FBFX Ltd

Team FBFX at the launch of Vollebak's Sonic Jacket, built by FBFX, at the Spaceshop in Covent Garden. If you're in London and want to check out the Sonic Jacket, along with Vollebak's one-off mycelium jacket, the Bang & Olufsen-packed, SAGA Space Architect designed Spaceshop itself and some of the brand's incredible clothes, the Spaceshop will be open today and tomorrow. To find out more about the creation of the Sonic Jacket, head to the link in our bio! #vollebak

Introducing the Sonic Jacket. Built for Vollebak by FBFX. Reposted from @vollebak The world’s first Sonic Jacket fires frequencies from 4 Hz to 20,000 Hz directly into your body. Maybe you’ll orgasm. Maybe you’ll shit yourself. Maybe you’ll find God… so maybe you’ll want to be careful where you wear it. You can join the waiting list in the link in bio. Images @sunleestudio

Happy birthday to us! Today, FBFX turns 33. Here's a couple of the hundreds of brilliant projects we've been lucky enough to work on over the years. Watching the runaway success of Project Hail Mary, with costume design by David Crossman and Glyn Dillon, has been a real pleasure. FBFX made the hard components (helmet, backpack and chestplate) for the film's beautiful red spacesuit, with the soft suit fabricated by the talented in-house team. It was a particularly special job for us, coming 10 years after The Martian, another memorable adaptation of an Andy Weir novel. Again, we fabricated the hard elements for the orange surface suit and the white EVA suit, and it was this job that really turbo-charged our spacesuit journey. Costume design for The Martian was by Janty Yates, with Michael Mooney as associate spacesuit costume designer. Fabric elements for the EVA were by Rob Allsopp & Associates, while the surface suits were made by an in-house team including neoprene specialist Shirley Wilson and dimensional printing pioneer Steve Gell. #projecthailmary #themartian #costume #happybirthday

Bringing Wolverine to the screen... During Tested's last visit to FBFX, our head of paint Anadora Peralta talked Adam Savage through the process of finding the exactly the right look for the wings on Wolverine's cowl. With options covering sleek and subtle, heavily weathered, eyeliner swooshes, leather textures, matte, gloss and satin blacks and meticulously refined shades of blue, FBFX worked closely with the Marvel team over several months before settling on the final design. Anadora told Adam how it feels to watch your work on screen - and how she loves to see cosplayers' approaches to creating their own versions. Costume design for Deadpool & Wolverine by Mayes C. Rubeo and Graham Churchyard, vis dev by Ryan Meinerding and Andy Park. Watch the video via the link in our bio! 📸 Photo by @normchan #wolverine #deadpoolandwolverine #hughjackman #ryanreynolds #cosplay

Sometimes, even we put the decimal point in the wrong place... A supersized outtake from the building of Darth Vader's helmet for Obi-Wan Kenobi! Spot the correct size component in the following pics. #darthvader #starwarsday #maythe4thbewithyou #bananaforscale #measuretwicecutonce

This Star Wars Day, a look back at one of the most iconic costumes we’ve been fortunate enough to build at FBFX: Darth Vader. This iteration of the character was for 2022’s Obi-Wan Kenobi series - a fighting Vader, with a costume that would honour the original while allowing for plenty of stunt work and action. Working closely with costume designer Suttirat Larlarb and Lucasfilm, every detail was carefully considered. We were supplied with incredible reference material including two screen-worn helmets - an absolute treat to have in the workshop! The helmet was particularly complex. The design for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series incorporated elements from different films, including Episode IV and Rogue One. With the Darth Vader helmet, it’s vital to maintain the handworked asymmetry of the original, so in the era of CAD design the challenge was to replicate just the right amount of asymmetry while using modern manufacturing techniques.  Perfecting the chest box fixings involved lots of prototyping and experimentation, the original buttons and switches recreated digitally, cleaned, printed, remoulded and recast. The electronics were designed at FBFX, with the lights individually controlled via DMX. The leather had to be just right. Multiple tests were carried out to find the right weight and feel, the leather handworked for the ideal level of crinkle, which was then sewn into place.  To allow for the all-important action, the shoulders were attached with elastic so they could snap back into place, and the mantle strapped to a harness through each layer of the costume to maintain position. We couldn’t have done any of this without the help of the brilliant Lynda Foote and her costume team. As lifelong Star Wars fans inspired to go into costume making by the original films, the chance to build a Vader was something we’d waited a lifetime to do! Check out Tested's look at this suit via the link in our bio. #starwarsday #maythe4thbewithyou #maytheforcebewithyou #darthvader

