Norwescon 37 - Masquerade!

So I meant to post this in January of 2014, but I was moving, and then I was in limbo, and then I moved again. Then we competed in Norwescon 37. AND THEN WE WON STUFF Y'ALL.  So I'm just going to talk about Norwescon 37 right now.

Wreck-It-Ralph!!!

Ralph: Played by the glorious Director. He has this amazing beard that we didn't want to ask him to shave off (not that he would) so we built a mascot. Plus, it totally worked for the cartoon aesthetic. Word to the wise, when you make a mascot, build in ventilation. Those things get hot, fast. Ralph ended up being made mostly of upholstery foam and fun fur for the hair. We purchased an over sized shirt for the costume after three failed attempts at making one with the exact perfect lines and plaid markings as on the screen.  Dejathoris then sewed up some overalls to complete the look. We built hands connected to arms connected to the body that we just threw over the Director's head. And build the feet over a pair of shoes so that he could mostly walk. However by the end of the show, the Director was quickly changing out of the costume because (let's say this together friends) we didn't build in ventilation.

Dejathoris was Miss Vanellope von Schweets! This was the year of failed dye attempts. Remember how I talked about how RIT was the bomb in terms of dyes? I was wrong. So very very wrong. DYLON IS THE S***. We dyed and ruined two hoodies before finding the perfect blend of two full sized Dylon dyes to make the perfect blue-green hoodie and legging set for Vanellope. Dejathoris then cut apart the leggings and then sewed in the white stripes and drew in the purple stripes. Even up close it looks seamless! For the peanut butter cup skirt she made a million and one pleats and sewed and stitched the whole thing together. While she was working on that, I made a hundred tiny little candies for her hair. We'd purchased two different wigs that we blended together for the full effect and then glued all the individual candies onto it. We also went to the specialty candy store in town to find a purple Gummi Bear that I sealed with resin and glued that sucker on too. I totally want to brag that the wig is SO FREAKING SCREEN ACCURATE. ;) The shoes she found on eBay and she added the black icing lines in between the treads. Overall the costume is both comfortable and ADORABLE!

Guavious was turned into Fix-it-Felix which resulted in us telling him not to cut his hair so that it was as long and shaggy as possible. He prefers it to be as short as possible. I found an amazing Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/MTthreadz) that does incredible embroidery for a really reasonable price. Dejathoris made him his handy dandy workbelt out of some leather we had. Did you know that in the movie they put Felix's belt on backwards? Did you know that our dedication to screen accuracy made us make Guavious wear his belt backwards? YUP. Match that with a powder blue shirt, some heavy denim, faux workboots, and some gloves and he's finished! (He also got a flask in his hammer!)





Oh, and what was I this year? I got to be Lt. CALHOUN!!! I got armour and a gun bigger than me!!!! According to the Director is was a natural choice as I apparently enjoy evil women... I don't know what he's talking about... The wig was bought on Ebay and ended up being one of my most comfortable wigs. I also freaked a lot of people out because well, there's no way in the real world I can get my hair to look that nice blonde. I wore oversized blue digital style anime contacts for that "high definition" look and airbrushed my makeup as natural and flat as possible.

Now let's talk about my armour, shall we? We bought Kamui's tutorial books and made some alteration to her patterns and had the base pieces made out of Wonderflex. If you haven't seen her work, I'll wait while you go look.... Are you back? Amazing right??? So the priority for the legs and arm pieces were to be realistic and slightly battle worn and to make sure that the lights looked as seamless as possible. Which meant a LOT of black paint. I then outlined all the lips and edges with silver. I then took one of the destroyed brushes and "dabbed" drying grey paint all over the main pieces for depth. For the chest piece I wanted to incorporate as many of the techniques seen on Calhoun as possible. So for the grated pieces I wrapped old fishnet nylon over the body and painted over it. I then proceeded to add layer after layer of different shades and lining until I finally had to stop. I believe the front piece was 4 hours straight before I had to walk away. All the silver tabs were actually from baby food bottles that we painted silver. We attached some all the way down to my shoes for consistency.

For the gun we made it out of the cardboard our stove came in! So it's super lightweight and passes the average con inspection/peace bonding requirements. We ran the LED tape down both sides and the handle holds both battery packs. It's definitely the coolest weapon we've ever made!

There were two major casualties of this effort. It almost was three when Ralph almost fell off the stage during rehearsal! We tried to make Vanellope's car but just couldn't and had to cut our losses. We also tried three different ways of building a bug to chase us off the stage but again, cut out losses. HOWEVER, the judges and the audience LOVED us!!! We were able to do a whole minute of the movie without any major spoilers (it's surprising how many people haven't watched the movie!) and we showcased four completely different costuming techniques during workmanship. We entered as Journeymen only to realize that we were the only Journeymen this year. However, the judges honored us by presenting us with Best Workmanship MASTER CLASS! The guys made me and Dejathoris go up and accept and I believe we had the most dumbfounded look on our faces because Anima!X was doing the Wayne's World "we're not worthy" and all we wanted to do was reciprocate! Overall it was an incredible experience and we've already started working on next year's because I'm super late at posting this year. I promise, one day I will get better (I am probably lying)