If you’ve ever been to a comic, sci-fi or anime convention you’ve probably seen attendees wearing cosplay (costume play) costumes of their favorite characters. Some of those costumes are designed rather poorly while others look incredibly good and then there’s David Carpenter’s costumes, which are on a completely different level.
Halo 4 fans will quickly recognize his latest creation, Master Chief’s nemesis the Didact. His process of creating his costumes is long and laborious and begins with a full-body cast of the person who will wear it. Once the cast is complete, it is then used to make a clay mold, which is painstakingly sculpted to the desired shape and design. The clay design is then used to make a ‘negative mold’ using 100% silicon with a clay mold overlay to make the individual pieces of the costume.
Those pieces can be made from anything, such as rigid plastic or soft rubber depending on the design. Electronics, such as LEDs are added and wired through the costume pieces giving them that extra-added sense of realism. The final step involves painting the design, which is done with spray-painting for the large pieces and airbrushing for the small details.
It took Matt four months to create the Didact costume and cost over $6,000 for the build materials, which includes about 650 LEDs powered by 16 AA batteries. His creations also include full-body Guyver and Mass Effect suits as well as other props from Skyrim and EverQuest. The props and suits don’t come cheap however, as full body suits can cost over $1000 and props such as swords and guns can cost over $250.
Keep in mind, it only took $6k to for Matt to win every single Cosplay contest out there. Well worth it.
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