And so it goes...K-con 2010.

Oh dear, oh dear. It's been about a week since I posted last, and here I thought I was going to finish this post last week and start talking serious business by now. But, I got somewhat busy (haha?).

Truth be told, I haven't been doing much in the way of costuming specifically, but I have been working on several projects (most of which I actually can't discuss at this point, but I'm sure will be explained in great detail as time goes on). These project are rather large creative dealo's that I'm rather quite excited about, and, again, I can't talk about.

So pretty much everything I've been funneling all of my time and energy into for the last few weeks is not discussable. So...for all intents and purposes, I've just been really lazy.
But I haven't.

What I CAN talk about is the few costumes that I've been too busy to work on much; Cassi's thesis which I've been helping out with somewhat (but, apologies to Cassi, I've been so busy with so many things I haven't been able to be 100% there all the time to help. But! hopefully you know you can always bug me about stuff you need done.), Cassi is doing a play based of several original characters that, with any luck, will eventually become an awesome web series, and I've been helping her develop some of the ideas, although I can't take any real credit at all. Mom's been somewhat sick, nothing too serious, as far as we know, but it's also kept me busy. Homework, as always. And! (drum roll please!) Emerald City Comicon has creeped up behind me! It's next weekend and I've gotten so swamped I didn't realize it was so soon until yesterday! I'm super pumped. I had been poking away at a couple costumes, (mystery men, Empty Child, Clue, Candyland) that might potentially wear, but I've been so busy with other work I didn't get any of them finished, which is alright. So, I will be seen as an Empty Child from Doctor Who; possibly a masky from Marble Hornets (fast and easy costume for sure); and Two Face, as will be seen below.


Warning: This might be another really long post. Consider yourselves duly-warned.

In 2010, Kumori-con rolled back around. With the amazing time we'd had the previous year with the awesome Dating Game, the whole Girl Genius crew and the smaller atmosphere of the con. We were all ready and raring to go. Furthermore, and, super exciting to me, the Oregon Girl Genius group invited our crew to join in a variety show they were putting together; Girl Genius style.
Awesomesauce.
We already had a girl genius costume in the works, so we were super pumped to join in the fun. The downside was, Phil and Kaja Folio, who are a large part of our Kumori-con experience, weren't present for 2010's festivities. They were too busy in Australia winning themselves the Hugo Award for the second time in a row. Ah, well. We'd muddle along somehow XD

Saturday

Although the Girl Genius show was on Sunday Morning, we wanted to wear our big deal cosplays that day; so we decided that we would wear Girl Genius out and about on Saturday, again on Sunday Morning, and then head back to the apartment and make the switch. Cassi and Tobi opted out of making Girl Genius costumes for the sake of time, funds and sanity, and ended up wearing original costumes (the same, ironically, that are being used for Cassi's thesis). You'll see these when I post the thesis pictures in (when is that again?)...whenever that is. I didn't work on the original designs in the slightest so I won't post them here. If you want images, check out Cassi's blog on my toolbar.

Meet the Jager girls! Caberet singers and henchwomen of the great Mama Gkika, they dress up as Jagermonsters to entertain the humans of Mama Gkika's bar. These costumes were a HECK of a lot of fun and something I had been wanting to put together for ages. I can't take any credit at all for Shawna's outfit (the blue girl) but I worked on Chase's green jager and my pink one. I also did all three hats which was some of the most fun I've had in a long time.
These girls are fun because they are really only minor characters, with a very short, bit part, but they are pretty well loved by fans and have gotten to be well known, (as has Mama Gkika herself). However, I'd never seen anyone do these three before and I was determined to do them as canon as possible. I loved how happy the Girl Genius people were with how we looked. I still see flaws (as I always will) but I was proud of these, particularly Chase's uniform, which I would kill to be able to wear. I wish Phil and Kaja could've been there for us to show off to, but, alas, they were not.
Girl genius is always a really hard series to cosplay not only because Phil has an infamous inconsistency with minor details on certain characters (including these three, who's costumes changed multiple times within the same comic page); but also because in the grand scheme of the costume, they are quite detailed. The thigh-high, pink gators on the pink Girl was one of the unluckily of challenges for me. They didn't seem like details that would be so troublesome, but they were. Finally I essentially made boot covers, with a flare at the top, lined with several layers of crosshatched wire to keep the shape. This is another something I might do a tutorial on.
Chase coat was awesome. I finished it in a single day when I was really "in the zone" and I love it. The hats were really just an experiment in something I had never done before. My and Chase's hats were painstakingly re-covered hats (that I might also do a tutorial on). Shawna's shako was way more interesting. I took a normal top hat, cut out the top, and then built a huge cage structure that was covered in fabric. It was awesome. I almost liked it better without the fabric and just the cage.

