For League of Legend and Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit) Fans
JonnyMac
Posts: 9,107
I was at the League of Legends World Championships last night -- and before yesterday I didn't know such an event existed. The Staples Center in Los Angeles was filled to the rafters with 10s of thousands of screaming LoL enthusiasts. It was amazing. I had no idea what was happening while watching the games, but the crowd swell when something exciting happened was incredible. Korea beat China, 3-0.
I was there because my friend, Steve Wang, had been commissioned by Riot Games to build a suit for Limp Bizkit guitarist, Wes Borland, who played in the opening ceremony. Steve asked me to add programmable lighting.
Here's the video of the entire ceremony (about 9 minutes -- costume makes appearance just after the 5:20 point).
[video]www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Ynv_bedzw&feature=player_detailpage[/video]
The suit has 300 RGB LEDS -- though we only used white for this performance. Wes will take that on the road soon and we will have multiple sequences (there's a button on the back of his helmet), and they will be multi-color. When is back is to camera you can see a couple items hanging from his belt. One is a box with a QuickStart board and a shield I made for powering and connecting to the LEDs. We ended up putting a muffin fan on it to control temperature in the box -- with all those LEDs running it got pretty hot (something I will deal with after their tour). The small packet is a carrier for an ELEV-8 battery; the whole costume is powered by Parallax!
The program is written in Spin using my WS2801 driver (two; one for the head (180 pixels), on for the arm (110 pixels)). The tricky part was remapping the willy-nilly arrangement of pixels (I didn't do that but told them it was okay -- was sorry about that later). I had to create a strategy for remapping the pixels into lines that could run from his left ear to his right wrist. After writing a program to map the pixels and create line groups, I ended up having a dream about the oft-maligned @@ operator which actually provided a solution to the code! In the end, Riot Games, Wes, and the crowd were thrilled with the costume; that's all that matters.
This is us backstage just before Wes went on:
L-to-R: Aina Skinnes O'Kane (costumer), me (electroncis/programming) Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit guitarist), Steve Wang (master creature creator)
Not in photo several (10 or more) very talented people who work with Steve that participated in building the suit.
PS: How do I embed an external video like the external picture? I hate to have people jump out to YouTube to see something.
I was there because my friend, Steve Wang, had been commissioned by Riot Games to build a suit for Limp Bizkit guitarist, Wes Borland, who played in the opening ceremony. Steve asked me to add programmable lighting.
Here's the video of the entire ceremony (about 9 minutes -- costume makes appearance just after the 5:20 point).
[video]www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-Ynv_bedzw&feature=player_detailpage[/video]
The suit has 300 RGB LEDS -- though we only used white for this performance. Wes will take that on the road soon and we will have multiple sequences (there's a button on the back of his helmet), and they will be multi-color. When is back is to camera you can see a couple items hanging from his belt. One is a box with a QuickStart board and a shield I made for powering and connecting to the LEDs. We ended up putting a muffin fan on it to control temperature in the box -- with all those LEDs running it got pretty hot (something I will deal with after their tour). The small packet is a carrier for an ELEV-8 battery; the whole costume is powered by Parallax!
The program is written in Spin using my WS2801 driver (two; one for the head (180 pixels), on for the arm (110 pixels)). The tricky part was remapping the willy-nilly arrangement of pixels (I didn't do that but told them it was okay -- was sorry about that later). I had to create a strategy for remapping the pixels into lines that could run from his left ear to his right wrist. After writing a program to map the pixels and create line groups, I ended up having a dream about the oft-maligned @@ operator which actually provided a solution to the code! In the end, Riot Games, Wes, and the crowd were thrilled with the costume; that's all that matters.
This is us backstage just before Wes went on:
L-to-R: Aina Skinnes O'Kane (costumer), me (electroncis/programming) Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit guitarist), Steve Wang (master creature creator)
Not in photo several (10 or more) very talented people who work with Steve that participated in building the suit.
PS: How do I embed an external video like the external picture? I hate to have people jump out to YouTube to see something.
Comments
eSports is becoming a pretty big thing these days. LoL, DOTA2, SC2, CS:GO, and others are having tournaments all the time now (weekly, monthly) with several really big ones per year. I'm looking forward to the coming year (especially since I've been working on one of the games that is starting to really get big in the scene).
[noparse][VIDEO]
Go to "Settings" - "General Settings" and make sure that "Enhanced Interface - Full WYSIWYG Editing" is selected, it is near the bottom of the page. If that doesn't work then I am stumped.
Nice!
I must be old or something, I have no idea what League of Legends is and I thought Limp Biskit was something cured with a little blue pill.
I'm going to pop by the shop tonight and add color in, as well as enabling other patterns. Wes has been really easy to deal with, and I can't wait to see video from their tour.
It is possible though, in some weird artistic way, that the beauty of that performance is that it is white sparks and not a cheapskate Las Vegas colour orgasm.
I can only imagine how much work must have gone into all of that already!
More than most would imagine. Wes came in for a head cast so that the helmet could be form fitted. That was made from carbon fiber and lined for comfort. Bucks for vacu-forming the clear shells had to be sculpted. The rings you see in the clear plastic are in fact the flanges from silicone baby nipples. Those had to be cut from the nipple, then attached to the plastic with a special adhesive. The LEDs come in long strips. They were cut into smaller strips and then soldered back together after placement of strips on the costume pieces. I used the QuickStart but this was a very quick-turn project so I stayed up all night laying out a shield PCB (power and LED interface circuits), then sent it to GoldPhoneix because they would do it in blue, and faster and cheaper than anyone else. Soldering the boards was via Cuisinart re-flow. And, of course, the lambskin costume had to be custom fabricated with all the embellishments required for it (Steve's costumers are amazing!).
In all, about about 14 people participated the construction of that costume.
Jonathan
(Random idea: could you add a really cheap mic to the box, and use the sound levels to subtly pulse the LEDs to the music?)