Tron Legacy Costume

[thecountofzero]

Thanks for your kind words. I'll try and get some more pics posted with descriptions of the progress and planning in the next couple of days.

As for the EL wire, I used 2.6mm high bright aqua color. 4 plug n' play systems each at 20ft. Powered by 4 fisher drivers at 8 batteries each. Yeah...ridiculous. hahaha. Bought it from Cool Neon.

Cool. Yeah, I am looking to start my second Tron costume and am thinking I might try EL wire this time. I'd be interested to see how you put together the lighted sections and then attached them to the costume and each other, etc. I want to see under the hood and check out the engine.

Thanks!

 

[ModernDayMarc]

Cool. Yeah, I am looking to start my second Tron costume and am thinking I might try EL wire this time. I'd be interested to see how you put together the lighted sections and then attached them to the costume and each other, etc. I want to see under the hood and check out the engine.

Thanks!

IMO dude, stick with your led's. wire is good for bending and making shapes if its thin enough, but it's nowhere near as bright. also, very very breakable the thinner it is. I had to get the super thick 5mm wire to put on my legs for my second suit cuz walking in my first suit broke the lights on the front and back of my legs. problem is I was going for as screen accurate as possible. but I suppose if you do what most do, and don't run the wire over joints like elbows and knees, it wouldn't be as much of a problem. I wanna convert to led's as soon as I get schooled on how the heck to do it lmao :confused

 

[thecountofzero]

IMO dude, stick with your led's. wire is good for bending and making shapes if its thin enough, but it's nowhere near as bright. also, very very breakable the thinner it is. I had to get the super thick 5mm wire to put on my legs for my second suit cuz walking in my first suit broke the lights on the front and back of my legs. problem is I was going for as screen accurate as possible. but I suppose if you do what most do, and don't run the wire over joints like elbows and knees, it wouldn't be as much of a problem. I wanna convert to led's as soon as I get schooled on how the heck to do it lmao :confused

I love the brightness of the LEDs, but the bulkiness is what bothers me. Did you see my pics of the light panels I constructed. My suit is not uncomfortable to wear, but there is something I like about the flatness of the light panels you can construct with EL wire.

Although aoifrost's use of foam as a diffuser and being able to lay the LEDs flat is very interesting to me. I need to get to store to pick up some of the foam to play around with his idea.

Let me know if you have any questions about the LED route. It really wasn't very hard.

 

[jkev]

Hi everyone,

I made an account just to say thank you so much to everyone on this thread for the immense amount of inspiration and knowledge. I had never soldered, dremeled, nor even heard of EL Wire/Ribbon before. I also had little experience putting costumes together. With this thread, I set out to create a costume for both myself and my fiance to wear for this Halloween. It was a very rewarding experience and I followed this thread religiously during the month and a half it took to finish both. I am now definitely looking forward to a next more elaborate costume project/challenge. Again, thank you everyone!

 

[Bandit-Jedi]

jkev,
Great work! You two look like you could have been extras on the Grid in TL.

 

[Canobi]

Hi everyone,

I made an account just to say thank you so much to everyone on this thread for the immense amount of inspiration and knowledge. I had never soldered, dremeled, nor even heard of EL Wire/Ribbon before. I also had little experience putting costumes together. With this thread, I set out to create a costume for both myself and my fiance to wear for this Halloween. It was a very rewarding experience and I followed this thread religiously during the month and a half it took to finish both. I am now definitely looking forward to a next more elaborate costume project/challenge. Again, thank you everyone!

Hi folks

Those are very cool costumes indeed, and yes, you could definataly be mistaken for extras on TL. If you have any tips or hints you can offer, many folks on here would be appreciative I'm sure.:thumbsup

 

[CelticRuins]

EveningArwen, you both look awesome! Jkev, you too!

I need to fix up my suit and shoes. I had to rip off the top bases after Dragon*con, and am currently looking for a new pair. My boyfriend's suit also needs repairing, before we get a photoshoot done! My suit needs severe tweeking.

Here's two more awesome shots from Dragon*con though, thanks to Kyle Nishioka!

Can't remember if I posted our Patcave pictures, but I love em, on Lionel's bike!

 

[shogunvader]

Hey dudes and dudettes. So after a couple months doing extensive research here on with the movie itself I finally finished my costume in time for Halloween and wanted to share some photos with y'all.

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out but I think I'm still gonna do some changes (replace foam sheet with new ones, secure batteries to back, etc.)

Thanks and enjoy!

:eek

The white armor pieces before paint looks insane!!!!

 

[ModernDayMarc]

I love the brightness of the LEDs, but the bulkiness is what bothers me. Did you see my pics of the light panels I constructed. My suit is not uncomfortable to wear, but there is something I like about the flatness of the light panels you can construct with EL wire.

