Cosplay at Work

“I made it at work,” was a phrase Laurel used many times to describe the Mass Effect 2 costume she created to wear to the Cosplay Convention she attended in the fall of 2019. Encouraged by her manager, Allen Brooks, to explore her creativity and flex her master-maker skills, she decided to take on the project of fashioning black foam workout mats into the N7 armor that the main character wears. 

Laurel, an associate and robot specialist at Building Momentum, used a pattern to get the main pieces of the costume drawn up. She created the initial version with paper to ensure sizing was correct. Once she felt comfortable with the pieces, she began to cut the black foam mats using a heat gun to bend and mold the foam, cut it using a Dremel band saw and glued them together with contact cement. Another special feature of the costume was the small Arduino nano light panel that was attached to the back. The flashing lights covered in frosted plastic gave the costume the realistic robot feel that was especially eye-catching and impressive on the convention floor.

The trickiest part of the process was the arm shield. Made with a thin acrylic, it kept breaking with even the slightest bit of pressure. After many attempts at fashioning the arm shield in various ways, Laurel came up with a solution using break-points that bend easily and could be fixed using nylon screws if something were to break while she was wearing the armor. One of the main tenets of cosplay is to be sure you can quickly fix any aspect of your costume yourself - quickly and on the fly!

The entire process of completing the N7 armor was crammed into two weeks and posed many challenges that resulted in a lot of trial and error. The ethos at Building Momentum is to find solutions to problems quickly and efficiently using tech tools at your disposal. Laurel’s adventure in cosplay costume fabrication is just one example of how the skills taught at the Garden and in Innovation Bootcamp can benefit many other areas of our lives. Additionally, when you work in a space like the Garden where using Dremel saws, laser cutters and welding equipment are the norm, it makes sense to use spare time to flex your creative muscles and make wearable art. Self-expression and pursuing hobbies are integral to the culture of the Garden, and Laurel’s N7 armor costume project is just one example of how employees are encouraged to bring their whole selves to work each and every day.