World’s coolest dad creates a working Overwatch D.Va mech for his daughter

Working together with his daughters, builder Mike Carambat of Retro Resource has created the coolest Overwatch D.Va mech.

Built out of wood, pink insulation foam, and spray foam, D.Va’s MEKA unit is created from a bunch of items that can bought at any local hardware store. And the mech does more than just look sweet: The arms move, guns fire with lights and sound effects, thrusters smoke, and the whole thing moves.

There were a lot of challenges in making it walk, Carambat told Dot Esports. “The leg mechanics are bike chain–driven from the right wheel of the power train that moves it,” he said. “It spins two cranks pulled from some old donated bicycles which push the legs up and down.” Carambat had to rebuild the wooden leg skeletons three times before they were ready to form the foam over them.

“This is going to be in the parade at Dragoncon so it needs to hold up over the distance of a few city blocks,” Carambat said. “If it was just going to do a few feet it would have been a lot easier.”

The whole thing took about six months to put together, Carambat said, but they started planning in January. His daughter, Amanda, will pilot the mech—she fits inside—at conventions. “She’s been wanting to cosplay D.Va for some time now and this was right up my alley as I like building large, mechanical cosplays.”

Transporting the mech, however, will be a challenge. The MEKA weighs around 300 pounds. It’s powered by two marine batteries, Carambat said, that alone weigh 100 pounds. “Luckily, we found it will just fit inside a U-Haul rental truck which also has an automated lift gate,” he said. They’ll use that truck, then, to drive the mech all the way to New Orleans for anime convention Mechacon from July 28 to 30, and Altanta for gaming and comic convention Dragoncon from Sept. 1 to 4.

All other D.Va cosplayers are going to struggle to try and keep up with this amazing Overwatch cosplay.