A man spent eight months making a 7ft Voltron costume to wear to Comic Con - and the results are epic.

By day John Kobra Acevedo, 46, operates robots at a car battery manufacturing facility, but for most of this year he has spent all his free time designing, cutting, heating, and assembling the seven-piece creation inspired by the 1985 Voltron: Defender of the Universe series.

The suit, mostly made of gym floor foam, stands 7ft tall and weighs 26lbs - with 22 of those pounds coming from the foot section alone.

A longtime cosplay enthusiast and former Comic-Con costume winner, the Salina, Kansas man said the project reignited his passion for large-scale builds - and he's "happy with the result" which he plans to wear to an upcoming convention. "

Acevedo constructed the entire costume using "the kind of foam that you use as a carpet for the gym," transforming the everyday material into an intricate robotic suit."

"Well, first you have to draw," he said. "I'm an artist, so I draw what I'm going to do and then I do the lines on the foam and I cut the foam. "

"I hit the foam because sometimes you have to hit the foam to bend it."

He added: "I hit it with a heat gun and then I glued the whole thing together and painted it."

Acevedo estimates the project took around eight months of total work.

"I worked on it at first for like five months, and then I stopped working for a year and then I started working again for three months," he said. "

"It took me eight months to finish."

His approach to the design blended personal creativity with faithful adaptation of the 1985 Voltron: Defender of the Universe series that inspired him.

"I looked at a picture of Voltron and then I decided that I was going to do my own Voltron, my own version," he said. "

"The legs are my version, but the arms are not because I didn't like the version that I did. So I went back to the picture of Voltron and I did his arms."

He added: "The whole suit is made out of seven pieces."

Getting into the towering suit is an effort in and of itself.

"To get into the suit, I have to use a ladder," Acevedo said. "The legs are too tall, so I need to get inside the legs first and then I put the rest, like it's clothing."

"I work at a car battery factory and they let me use two empty car batteries to step on to look taller. Then I covered them with the foam."

One of the hardest parts was building Voltron's massive sword.

"When I finished, the last thing I did was the sword," he said. "

"I thought I was not going to be able to do it because my hand doesn't reach the mouth of the tiger that holds the sword. "

"Using wood, I had to do something long enough to hold the sword really far from my hand."

His cosplay journey began with significant success in 2018, when he won his local Comic-Con competition with an original "mech suit" design."

"It was my own creation," he said. "I didn't copy anything."

Acevedo said his passion for creating costumes stretches back to childhood.

"I've been into it my whole life," he said. "Every Halloween I would make my own costumes."

This time, he felt ready to tackle his most ambitious project yet— and Voltron was the perfect choice.

"I decided, okay, I want to win another Comic-Con. So I went ahead and I built a big robot Voltron," he said."

Acevedo added: "I'm kind of happy with the result."