I stay up fairly late into the night working on a helmet that I think will be an essential part of my costume. It wasn't. Regardless, I was excited to be Jet Girl the next day. I'm not sure why I look like a serial killer.
I wake up and get ready for what would be one of the longest, most tiring days of my life. I'm definitely feeling it today as I write this. Especially in my legs and feet. It was a good day, but it was exhausting. I spent my day with Sarah aka "Tank Girl" who has upgraded her costume every year for the con. This year she added a RPG launcher and a couple of grenades to her costume in addition to a new coat of paint on her... torpedoes. My costume was certainly in the shadow of hers, but some people really appreciated that we had dressed up as two of the characters from the comic.
We immediately made our way to the centre of the exhibition building to sign in for the costume contest later that evening. Sarah had missed it the past two years (last year due a long admissions line and a lot of people wanting to take her picture), so we made sure to get there for her first. After being stopped about once every five feet for photos, we finally arrived at the booth. Somehow I figured that entering the contest as a team would be awesome and she liked the idea, so we registered together and were set to be in the contest. As I have stage freight and a lack of confidence, I really don't know what came over me. Regardless, we were in it. After leaving the booth we met Red Skull in the picture above. We saw him last year and it was good to see him out again. His costume is magnificent.
We wandered around for most of the day taking pictures, doing some broken, ineffective browsing and shopping, and meeting up with people we knew at the con. Tank girl had a lot of connections, meeting up with volunteers that she knew while she looked for the friend that made her torpedo top and RPG. He is a part of the 501st Badlands Garrison group, making movie-quality props and costumes. I don't know if she ever met up with him, but we didn't see him while I was travelling with her. We did, however, run into another Tank Girl sporting a target top and fish net stockings. Wasn't sure what she thought of the rocket boobs.
I know what most other people thought however. We were very entertained by all the comments we heard such as "that's different," "that's interesting," "oh my god," "that, is awesome," "nice rockets," "are those real," and "wow." Tank Girl's catch-phrases were "lock up your sons," "bang bang," "p-p-p-pow," and "yup, these are real." We encountered this fellow here, which unfortunately I have no idea what he is from, but I liked the shiny lights and music. His shoes were also platform and had crazy lightning circles. A lady at a kiosk next to me said someone should be videoing it. Ironically enough, I was already getting the camera ready on my crackberry. My favourite part is when she just turns and poses for a guy taking a photo.
The random glitches in the video are from the flashes in people's cameras. I kind of wish some of them didn't put the flashes on, especially when we would stop in an area for a few minutes and a lot of pictures would be taken. I was blinded more than once. One funny instance was after about five photos were taken, I couldn't see for a few seconds, but when my eyes recovered the person standing right in front of me was someone I knew. So I must have looked super dazed before I said "OHI."
Met up with Captain Jack Sparrow, who would eventually go on to win Best Performance in his category later on in the contest. With good reason, he was in character all day. I love how later on we were sitting in the room waiting for the contest to start and I say to Tank Girl, oh look, Jack Sparrow is here. Without looking she says "what, the good one" and turns to see him looking surprised at her. Then she says "yup, the good one" to which he laughed. The woman next to him said "well at least he was the good one or that would have been awkward." And then we all laughed. And laughed. And promptly went back to ignoring each other for the time being.
Meant to get a picture of this guy on the Friday, but I missed my opportunity and the volunteers were shooing us out of the hallway. Found him again on the Saturday and asked for his picture. The Doctor from Assassin's Creed had a spring loaded needle that would pop up when prompted, He also had a cool detail on his back with vials filled with different coloured liquids. Was pretty fantastic. I love the little "Strange" sign above his shoulder for an added unintentional touch.
And then we blew up Lego Star Wars land.
First of a couple photos taken with incredible (and accidental) timing. Wolf Cop came along to get a picture and they were in the middle of figuring out a pose as I snapped a picture. The facial expressions here are just priceless. Especially Wolf Cop.
As Wolf Cop and Tank Girl finished getting their photos taken, this duo was pointed out to me. As Oliver put it: "Dad of the Year." I thought it was adorable, though I'm not sure why the kid was doing the splits. He was doing a bunch of poses before he decided that this was the best one. Clever idea regardless, and the kid seemed to be having a lot of fun.
One of two amazing Optimus Prime costumes that we saw that day. Both entered the costume contest later on, though I don't believe either one of them won anything as far as I can recall. Too bad too. They were both excellent and one of the guys broke a leg (an Optimus Prime leg) as he excited the stage. Thankfully some people were there to catch him as he fell while his costume dismantled itself.
Later in the afternoon I start to hear horns and drums as the Vikings entered the exhibition hall and began marching around the outside aisles. They all stopped in the autograph building where we encountered the group of them. I asked Tank Girl if she wanted a picture with them, which resulted in one of the greatest costume contrasts I saw all day. Snapped the first one with her camera and moved to get mine just in time to get her leaving the group. I found the picture amusing as it looked like some epic confrontation or battle was about to begin. I believe these fellows were also demonstrating sword and shield combat outside throughout the day.
One of my favourite moments yesterday was when we passed the Space booth and two men were in the midst of a discussion or interview when in the middle of a sentence the one guy yells "OH MY GOD IT'S TANK GIRL" and then continues with the conversation. The camera person looked so confused as she wasn't sure whether to turn the camera to look at Tank Girl or continue holding on the people talking. I look forward to seeing that interview sometime...if they don't edit it out. Anyhow, we passed the booth again later and these fellows that we did an interview with earlier (much to my dismay as I was part of said interview) spotted Tank Girl and asked if she'd like to do an introduction to their program. I got a lot of enjoyment watching her say the lines. I did get a video, but the voices are incredibly hard to hear, so I decided not to post it.
