Tron Legacy Costume

oculus1857

HooDooMan1 - sounds like some solid research to me. I can't wait to hear what you find out.

SithsPadawan

yeah please do, otherwise EL tape and wire it is

HooDooMan1

I emailed Oryontech last night inquiring about pricing information and such. Hopefully, they'll get back to me pretty quickly. I'll post any information I receive.

If it's ridiculously expensive, I'm like you SithsPadawan, EL tape and wire it is!

BIKERFETT

My friend was responsible for sewing some of the hero costumes. I will ask what the different materials were made from.

Biker

Annisse

Hi there,

So you mean your friend sewed the actual movie costumes??? Yes please ask your friend what was used for the light source exactly and where one can get that HEX print custom made. I am already half way done with my upper body armour on my Quorra costume and want to order my lights soon.

Thank you,
~Annissë

Annisse

Yeah I am trying to figure that out too. Are the lights white or blue?

~A

Annisse

Any chance you can still post for me please those pictures of EL sheet and the cutting process?

Thank you!
~A

Annisse

Thanks so much for explaining this to me. It helps alot. I guess at this point I should just order a sheet and go for it. Cut the pieces out and start attaching them to my Quorra chest piece armour I have made. I am not quite ready yet maybe in another day or so.

I think what is stumping me are the splitters. I understand the driver or inverter because I have used those before. Actually I have used splitters but for EL Wire when I was lighting multiple wire colors to my one driver source. I am not sure I understand how the splitters will be connected to all those overlapping EL sheets.

~A

Annisse

DANG!!! I think that looks really good! are you a perfectionist like me??? because if you think you need to improve that, you must be

~A

Annisse

Oh man, just checked out that Oryontech site out and yeah I can imagine that stuff ain't gonna be cheap, especially if it was the actual lighting used for a high budget movie.

Well, please let us know what you find out when they reply back, I am very curious myself. Damn me and my perfectionism always wanting to have the best exact stuff they used in the movie, it don't come cheap!

~A

kenobibale

i email Oryontech also to see about the price of the elastolite, its prob gonna be real expensive sadly, since i have become obsessed with the tron light system. anyway i also have some blue el wire and some blue and white el panels on the way to see which looks best in real life.ill try and post some pics for comparison with the movie suits. also due to my limited skills i think im gonna use sintra or something to do a segmented armour look like the dark inght and segment the light panels, i can still follow the basic lay out of the movie suit but i think this will not only save on the number of panels but also allow for some freedom of movement that is unless this elastolite stuff is cheap. any thoughts on the segmented armour look are welcome

Termin8Anakin

Hey all!

I started cosplaying last year and only recently started to do some more complex cosplays over the last few months, the first of which was Tron Legacy!

First of all though, I have to unfortunately say that I actually failed in making the costume.

There were many reasons for this, least of all is down to my experience and lack of planning of...well basically everything.

Because of the tight-fitting look of the suit, I opted to base mine on a wetsuit.

I cut out many panels of neoprene off-cuts which I had bought for VERY cheap, which I then glued onto a cheap wetsuit I found according to the 'armour' look based on the various screens and videos of the movie currently out at the time.

It actually turned out ok, though only if you see it from afar. If you looked at it up close, it really looked quite.....

It didn't phase me too much at the time though, because the EL wire I ordered had arrived!

The lack of planning of the wiring was a major contributing factor in the downfall of the suit.
I tried my best not to run any wire such that it would interfere with my bending over, etc.

Needless to say, when I put it on, it was a disaster.
The suit stretched in all the wrong places, which wasn't at all helped by the non-stretch of the EL wire. In fact, it tore a bit in some places.

Here's some pics of the suit:

As you can see, the wiring is pretty ugly. While I wish I used EL tape, it's a LOT more expensive, and you can't exactly cut it up in the same style lines of the Legacy suit.


It looks HEAPS awesome in the dark!


Here's the back.




Mind you, this was made in the space of about a week, and it was a very last minute costume.
Because it didn't work out as well as I planned, of course I couldn't wear it to the convention.

I've come to realise that my inspiration came from the wrong place.
I should have based it on a motorcycle racing suit.

In light of this, I've already started planning on the costume again, and it will hopefully be ready in time for the premiere of the movie in December!

