Colonial Marine Smartgunner - Aliens
Why I chose to make this costume
The 1986 movie, Aliens, is one of my favourite of all time. On top of that the character Vasquez is, in my opinion, one of the most badass ever portrayed on screen. This project is an homage to both.
How I made this costume
I spent about a year on this (with a few interruptions for other projects) from planning, acquiring resources, through actual fabrication. Early on I recognized that many screen-accurate pieces of this costume were going to out of my price range, so I had to get creative. A lot of different materials and techniques went into this project, and many parts were 3D-printed (attributions, as appropriate, in the Build Book linked below). Much of the progress was shared on social media, including a series of videos which culminated in a build guide overview comparing my build to a screen-accurate one as well as discussing ways that this could be put together on an even tighter budget!
Thoughts on this costume
This project was a love-letter for me, so it will always be special to me. However if I had it to do again, I might engineer a way to break the Smartgun into two pieces for travel as this barely even fits into a golf club case! Also, when taking it to conventions, there is a stark divide between attendees that recognize exactly where this comes from and those who are too young to have seen the movie :)