This will likely not be the most thorough tutorial, but here’s what I do remember and have documented! I competed back in 2016 at Salt Lake Comic Con (now SL FanX) and had a blast. 

If you’re familiar with the Mass Effect game trilogy, then you know who Commander Shepard is. I chose to the uniform from the very beginning of the third game, which is on screen for maybe ten minutes. But it seemed far more approachable than all the armor sets. 

I started with a t-shirt that fit, using masking tape to mark where the front and back of the chest armor edges would be. Then I used taped together pieces of paper to lay out the details of the armor. I used denim as the base fabric, with black pleather as the armor exterior. I also used 22 gauge steel plates for the armor pieces – cutting them with tin snips, sanding the edges with my dremel tool, and punching holes that I later riveted the pieces into place. It was a long, tedious process, but it gave the effect I was going for. It also weighs a lot. 

It was a lot of little details – matching stitch lines on shoulders, figuring out how to make cargo pockets for the hips pieces, including a way to hold the gun I had commissioned from the maker Quantum Entanglement. He ended up being one of the judges, so that was extra fun! I did make sure to document that he had made the gun and never claimed credit for it. 

I make the buckle in a 3d design program and printed it myself. 

More people thought I was from Fall Out than Mass Effect, but I still had fun and enjoyed how it felt to be Commander Shepard for a day. 

The pictures below are roughly in order of my process. 

Contest prejudging pictures by the FanX staff.

Reference image from the game files.