A piece of Bond film history discovered in the vaults... We recently found this helmet from Roger Moore Bond movie Moonraker during a tidy up at an old storage unit! We had it as a reference for another project back in the 90s - it predates FBFX by around 15 years. Released in 1979, the era of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers, even James Bond was heading out into space. This helmet, we think, belonged to a member of the silver-clad US space marines, who engage in a monumental laser battle with the henchmen of baddie Hugo Drax. #moonraker #007 #jamesbond #costumemaker #classicfilms

Batsuit and League of Shadows vambraces from Batman Begins! We know these are a big favourite with our followers, so suggested @therealadamsavage and @testedcom take a closer look during their last visit to FBFX. Turns out, Adam's a big fan too! In Tested's video, co-founder Grant Pearmain talks Adam through the creation of the different vambraces - including practical stunt versions with lethal steel spikes and an ingenious 'freezer bag' close on the Batsuit version - as well as the elements of League of Shadows costumes made at FBFX. Costume design for the Christopher Nolan-directed Batman Begins was by the wonderful Lindy Hemming, with the Batsuit made by a brilliant in-house team including Graham Churchyard, who we'd go on to work with many times over the years. The link's in our bio and news story highlights! Music from our friend @spiralizeruk #batmanbegins #christophernolan #liamneeson #christianbale #kenwatanabe

A look around the dedicated soft costume facilities at FBFX! The new unit is an adaptable space staffed by experienced costume makers, capable of taking on specialist and traditional sewing and soft costume work of any type. It's located alongside our main building near Heathrow Airport and Shepperton Studios, with soft costume clients able to access FBFX's in-house digital cloth simulation experts and photogrammetry facilities, CNC robotic mannequin milling and the skills of the workshop team. Check out the link in our bio or DM us to find out more! #filmcostumemaker #costumemakeruk #costumeconstruction #costumesewingservices #patterncutter

Small, medium and large. Costume design for Project Hail Mary by David Crossman and Glyn Dillon. #projecthailmary #lego #popcorn

Lovely background on the Project Hail Mary spacesuits and costume from Glyn Dillon! 👩🏼‍🚀 Costume design for Project Hail Mary by David Crossman and Glyn Dillon. Repost from @glyn__dillon My brother, being 9 years older than me, was old enough to watch the first moon landing on TV... But by 1971, the year I was born, Apollo 17 was the final crewed mission to the moon. Commander Gene Cernan being the last man to set foot on the lunar surface. I saw Star Wars when I was 7, but in terms of more ‘hard sci-fi’, I didn’t get to see 2001 A Space Odyssey until I was about 10, and even though I only saw it on TV, it still blew my little mind. But even before that I had an interest in all things ‘Space’ thanks to my brother. He’d made models of the Saturn V rocket, as well as the Eagle Lunar lander, and a cratered moonscape he’d fashioned out of plaster and painted grey, for it to sit on. He also had a load of the Major Matt Mason toys when he was a kid, thankfully this time they were kept and then handed down to me. And it’s easy to see now, how all this stuff has gone in over the years… a lifetime of influences and inspiration. So it feels a bit like tonight marks a kind of full circle moment, as the Artemis II crew takes off towards the moon. I wish my brother was here to see it and to witness how mad the whole Project Hail Mary thing has been. Slides here include concept art for the PHM EVA suit, and an earlier version of the helmet, stuff from the 2019 Kubrick exhibition, Dave Bowman’s helmet from 2001, Danny’s homemade Apollo 11 sweater from The Shining, a little portrait I did of the Artemis astronaut Christina Koch, me when I lived with @hewll circa 94, making him a Saturn V rocket (why am I wearing sunglasses?!)… a beautiful drawing of Valentina Tereshkova by good friend @pjbond ….and a few dope photos of Artemis astronauts snatched from the internet over the last few days. Godspeed Artemis II Poyekhali! #CostumeDesignbyDavidCrossmanAndGlynDillon EVA Suits made by Cutter Jenny Alford and her team, gloves and boots made by Ian Jones and team, and hard parts made by @fbfx_ltd

Very much looking forward to seeing Supergirl on June 26th! Costume design by Anna B Sheppard. #supergirl