KOCHI: A usual hangout with friends and random discussion that followed changed the life of a youngster from the city and made him the winner of two consecutive Comi Cons.
Nadir Najumal Hussian, 24, got interested in costume designing a year back.
“My friend Yadhu and me were just discussing about it one evening. My friend said he was going to make an arc reactor and I thought I will make a prop of it. While searching for that I came to know we can even make suits. I thought to give it a try. It was because of him that I got introduced to this hobby,” says Nadir who had kept his hobby a secret for the first four months. Only after he made his first suit did his friends and family actually know that he has found himself a new hobby and was amazing at it.
“ I started looking up tutorial videos online and joined a community called RPF where people all over the world, interested in the art discuss and share ideas,” he says.
Nadir takes the templates for his costumes from there and then uses Pepakura designer to transform them into paper according to the size.
This year Nadir has won himself a XBOX1 and a trip to Chicago for the War Costume from Iron Man-2 he made at the Comi Con Bangalore held last month.
“There were five categories at the Comi Con. I participated in the movies category. There is one winner from each of the categories and then a final winner from the five. So, I won competing with around 250 contestants,” he says.
The Iron Man costume he made this year was his body size. All the parts of the costume are detachable. So he detached each and every part and took it to Bangalore.
Nadir took around five months to make this costume. “After work I would start working on my hobby by 7 pm. I would work for at least six to seven hours each day. I have made my costumes in such a way that they can be resized for anyone,” says the site engineer by profession.
What is most shocking is that it was only last year that Nadir took up this art and he has already won the Comicon twice.
“The art requires a lot of creativity and patience. I never got it right at the first go. It was after many many tries that it turned. But, the online tutorials made work easier for me,” he adds.
Last year at Comicon Bangalore, Nadir had made the Marks 7 costume from the Avengers movie which took him around four months to complete. That was the first time Nadir had participated at Comicon and right at the first go he won it and got himself and a friend a free trip to Goa.
Ask him if he plans to make his hobby his full time profession and he says, “This was not something I had planned it just happened. So I am not sure if I will make it my profession. But I want to shift to a creative field and have decided to pursue interior designing now,” he says.
Describing his hobby he says, “Its cool. You need a costume or a suit just built it from scratch your size, your style. if kids want to learn how to do this I am even more than happy to help them out. All you need is a lot of patience and you can do it.”