Soulinertia

How much power did your suit require Termin8Anakin?

kenobibale

Termin8Anakin the suit looks great all powered up, i considered el wire and doing it in multiple strands so that the top and bottom half of the suit was separate that way i could sit down etc without breaking the wire however based on further research i came to the conclusion to use el panels (cut-able ones) and lining them all up except with breaks in between so i can have full range of movement, it will be my own interpretation of a tron suit which means i can make my own changes to fit function over form, i would love it to look accurate but i think the best i can hope for is that it look cool and send the message that its a tron suit too, i bet most people wont get it when i take it out at halloween but still im sure it will look badass on the dancefloor

carboxyll

What mil is your wetsuit? I have a 3mm/2mm i considered using... but seriously I am drenched in sweat and gasping for water down when I wear it... May just be the Florida humidity. I considered using a spring suit which are like 1mm

what do the storm troopers use?

It looks great

HooDooMan1

Biker, please ask your friend what type of materials were used and also where can we find the material with that hexagonal pattern? That hex pattern is driving us all nuts! That's the one thing we're having trouble replicating. Everything else we can do a halfway decent job of copying, but that hex pattern is a doozie! I'm sure if you could find that out for us, you would be celebrated as a hero, my friend! LOL!

HooDooMan1

My guess is that the lights for Sam and Quorra are white. I do know what you mean as far as it looking blue though, because there are several promo shots where the lighting does look a bit blue. But I think that may be from the reflection of the ambient blue light that is bouncing around in the image or on set, as it seems they are using a lot of blue light in the environment. But, IMHO, Sam and Quorra are wearing WHITE lighting.

carboxyll

So tomorrow I am going to try an experiment... I picked up some copper shims from ACE Hardware that I am going to try powdercoating with Aluminium Phosphate and then run some 26ga wire in it then hook it tp an inverter... we will see. Idealy I will be making custom shaped EL sheets... I'll post pictures...

HooDooMan1

You're very welcome, Annisse! I'm glad I could help! I would hold off on buying the EL sheets just yet. Let me see what Oryontech comes back with (that is, if they get back to me in the next couple of days. I'm sure they've been deluged with requests!) before you purchase the EL sheets. If the ELastolite is somewhat affordable and works like I think it will work, that means it will stretch and bend pretty easily and we won't have to worry about having to get all these multiple segments to connect together. You'll just be able to purchase one long piece for your arm, one for the leg, etc.

But in the event that the ELastolite is prohibitively expensive, the cuttable EL sheets could work in segments. Let me see if I can explain how the splitters would work with the segments. I'll use Quorra's arm lighting as an example.

Her lighting basically runs from her middle fingertip down the top of her arm to her elbow,
makes a 90 degree turn toward the body,
wraps around to the top of the bicep,
makes another 90 degree turn toward the shoulder,
and runs up the bicep,
then turns again 90 degrees into the body,
and wraps around the inner bicep.

Here are a couple of reference images:





Now, the cuttable EL sheets come in various sizes, but I'll use the A4 sheet as an example. It's about 8.3 in x 11.7 in., but the lit portion will be slightly smaller, 7.7 in x 11.1 in. according to the EL sheet website. It has terminals on 3 sides.

E-Luminates

If you cut the sheet into one inch wide strips, you have about 7 11-inch strips. You may have to end up cutting them shorter to whatever length you need. When you cut each strip, make sure you have terminals on one end, but not on the other end of the strip. The reason for that is, when you overlay them, the end without the terminals will cover the terminals end of the next strip.

So if you start at the end of her arm and work backwards, you attach one strip on top of the hand with the terminal end at the wrist and the other end at her fingertips. The terminal end at the wrist is where the wire would connect, and the wire runs up the arm to a connection point. To connect the wire to the terminal, you could use alligator clips, or you can tape the wire, or shrink-tube the wire to the terminal. Whatever method you use, make sure you insulate the wire and the whole terminal to avoid shorting out or electrical shock.

Now, attach the next strip to the forearm with the terminal end of that strip at the elbow and the other end OVERLAPPING the terminals of the first strip at the wrist. Now attach another wire to the terminals at the elbow and run the wire up the arm to another connection point.

For the elbow piece you may have to use a full cut-and-shape EL sheet to make an "L"- or "S"-shaped strip for the 90 degree turns. But the shaped piece would OVERLAP the terminals of the previous segment, the ones at the elbow, in the same way. Then you would attach a wire to the terminal of the shaped piece and run the wire up the arm to a connection point.

