The hugely popular tabletop game Warhammer 40K is set in the far future and played with 28mm miniature figures. In preparation for Comic-Con, a few fanboys decided to supersize these little Space Marines and built 7-foot-tall, wearable replicas of their armor. Want to make your own? Go for it! It only takes 352 “terribly complicated” steps.
Step one: Join the “Obscurus Crusade,” an entire forum devoted to creating costumes based on the game’s Space Marines, Orks, and Tyranids. Or, for those not quite ready to enlist in the intergalactic army, creator Shawn Thorsson has provided an overview of his process at Instructables.
Designing the Armor
The first challenge in creating a life-size Space Marine is accounting for the difference in size. These iron giants are a couple feet taller than most normal people and that requires some design translation. People wearing the costumes have to walk on stilts and use arm extenders to make the proportions work and models need to be built around that.
Using a slick software package called Pepakura, cosplayers can pull 3-D data from videogames and turn those files into paper models. Once the paper is cut and folded, it is reinforced with fiberglass to give it strength for the next step.
With fiberglass models made, the space marine recruits can create multiple copies of the armor through a process called vacuum forming. Using this technique, a thin sheet of plastic is heated and pulled over a shape using a vacuum, leaving a near-perfect replica of the original.
Not every part of the costume could be built the same way. The helmets were very complex and required the designers to use a casting process. Once the base models were completed, they were customized in the painting and decoration phase.
After months of hard work the final costume started coming together. With a little paint and polish, these space marines looked ready to fight whatever baddies Emperor Zurg could throw at them. The costumes stole the show at Maker Faire 2012, and will likely wow even the most jaded Comic-Conner.
It will probably be expensive to make, and uncomfortable to wear, but DAMN do I want one in Space Wolves colors.
With a little paint and polish, these space marines looked ready to fight whatever baddies Emperor Zurg could throw at them.
Shows how ignorant the writer is of WH40K fluff- the humans acknowledge ONE, and ONLY ONE, Emperor. Anyone else claiming the title, will likely be labled a heretic and a pretender, and await the Inquisition, Officio Assassinorum, Imperial Guard, and Space Marines' serious efforts to "educate him in the error of his ways."
Those gun nuts do not understand the meaning of "overkill," and will simply use weapon after weapon of mass destruction (WMD) until the monster is dead, or until they run out of weapons.
They have more WMD than there are monsters for us to fight. (More insanity here.)
didn't they use similar sized "puppets" in Lord of the Rings films to depict normal sized humans in some scenes?
I may be an idiot, but I'm a tolerated idiot
"I think you completely missed the point of sigs. They're supposed to be completely homegrown in the fertile hydroponics lab of your mind, dried in your closet, rolled, and smoked...
Oh wait, that's marijuana..."Einhander Sn0m4n
Sidewinder wrote:Shows how ignorant the writer is of WH40K fluff- the humans acknowledge ONE, and ONLY ONE, Emperor. Anyone else claiming the title, will likely be labled a heretic and a pretender, and await the Inquisition, Officio Assassinorum, Imperial Guard, and Space Marines' serious efforts to "educate him in the error of his ways."
oh good lord
Sarevok wrote:So how do people who are not 8 feet tall wear and move in it ?
Well, it's quite complicated. And mysterious. Why, if one didn't read the OP's article at all, it must be nothing short of mystifying!
(stilts and arm extenders. I divined this knowledge through the aether)
Agitated asshole | (Ex)40K Nut | Metalhead The vision never dies; life's a never-ending wheel
1337 posts as of 16:34 GMT-7 June 2nd, 2003
"'He or she' is an agenderphobic microaggression, Sharon. You are a bigot." ― Randy Marsh
Aren't your heads a little small for a Space Marine?
The making of pictures in the article are pretty good... thought they do look a little wobbly in the armour when it's in motion. Perhaps not entirely suprising.
I do approve of the fact they're keeping up the rule that at least one Space Marine in any squad must be wearing the Beaky helmet. That thing's so mch nicer.
According to wikipedia, "the Mohorovičić discontinuity is the boundary between the Earth's crust and the mantle."
According to Starbound, it's a problem solvable with enough combat drugs to turn you into the Incredible Hulk.
Lord Revan wrote:didn't they use similar sized "puppets" in Lord of the Rings films to depict normal sized humans in some scenes?