This was the costume I had the most trouble with out of all of them. I loved the base coat that I had for her, but it was unfortunately suede leather, which is an absolute beast to sew. Particularly since most of these details had to be hand stitched. For the buttons I was literally beating the needle through with a small hammer. Not fun.
The other thing was that the pink costume has a weird structure to the coat that is cute in comic form, but in no way attractive on a real human being (highlights the gut, not good on anyone, particularly on me). So I had to refit the coat structure multiple times to get it to look right at all. It still fit a little oddly, and was always riding up, but it worked out alright. My favorite element was the old Science fair medal that I used as the medal she wears in the centre of her coat. MAD SCIENCE!

This is Molly. She is an amazingly sweethearted lady. Everybody in this group is awesome. Katrina, who I sadly don't have a picture with, who more or less leads the group, was so encouraging and complimentary. Molly pictured above as Mama Gkika is a total sweetie and an amazing fan. Her Mama Gkika is always just about spot on. For the show, structured as a variety show at Mama Gkika's bar, Shawna, Chase and I performed two Polka's done Girl Genius style, re-writing the lyrics and doing a small degree of dancing as we saw fit. It was a total riot. I don't know that we were any good, but we had fun anyway. The only downside was the poor Shawna had hurt her ankle rather badly the day before and we had to change up the choreography last-minute to account for her gimpy leg. But all in all, it was a really fun time.

Sunday



This was a strange day of crossover grouping. This was also the day of my all-time-absolute-favorite-dream costume ever:

 

Meet Two-face. Or, as we referred to her all day: Big Bad Harv.
Tobi and I have a deep and endless love of bad, campy, awful movies. I mean, terrible. Right up there at the top of the list? Batman Forever, starring a drugged out Nicole Kidman; Val Kilmer playing Batman's lips; and a horribly amazing duo of Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey as Two Face and the Riddler respectively. 
Not only is this movie over the top, horrifically campy, and needlessly neon; it was also some of the worst acting I've seen in my life. Seriously, go rent it. It's terrible. 
With our deep love of cheese, Tobi and I obviously, instantly, fell head over heels in love with Batman Forever; and the fact that Tobi is already scarily-like Jim Carrey; what better costume could we do?
We had been planning these costumes for ages, and I finally felt confident enough that we could pull them off. And indeed, I believe we did. 
My Two-face, being a woman, was a lot of fun to interpret from Tommy Lee Jones's animal-print festooned villain. I wanted to keep the basic color scheme and look of the costume but in a more feminine, and interesting way. (This might become yet another tutorial). I found all the elements of a three piece suit, re-sewed the ugly portions, and decorated to my heart's delight. It was excellent. 

Two-Face and Riddles frolic off towards trouble!
These two are so fun. XD

This is a nice shot of the back of the Riddler coat. The coat was more last minute than the rest of the suit. Because the Riddler suit could be more or less taken directly from the movie (there's not all that much fanicfying you can do to a catsuit) the coat was the only part of the suit that wasn't set in stone. We tried to use a pre-existing blazer but it didn't dye well (it ended up being Chase's jager coat from the day before) so we just ended up making this one from scratch. This was really the first year we embraced pattern using, rather than making or altering everything just out of trial and error. The coat was a simplicity pattern that we put together and then altered a bit to make it fit the Riddler style. Tobi wasn't totally satisfied with it, but I think it looks pretty good.