Shortly after we met Skeletor from He Man, so we got a few candid shots with him. The first is one of my favourites from the entire day as I just love Skeletor's facial expression. You can probably tell from the picture, but Skeletor was super tall. One of the tallest people I saw at the con, so he really stood out. Oddly enough, he also turned out to be one of the judges for the contest later. The child in front was getting his picture taken with a bunch of cosplayers at the time and he kept getting in all the pictures. Wasn't a big deal. At least he was a cute kid.
On our way outside Tank Girl had another battle, this time with Iron Man. Tank Girl insisted that she was winning (obviously). Iron Man ended up being at the con all three days. Kudos to him and his stamina. I cosplayed one day and now I feel like a truck hit me, ran me over a few times and then dumped the contents of the cabin's ash tray on my head before leaving me in the dust as road kill. Point is, the costume and the cosplayer was awesome.
On our way to the Big Four building while Tank Girl was getting pictures taken I shuffled off to the side to get a picture of some characters from The Hobbit. There were a few good Saurumans running around the con, but this is the only Gandalf I ever saw. I did have the opportunity to have a couple pictures taken with Gandalf's staff (no comment) as I mentioned earlier, but I have yet to track down who has that photo.
Had some supper in the food court, which thankfully wasn't packed full wall to wall with people as it was last year. It was rather spacious and included a bouncey house for the children. Though I couldn't help but imagine some of the cosplayers in there. I doubt the house (or some of the costumes) would have lasted long. Tank Girl also found another use for her torpedoes as a table/napkin holder. What was really nice about the food court was that people almost universally understood it to be the "we're taking a break here so don't bother us to take photos" zone. Was nice to sit down and take a break, especially for someone who doesn't normally wear heels. My feet were killing me. The salad was fairly tasty if not stupidly expensive.
Tank Girl and I split off for awhile at this time as I had a photo op to go to. I was so excited to meet Misha Collins, Mark Sheppard and Mitch Pileggi and get my picture taken with them. I'm not normally the squealing fangirl type, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't super happy to be there. They were all really nice, though saying I "met" them was stretching it a bit. The person I split the photo op with went back on the Sunday in the autograph line just to meet him and shake his hand. I was happy enough with the photo, though it would have been nice to say hello with her.
So, as I mentioned before, Tank Girl and I had entered into the costume contest, of which we had to check in for at 6. My photo op was at 5, and the HIGHLY INTELLIGENT volunteers outside told us that no one was being allowed to line up for it. We asked twice and got the same answer. At 5 we approach another volunteer and he tells us that people began lining up 15 minutes before. We go in and end up being 5th last in line for the photo op. So I end up arriving JUST in time for the contest, running on my already destroyed feet, nearly breaking my ankle a couple times and we were ushered into a side room for pre-judging.
Inside we had a chance to talk with a bunch of other cosplayers, some of which I have already mentioned. I was so impressed by all the costumes in the room and how friendly everyone was, even after a day dealing with hot, sweaty costumes, over-enthusiastic fans and annoying comments. I overheard the man who cosplayed Dr. Manhattan recalling all the ridiculous comments that he had received all day. The top three were "who were you in Avatar?," "are you one of the guys from the blue man group?" and something along the lines of "you're not a very silver silver surfer." (I can't really remember the last one). The one woman in a Samus suit (with lights and everything!) was saying how next year she'll be installing a fan because she was overheating in the suit (a common problem). She won the Novice category in the contest, so hopefully it was worth it. A man dressed as Flin Rider chatted with us (and scared us half to death) about his skit on stage. He was saying how he hoped his lines would be good enough to carry him through the competition. We thought we had to do a skit as well, and we hadn't prepared anything, but we were told we checked the "walk" option on our entry form, which meant we only had to do a couple poses. Anyway, I think he made a good Flin Rider. A guy playing Jack Frost from the Legends of the Guardian also talked to us about the con and some of his experiences with cosplay, which was interesting. We also met a new friend dressed as Cloud from Final Fantasy 7. She had an awesome home-made buster blade. Apparently she had cosplayed Shadow Link the day before and switched to Cloud for the Saturday contest. I want to be able to switch costumes like that some day. Regardless, we exchanged contact information and suggested that we look for each other in future cons.
Waiting to go on stage. First picture was for the judging and individual walks. Second picture was for the finale when we walked out as a group so the audience could take photos. Top photo includes one of the organizers in the Link costume, the kid in an R2D2 suit who was telling us how it started as a salad bowl and ended up as a Halloween costume out of control. I also had a good chat with his father about the Flames and their prospects for next season. On the right was a female assassin who won the Master level category of the competition. Her suit was fantastic. Bottom picture you can make out the Samus I mentioned earlier in the middle. To the left of her was Haytham, one of my favourite costumes of the con that I unfortunately didn't get a good picture of (or less blurry in the case of my camera). The red blob in the front was a custom Spiderman costume. The guy bought the base materials and did the designs and details on the suit himself. To put it in context, it looked almost exactly like the suit from the most recent Spiderman movie.
Sitting, waiting for the photo session to come to a close and to find out the winners of the contest. As we waited a group of people working with the con did some stand-up and improv to entertain us. Look closely and you can see the giant sword Cloud was carrying and the light sabre of Darth Maul. Darth Maul, if I heard this correctly, took 7 hours to prepare his costume that day. He had to paint his body, glue horns and other aesthetic objects onto himself and ensure he had all the pieces to his costume. A lot of effort goes into these costumes that I never really knew about. Tank Girl herself took 2 hours to get dressed and ready for the con.
Probably my favourite picture overall from the con this weekend. Cloud, Tank Girl and Jet Girl unite! It was a long, tiring day, but we had a lot of fun, learned a lot about people and their costumes, and made a couple friends along the way. YEAH COMIC CON.
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