
Wang Kang, a 25-year-old office worker from Shanghai, China, surprised his colleagues a few days ago, when he came to work wearing a home-made Iron Man suit.
It happened on June 3rd, 2011. Kang walked into his office building wearing a metallic-looking costume and was immediately stopped by security. After explaining to them that he was actually an employee there they allowed him to go through to the office area where all his work mates stopped what they were doing and stared at the real-life Iron Man that just walked in. Everyone was speechless at first, but proceeded to congratulate Wang Kang for his incredible achievement, and started taking pictures. One of these ended up on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo, and the young self-taught costume maker became an internet sensation.
Wang Kang got the idea of making his own Iron Man costume after seeing the 2008 blockbuster starring Robert Downey Junior, but actually started working on it on February 26, 2011, right in the living room of his rented apartment. The costume is mainly made of high density foam, wires and tubes, for which he only paid 3,000 yuan ($460). It also features the famous arc reactor which he made from glass. The whole thing took him three months to finish, but the reactions on his colleagues’ faces were totally worth the time and effort. After the office test, Kang took to the streets where he left everyone stunned, as well.
Two die-hard Iron Man fans chose the streets of London as the best place to show off the cool homemade costumes they worked so hard to complete.
32-year-old John Bekkensten, from Norway, is an established sculptor for the movie industry, with works featured in blockbuster hits like “Gladiator”. “Braveheart”, “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” and others. But John is also a big fan of Iron Man, so apart form his official projects, he spent over a year replicating the costumes of the popular hero and his sidekick, War Machine, out of fiberglass and plastic.
John ended up wearing the much cooler War Machine costume, while his buddy got the chance to be Iron Man. Together they got on double decker buses, took picture with London guards and managed to stun pretty much everyone they passed by.
If you’re interested in cool movie props, be sure to check out John Bekkensten official site.
I’m a huge fan of cosplay, and although I’ve already featured a few home-made Iron Man costumes on OC, I just couldn’t help share the metal suit made by Ted Gorzkowski.
Ted is a carpenter by trade, but a talented blacksmith at heart. And since he’s always been a fan of superhero movies, he decided to put his blacksmith talents to the test and create a metal replica of Tony Stark’s famous suit. He spent months molding the pieces of metal, painting it in just the right colors and creating the arc reactors out of hundreds of LEDs, but the final result was totally worth the effort.
This Iron Man suit made by Ted Gorzkowski may not be as detailed as the War Machine replica created by cosplay master Anthony Le, but it’s definitely worthy of our praise. For more photos of this cosplay masterpiece, check out Ted’s MySpace profile.
Thanks a lot, Ted!