I love this picture. So cute! haha.

Mike did he own version of the Joker for this year, making a sort of Riot-gear Joker. There was a lot of really cool detail work in his suit and he sure looked the part. We got a lot of great pictures of these three Gothamites.





These two are such funny characters. In many respects they totally hate each other. In others, they are best friends. I had fun stealing Tobi's cane and using it as a face divider throughout the day. This was just a cute picture of us goofing off.
The cane is made out of a long PVC pipe that Tobi's dad melted into a rough question mark shape. It wasn't exactly what I was imagining, and it's still a little rough. I'd like to make a new one at some point in the future, but this one is pretty good for the time being.





Before we blow up the courthouse, we have to FLIP FOR IT FIRST.
It's the law.
I got the coin off of Ebay, as a movie memorabilia cast of the coin from Dark Knight. It was pretty cheap and pretty legit. I was afraid that it would be too light, or not coin-y enough, but it was all in all very realistic. However, and I knew this before I bought it, it doesn't have the damaged side that makes two-face's coin his coin. Actually destroying it was really fun. At first I tried to go at it by hitting it with the wrong side of a hammer, making dents and chips in the surface, but it wasn't giving me realistic enough scratches. Eventually I ended up taking it to a rough patch of concrete and rubbing it against the ground with my show, which quickly gave the 'wrong' side a nice battered appearance. Then I took a small scented candle and held the coin over it to get that nice smoky, burnt look. Since you can't actually burn the coin, I dropped several matches into the candle, which produced enough smoke to darken the coin. It all looked really good!



The whole trio all together!
Tobi's Riddler costume was the first time we had made a catsuit, (another tutorial!) and it was a bit of an adventure. Just finding the right colored fabric was a bit of a chore (luckily we ended up finding it at Costume and Display, although it was a bit pricey). We managed to put together the catsuit without too much trouble until we got to the arms. For some reason, the second arm was really difficult to fit correctly, and (also for no apparent reason) the shoulders seemed to have shrunk. It all ended up coming together and fitting alright, but the shoulders are pretty tight on Tobi. In the future we'll have to be careful not to repeat whatever mistake we made in that area.
The Question marks were painstakingly painted on over the course of weeks with fabric paint...which we then failed to properly heat seal and they all ended up washing out. -_________-
However, between what was left of the paint and some dynamic Sharpie action, we got the question marks put on and everything turned out all right.

Downside of twoface?
I can't drink water. This is bad because that costume is toasty. I ended up fashioning a funnel that I could get water into my mouth with, but it was a real pain.

The face is made out of a latex mask, that i cut down to my face shape and then re-latexed some of the structure of. After all that, there were several layers of paint involved (although you can't see much of the texturing in the pictures) and then it was all latexed onto my face. The result was a really cool mask, and the inability to move my face much at all. In the future, when I have money and some mad skill, I want to make a face mold for me and others in my group so I can actually make actual fitted latex masks, but for the time being, this is what I have to work with. The mask really did work out well, but it's very hard to really express much, or drink water, or eat. It was a struggle XD.



WEIRDEST CROSSOVER EVER:
Chase and Tobi made a modern Princess Peach costume, which turned out really cute. It was simple, but really adorable on her. Although this picture makes no sense, I really like it.

Monday

Cassi loves being a Moogle. Or a chocobo. Or really anything cute. Consequently, she begged us to do a 'herd of moogles' for this years convention. At first we weren't going to, and then it just sort of...happened.

