Tron Legacy Costume

For a recent dress up party I decided to dress up as a Tron character. Ive played "Disks of Tron" at the arcade an once the remake of the movie came out ,I knew this was what i had to do...and drag my girlfriend with me.

After searching on Google Images I came across a well laid out design for the suit. The female version was just a variation of this. I started with a black stretchy shirt, a material such as lycra works best. as for the pants , We baught more black material and tailored it. My girlfriend opted for the full body suit. I cut out the strips of white paper to see how it would look and corrected the measurements. We then sewed white material (the same material as the shirt) in strips throughout the suit in the correct pattern.

The point was to sew only the edges of the white material so that we could later feed "LED strips" through so it could light up. We bought LED strips from the market for R30 (~$4) for 3 meters of which include a battery pack at the end. The LED's are roughly 4cm apart connected by wire. We landed up using About 8 LED packs between us. Each LED needs to be taped flat so it can be fed through the suit and not get caught on the edges.

Each item of clothing was turned inside out and a small slit would be cut at the start of each white strip, the LED's are then fed through as far as possible and then the battery pack fastened down. (This took a very long time) We each got a black pair of gloves and my gf got a wig like the movie character. When the LED's are turned on the suit look great, there isn't an even light throughout but it is good enough. An alternative would be to feed "EL wire" through the white parts. the only problem is this is very expensive at R70 (~$10) per meter.That would give a more even glow.