Since debuting my Commander Shepard outfit at CFCC last week, I’ve realised that there were a few changes that I needed to make in order to a) make it easier to wear and b) improve the look of it.

The only thing that really needed to be altered for the fit was the biceps. I thought that friction created between the armour piece and the morphsuit would be sufficient to hold them up, but it wasn’t so they kept slipping down. To fix that, I simply hot glued a bit of velcro high on the bicep so that once they were on they didn’t move, and that seems to have fixed the problem.

As for alterations to the look, there were a few things that I needed to do.

1) Backplate LEDs / EL wire.

In the first iteration of the lighting for the back of the armour, I’d opted for EL wire. It looked like this when I put it in.

Not too bad, but really it was way too dim (I had to close the curtains just so you could see it), especially in daylight, considering that the venues are typically well lit, it just didn’t do a good enough job.

So the day before CFCC, I took out the EL wire and replaced it with some red micro-LEDs that I had in my box of tricks.

This still wasn’t super bright, but was a good enough solution for that con.

Afterwards, I decided that super-bright blue LEDs were going to be the best solution as they’re really bright in daylight and due to being closer to the UV end of the visual spectrum have a much brighter impact. I always buy LEDs from the same person on eBay as they’ve never let me down and have a 24 hour free shipping service. If you’re interested, these are the LEDs I ended up using on the backplate. This is a side by side of the blue and the red LEDs to give you an idea how much better they are.

These were much more like what I was after, so out came the red and in went the blue. As you can see, they’re so much brighter…

…even from a distance.

2) Helmet LEDs.

Something that I didn’t add in the first iteration of the outfit was lights in the helmet. I fixed that this time by just adding a few super-bright micro LEDs in the same shade of blue as the backplate. Makes it look tonnes better.

These are the LEDs I used here as they’re a lot smaller and lighter, so easy to put in a helmet.

3) Helmet N7 logos

How I missed these off first time around is beyond me. Not a huge addition, but definitely one that finishes the helmet off nicely.

4) Paragon logo

Ok, so technically speaking, if you’re making this outfit screen accurate, you won’t add this bit, but whilst at CFCC I got asked a lot if I was Paragon or Renegade (you will have had to have played the Mass Effect series to get that), and I thought that the addition of a Paragon logo on the shoulder pad would not only look really good, but stop that question being asked too. It’s my outfit after all, so if I want to add my own bit, I can.

So, that’s it. 100% done and dusted. Nothing else is being done on this outfit now; ever! (bar any repairs I might need to do post-LFCC for MCM).

After it’s next two outings, it’s getting retired. I’ll either put it in be storage or sell it, depending on how I feel after the next couple of times wearing it. I did have a couple of decent offers for it at CFCC, so it will probably be the latter as I’ll need the space for my next couple of builds.

That’s that then. Shepard, out!