Warhawk Battlemech Costume

This costume is a product of two years of work on and off. It is made completely out of cardboard which was then covered in craft foam. It can be worn as well as placed on a stand to be used as a prop (it weighs 40 pounds so it does kind of get heavy...and hot). At its full height it stands 7 feet 4 inches tall, 5 feet 1 inch across, and 4 feet 5 inches long. It takes 4 people 15 minutes to put the costume on and off. The thing I love most about this costume is that its almost impossibly to break. sure things get ripped and bumped from moving, but whenever it receives damage in real life I just beat it up more and make it look like it got hit with a laser or cannon shell. After all it's supposed to be a war machine!

I turned the basement into a war zone to make this, going through countless boxes and a mound of spray paint. In total the cost of materials was close to $150, mostly in spray paint. Inside the costume are 5 LED lights; one in each gun barrel, and one red one on the top near the missile launcher (sadly it does not actually fire nerf missiles like I wanted it to). It has a full cockpit including a little action figure that I found to put inside. I can see from a two way mirror I put just behind the cockpit. It comes from a game called Mechwarrior, and I built it to scale working off of a single picture of concept art for it. The community loved it and the children's reactions ranged from awe to "I'm not going closer than twenty feet to it".