If being Iron Man can be based on looks alone, then this guy could very well be the real Iron Man. Geek and DIY cred goes to Wang XiaoKang, a 15-year-old employee of ZTE. If you have a USB broadband dongle, then you might be familiar with this Chinese company as they are the second largest China-based telecommunications equipment manufacturer.
Employee of a technology company or not, Wang XiaoKang deserves two thumbs up for his work. Heck, I’d give him three thumbs if I had three! He built this armor within 3 months and spent 3,000 yuan – that’s about USD460. When he started his project – for the sheer love of Iron Man – he had no previous DIY experience. All he had to work on was the result of his research online and watching the movie (on Blu-ray) every day. (Now maybe I have an excuse to watch Iron Man every single day!)
His research led to sketches and “samples”.
And pretty soon, other parts of the armor were being built. Being true to Tony Stark’s style, Wang XiaoKang did the tests on the suit himself.
He had to switch designs mid-project, though, due to some “technical” difficulties. From these:
He finally ended up with a wearable, authentic-looking armor. Now if Tony Stark himself wouldn’t be proud of that, I don’t know what to say!
For someone who had no experience with fiddling around the workshop to engage in DIY, Wang XiaoKang did a pretty awesome job with the suit. And he had an even more brilliant idea – to actually wear the suit to the office. Yup, that photo up there was taken as he was walking around the ZTE campus in Shanghai. While all the other “cool” people applauded him, the poor security guard had to do his job and be a party pooper – he asked Wang XiaoKang to remove the suit!
I don’t know about you, but this guy is on my watchlist now. It seems that he has got the DIY fever and is going back to the workshop to finish his original Mark III project. Now that is worth looking forward to! In the meantime, here’s some more of this Iron Man goodness.
Via M.I.C Gadget
[...] Toys decided to make figures from three movies, with two characters from each movie. Iron Man and Tony Stark, Loki and Thor, and Red Skull and Captain America. It’s a no brainer which [...]