The Archon - Starcraft

Hello everyone!
Direct link to the complete costume video here:

Update 2021:
The Archon at Blizzcon X video

Just recapping,
Three years ago I cosplayed a Ghost (Terran race)

Photo by Bobby (Cute World Photography)

Last year I made the Hydralisk (Zerg race)

Photo by John Jiao Photography

This year, I'm wrapping it up with the last race of the Starcraft saga: the Protoss.
Sample images:



The Protoss are an ancient humanoid race which developed sophisticated technology and gifted with enhanced psionic power.
I initially wanted to build the Stalker (a 4-legged mecha controlled by the essence of a dark templar).


However, when Blizzard featured the Archon in the latest expansion trailer, I could not resist.


So here it is!

THE ARCHON THREAD
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Back in Starcraft I, the Archon had little substantial media to work with. It was simply a naked protoss in a ball of luminous energy.


With Starcraft II new design, the Archon looks more like an energy soul entrapped in a templar outfit which I find looks definitely more majestic than the original form.


However, it's really the cinematic version that hit me the most.

The armor got seriously revamped and look so much stronger. Goosebumps when we hear the glorious "POWER OVERWHELMING". Despite the big difference between the designs, I find the huge almost spherical torso armor still kept a feel with the old "ball" design.
Anyways, Let's start with my main visual sources for my cosplay:

Concept Art by Anthony Jones


And there is the 3d model featured in the cinematic behind the scene:

The quality is much better in the blue-ray version

Ok let's with the head!
I modelled my Archon head out of clay then made a plaster mold out of it. Scraped the clay out of the mold, cleaned as much as possible then poor latex in it. It was my first mold so I could have done a better job. Should have made a two-piece mold instead of just one. Once the latex cured, I pulled the mask out, then trimmed the imperfections. Painted with acrylic mixed with latex.

Overall pretty happy with the way it came out. With practice I believe they can be even smoother and avoid air pockets.

The body was a puzzle. How should the piece fit together. What's an appropriate and realistically wearable size? Where do we start? =O
I decided to make a miniature paper version of the main body.

That would give me an idea of the form it would take. Once it sort of looked okay, I simply projected the size of all the pieces onto EVA foam. Scale was 1:5. And this is what you get: a big fat Archon


Now the important question is how was I going to wear that.
At the time, I got inspired by WIRED's Giant Robot featured at San Diego ComicCon 2013. The actor wears a football shoulder pad to which is affixed the skeleton of the robot.



I decided to do the same thing. Got myself an used shoulderpad, screw 2 standing rods to it with a cross bar to hold them tight. Then I trimmed the bulky torso and added more details and this is what it looked like:

That's my cousin helping be a model XD
The arches went through trials and errors until they had the right curve.Tried to grind evertyhing as smoothly as I can but there is WAAAAAY more room for improvement.
At that stage I figured the cosplay would be about 8 feet tall and about 6 feet wide. My arms would come out free right under the armor.
That's it for now. I hope the content was interesting enough to tap your curiosity!
The project is currently almost near completion. It just takes lot of time to write about it so stay tuned to see the rest! =)
But if you can't wait for the latest update, check out my facebook page!
En Taro Adun!

My gosh that's looking fantastic already!! How do you find the time to do these??? Can't wait for more on this, that thing is a beast!! Subbed!

Looks great so far! I have no doubt this is going to turn out amazing.

good luck with rest of the build looks great so far

Oh my god please tell me you have a build thread, or more pics of your hydralisk, that looks BEYOND amazing.

I got chills when he said "power overwhelming" in the opening cinematic for SC2: LOTV. Seriously. Almost lost my mind at that trailer and how cool it was.

Totally subbed. Cant wait for updates! Great work so far!

Wow. Thats really cool how you made those. Very well done. How did you walk with the Hydralisk as they slither like a snake?

MWiggs said:

My gosh that's looking fantastic already!! How do you find the time to do these??? Can't wait for more on this, that thing is a beast!! Subbed!

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Thank you man but YOUR MARINE SUIT IS SO BEAUTIFUL I WANNA CRY! Just like you I work on my cosplay in between life's activities =)
Can't wait for the final color and see you take down a Convention!

JediMichael said:

Wow. Thats really cool how you made those. Very well done. How did you walk with the Hydralisk as they slither like a snake?

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Snikt said:

Oh my god please tell me you have a build thread, or more pics of your hydralisk, that looks BEYOND amazing.

I got chills when he said "power overwhelming" in the opening cinematic for SC2: LOTV. Seriously. Almost lost my mind at that trailer and how cool it was.

Totally subbed. Cant wait for updates! Great work so far!

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You can find all the details about my Hydralisk build here!
http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=242957

gothic said:

good luck with rest of the build looks great so far

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collinE83 said:

Looks great so far! I have no doubt this is going to turn out amazing.

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Thanks guys for supporting! Hope I won't disappoint =)
Alright, last we left at building a wearable structure that can support the armor.

I will add more details concerning that key feature when building my Archon.
My first trial at it was to use rack bars to support everything. It was great tp support any weight and easy to assemble. As you can see on the picture, I intentionally cut the bar longer than the main body's width. The purpose was to have the shoulder piece sit on each side.


The problem I had with the rack bar is that it is too slim and the shoulder piece would lose balance... like walking on tight rope
I tried adding on a second parallel bar about 10 cm apart from first one to offer more support but that would mean extra weight. Another issue I did not mention is that I wanted to build a "height adjustable" structure that would allow me to lower it or raise it while inside the armor. The purpose is to be able to pass through a door.
To make it short, rack bars didn't work for me and I switched for different materials.


