This Rules: Furiosa’s Bionic Arm Becomes A 3D-Printed Cosplay Prosthetic

There's cosplay, and then there's the mindblowing hijinks happening over at the Replica Prop Forums. Whereas some Con attendees might be perfectly happy tossing on a ratty bathrobe and declaring themselves Jedi, the folks over at RPF are putting in serious work on their cosplay efforts. They're doing their research. They're taking plaster casts. They're 3D-printing elaborate bits of armor. They're soldering things to other things. They're strolling into their favorite Cons looking like they just walked off a movie screen.

Simply put, these folks aren't screwing around. Take, for instance, this amazing piece of Mad Max: Fury Road cosplay put together by Overworld Designs: it's a 3D-printed replica of Furiosa's mech-arm, and it's an actual prosthetic.https://instagram.com/overworlddesigns/

Over at RPF, there's an entire rundown of how Overworld Designs put this thing together, and the details are fascinating. Originally, Laura - a left-arm transradial amputee with a passion for cosplay - wanted a Terminator exoskeleton arm she could wear as a prosthetic. Overworld had an elaborate plan in place to pull off this design ("The idea was to 3D print a CAD design for the Endo Arm and possibly wire it up with some sensors and servos to make the fingers open and close"), but before they could get going on it, George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road came along and knocked everyone - especially Laura - on their asses.

Laura loved Fury Road, and - for obvious reasons - felt a particular affinity for Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa. After writing about what the character meant to her over on Tumblr ("I’ve been a fan of action film my entire life. And I have NEVER seen a physically disabled, kickass, female lead character in a Hollywood movie EVER – not once, until yesterday"), the decision was made to switch gears from a T2 exoskeleton arm to Furiosa's badass mech-arm. 

Overworld Designs had already scanned Laura for the T2 arm (using, of all things, an XBOX Kinect)...

...and, with that step out of the way, they set about building the prosthetic. After creating a plaster cast of Laura's left arm, the various pieces of Furiosa's mech-arm were 3D printed, painted, and assembled.

From there, it was just ("just") a matter of laser cutting the various add-ons necessary to fill in all the many, many details in the piece: the mesh covering on the prosthetics fingers, the wrenches that made up part of the inner-arm support, bits of leather strapping to tie various pieces together (there's a pretty great rundown of the entire process over on this thread at Replica Prop Forums, and you should absolutely swing by there to check it out). Putting this thing together was no small feat.

But goddamn, what a payoff! Just look at the final product!

We expect to see a lot of Mad Max: Fury Road cosplay in the future (see if you can count the War Boys you run into on Halloween this year), but it's highly unlikely anyone's going to match the balls-out badassery achieved by Laura and the good folks at Overworld Designs. Once again, you can head over to this page on the Replica Prop Forums to learn more about how Laura's amazing Furiosa prosthetic was built, and we strongly suggest that you do. It's a legitimately incredible read, and there's a bunch of other great pics over there to gawk at. 

What do you guys think? Best Mad Max: Fury Road cosplay, or the very best Mad Max: Fury Road cosplay?