The art of cosplay is a tricky one. If you have ever been to ComiCon or any other tradeshow, chances are you have seen attendees in some pretty interesting costumes of their favorite anime, game, or sci-fi characters. While some look downright horrible, others look absolutely incredible. Artist Leo Simon’s take on Kayle from the popular League of Legends definitely falls into the “incredible” camp.
Simon unveiled his cosplay at 2015’s Worlds in Europe. The wings can actuate from a fully closed position to a fully spread position using a smartphone app. What’s even more astounding is that this creation was his first attempt at cosplay!
It took Simon over 1,000 hours to build his rig for the wings. It was constructed with parts from a bed frame, shelving, PC power supply, motherboard, and even a microwave.
The mockup was taken directly from the LoL character model and brought to size using SketchUp, which features an aluminum frame for the wings covered with EVA foam along with 3mm acrylic for the wing accents.
To actuate the wings, Simon used several servomotors: six to control the wingtips and small feathers and two to rotate the wings back and forth. Since this is an ongoing work in progress, Simon plans to incorporate seven more servomotors to extend the feathers outward and to raise and lower them to multiple heights.
Controlling the show is an Arduino Mega-2560. Simon wrote over a 1,000 lines of code in order to actuate the wings and the LED lighting.
A pair of 5000mAh 3 cell LiPo batteries that are wired together are used to power the wings along with the incorporated LEDs while a mobile power bank provides juice to the Arduino and chest plate LEDs.
All in all the costume tops-out at around 44lbs, which would probably make it uncomfortable for the average person to wear for extended periods of time. Even though Simon has a degree in computer science, his first venture in the world of cosplay is truly a work of art and has raised the bar for even seasoned designers.
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