Tron Research

I have been doing a lot of research over the past few days for my Tron costume, both me and Amanda plan on making one, however since her cosplay calendar is full for Sakura-con, I shall embark on this adventure first. I really wish that I could draw because it would make the plans for this costume a lot easier. Unfortunately since I can't, I guess everything must stay in my head until I actually have the materials in front of me.


I plan on trying to make Quorra's outfit as accurate as possible. Here are pictures, first concept art from the movie, as well as the final product, and the second is from the game (Tron: Evolution).

 

I figure that for the most part, actually putting together the costume won't be too hard. Find some wedge heeled boots, faux leather leggings, and then create the "dress" part using a pattern and faux leather material. So far I have found the boots and the leggings:

Now for the hard part, making the costume light up. I think the most popular example of a working lightsuit is probably Syuzi. I found pictures of her in almost every article I read for Tron costumes.

I love what she did with her costume, especially that she made the lights removable so she could wash her costume. 

I found a few websites that offer instructions on how to work with EL wire as well as sell them. So far I find Ladyada's website the most helpful. They include pictures with their instructions! Plus they sell EL wire individually as well as in a starter pack for a really good price. If you want more colors than just aqua (which is all Ladyada's offers) then I found a website called Unixsurplus that offers yellow, white, sky blue, red, purple, pink, orange and green. They sell EL wire in 25ft or 50ft and is more expensive, but you get a lot more for the price so it is a plus. 

When I first started researching Tron costumes, EL wire was my first choice. After reading about Syuzi's costume and how she used EL tape, I think that it will be much more useful and offer more of the thick line of the Tron movie costumes than EL wire which would require using something to diffuse the light. Thanks to Syuzi's website, I was able to find EL tape at a website called Glowhut. The only downside I see is they do not offer EL tape in white. As much as I love the color blue, and would be ecstatic to have my costume glow blue, I want to keep it as accurate as possible. Luckily, I just typed  EL tape into Google and found Electro Luminescence Incorporated. They offer EL tape in multiple colors (including white) and varying widths. Electro Luminescence Incorporated takes custom orders, so they don't really have prices available. Other websites are Jab-tech which offers blue, green and red EL tape and Elec 2 Go which offers red, blue, white/pink, aqua, green, lime green, and orange. Elec 2 Go is also very useful for EL wire as well, they offer a special type of EL wire that can be used specifically for clothing if someone did choose to go that route.

Now that I've covered lighting up the costume, I'll move into props. Luckily this is pretty much a give in as you can buy an Identity Disk from Toy's R Us for $19.99 so there isn't much to go into. I bought mine today (super excited about them!), one for cosplay and another to keep solely as a collector. 

The only downside, is the Identity Disk glows blue and not white, so I plan on having some fun and taking it apart, gutting it and installing EL wire inside to glow white. I'll be sure to post pictures and possibly videos of that rediculous endeavor when it occurs. I did find a video of someone who glued EL wire to the outside of the frisbee version of the Identity Disk, and it looks pretty cool.

This ends my Tron research, atleast so far. I'm planning to start on the costume in the next 2 weeks, so hopefully I will have something to show for it soon. Until then, I'll update with whatever new Tron costume information I find.