In the Boing Boing Flickr pool, Melissa Li shares some wonderful photo documentation of a cool costume she developed in multiple editions, over a period of years. Above, "Cyberpunk 2.0," the 2012 build:
Costume is an original design inspired by the 'cyberpunk'/fantasy genre work of artists including Masumune Shirow, Eric Canete, Joe Benitez, and various modern gaming concept art.
The process was a lot of fun and took approximately 3 months of on-and-off planning and building.
The assembly is made from over 60 parts designed in Solidworks and sewn/cut/glued/laser-cut/heat-formed using various techniques.The costume includes color changing LEDs on the spine and front that are controlled by an Arduino microcontroller and onboard RGB controllers (respectively), and is powered by 16 AA batteries, 1 LiPo rechargeable battery, two 2032 coin cells, and one 9-volt battery. In total there's more than 70 LED's on the entire costume and over 60 parts.
And below, the 1.0 version she created for DragonCon 2011:
Design was based on actual spinal transverse sections and lit with ~40 LED's. Design and assembly of smaller accessory pieces for shoulders, chest, and arm were found pieces or designed in Solidworks.
In total, ~46 pieces put together over a period of ~2 months.