to move up and down
the kid flash adventure
So after sewing points for Nightwing last year, I figured I had Kid Flash pretty set. Cut, hand tack, hand stitch, baste, stitch, serge. Long process but it worked out pretty well:
I made a muslin out of old fabric left over from other superhero costumes and just drew on where I wanted the spikes to go. The hardest part was actually picking which of KF’s Young Justice costumes to go with… I preferred these spikes but I really also liked the shoulder panels on the newer one. In the end I decided to go with the first version because it would be more simple.
The logo was pretty easy. I drew it on A’s muslin body suit and made a pattern from there. the back has double-sided fusing on it, so basically just had to iron it to the front where I wanted it to go.
I actually anticipated A having an issue with wearing a jumpsuit (like what if he had to go to the bathroom?) but he tried to convince me to let him wear the muslin to school so I clearly have found a new avenue for introducing clothing around A’s sensory issues.
So after ironing it on I realised it did this:
MELTED the centre of the front panel….. I did NOT want to take apart the spikes at A’s hipbone, because they would take forever to redo.
I ended up adding another panel across the chest, curved around A’s ribcage, to offset the error without redoing everything. It kind of makes me angry but no one else seems bothered by it.
A’s goggles and ear spikes were spraypainted:
In the back you can see I tested like 8 different kinds of things for the ear pieces, everything from a hollow bouncy ball cut in half to the plastic balls that quarter toys come in, which is what I ended up going with. His lightening ears are just wire and foamcore.
The goggles are Willy Wonka’s TV specs, which were an amazing find because the lenses are already red! Too bad they’re too big for A… I’ll post pics of that soon. I should have boiled the plastic first and bent it a little so A could wear it with elastic. I might try that before the photoshoot.
But they look rad:
the boots. OHHHH the boots. I dont even want to show you the photos.
I bought these white go-go boots for A to wear and they were fine on him. I figured, oh hey I’ll just spray paint them it’ll be GRAND.
WRONG.
I tested a few different paints. The issue was that the top panel of the boots stretched and made everything chip.
I tried to correct this with actual liquid latex and then powder on top, to offset latex’s need to stick to itself, but it just made the boots really dark. The boots he’s wearing in the photos were literally made in twenty minutes before the boys arrived to my apt to get dressed………talk about a rush job!
Lo as Astro Boy. Since this was his halloween costume originally, I had a lot more time to make accessories for it - like the LED chest reactor and arm cannon. It’s hard to see some details, like the joints I made at his knees & elbows, but it’s okay. I’ve never had to work with LEDs before so it was a learning experience to share with Lo.
More pictures soon! I have a lot of progress shots of the cannon as Lo & I constructed it, too.
Quick post to start the ECCC round up. A as Kid Flash! This time, I have all the progress shots for the costume and I’ll post a progress thing soon… all sorts of interesting issues I didn’t foresee.
proudest moment of my weekend goes to A, who came with me to the DC 52 panel and walked up to the mic dressed as Wally/Kid Flash to ask the panelists, “Why isn’t Wally West in the Flash comics anymore??” and the whole room cheered for him.
A & I really like the new Flash comics! I actually like them a lot more than the Batman issues, which is another conversation, but we are both really sad that Wally’s been virtually erased. On Friday someone else asked about Wally at the DC All Access panel and the moderator literally answered with “Who wants free comics?” which I suppose is to be expected, but it made me sad.
A was apprehensive about walking up to the mic and was worried he wouldn’t remember what to say so we practiced a lot & I ended up writing it down to make him feel better. I think he felt pretty proud after though! A few people came up to him afterward, and during the con, to tell him he had a great question, which I think totally made his day. Brian Cunningham saw him a few hours later and yelled out GO WALLY WEST! which I think also made him really excited (though I didn’t see it).
He ended the day with: “When am I going to be old enough to go to the big comiccon?” which seems like a success to me. :D I plan on getting better pics like the Speedy ones, but ECCC fell on a really busy weekend this year so it’ll be awhile before I have time to take him somewhere appropriate for a shoot.
remember when i numbered posts
okay so i’m really sick of how disorganized flickr & other image engines can be, especially when it comes to finding photos of yourself at a convention. especially when your cosplay is a character who’s cosplayed a zillion times and looks like you in every tiny thumbnail because everyone’s pretty consistent when creating her costume (harley what). especially even MORE when that cosplay is a character who is well known to a certain extent, but whose name is frequently misspelled or assumed to be another character (harlequin anyone), thereby ruining chances of finding all the awesome photos that fantastic people take of you.
it also sucks when you have a convention that’s tagged with a million different things- for example, san diego comiccon has like 10, misspells not included: SDCC, SDCC2011, SDCCsaturday, sandiegocomiccon, sandiegocomicon, sandiegocomiccon2011, on and on. and not every one tags their photos individually (or tags them at ALL) because let’s face it, that’s a gigantic pain in the ass.
and we can’t forget about the person (ME sadly) that takes a zillion photos that sit in Aperture/Light Room and never see the internet at all, because some of us (ME) can’t be bothered to find the patience to edit and process hundreds of photos (which raises the question, why do you bother taking them at all, Aidan? and I DONT KNOW OKAY).
