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Meet the Youth Best In Show winner from the 2013 DragonCon Masquerade contest: The Lady Doctor and her steampunk companion K-9!
Jo loves watching Doctor Who, so she designed this Lady Doctor costume for herself. There's lots more about how she made it herself over at Wendi's Shiny Happy World blog.
Jo was especially proud of the vest, which used all different brass buttons. The coat is pretty great too. You can just see the really spacey lining here, on the lapels. Her hair is dyed TARDIS blue.
I helped her with the rocket boots. She still did all the spray painting and the drilling and gluing but I was there as the technical advisor. One of her Monster High dolls has rocket-powered boots, and so Jo wanted a pair too. The silver rockets are actually upside-down plastic things you put on chair legs to keep them from sliding. We glued them on with Gorilla glue, which held surprisingly well. The boots were thrift-store finds, spray painted with a really super copper color Jo picked out.
The whole ensemble, before she went on stage in the Friday Night Costume Contest! This was a fun costume for Jo--and one she could walk around in afterward without too much trouble! She did trade the rocket boots in for a pair of red Converse high tops for roaming the hotels though...
For this year's DragonCon, I built a steampunk K-9 to accompany Jo's Lady Doctor costume in the Masquerade. Together, we won Best in Show in the Youth category!
As a model, I used this tiny scale model K-9 from ThinkGeek, which I got Jo to go with the Barbie-sized TARDIS I built her. Despite being just a couple of inches long, it's all to scale, which allowed me to do the math and extrapolate a larger version.
I started by building a mock-up out of foam core. I got it mostly right from the start, but this allowed me to mess up and not waste wood. (And time!) The foam core is just held together with masking tape and straight pins. I designed it to fit on a remote controlled car base I bought, and ended up making it almost 1:1 scale with the original K-9...
Late in the process, we realized that a key would make a brilliant tail for a steampunk dog. Originally, I was just going to buy an antenna and spray paint it brass. I think the key turned out much cuter.
When I was finished, I cut all the taped joints apart and used my foam core pieces as pattern pieces. I traced them on a very thin plywood, and cut them out with a Skill saw and jigsaw.
I don't have very many pics of me actually building K-9, strangely. I love process pics, but so often I did the building later in the evening while watching TV, and the light was always terrible for taking pics. I always said, "Oh, I'll take a picture tomorrow in the good light." And then I never did. But here's me using a vise to hold together the tricky angles of the face while I screwed it together. In the back of the head, you can see the small square dowel I used in the corners to give my something to screw into besides the thin plywood.
And here's the finished product!
The TV k-9 has colorful buttons on his back. For the steampunk K-9, I used two great brass faucet knobs we found at the Home ReStore in town. I think they were maybe $2 each. The joiner pipe is actually a piece of wood dowel I spray painted brass. The keyboard (in lieu of colorful buttons) is made up of individual wooden keys. I found a person on Etsy who laser cuts them out of wood, then applies pictures of antique keys to them. They look like authentic typewriter keys, but they're fake! They're a lot lighter--and a whole lot cheaper than real typewriter keys, which go for a pretty penny on eBay.
The tail is wood, spray painted to look brass. Again, much lighter! And there was no way I was going to be able to make something like that out of real brass.
The neck is dryer tubing spray painted brass. It took the spray paint really well! And I didn't have to attach it--all I did was bend it around the head, and the angles did all the work. The collar is a brass hand towel ring with the mounting piece cut off of it. The bone tag is wood, again painted to look brass. A rule I've heard that I'm trying to live by is "looks great from six feet away." I think all this looks great close up, but it all passes muster six feet away, which is really the level of detail we want on our costumes.
The nose was a real score at the Home ReStore, which is a Habitat for Humanity store that reclaims old fixtures from torn down houses and renovations and resells them. This faucet was an awesome find. Jo and I spent a very happy couple of hours rooting through the plumbing bins at the store, looking for treasures like this. I hadn't planned on putting a faucet on the nose, but it was too good to pass up--and ended up sort of making the whole thing.
We had a lot of options for K-9's ears. I almost went with another pair of faucets made of wood and brass, but these curtain rod ends won out in the end. They were just too cool looking. They're plastic--about the only plastic thing on the whole dog, except for the remote controlled car underneath him--but they look brass, and they have the added benefit of being lightweight, which was an issue on the head.
K-9's eye bars are wood, painted brass. The eye itself is of course the knob off a garden hose bib. I loved it--particularly as the original K-9's eye is a red circle. I left the maker's ring on there too. It was too awesome.
The big "K-9" on the side are wooden letters from A.C. Moore, again spray painted brass. I screwed them in from behind, so you can's see the screws. You'll see screws everywhere else though. My original plan was to cover those with "brass" trim, which was going to be a brass duct tape I found. In the end, I loved the look of him without all the brass trim. I think going without was a good call. He's already pretty blinged out as it is!