Now, so far you have three connection points with wires running down your arm to light up three different segments. To connect those segments to the same driver you will need splitters. The splitter splits the electrical current coming from the single wire out of the inverter into the multiple wires running to each segment. Annisse, It's basically the same splitters you've used in the past for the EL wire. Here's a link to a typical splitter:

Product Detail - Solution Industries

Sometimes you can buy an inverter with multiple outputs, but usually they cycle through each output instead of having them all on at once.

So that's how you could overlay each segment and connect them to an inverter using splitters. Basically, you would have to repeat that process for each "limb" or "area" of the body you want to light up.

When attaching the segments, one idea I had would be to use a clear vinyl sleeve with a velcro backing. That way, the EL strips could be protected inside the vinyl sleeve when you wear it, while being easily removeable from the costume if you wanted to wash the suit.

Now, keep in mind, this all works wonderfully in my head, but I have yet to actually TRY any of this! LOL! It may not work at all. If anyone has any suggestions on how to improve this idea, or a better suggestion on how to accomplish the same goal, please post it, as I'm looking for all the help I can get!

Annisse, I hope I didn't just end up further confusing you. (I tend to have a bad habit of that! LOL!) Incidentally, I had ordered an A5 sized custom cut-and-shape EL sheet from that site and it came in the other day. I got the white sheet that glows blue when it is turned on. (NOTE: The inverter I purchased doesn't come with a battery holder. You have to connect it to a 12 v AA battery holder/pack.) I didn't have a battery pack so I connected it to a 12 volt AC power pack that you plug into the wall. I turned it on and the glow looked great! But, as I was messing around with it, I forgot about the exposed terminals and shocked the crap outta myself! LOL! So NOTE TO SELF: DON'T TOUCH THE TERMINALS! LOL! But overall, the glow was very cool! I think if done right, it would make your costume look fantastic!

I apologize for the long post, but I hope it will help generate some ideas on how to better create these wonderful TRON: Legacy costumes!

Good luck everyone!


BTW Annise, how did you create your armor for the chest piece? What material did you use? I'm still trying to decide how to go about it. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

nickytea

Termin8Anakin, how much EL wire did you have to purchase for your costume? Also curious what the best source is for this stuff.

DangerIMMN

To anyone asking about the color of the glows:

Sam and Quorra are definitely blue. Check out the Disney movie site - the color of your glow indicates something about you. Blue means you're an individualist, orange means you're a leader, red means you're a supporter, white means you're an activist. I'm not sure exactly what these titles mean but I think we have some idea just based on what we know about the characters so far.

Just one more clue/reference.

Termin8Anakin

I used a 2mm steamer suit. The convention was about a month ago and it's winter at the moment, so it would've been very warm to wear without too much hassle.

My suggestion is DON'T use a wetsuit. As they're designed to be VERY TIGHT FITTING, if you cut it up like I did it'll ruin the integrity of the suit and makes it stretch in all the wrong places.
Doesn't look good AT ALL.

I bought 10 meters of EL wire. It was powered by a very small inverter (it's the little box at the top of the first photo) and only requires a 9V battery. Pretty good IMO.

I had originally wanted to use cuttable EL panels, but the place I bought the wire (which is the ONLY PLACE IN AUSTRALIA that sells EL products!!!) only sells small wallet-sized panels, and they're already quite expensive.
The EL tape would've been a great alternative too, except it's also expensive!

The EL wire i got, plus the inverter, cost AUS$195 all up.

You Americans and Brits have it lucky when it comes to EL stuff...

BumblebeeRecycd

Hi all, i have had a breif talk with Oryontech. The price per foot is not to bad, till you figure the final cost(template/powersupplys ect) the min cost as far as I can see is at least $2000 for a single costume, but if more than one person goes in, the cost for the template (the biggest cost)can be split up, cost per square inch is from .38-.50 cents, based on volume and how much waste space per panel. I have also been thinking of a Tron lightsuit as you can see. They suggested there might be anouther company to do bis with and are going to contact me with it.

MrSinistar

According to IMDb, the costume budget for the movie was $13 million and a light cycle racer costume cost $60,000.

Unless you have that type of dough, I'll be sticking with the reflective tape.

Also, Spin Masters is coming out with a replica Identity Disk that's like $20 or so. I talked with a guy who worked the Tron toy line and he said that it's the exact same size as the prop used in the movie, so I'm definitely going to get that for my costume.

Soulinertia

Don't forget the baton too