The inspiration for our outfit was Tron and Iron Man. The reason we were inspired by these suits is purely because they look cool, futuristc and unique. Nobody ever sees someone wear a real Tron or Iron man suit on the street so we decided to build one of the world's first street-worthy Supersuit!

Our task was to design and create a garment which incorporates technology into fashion. We used a combination of fiber optics and LED lights within our suit. We made something that is called an infinity mirror by having an LED strip in the middle of two mirrors, one of which is only visible from the outside. The infinity mirror is placed on the center of the chest like Ironman. The final feature is the backpack. The backpack is made of three clear cylindrical containers that hold glowing tonic water. The water glows by illuminating the liquid with blacklights that are hidden above the cylinders.

The first thing that we did when designing the suit was acquire fabric that would act as a working prototype. We went to Goodwill, a local thrift store, and bought a jacket that fit one of our teammates, Graeme, and that was made of a material onto which we could sew fiber optics. Then, once we tailored the jacket to the right fit, we started to sew the fiber optics based on the pattern we had designed. The fiber optics were then attached to an LED strip and programmed to light up and switch colors. We then stitched the fiber optics to a spandex material thinking that spandex would look more like a tron suit, but in reality it was too hard to sew on to the spandex and we had to switch to a non-stretchy sweater material. For the infinity mirror, we found a template online that we could laser-cut from clear acrylic and assemble to make an iris mechanism that would open and close with servos to reveal the infinity mirror. The backpack was designed in Sketchup, then laser cut into separate parts, and then assembled once cut. The tonic water was put inside the assembled piece near the very end, and the backpack and iris mechanism with the infinity mirror were attached at the very end of the process.

We discovered that our final project looked futuristic and technologically advanced, and we had mostly achieved what we were hoping to create for the Tron/Ironman superhero suit, but it was uncomfortable and a little bulky!

Although we did not entirely finish the project, the final product was impressive with all of the technology components included in the suit and made within a two week studio.