Although aoifrost's use of foam as a diffuser and being able to lay the LEDs flat is very interesting to me. I need to get to store to pick up some of the foam to play around with his idea.

Let me know if you have any questions about the LED route. It really wasn't very hard.

The one major thing that I hate about el wire diffusion method, if you're going for complete screen accuracy, the chest panels never look as good as the movie. You always get a "dark spot" up where the light tracks are on the pectoral part of the body =/

I definitely think aoifrost's method is brilliant, and I would love to expand on it to see just how far one could get to screen accuracy with the lines. Kind of blend Eddie's method with aoifrost's.

Mind giving me a crash course on working with led's?!? :angel

 

[HowardAxiom]

Hi everyone, I'm new here and just wanted to say all of you are amazing! Here's some of the things I've been working on:

My (Flashback) Kevin Flynn identity disc

A (Flashback) Kevin Flynn/Sam Flynn-style jacket

Rinzler identity disc(s) -- 2-in-1 (1 disc splits into 2)

Kevin Flynn identity disc (SoulInertia disc mod)

My first modded disc

I'm planning on making TRON gloves as well but I don't know how to connect 3 seperate strands of EL Tape together :unsure

 

[Icey]

I definitely think aoifrost's method is brilliant, and I would love to expand on it to see just how far one could get to screen accuracy with the lines. Kind of blend Eddie's method with aoifrost's.

Mind giving me a crash course on working with led's?!? :angel

This is what I'm planning on doing. I too had problems with dark spots on the wider sections of my costume, not to mention how bent up the strips got (I posted pics on the previous page) from just walking around the con since my costume isn't form fitting. SMD LED strips are very easy to work with since there's no dealing with resistors and whatnot. I used them to mod my disc and it's as simple as matching polarity on the wires to your power source, which, conveniently is also 12v. I have a spare strip I wound up not using for my disc and I was going to play around with a foam/shower curtain hybrid to see how it diffuses once I get my hands on some acceptable foam.

 

[thecountofzero]

The one major thing that I hate about el wire diffusion method, if you're going for complete screen accuracy, the chest panels never look as good as the movie. You always get a "dark spot" up where the light tracks are on the pectoral part of the body =/

I definitely think aoifrost's method is brilliant, and I would love to expand on it to see just how far one could get to screen accuracy with the lines. Kind of blend Eddie's method with aoifrost's.

Mind giving me a crash course on working with led's?!? :angel

The LEDs really were simple to work with. The hardest part for me was learning how to correctly solder wires to them so I could connect all the cut strips together.

Once I had that squared away there was nothing to it. Just had to make sure you have all your positive and negative wires connected correctly and since the strips have a + and - on them, it's pretty hard to mess that up.

Get it all hooked up to a 12V source and boom, you've got LED light!

I suggest getting a reel of LEDs and playing around. You'll find it to be pretty easy. If you have any specific questions, don't hesitate to ask. This costume was my first experience with LEDs.

I'm gonna try and hit up the store tomorrow to get some foam to play around with aoifrost's idea. Anyone know where I can get that foam he used? Home Depot?

 

[jkev]

Hi folks

Those are very cool costumes indeed, and yes, you could definataly be mistaken for extras on TL. If you have any tips or hints you can offer, many folks on here would be appreciative I'm sure.:thumbsup

I'm not sure that I can contribute anything beyond what this thread has already covered but here are a few thoughts.

First off, I went with EL Ribbon and EL Wire from coolneon.com. The stuff ended up lighting great and I would definitely use the stuff again.

I used e-6000 glue to get the connections to stay in place for the short EL Ribbon strips on the boots. I found this kind of connection to be flimsy though...if the placement of the Ribbon hadn't been in such a fixed position, the connection would have broken over time easily.

I noticed everyone was still playing with a lot of ideas for the mount. My take (inspired by many other sources on here) was to use part of the packaging that came with the Tron Disk and integrate the tab/magnets idea. I cut slits into the upper portion of the raised part of the Tron packaging and slid in a long plastic tab I cut out of a plastic take-out container. Then I covered up the top of the entire thing with a round plastic furniture foot pad and drilled a couple of holes through all of it and bolted it all together. (Rather crudely represented in what's left of my initial brainstorming drawings attached...). This way the tab and cap were completely secured to the mount as a whole. I Pedi Dip sprayed all these parts (including the heads of the screws) first before putting them together so that the tab could move a little more freely without ripping the Pedi Dip coating. Then I hot plastic glued 5 rare earth magnets to the inside of the mount as well as the disk. I cut out the center plastic square on the inside of the packaging to house the inverter/driver whatever it's technically called and added foam around it to make it snug. I cut the larger round plastic base of the packaging (which tended to bend upward) into 4 smaller tabs which I bolted to the jacket. Cutting this part up in this way also freed it from it's initial concave shape.