Here you see, I replaced the vertical rods with ball-bearing drawer slides. They may be heavier at first but their useful feature compensated for this. I could slide them up and down easily when I needed to. I screwed in an aluminum rod at the base that would act as a stopper to lock the cross bar in place. The cross bar itself is now made of light-weight wood and sits comfortable on the drawer slide. To hold the shoulder piece I cut and glued a piece of 2 inches insulating foam inside the shoulder. Then I screwed two shelf support facing each other with a gap in between where the insulating foam squeeze in (like a book stopper)


And this is how it looks like now!

I worked out the details on the chest, collar and arch, and smooth out the edges with a dremel. Again here, lot of small details omitted for my sanity sake. The dremel work is far from perfect, it was my first time using the grinding tool this intensely with foam. The amount of dust I accumulated over the weeks was cray..
More details of shoulders and back:

None of these last pics are loading for me. Would love to see them.

The picture should show now. Thanks JediMichael for pointing it out!

Continued from last post:
Here are the references and progress pictures for the arms:
View attachment 647557View attachment 647558View attachment 647559





I'm not the best at taking progress picture because I never liked to stop my work and take a snap at some unfinished product. Made an effort for you =D
Next post will cover the hand/fingers and the LEDs. Stay tuned and catch pokemon!

For Aiur

Thats looking really awesome. I always liked Artanis' armor from SC2. That would be really crazy to see.

JediMichael said:

Thats looking really awesome. I always liked Artanis' armor from SC2. That would be really crazy to see.

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Artanis' armor is beautiful indeed =)
I was tempted to make him too but I knew people out there were already on it


Alright, here is a breakdown of how I made the hands of my Archon.
View attachment 648289

I wanted to be able to control them like puppet hands. If you guys have seen the giant Thresh at Pax East, it’s basically the same idea.
you can see the sticks the actors use to control the arms:


I also wanted to articulate the fingers. The mechanism needed to be simple enough to allow my own hands to hold or release the Archon’s hand whenever I needed to.
Usually other cosplayers and prop makers design their articulated fingers to be independently controlled. This usually involves a device holding your arm in place and featuring rings to pull the puppet fingers.



I would have loved to to do that but it would mean stretching my arms out forever until someone can release me. Also I didn’t want the device to pop out too in the picture. After much pondering about it, I decided to use a telescopic trash grabber to control all fingers at once. Instead of explaining, let's roll the photos =)





and here we go with 2 articulated hands =)
I made a short video of The Reaver from Starcraft 1, featuring... guess what =p

Also tried it on for a test walk ^^
Kids in the neighborhood loved it


Next post we will talk about LEDs and paintjob!

Looking really great. Maybe you said it, but I probably missed it, but how are you doing the cloudy part around him?

This is looking incredible. Always love a good massively scaled project. Looking forward to seeing more progress on it.

JediMichael said:

Looking really great. Maybe you said it, but I probably missed it, but how are you doing the cloudy part around him?

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I haven't covered that part just yet but it will likely be with dry ice and hot water =p

Ikras said:

This is looking incredible. Always love a good massively scaled project. Looking forward to seeing more progress on it.

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Thank you!!
Now we'll talk about LEDs.
I bought 2 of these DreamColor LED strips on amazon for my project.


There are ways to program LEDs with Arduino and Adafruit circuitboard but this kit offers way more options and is very easy to use.
The only thing is I needed a power source with enough capacity to light up the strips for a long period of time.
For 2 strips of 150 LEDs, I needed a battery that could deliver at least 6 Amp to power them all at 12 Volt
I bought this rechargeable battery cell which does the job beautifully!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016BJCRUO/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A24OIV2F0TL1K3



I wanted to create the "pulsing" energy that we see at the arm and lower torso area.


I bought some 1 1/4'' blue translucent vinyl tubing
and wired the LED strips inside.

Here's a test video:

And I also glued some strip inside the main body to do light up the hood and the open spaces on the chest
Soldered extensions and connections so I can easily plug them together.


If you notice on this concept art picture the archon has some jems on the chest, hood, shoulder and the cod belt.


I wanted to light them up too.
I started to sculpt the jems in styrofoam, then cast them in a silicone mold, I used Mold Star 30 silicone. To make the jem I poured epoxacast 690 in the mold and let it sit for 24 hours.
I drilled a hole and glued an LED inside each jem, wired them with a cell battery and switch. I painted the surface with acrylic paint and voila!

Continued from last post

Last thing to light up now is the head:
I melted small holes on my latex mask with a soldering iron then threaded fairy LEDs in each of them.
Here's a before and after shot


Now let's tackle some paint job
I primed everything with pastidip x 3 coat black and used Krylon metallic gold/chrome paint to finish up the rest.
I was initially going to spray different hue of gold but I really liked the silver and gold mix together. Weathered with black acrylic and touched up small details with acrylic paint and coated everything with Rusteoleum clear coats







Alright next will be the final touch up and photos and videos of full suit on mode! =)

Last two weekends were pretty busy with Otakuthon and Dreamhack!
Here are the photos we took early at dawn:

Your photos aren't working.

kialna said:

Your photos aren't working.

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I checked the post without signing in and they seem to work.
I don't know if anyone else have a problem seeing my photos. =(

Strange, they're working now! Awesome!

Saw the video you posted this morning - looks incredible! How'd you get the smoke effect?? Awesome lighting it really makes the effect work! Great job.