Gallery: The Making of WIRED's Enormous Comic-Con Mech
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Meet our mech. He's real, and we're going to show you how the wizards at Legacy Effects put him together.
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This is no static display piece. Everything about this mech actually works, and it is stomping around Comic-Con right now. It all has to fit together perfectly when you're building a mech, so all the pieces are carefully trimmed and finished for a precise fit.
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Legacy's Rob Ramsdell fits a piece of armor above the mech's pecs.
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Stilts? Pfft. An exoskeleton is so much more WIRED. Bruce Mitchell gets a little help becoming 9.5 feet tall.
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Jim Kundig spots Bruce Mitchel as he dons the pads and linkages that control the mech's arms -- one of which sports a sweet chain gun.
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Suiting up is a four-man job that requires Peter Weir Clark, Alan Scott, and Jim Kundig to help Bruce Mitchell into the massive mech.
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WIRED's mech is only slightly less menacing without its armor.
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It's just another day at the office for Bruce Mitchell, suited up in the mech's cockpit. The larger arms mimic the motion of the smaller arms, which Mitchell controls via a series of linkages.
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Reach for the sky, mech! Peter Weir Clark provides a little physical therapy to WIRED's mech.
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It isn't as if you can buy mech armor at the hardware store, so Legacy Effects made custom molds to create our mech's skin.
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Bruce Mitchell tries his mighty legs on for size while David Vocarrubias and Alan Scott wire him up.
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Comic-Con or bust (your head).
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Check out the discrepancy in shoe sizes between our mech and the guy inside. Form follows function -- it's no small feat (See what we did there?) to keep a 9.5-foot-tall mech from toppling over.
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The molded fiberglass skin is painted and polished before being fitted over the metal skeleton beneath.
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When your mech is more than 9 feet tall, it's a good idea to wear a helmet.
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At more than 9 feet tall and 400 pounds, the fiberglass-over-metal mech was terrifying even before it was finished.
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WIRED's massive mech hanging out at Comic-Con, towering over Adam Savage.
