trying to lose a lot of weight around my waist for this, as well as planning a corset for mounting the chest and back plates anyhow.
If anyone has insight on how to go about designing, developing, ANY part of this machine of a costume, please give insight
this is the most exciting project I've ever decided to take on, since my fiberglass cast pac-man costume which was extremely simply compared to this.
Basically: Materials, colouring inspiration, any creative ideas as to how to go about this.
I am guessing at bare minimum I will need:
-A figure similar to mine, mannequin etc, to buy or borrow
-Wonderflex (many layers probably)
-EVA 100 Foam (like those foam mats... big squares of it), other forming material like it.
-Paint obvs
-Fundamental things to form over top of (mannequin + plaster or putty)
-Glow Wire, LED lights
-Body Suit, probably black, maybe painted in certain portions
-Cooling unit? This shit might get hot
-For arm cannon... who knows. Anything that might look like I'm blasting shit i.e. puffs of vapor and a yellow LED.
Halp. Very motivated to do this. Will prolly be costly.