The other side had a door. This served two purposes. One was practical--it gave me a way to reach inside and attach the cotter pins to the posts that connected the K-9 unit to the remote controlled car. The second was part of the show: we put a tea cup and saucer in there, and at a certain part of Jo's performance, K-9 raced over to her and she took out the cup and pretended to pour tea from his nose! It was a real hit. This space also, coincidentally, made a nice storage area for his controller, spare battery, charger, etc.
For the curious, here's the R/C car I used as the base. It's not your cheapo mall-bought R/C car. I got this at HobbyTown USA, where they know their machines. At first, I was worried it wouldn't be strong enough to move the wood and brass K-9 I built--but I ended up having to take it in to the shop to have them help me slow it down! It's a beast of an R/C car, and it worked great.
Okay! By popular demand, pics of our Totoro and Satsuki costumes! I've been holding off because we don't have too many--I was inside the thing all night, after all!--but people have been asking, so here are a few pics to whet your appetite. First up, a picture of Jo and me (inside Totoro) with Grant Imahara, star of Mythbusters, and host of this year's DragonCon Masquerade! He was really cool--and really appreciated the scale of Totoro! We were too tall for the photographer's set and lighting here, which is why there's a big lamp above Totoro's head. Jo is holding our award for Best Animated Character--our second award in that category. (Our first was for Samurai Jack and Aku.)
Here's a shot I yanked off someone's Tumblr. After the Masquerade, we set up Totoro on one of the floors in the Marriott, where a number of people got their picture made with him. He was so tall (over ten feet) that his head was hitting the ceiling (and a sprinkler!) in the first place we set him up. This place had a bit taller overhead.
Getting Totoro to the con was a bit of a challenge, as you might imagine. We had to rent a mini-van for the purpose, and stuff him in the back. We built him to be collapsible, but we were careful with his face. :-) I had hoped that people would see Totoro peering at them out the back of our van on the highway, but all the van's windows were tinted, so I don't think anyone actually saw him.
That's your teaser! More pics of the construction, and hopefully of Totoro around the con, to come!
(Click the pics to see them bigger and better.)
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We don't know which costumes to attempt for this year's DragonCon Masquerade, and time to build is running out.
The top three candidates are below. Each has its particular challenges and drawbacks, but each is equally worthy and awesome. Tell us what you think in the comments!
Candidate #1: Peanuts/Watchmen mash-up
This is the work of the awesome illustrator Evan Shaner, and though he's tired of seeing it, we never tire of it.
Pros:
Costumes are complex, but the legs are easy. (Trust us on this one.) Could bring the house down. (Particularly if you can see what Snoopy/Rorschach's hat is hiding there on Dr. Manhattan/Charlie Brown.) Character costumes are basic shapes, and hide a lot of building rough spots. AWESOME.
Cons:
Well, we need six people, and we're only three people. (Volunteers, anyone?) That's six (!) costumes to make by September. Jo has to wear a full-body suit. Transportation issues. Technical issue: we're not sure yet how we would see out of them.
This is an incredible Incredible Hulk comic book cover done by Kaare Andrews. We like this one so much we have it framed and hung on our wall. It's a fantastic Where the Wild Things Are/Hulk mash-up, with all the Hulks following Max/Bruce Banner. Very apropos this year, what with Avengers in theaters and Maurice Sendak's death, yes? We agree.
Pros:
Jo doesn't have to have a full-body costume on. (She'd be Max/Banner.) That's mportant, as she wears out by 11 pm and has less patience than us overall. Timely. AWESOME.
Cons:
Whew. Where do we start? Do we cover them in fur, or in fleece we dye or paint? Will people get it without the background? Do we make the Hulks look a little more Wild Things? Transportation issues. That's three full-body Hulk costumes to make by September. (We would make the third either the Red Hulk, Nerd Hulk, or another Green Hulk.) We're only three people, and we'd need a fourth. (Volunteers, anyone?)
Candidate #3: Duck Dodgers in the 24th and 1/2 Century!
Duck Dodgers is a fan favorite at DragonCon, and here in the Gratz house. We would do Duck Dodgers, Space Cadet Porky, and Marvin the Martian. Pretty much don't have to do much more than come out on stage and get the audience to yell "Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half century!" with us to be a hit.
Pros:
Just the three of us! And only three costumes to make! Marvin's the easiest b
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Check out this awesome R2-D2 beanie Wendi made for me! I love it so much I've been wearing it around the house even when there's no one here to see it.
Round three of the DragonCon 2010 pics! We begin with a really great McGonagall and Snape.
Samurai Jack and Aku as a female assassin.
Jo insisted we get this one: James from Pokemon's Team Rocket!
A great Lucious Malfoy and Mad-eye Moody. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!
