This article was taken from the April 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

Holly Conrad's first costume creation was a masterclass in economical design: "It was a Koopa Troopa from Super Mario Bros. I was four years old; I taped a green pillow to my back and ran around the house."

Conrad, now 25, found the perfect stage for her more mature artistic vision in her native California -- San Diego's Comic-Con, famed for its fiercely contested costume competitions. In 2010, she gathered her friends, cleaned out her life savings and built a set of hyper-realistic costumes based on the multi-million-selling BioWare game Mass Effect 2. Conrad portrayed Commander Shepard, the game's hero, in a faithfully recreated suit of space armour. Well, mostly faithfully: "I had to redesign it so I could sit down. If you don't have some kind of stiff and pliable magic material from the year 2160, it's just not going to happen."


The costumes caught BioWare's eye: she has since been commissioned to build four more suits, and sculpted the zombie "husks" in a live-action trailer for Mass Effect 3 (the game is out this month). She's already lined up for a production role on the upcoming film adaptation of the game. In the meantime, another movie has been taking up her time: she appears in, and is promoting, Morgan Spurlock's documentary

Comic-Con Episode Four: A Fan's Hope, making red-carpet appearances in full armour. "I met Antonio Banderas and told him about Mass Effect, then he told me about The Singularity. We had a nerd moment. It was awesome."