This si what happened. Basically we became an entire Moogle culture, complete with subcultures. We had a flouncy girly-girl, the science Moogle, the Wanna-be Moogle, the Nerd, the Wankster, and the Moogle Hunter. All in one beautiful package.
I loved this costume.
Not only did I get to be a total wankster all day, but it was also surprisingly comfortable. Albeit, mind-numbingly hot. I don't have many pictures of this day, (I think Cassi has them all?) but I love the ones we do have. I had a big pair of jeans, that I sagged around all day, with three successive pairs of boxers that were sagged underneath the pants. I had those big plastic shoes, and the wife beater under a poof-daddy jacket. The best part was the Hat. We took a wankster hat and removed the skull symbol that was sewn to it. Then Cassi made some iron-on pictures of a Wankster Moogle that we then stitched onto the hat. I was also able to attach the ball directly to the hat, which meant that, unlike the other moogle balls, which have to be strapped on with several headbands, mine was really easy to take off.
Mike's head was too big for a moogle ball XD, so we ended up floofing his hair and having me carry around his 'stolen' moogle ball all day, which was pretty funny.

Cassi was the fluffy, girly moogle. We took and old wedding dress and shredded it, adding wings to the straps and putting a mess of tulle under it to get it the shape that it had. It was super adorable, and Cassi spent the whole day being prissy. I think we joked around that she was my moogle's hot girl-friend.

Chase was sort of the sciency/airship moogle. She's always so cute. This shirt was a real find and it looked great on Chase. The downside was, we didn't want to sew the wings directly to the shirt in case she wanted to actually wear it in the future. I could've removed the wings, but the fabric was such that the stitching would always show. So we ended up making a wind halter that held her wing on, sort of like a backpack.

This year was a lot of fun in a lot of ways. We actually were smart enough to go around and photoshoot our costumes  outside of the conspace; the costumes were much better than they had been in the past, and everybody seemed really excited about what we were doing. There was also a great sense of involvement in the convention, thanks to the Girl Genius fans who are always so gracious in letting us chill with them. This was one of the best cons I have gone to. I don't know when I'll be going back, thanks to changing locations, and Cassi graduating from her college, but I hope it's soon, and, for sure, I will definitely, eventually, be back.

LESSONS?
1. Take the time before and during con to walk around outside of Conspace. Not only is it just fun to see people react to our costumes, but you can find some really awesome spots to take pictures in.
2. Get involved! Find fans that are interested in the same thing as you and do something together! That's what con is really all about, is it not?
3. Take costumes for a test run, particularly if they are something you've never tried before, like masks or bodysuits. It's really useful to already know how to move in the costume before you actually get down to the Convention, and you my find some way of improving it that you hadn't even thought of while it was on the dress form!
4. (Tobi will kill me for this) PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU PUT ON YOUR FACE! Oh, poor Tobi. We were going to put her mask on with spirit gum, so we didn't need to strap it on her face, and it would get the same look that Jim Carrey had in the movie. But, while she was getting in costume, Shawna, Chase, and I had already left for the Girl Genius show. When she arrived she was not in her costume, but rather in the Riddler Footy Pajama's I had made her for her previous birthday! When I asked her why she wasn't in costume, she said that the Spirit gum had burned her face, and that it seemed she was allergic. After that whole debacle, she hadn't had time to get ready. We have since discovered that had happened wasn't that she had put on spirit gum, and it had burned, but rather she had mistaken it for spirit gum remover which does burn when applied, particularly when you put on as much as she had. I can't laugh at her too much, the bottles do look strikingly similar, but seriously; You can really do some damage if you put the wrong thing on. Check and double check what you are applying to your skin. It is meant to go on skin? Is it meant to go on in great quantities? And, always, always check several days before hand to make sure that you aren't allergic to any paint or adhesives, so that you have time to make a plan B.
5. Costumes are made for cheating. They don't have to necessarily work like real clothes. If you need to line your hat with something soft and fuzzy so that the wire Moogle ball doesn't drill through your skull, do so!
6. Doing original versions of canon character, particularly well known ones, is always fun, and a lot of the time, really well received! But, it also means that you have to go above and beyond by making the costume something even more special.
NEXT YEAR? BETTER!


So! This wraps up our blast from the past, and we should be moving into current projects! (finally!)
If I ever don't have anything exciting going on, or am working on projects that I can't talk about (as looks to be more and more the case) I'll try and post some tutorials or discussions of costumes I've done or costumes I hope to make.
Hopefully this blog is interesting and useful to somebody out there in cyberville. Cheers!