Discover how the killer suits from Edge of Tomorrow were created

Edge of Tomorrow was one of the most popular movies to come out earlier this year, with the ExoSuits quickly becoming one of the best designs in sci-fi movies we've seen in recent offerings. There's a lot to creating a costume such as this, as costume designer Kate Hawley knows all too well. She worked closely with the actors to fuse their characters' personalities and histories into the design.

"Tom wanted his armor to evoke the imagery of a war painting or war photography, where there is a bleak romance to it, and a sort of timelessness," she explains. The ExoSuit factory produced an impressive 70 hard material suits and 50 soft material suits, with each of their 200 hand-cast components made to articulate fluidly and with purpose.

Over 650 components were created each day, that were then sanded, painted and finished before the actors were strapped into their bespoke armor by four handlers each. Exosuit prop modeller Pierre Bohana said, "The core principal for operating an ExoSuit is making sure the external skeleton is precisely aligned with pivot points in the internal, human skeleton like a hand-puppet." Each of the three classes of the Exosuits – Grunts, Tanks and Dogs – had specialized strengths, defense resistance, stealth capacity, attack styles and a panoply of weapons.

Edge of Tomorrow is available to buy on DVD and Blu-Ray in the UK from Monday 13th October.

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Sammy Maine

Sammy Maine was a founding member of the Creative Bloq team way back in the early 2010s, working as a Commissioning Editor. Her interests cover graphic design in music and film, illustration and animation. Since departing, Sammy has written for The Guardian, VICE, The Independent & Metro, and currently co-edits the quarterly music journal Gold Flake Paint.