Pacific Rim - Scavenger Scout - Concept and Design

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The building of the Scavenger suits, seen in the Kaiju harvesting scene of Pacific Rim, was our first feature assignment. As you will see here, it was a doozy.

The Scavengers perform a short, yet critical role in the story: The recovery of Kaiju organs and tissue for sale and scientific study. Even though these characters are on screen for less than one minute, their costumes required the dedicated effort of at least a dozen people over the course of four weeks to complete.
With direction from the Pacific Rim Costume Designer, Kate Hawley, we worked day and night (putting in roughly 1000 total work hours) to hand off 6 suits in time for breakdown and shooting.

Here's a look at the process that went into creating these unique character costumes.

Character Background and Concept Sketches

Kate Hawley, the costume designer for Pacific Rim came to us with a request to construct a costume for the Scavenger characters that was part Hazmat suit and part astronaut's space suit.

Kate brought us an actual hazmat suit for reference.

Kate's concept for the suit was inspired largely by this x-ray diagram of a vintage NASA spacesuit. She liked the idea of a voluminous environment suit that had some transparency to show the structural and technical components within. This is why she chose latex as the material for the main body of the suit.

Like just about everything else in Pacific Rim, Kate wanted the Scavenger suits to look like they had seen a lot of abuse over time. They would have obvious tears, patches and repairs all over them.