The Making of Adam Savage's Admiral Ackbar Costume

Every year at Comic-Con, Savage hits the convention floor in full costume, tweeting out hints to his fans. "Adam Incognito" is his version of Where's Waldo, and the first fan to find him wins a prize. Here are some photos of his previous outfits:

2013 Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars http://files.tested.com/photos/2013/07/19/64-50337-_v2c0074-...

2012 Ring Wraith from Lord of the Rings http://p.twimg.com/Axo2wwCCMAAuOHf.jpg:large

2011 No Face from Spirited Away http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/comic-con-2011-adam-pictures1.j...

2010 Storm Trooper from Star Wars http://media.corporate.discovery.com/blog/wp-content/uploads...

2009 Joker's henchmen from the Dark Knight http://twitpic.com/bn7pu

2008 Hellboy from Hellboy http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6v2jitxhm1rnwx2io1_1280.j...

The "making" sections on Tested are really interesting. Adam Savage is a prop-maker, and so items tend to be cosmetically interesting, rather than having interesting tech. He takes a nice big wooden box, paints it, applies decals, then distresses it. It's nice, it looks (to my uninformed eye) genuine (it has big NASA logos on it), but it's entirely fake.

It reminds me of "pretty face" - a fake shirt collar attached to a jacket so poor people in communist China could maintain decorum. (http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/hsc/evrev/mao_suit.htm)

There's a movie gun replica (hellboy?) where a bunch of glass tubes and valves are sourced to get "accurate" versions of what was used for the movie. And he knows, because he used to work in the industry, that it could be tricky to source the parts because prop-makers just use whatever is available that looks "right". So a prop maker could buy some stuff from a junkstore and rip it apart, which makes it hard for people years later to reproduce it.

EDIT: And this article is full of interesting domain-specific knowledge about what casts what and why.

For those that have never seen Adam Savage's TED talk on his prop-making, it's fascinating and well worth the 15 minutes of your time: http://www.ted.com/talks/adam_savage_s_obsessions.html

I was particularly interested by his research and collection of reference images, but his whole process/thinking is fascinating (and awesome).

Adam,

My wife's uncle made the original Admiral Ackbar costume for the movies. If you wanted a costume, you could have just emailed me and I would have put you in touch with him.

Regards, shoe

» the greatest non-human character in film.

"Those are not aliens, but just humans in funny costumes" Marc Miller, author and guru of Traveller™ SciFi RPG.