2015
20th Century Fox
The Martian
DIRECTOR: Ridley Scott
COSTUME DESIGN: Janty Yates
FBFX was tasked with making the hardware and electronics for the spacesuits in Ridley Scott’s 2015 sci-fi epic The Martian, and it’s still one of our all-time favourite jobs.
Janty Yates’s beautiful costume design for the suits was based on conversations with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The aim was to create realistic suits for a near-future mission to Mars, and innovative tech would be required to bring those visions to the screen.
FBFX worked on the helmets, backpacks, front plates, wrist tech and boots for the white EVA suits and orange surface suits.
The fabric elements for the EVA were by Rob Allsopp & Associates, while the surface suits were made by an in-house team including associate designer Michael Mooney, neoprene specialist Shirley Wilson and dimensional printing pioneer Steve Gell.
The Martian was an important job for FBFX, accelerating a spacesuit journey that began with 1997’s Event Horizon.
We’d started building our own electronics systems and using vacuum casting to create epic helmets while making the hardware for the spacesuits of 2012's Prometheus - another Ridley Scott film with Janty Yates-designed costumes.
Combining digital design, 3D printing, 3D scanning and vacuum casting with more traditional methods like clay sculpting and polyurethane spraying allowed us to realise increasingly ambitious designs.
The helmets incorporated inner and outer lighting components, air ducts and fan pathways to guide the flow of air into the helmets, with dozens of separate mating components modelled for each helmet.
The finished suits also featured remotely controlled multi-channel lighting and a system to pump breathable air from the back packs into the helmets.
Every part was beautifully art finished by the paint team.
Though the orange surface suits from The Martian are the most recognisable, the nine EVAs were even more complex to manufacture.
They needed to look utterly convincing while accommodating complex flying rigs and allowing performers to move, with Janty Yates and Michael Mooney drafting multiple iterations until the suit was perfect.
Watch the trailer here.