so i decided that in hopes of finding at least SOME images, maybe if i made a card to hand out to people as they take my photo, some people would actually take the time out of their day post-con to email the photo(s) they took to me. even if it’s just one or two people it’ll still be worth it to me (i’m greedy for pictures always, sad story), so i present to you my cosplay business card (good lord):
there are a lot of problems with this. one, handing out a card while in a group photo is kind of ridiculous, especially if we’re surrounded by a lot of different people (the harley meet-up for example). also the logistics of carrying around a stack of cards… PLUS, people will lose the card, not bother at all, forget which costume i was (hopefully i’ll write little notes or maybe a sticker for the back so they remember what i looked like), etc. i’m hoping that if nothing else, it’ll be a social experiment i can laugh about. i don’t want it to come off as pretentious or “do this or else” etc, but i know that when i’m given business cards & notices from photographers, i usually email them asking for my photo and they’re like SURE SURE (except for that one guy who backhandedly tried to charge me for photos, yeah ccimages i’m looking at you, but that’s another story). so anyway i’m kind of hopeful that it’ll work out the other way around.
we’ll see i guess!! might experiment with this at ECCC at the end of march if we end up pulling out Harley & Ivy. I need to have a hand-writing adventure………whee!
ohhhkay. getting through images slowly but surely (HOL, you’re next!)
the scott pilgrim group was overshadowed by our DC excitement, but it was a lot of fun. it was my first time within a larger group and i did enjoy all the photo opportunities we got to take within it (though I didn’t show them all here, because tumblr has a photo limit, sigh).
there are a few adjustments i’d like to make to ramona’s costume before i wear it next (starting with wearing more makeup and ending with making those shorts fit better), but for the most part, it was a good time… except for that damned wig!
Full group shot here. Claire has some more Kim shots on her blog here.
some shots by Jason Holmes. He also photographed some of our Scott Pilgrim cosplay..but that’s for another day ;)
in which i sadly learn that my teeth match my hair & not my white face.
check out all the glue gunk that i pick off my face for days after…whee!
So I finally bit the bullet and sat down to completely pour through as many pics on flickr as possible, and these are the “best of” results. Still waiting on a few shots, can’t really complain about that though, as I am The Ultimate Worst at uploading pictures (omg SO SORRY HOLers).
Had a great time at the Harley meet-up, the first time I’ve done something like that. it was fun, wish I had the hours right though but oh well, next year. :)
I do have some in progress/close-up shots of C’s Joker tailcoat if anyone wants me to break that down. And my leather shoes (what an adventure).
Other than that, I have a couple more posts from some photographers that took individual pictures… will try to get that up tonight, too.
More photos here as well as on Ivy/Claire’s blog here and here.
017: the briefest of harley updates
as some of you know, i’m in NYC vising old friends. here’s a couple pictures of us from the weekend to tide you over until next week, when i have evenings off to search appropriately:
photo by Adam Richards
photo by Jerry Abuan
the SDCC scott pilgrim quick post
Friday we dressed as our Scott Pilgrim characters. Claire as Kim Pine, Katie as Envy, Colin as Gideon, me as Ramona, Spaz as Roxy and we just happened to find a fantastic twins cosplay.
I have more photos/etc but I’m not home & still groggy from the weekend. Tomorrow I fly to NYC for the HOL meet-up this weekend; I’m going to try to make a proper post over the next couple days. Including some shots of our Joker/Harley/Ivy. I didn’t carry my camera around this year so I’m relying on some shots from awesome people around the con.
016: hand-sewing leather is a bitch
there’s just a lot of things i didn’t preemptively anticipate and probably should have. for starters, that there’s a PROPER way to pierce leather. check out this nice little chart i belatedly discovered after stabbing holes into half of the red boot:
i’d like you to guess which one MY stitching looks like
because i assure you
it’s not the one it should be.
i dont want to talk about the forgetting each leather hide has a different amount of give and that i should have anticipated the black wouldn’t be as forgiving as the red and therefore requires a lot of greasework to put on. between this and the joker costume i’m really selling myself as a skilled costumer, aren’t i? haha! and i even went to school for this. beautiful. children’s clothing is just so different…
so the awl puncturing. IT SEEMS LOGICAL NOW, but oh man, I just didn’t know! and my original instructions didn’t mention it! I’m going to have sloppy contrast stitching and unhappy feet. but at least, i guess, i’ll have ACTUAL soles and won’t have to be carried over broken bottle glass like last year.
TO BED WITH ME. tomorrow i’m flying home for the first time in over a month. goodness.
015: a ramona update
the jacket’s coming along
because i just like driving myself crazy…
i thought it would be a better idea/less stress than lining the thing, because i’m already going to be wearing a hoodie in sandiego.. all day… in the sun… except, you know, covered seams aren’t a picnic either.
at least the outside looks decent:
UGH i accidentally left my cell in the sunlight and the phone camera now has pink spots
so i have concerns about this part right here:
namely, where the buckled straps connect with the center front of the jacket.. i dont want it to look bulky and bad. it’s probably going to be my project this evening when the rascal sillies are out for the night.
also, lets talk about that other belt… what the hell is that? i think i’m just going to wear a pair of studded belts and call it done…..
EIGHT DAYS OH SHIT
lining box pleats, also known as Something I’ve Been Avoiding For an Entire Week.
