KAEMEN LAFLEUR’S BUILDS LOOK LIKE the kind of thing you might dream up after watching a superhero movie, like an exoskeleton suit or robotic arms mounted to his back. The difference is, Lafleur actually builds them.
Online, where he goes by “Kaemen the Creator,” Lafleur has turned his artistic mix of engineering, cosplay, design into a massive following, with about 3 million followers across platforms. The instinct to take things apart, make them move, and push an idea past the point where most people would stop started long before the internet found him.
“When I was young, growing up in Louisiana, my grandfather was a mechanic,” Lafleur said. “And even though he didn’t graduate high school or get a college degree or anything, he would work on cars and he would build things in his garage. And that had honestly got me interested in engineering as a whole.”
Lafleur first studied industrial design, and in one class project, he was tasked with creating a suit inspired by a cicada. The assignment was supposed to be about design, but he found himself thinking beyond that.
“I was more so focused on the framework of the suit, like the engineering behind it as opposed to the design itself,” Lafleur said. “And a lot of people in my classroom, they were like, dude, you should do it. And I told my grandfather, he was like, you should do it.”
And so he did it. Lafleur switched his major to mechanical engineering mid-year.
Still, he never left the art behind. Engineering became a way to make the art more real. “You can never replace the heart of an artist, you know what I’m saying?” he said. “I just wanted to take the formal approach, do engineering, but my passion always lies in design.”
Going Viral
Lafleur is now pursuing a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, while continuing to build for an audience that found him almost by accident. Content creation was never a formal career plan, he said. He had no camera training and did not grow up wanting to be in front of one.
“My path to content creation just naturally developed. I had no aspiration to be well known or known in any capacity. I just wanted to create things,” he said. “I honestly had to learn as I went.”
His first viral build was the exoskeleton suit that connected directly back to his design roots that first pulled him toward engineering. What began as a cool-looking suit became, in his mind, something that could actually be functional. Online, the video blew up.
“A lot of times I’ll kind of go back to those days, and I’ll repost videos of some of my past work,” he said. “I just realized this is a cool way for me to document my creativity.”
Like most students with big ideas, Lafleur’s earliest constraint was money. He had scholarships, but those covered school, not an endless supply of parts and materials.
When asked if he’d rather be the hero or the villain in an action movie, Lafleur said he would choose to play a hero every time. And if he had to pick a specific one, he’d be Iron Man. He’s got the suit ready.
“Let students really tap into their true creative limits and scratch outside the lines. Everything doesn't have to be perfect or linear. Just be creative. Failure is feedback.”
—Kaemen Lafleur, STEM Influencer and Master’s Degree Student, University of Texas at Arlington
“Sometimes I would have these crazy ideas, but I didn’t have the budget to actually complete them,” he said. “So I had to come up with creative ways to actually bring those ideas to life.”
Over time, as brands began to take notice of his innovations, the projects grew in scale and complexity. Among his most-hyped creations are a fire-breathing Bowser mask, a Mortal Kombat-inspired Kung Lao hat that can cut through fruit, and a set of Doc Ock inspired arms that attach to a frame.
Because these builds are fun to watch, it can be easy to forget how much risk there is behind building them. Lafleur does not.
“I always say if I cannot imagine the worst scenario and figure out a way to combat against that, I shouldn’t do the project,” he said. “If I’m going to work with fire, I’m going to make sure I have fire repellent, a fire extinguisher on site, water on site, an extra person on site—just to make sure that if something really were to go wrong, we can handle everything accordingly.”
Think Big, Then Think Bigger
His dream is to scale the work beyond himself. Lafleur shared that he would love to put together an engineering team in the Dallas area, a group that can take the crazy concepts in his head and turn them into something even bigger.
“I want to have like a think tank, where we’re not just thinking, but actually building something too,” he said. “If I could find even just four or more people who have the desire to invent and create and just be creative, and we come together like a band and synchronize—I feel like we could make some great music.”
And in the meantime, Lafleur said he’ll carry on doing what he’s doing.
“I just want to continue to create, to inspire others to build,” he said. “Social media is [a medium]. Let’s say a video gets a million views. It reaches a million kids or people that aspire to be engineers. It’s almost like handing out a million magazines.”
That’s a million young people who might never pick up a brochure, attend a society event, or see themselves in a traditional engineering pathway. Content creators are a powerful, often underused force for engineering outreach, he said.
“If engineering societies can start investing their money into creators to show what engineering could truly be, oh my God,” he said. “It would take the engineering space from here to another level.”
Sarah Alburakeh is strategic content editor.
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