How to make Sam Flynn's costume from Tron: Legacy. For full tutorial visit http://troncostume.wordpress.com/

Step 1: Research

It starts with research. I spent hours reading about others’ attempts to make Sam Flynn’s costume. Mostly on Instructables, Cosplay forums and YouTube. I was so impressed with the time, effort and amount of money people spent on trying to make their costumes. Some wanted something to wear to a fancy dress party, others were attending a Cosplay forum where very high standards of custom clothing are always expected, and then there were just people who fancied the challenge of making the costume, with no particular event in mind to showcase their craft but just the prospect of owning a Tron costume motivating their hard work.

I’d like to credit them all but there were simply too many. Off the top of my head, the following people are responsible for giving me the most inspiration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB2XlX5dOBA
http://www.fashioningtech.com/profiles/blogs/tron-quorra-costume
http://battle-arleh.livejournal.com/3998.html

But I salute you all, fellow creators.

Onto the costume itself. A lot of attempts seemed to use a boiler suit or leather biker clothing. In my opinion those costumes looked too baggy. If you look at Sam Flynn’s cotume, it’s pretty tight fitting, obviously custom made. I saw a behind-the-scenes clip once of Garrett Hedlund putting on the costume (actually someone else had to put it on him) and that cemented in my mind that it needed to be a tight fit. So I thought of using a wetsuit as the base. For the lights, I’ve seen some pretty amateur efforts using glow-sticks – the kind that you see at raves, but they’re quite inflexible. The obvious choice of technology is electro-luminescent (EL) wire and tape. This was the technology used in the film, so why not? I’ll tell you why not – it’s expensive. But it’s worth it. Next, I decided to use sheet foam for the panels that would be worn on top of the wetsuit and house the EL lighting. The foam would be attached to the wetsuit using a mixture of velcro, superglue and fastenable straps. Finally, the Tron identity disc. You can buy the toy from the US over the internet. Some modification would need to be made to get the lights to stay continuously on – then the real challenge would be how to mount it onto the suit.

Step 2: Materials

Right. Here’s what you’ll need:

    wetsuit
    black gloves
    black boots
    Tron: Legacy Deluxe identity disc
    2m2 black sheet foam
    matt black spraypaint
    electronics: 2x 40cm light blue EL tape, 2x 12cm light blue “L-shaped” EL tape, 4x EL hoops, 3x 3m light blue EL wire, splitters, inverter,battery pack. Get it all in a bundle from EL Wire Craft
    8x AA batteries, 1x 9V battery, 1x 9V battery clip
    25g superglue (I used 8x 3ml Loctite Superglue Ultra Gel)
    40x 5mm diameter Neodymium earth magnets
    black duct tape, white adhesive reflective tape, soldering iron, solder, screwdrivers, wire strippers, electronic wire, scissors, box cutters, tape measure, pliers, marker pens, 1m velcro strip, Blu-Tack, candle
    1l Famous Grouse

Step 3: Disc Modification for Continuous Lighting

I bought the Tron: Legacy Deluxe Identity Disc for around £20 from eBay. Out of the box, the on switch starts a pretty unimpressive sequence of LEDs lighting up sections of the disc. (There’s another button to activate a sound that’s supposed to be somehow related to the film but to me sounds pretty naf so ignore it.)

I followed this tutorial:

http://www.therpf.com/f24/tron-legacy-deluxe-identity-disc-mods-98306/index3.html

which showed how to open up the disc and modify it so that the lights stay continuously on. You need a small Philips screwdriver, a soldering iron, some solder and some thin electrical wire. Unscrew the six screws on the back of the disc and gently lift of the back plate. You should now see the chip which controls the sequence.

Here’s the science bit: connect pins R3, R4, R5, R8, R9 and R10 to the battery in series. That’s it.

Step 4: Attaching the Disc to the Costume

The main challenge here is that the wetsuit has a zip running up the back. I wanted to create a disc holder that could be attached to the back of the costume once it’s zipped up, and removed before unzipping.

But first, I needed a mechanism to hold the disc on the disc holder. This tutorial:

http://www.therpf.com/f9/tron-legacy-id-disc-small-update-100476/

suggests using magnets inside the disc and inside the disc holder. I bought some strong 5mm Neodymium disc magnets from eBay for quite cheap. So, open the disc again, and stick down two or three magnets onto the inside of the back of the disc, directly behind the four ‘notches’ that you can see on the back of the disc. Then tape them down with some duct tape. I orginally used two magnets in each corner but it wasn’t strong enough. Seal up the disc and pop some magnets onto the outside back of the disc just to test they’re attracting.

Next, make the disc holder out of the packaging that came with the disc. Stick some more magnets down in the corresponding areas and tape them up. This piece of packaging actually makes a great place to store the battery pack and inverter which will power the EL lighting in the costume. So trim the edges of the disc holder before sticking some cardboard on the back of that holder, then tape the battery pack and inverter into the hole in the middle. Spraypaint the whole thing matt black.

To attach the disc holder to the suit, turn it over and superglue two velcro strips onto it. Then superglue the reverse velcro strips onto the back of the wetsuit. The disc holder should now sit on the back of the costume, with the disc held safely in place.

Step 5: Disc Modification for 9V Battery

After a lot of testing the battery in the disc runs out. It uses 6 little watch batteries which aren’t easy to replace. I wanted to wear this costume out, and if I ran out of batteries, I wanted to be able to go to the nearest shop and buy batteries to stick into the disc, without having to open it up with a screwdriver.