I dont think so, news to me anyway if they had any man puppets. I think they did have basically mannequins in some Hobbit shots as backgrounds, but most of it was done with lots of GCI splicing, different heights of floor, and lots of forced perspective including using moving moving floor rigs interlocking with the camera movements to maintain the required angles.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Lord Revan wrote:didn't they use similar sized "puppets" in Lord of the Rings films to depict normal sized humans in some scenes?
I dont think so, news to me anyway if they had any man puppets. I think they did have basically mannequins in some Hobbit shots as backgrounds, but most of it was done with lots of GCI splicing, different heights of floor, and lots of forced perspective including using moving moving floor rigs interlocking with the camera movements to maintain the required angles.
"puppets" in a sense that they were operated by a (short) human standing on stilts from the inside (with remote controlled hands), I'd show screenshots from the documents but I'm not sure how to get any.
I may be an idiot, but I'm a tolerated idiot
"I think you completely missed the point of sigs. They're supposed to be completely homegrown in the fertile hydroponics lab of your mind, dried in your closet, rolled, and smoked...
Oh wait, that's marijuana..."Einhander Sn0m4n
You can't just hit print screen and copy into paint?
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Sea Skimmer wrote:You can't just hit print screen and copy into paint?
tried it on one of my trek DvDs and got nothing but a black screen.
EDIT:sorry for the lack of evidence, but my PC is a bit tempermental (I need to take to be repaired)
I may be an idiot, but I'm a tolerated idiot
"I think you completely missed the point of sigs. They're supposed to be completely homegrown in the fertile hydroponics lab of your mind, dried in your closet, rolled, and smoked...
Oh wait, that's marijuana..."Einhander Sn0m4n
Doesn't look half bad. The proportions are off of course but then they'd have to be for something even marginally operable by a normally proportioned human.
Even the walking suits seem to still be under construction (the paintjobs if nothing else are definitely not finished) but very visually impressive.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
Lord Revan wrote:didn't they use similar sized "puppets" in Lord of the Rings films to depict normal sized humans in some scenes?
From my recollection, they had people stand on stilts with huge clothing. Here's a screen of one. It's a full resolution lossless Blu ray capture. This dude walks all around the Prancing Pony.
Stark wrote:I guess there WERE people who never knew miniatures exaggerated detail size.
Yeah, I mean that'd totally not be the reason I mentioned it wouldn't work with a real human operator or something.
'Next time I let Superman take charge, just hit me. Real hard.'
'You're a princess from a society of immortal warriors. I'm a rich kid with issues. Lots of issues.'
'No. No dating for the Batman. It might cut into your brooding time.'
'Tactically we have multiple objectives. So we need to split into teams.'-'Dibs on the Amazon!'
'Hey, we both have a Martian's phone number on our speed dial. I think I deserve the benefit of the doubt.'
'You know, for a guy with like 50 different kinds of vision, you sure are blind.'
Folks at SB who saw it up close tell me the armor looks less impressive in person than phtoto shoots. Makes sense since they used papercraft - one of cheapest production method there is. It's good for fast and dirty but not exactly quality or good looking.
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
They're pretty decent - most life-size Space Marine suits look really goofy after the proportions are altered to fit an actual human. Pity it's a foot too high. Looking at the article on Wired, it shows the line drawing of a Marine against a 1' grid. Thing is, the original version of that, as seen in The Gothic and the Eldritch, had the Marine's feet on the 1' line, making him 7' tall, not 8.
"So you want to live on a planet?"
"No. I think I'd find it a bit small and wierd."
"Aren't they dangerous? Don't they get hit by stuff?"
andrewgpaul wrote:They're pretty decent - most life-size Space Marine suits look really goofy after the proportions are altered to fit an actual human. Pity it's a foot too high. Looking at the article on Wired, it shows the line drawing of a Marine against a 1' grid. Thing is, the original version of that, as seen in The Gothic and the Eldritch, had the Marine's feet on the 1' line, making him 7' tall, not 8.
Space marines without armor are at least 7 feet tall, it makes sense with armor they would be somewhat taller.
Black Admiral wrote:IIRC, it's stated in one of the Horus Heresy novels (or possibly Soul Hunter) that regular power armour adds ~6 inches to an SM's height.
Knowing spaces marines are easily over 7 feet tall, and you had an extra 6 inches, also knowing within the space marine themselves there is a wide diversity of height, an 8 feet tall SM isn't far fetched at all.
