Burning Man Jacket

I've wanted to go to Burning Man for many years. Unfortunately, living on a student budget on the east coast made this mostly impossible. But after I moved to Berkeley for grad school, the community and opportunities were hard to escape. I applied for a Low Income ticket in April, after a longtime burner friend of mine convinced me to go, and, to my immense surprise and gratitude, was granted one. In July, this friend got in contact with the people who built Dr. Brainlove, and suddenly, I was on board as one of the core crew to build an art car (post on that forthcoming). 

Two weeks in the desert loomed up in a month and a half, when I'd never been to a festival before or even gone camping for more than a weekend. And in the desert there are no coat checks; my usual strategy of multiple layers for warmth under a leather jacket against wind would probably be suboptimal for long nights that wavered between biking and dancing and sitting out in the open. I looked online for a while and hit up thrift stores, but didn't find a jacket that really met my needs and aesthetics. So I dusted off the Singer sewing machine my father gave me and made a custom jacket. 

Finished product first. Appropriately cyberpunk (shaved half hawk? check. Weird shapes? check. Military inspired lines? check. 120 degree angles? check. Asymmetry? check. Low life? uh, do the PJs and dirty bathroom count?)

Daft Punk Tron Cosplay: Final results!

Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for: The complete cosplay, in action! (I actually didn't get any good shots from PAX East, so these are a conglomeration from MIT Maker Faire, and Halloween from this year.)

And a very terrible quality video of the lights reacting to external sound input: 

Daft Punk Tron Cosplay Build 4

Wow, this is a long build sequence. But I was determined to make this pipe dream of mine work out.

I was under the impression that thermoforming would be easy. I had the visor set up on blocks, and I made a nice wooden frame using some plywood and nails that I had lying around. 

Daft Punk Tron Cosplay Build 3

I put off carbon fibering my helmet for so long. Part of it was because I was still busy marveling at the fact that I had rotocast my own helmet hnnngggg.

And part of me was scared. I didn't have a vacuum former or any way to shape the carbon fiber other than draping. The helmet had a lot of curves, and I didn't have a very fine carbon fiber weave (something something budget something something close enough). And I really, really didn't want to ruin everything forever. 

But I had to do it. It was four days until techfair. I had these four days to carbon fiber, attach electronics, thermoform and tint the visor, and do any cleaning up. Not a lot of time, so I gritted my teeth and buckled down to work. 

I started by dremeling out the visor. Yayyy more pretty pictures of the hollow thing I made omg--

Daft Punk Tron Cosplay Build 1

Helmets.

I don't know what it is about helmets. They're bulky, expensive to make, hard to breathe in, and retain heat like greenhouses. They make it awkward to talk to people and usually you look like a bobblehead.

But I just keep making them. Part of it is about the anonymity, and part of it is me being socially awkward and not wanting to make eye contact. I'm self-conscious enough that I don't want people to see my face in regards to my cosplay. I'll have to get over this for next year's PAX East (my planned cosplay has me both wearing a dress and showing my face, oh dear). But for now, I'm happy just rocking it in a kickass helmet and leather jacket.

I've been a huge fan of cyberpunk since I first read Neuromancer in seventh grade. It all started with the literature: console cowboys surfing the crystalline matrix of cyberspace, hacking across the net and tearing down firewalls and black ice. I'm an avid speed-reader; I tore through each of the Harry Potter books in hours and finished the Dark Tower series in a week. Cyberpunk was my introduction to science fiction, and I devoured Stephenson, Sterling, and Gibson's books without discrimination. And then I watched the Matrix in eighth grade, and everything changed. It wasn't just a genre of books anymore; it was a complete aesthetic, slick black pvc and fierce mirrorshades, blaring neon and crisp chrome, high-tech hexagons and low-life grunge. I'm a visual learner, so it took seeing the look to really bring the scenes I had read about to life. I was hooked.