I used velcro to attach all the EL Ribbon to the jackets which was a LIFE saver. Being able to freely adjust and swap out anything that got damaged was a definite plus. I opted to cover the edges of the EL Ribbon with electrical tape to hide the unlit parts and to blend better with the jackets.

As far as power goes I used 8 ultimate lithium AA batteries per jacket and 1 9V battery per boot.

I hope any of this was useful! (Let alone made any sense...lol)

 

[predpaul]

Hi guys

Now that my Wiseman costume is finished and my Alien and Predator are all tucked away for another year I would like to attempt a TL costume.

With the risk of sounding like a NooB (which I'm not:lol) Where in the U.K can I get the materials to start putting it together? preferably on a budget of £100

I want to make a Sam Flynn suit like the one he wears in the arena and most of the film. :cool

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Paul

 

[Eveningarwen]

Hey everyone! Thought I'd post this here for any new folks that may find this helpful. I've started a build thread about our Castor and Gem costumes and it has a sort of photo tutorial from the beginning of the costumes to the finished product. I tried to condense down everything we learned from here and put links to all of the sources that we used and the like to help give someone just starting out an easy introduction to making a Tron costume and for those in the process of making costumes some pics that hopefully help confirm what works and what doesn't work. As we do more work on these costumes in the future we will put up even more detail pics to help break everything down but at the moment there's already a ton there. I hope it's useful to some of you!

http://www.therpf.com/f24/castor-gem-tron-tutorial-step-step-photos-pic-heavy-131753/

 

[ModernDayMarc]

The LEDs really were simple to work with. The hardest part for me was learning how to correctly solder wires to them so I could connect all the cut strips together.


Get it all hooked up to a 12V source and boom, you've got LED light!


?

Do you suppose that wire glue stuff mentioned a few pages back could be used instead of solder when cutting and connecting multiple segments of led's like aoifrost did?

Also, I have a 12v 8-aa battery pack and inverter for my el wire. the battery pack is wired to a black box with an on/off switch, and coming out from that box theres an el wire connector. Could I just cut off the connector for the el wire, or would I have to cut off the inverter and wire in a new switch?

 

[Vew]

There are a lot of LED resources online. If people are still having trouble understanding, I can either answer questions or try to write up a easier to understand version. They're very simple in terms of the semiconductor world, but there is a lot to them which I can see being overwhelming to folks with no background in this stuff.

 

[thecountofzero]

Do you suppose that wire glue stuff mentioned a few pages back could be used instead of solder when cutting and connecting multiple segments of led's like aoifrost did?

Also, I have a 12v 8-aa battery pack and inverter for my el wire. the battery pack is wired to a black box with an on/off switch, and coming out from that box theres an el wire connector. Could I just cut off the connector for the el wire, or would I have to cut off the inverter and wire in a new switch?

I'm thinking you probably need to get rid of the inverter. You could put your own switch in there so you can turn everything on and off easily. My battery pack has a built in switch.

I don't know anything about the wire glue, but I'm gonna say that I think soldering is what needs to be done. It's not very hard. I was actually having trouble at first (cold solder joints), but thanks to a few tips from Vew and Tim, I got that sorted out.

 

[Canobi]

I'm thinking you probably need to get rid of the inverter. You could put your own switch in there so you can turn everything on and off easily. My battery pack has a built in switch.

I don't know anything about the wire glue, but I'm gonna say that I think soldering is what needs to be done. It's not very hard. I was actually having trouble at first (cold solder joints), but thanks to a few tips from Vew and Tim, I got that sorted out.

Hi there

I have to agree with thecountofzero. If your using LEDs, soldering is the way to go.:thumbsup. The wire glue is only good in situations where heat is a major issue, like EL tape and sheets. Soldering isn't hard to learn if your new to it, if you can find a liquid flux and a small paint brush to use with the solder (it cleans and spreads the heat/solder evenly and some types of solder have it as the core) it practically halves the work time and makes sure you don't get dry solder joints.:thumbsup

 

[ModernDayMarc]

I'm thinking you probably need to get rid of the inverter. You could put your own switch in there so you can turn everything on and off easily. My battery pack has a built in switch.

I don't know anything about the wire glue, but I'm gonna say that I think soldering is what needs to be done. It's not very hard. I was actually having trouble at first (cold solder joints), but thanks to a few tips from Vew and Tim, I got that sorted out.

Well, looks like first I need to get some LEDs, soldering iron, and solder.

Is there a certain gauge of wire I should be using? Looks like people are using one kind of thickness for running wires to and from, and aoifrost looks like he's using a really thin gauge for when he would cut and connect segments....
thoughts?