Ender's Game Dragon Army flash suit build

When I was 13 I picked up a little book called Ender's Game at my local library. Within 48 hours I had read it twice, and was starting in the third time on my own brand new paperback.

Naturally, I was ecstatic when they announced the movie - and what better way to display my enthusiasm than wearing a flash suit to the premiere?



This is a finished build, but I photo documented everything every step of the way, so I'll break everything down in this thread. I have a feeling it will take a while though, so I'll break it up into separate posts to keep things manageable.

First things first: Making patterns.

For the movie, the costume designers made sure that every part of the suit overlapped to some degree, so when the growing teenage actors shot up an inch overnight the costumes would still fit. This made patterning a little easier than some costumes, since nothing had to be precisely a certain length.

I decided to start with an old pair of sneakers for the boots, since I like my costumes to be fully functional for walking around conventions. The boots go up to mid calf, though, so I had my husband help me make a duct tape dummy leg. Then I made the boot pattern by draping butcher paper over the shoe and trimming as needed to get everything to the right size and shape.



The gloves were a bit trickier than the boots, and honestly I'm still not sure how I got them to work out so well! I basically traced my hand and started papercrafting until I found something that worked.



With the hard parts out of the way, I grabbed an old leggings pattern that a friend drafted for me to make the pants. They have a base layer of heavyweight spandex (think football pants) and the darker gray spandex was appliqued on top, so after I cut out the untouched pattern I and traced out the applique shapes and cut them out too.

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For the jacket I started out with a pre-made pattern traced onto butcher paper. I cut off the seam allowance and taped everything together, then drew in my own seamlines for the coat. Like with the pants, the jacket is one solid layer with everything else appliqued on top.

The gauntlets were definitely the trickiest thing to make, and I'm not quite satisfied with them. The pictures below are of the first one I made, and I used a zigzag stitch since it is stretchy fabric... not a good idea for small areas like this! Unless the fabric is actually going to stretch, I'd recommend against using zigzag because it made the seams all wobbly, despite being a long stitch and not a very wide zigzag.

The hand was made separately from the cuff. I used silver ribbon for the detailing on the fingers - another thing I'm not satisfied with. The ribbon is so thin, it can't take many stitches, and the ends frayed out despite using fray check and have popped out of the seam. I'm thinking of using puff paint if I remake the pair, but each gauntlet took about 6 hours, so I'm not sure if I will be able to get it done before Archon a month from now.

To make the cuff stiff, I used Peltex, a stiff stabilizer kind of like super-dense polar fleece. The mesh on the back of the glove is, I found out, called "spacer mesh" and is used a lot in upholstery. Since it's not really commercially available unless you want to buy an office chair, I went straight to the source - Mayer Fabrics - which sells mesh wholesale to manufacturers. They sent me two 8"x10" sample pieces of the mesh for free! I also used the same mesh on the elbows of the jacket.

The gauntlets close at the wrist with Velcro, which I wouldn't do again either. If I have one gauntlet on and try to fasten the other, it sticks to and pulls at the spandex and makes it a little bit fuzzy. I know now to get help putting the second one on, but magnets would be a much better option if I redo them. So many learning experiences in this one small piece!

The fabric portion of the pants were a relatively simple matter - just lots and lots of pinning to make sure all the pieces lined up before I appliqued everything on.

My husband sculpted the knee armor out of Apoxie Sculpt, then we used our brand spankin' new vacuform, which he built specifically for this purpose, to make the final knees. Then I traced the armor onto the pants with disappearing ink, stitched around the line, and carefully attached the armor with E6000. The shoulder armor was made in the same way.

The piece that took the most time, hands down, was the jacket. I made a plain jacket torso, then appliqued spandex covered Peltex on top of it. On the real costumes, the jackets and pants had sections coated with various types of flexible plastics, so the dark gray sections on the torso are actually pieces of a yoga mat. To keep the mat from peeling apart when perforated by stitches, I attached wide pieces of grosgrain ribbon to the edges with E6000. Fortunately my sewing machine is a tank, and stitched the whole thing on with no problems!



The neck armor was papercrafted, then vacuformed like the shoulder and knee armor, and attached to the jacket with E6000.



And there you have it! The whole build took about 90 hours, plus additional time for the flash gun and helmet builds.

Great job! I love seeing builds that people make before the movie even comes out. Hope it didn't disappoint you too much. I didn't read Ender's Game for the first time until maybe 8 years ago, but the movie was a huge letdown for me. But after seeing your build, at least something good came out of it

I was disappointed that they left out the entire Locke and Demosthenes plotline, but I understand why they did. Honestly, the only major complaint that I had was that Bonzo didn't kick the bucket. None of this "sitting by his bedside, waiting for him to wake up" nonsense. Otherwise, I LOVED the movie!

What a great build!
Thanks for posting all of the pics & info!