The only place to fit a 9V batttery is at the top end of the disc. This is where the break in the inner “C” ring of the disc is. Currently that’s where the speaker and sound chip are stored. The 9V battery will not fit completely into the disc but will stick out discreetly. Open up the disc again and cut out the speaker and the chip it’s attached to. Tape up exposed wires. Now heat a screwdriver tip or a sharp knife over a candle, and cut away the plastic that held the speaker and chip. You will also need to cut a small way into the disc rim on both halves of the disc. Make sure you only cut away a hole that in the end makes a tight fit for the 9V battery.

Next, unscrew the battery door, remove the original 6x watch batteries and replace the battery door. Now open up the disc and disconnect the wire we ran from the circuit board to the battery neg line, and instead connect it to the battery neg line on the 9V battery clip. Next, connect the battery clip’s pos line to the disc’s original battery pos line. Run the battery clip wires neatly along the disc down to where the 9V battery will slot in. I used a lot of electrical insulation tape to cover up exposed wires.

Attach a 9V battery to the battery clip, tape it up so it’s black, and test. You’ll find the disc now shines about twice as bright as it did with the original watch batteries. Close the disc and push the taped up battery in. You may have to cut a little more around the disc rim in order to get the battery to fit perfectly.

Note: You will now have to make a small notch on the battery disc holder so that the disc fits on with the battery protruding out of it.

Step 6: Circuit Design

I wanted to make my costume resemble Sam Flynn’s costume as much as possible. That meant examining lots of footage from the film as well as photo stills and behind the scenes footage. In the end, there were some aspects of the costume used in the film that would have been very difficult/expensive to emulate, but the overall effect was achieved.

First, I mapped out the design of the costume as seen in the film. Then, I mapped out a configuration for the various EL strips and EL wires that I had, that roughly fitted the design. Bear in mind all wires needed to be connected to the battery which is held around the upper back area.

Here is the configuration I used:

    2x 40cm EL strips down the chest (32cm would be fine but my supplier only had 40cm ones so I used black duct tape to hide parts)
    2x EL “L-shaped” strip along the breast
    2x EL hoops above the breast
    2x EL hoops at the waist
    1x 3m EL wire for the chest and back
    1x 3m EL wire for the left arm, back hoop and waist
    1x 3m EL wire for the right arm, back hoop and waist

Note: these circuit diagrams were drawn before I decided to add the two “L-shaped” EL strips to the costume.

Step 7: Vest

Most of the EL wire would be thread through the wetsuit and glued down onto small panels of the foam. But the larger EL strip components are too fragile to risk bending. So I decided to attach most of the EL strips to a vest, that would attach on top of the wetsuit. The items to attach to the vest are:

    2x 40cm EL strips
    2x “L-shaped” EL strips
    2x EL hoops
    1x 3m EL wire

I cut out a waistcoat-shaped area from the sheet foam and used relfective tape to mark where these areas would be. I then cut out a shoulder/back brace area and attached that to the front area. The back brace would eventually be glued to the back of the wetsuit, then, once the wesuit was on, I would pull down the front part of the vest over my head, kind of like a seat belt on a rollercoaster. Threading the wires through the vest took some patience, as did creating the bevels for the EL wire to sit in. Once I glued down all the components, I labelled all the wires and attached the back of it to the wetsuit.

Finally, add small velcro patches (around 5cm x 2cm) to the sides of the back brace, and to the bottom of the front part of the vest.

Step 8: Body Wires and Waist Hoops

This is probably the most time consuming part of the process. Basically I cut out lots of ‘panels’ on foam, bevelled them out to run wire along them, then put a hole at each end of them for the wire to stitch in and out of the wetsuit. Avoid elbows and knee-caps, but make sure to leave slack on the wire inside the wetsuit in these places. I also made special panels that housed the wire in a coil for the back hoops. 3m of EL wire is enough to run from the neck (where it will attach to the battery) down the arm, back up the arm, down the back to the back hoop coil then down the leg. So I used one wire for each side. Again, don’t forget to leave slack in areas inside the wetsuit where there’ll be a lot of bending.

For the waist hoops, it’s much the same process as making the vest. You’ll need a splitter to connect them inside the wetsuit, then run the wire up so its connector comes out of the neck of the wetsuit.

Step 9: Final Touches and Considerations

For the gloves, just get some basic black gloves from a DIY / electrical store, and cut out completely the two middle fingers, and partially the little finger, leaving a ring for the little finger. I also cut a strip down the crotch of the wetsuit and stuck on a velcro fastener so I could go to the toilet without taking the costume off.

I wasn’t satisified with the security of the disc on the holder, so I duct-taped some larger flat magnets onto the disc, and it now sits on there very securely.

And now the considerations of wearing the costume:

    It takes 15 minutes to put on, and 15 minutes to take off
    You have to be completely naked to put it on. No underwear, no jewellery
    You get really hot indoors, and you sweat
    Wearing a wetsuit for hours makes your muscles ache
    It’s not waterproof, drunk person proof or council estate proof
    You can’t do anything that involves bending too much as the foam panels will break off. Sitting on a chair, walking and grabbing/replacing your disc are pretty much all you can do in it

Otherwise, enjoy the costume, and send me photos.