Can I do this caption without saying "you damn, dirty ape"? No, apparently not.
A really terrific Bossk. He was a winner in the Masquerade too, I think.
Gandalf the White and Gandalf the Grey, together again for the first time. :-)
You can always trust that someone will show up with a Flying Spaghetti Monster costume. This year as we were driving home up 85 out of Atlanta, we saw this costume stuffed into the
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Time for more DragonCon 2010 hall costume pics! Talking to people about their costumes and taking pictures in between panels and sessions is one of our favorite parts of the whole weekend. And we've got some weird ones for you today...
I...don't have any idea what these are, but they're pretty cool. I'm surprised we didn't see them in a costume contest!
I THINK these are based on commercial characters. The one on the left is, at least--it's from a line of figures and merchandise with a cute but vicious bear on them.
The ladies in this pic later performed a dance number from Glee during the masquerade. I'm can't tell you why half of KISS hopped in there in the pic though...
A very good Harley Quinn, the Joker's main squeeze. You have to have a LOT of confidence to pull of Harl's costume...
Two visions of Fiona, from Shrek!
Jedi and Dark Jedi living together--mass hysteria!
We already posted pics of Jo ruling the 2010 DragonCon Friday Night Costume Contest, but there were of course tons of other great hall costumes out there! We got far fewer pictures this year than last (we seemed to be more busy doing other...stuff...this year!) but we still got lots of great snaps to share.
This year, rather than divide them up by category, I'm going to be lazy and post them in the order I took them--except for the ones with US in them. I'll save those for a Gratz family-themed post!
Steampunk Mary Poppins and chimneysweeps.
A Clone Wars collection.
Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece, one of our favorite manga/anime series! Jo claims he even had the little scar under his eye like Luffy...
Jo entered the DragonCon Friday Night Costume Contest this year with an entry of her own construction! That's right--Jo sewed and crocheted that costume all by herself. (Okay, Wendi helped her with the shirt, as the material Jo chose proved impossible to work with.) She is Mistumi, a Pokemon trainer from the recent Pokemon Diamond and Pearl manga books.
Jo entered the costume contest last year in a Raven costume Wendi made, and we learned a lot. For one thing, the costume contest (as opposed to the Masquerade on Sunday night) puts the emphasis on construction and results, not performance. Jo's costume was great last year, but she didn't make it herself. Further, we had no reference photos for the judges to see what we were trying to match. People who knew what they were doing brought notebooks full of pictures, with reference photos as well as pictures taken during the construction of the costume.
We learned our lesson, and this time we took copious pictures of Jo creating her costume, and included as many images of the costume as we could from scans of Pokemon comics. We put them together in a book for the judges to look at, and then they asked Jo questions about her character and the construction of her costume. They were very impressed, and told Jo she had a future in professional costume design! They especially appreciated the boots, which are always one of the hardest things to make for a costume.
After Jo's interview was over, it was time to have her picture taken by the DragonCon photographer. I snatched a pic or two while she was up against the solid background.
All the costume contest contestants have to hang out in the same room while the judging and photography is being done, which makes for an interesting crowd... Here are the folks who would eventually win Best in Show: an apocalyptic Wizard of Oz collection.
If I lived in the world of Harry Potter this is exactly the cloak I would wear. I showed the start of the work on it here. Now it's just about done - it just needs some topstitching to help hold the layers in place.
I love the pattern on pattern. I'm going to be wearing it with a patterned shirt, too. The outside of the cloak is pieced black fabrics - anything I could find that was black or dark gray - velvet, narrow and wide corduroy, some gorgeous flocked sort of fabric with a baroque swirly pattern, jacquard and patterned cottons. I'd guess about 2/3 of the squares are straight-up cottons and the rest are "fancy" fabrics. The lining is a beautiful brocade. Now Jo wants one too - but I told her she has to wait until after Dragon*Con.
For anyone interested this sort of thing - I used Simplicity 9887 (view D) with no changes. Good pattern.
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Dragon*Con is at the end of this month and we're just now getting down to making our costumes. Lots of costumes - I'm not even going to tell you how many. . .
. . . but maybe this pile o' fabric waiting to be pre-washed will give you a hint.
For a change this year - I decided to start off with one of my costumes. All these squares are various shades and textures of black, waiting to be pieced together into a fabulous patchwork cape.
Labor intensive? Oh yes - but that's how we roll here at Gratz Industries.
Jo's getting in on the sewing action too this year. She wants to enter the costume contest as a maker - so she's doing all the sewing herself. I'm just helping with pattern drafting and technical advice. She's decided to go as Mitsumi, a Pokemon trainer from the Pokemon Diamond and Pearl graphic novel series - her current favorite book series. Here's Mitsumi. . .
Jo's working on the skirt up there at her machine. She decided to make it just a smidge longer than the skirt in the picture because she "wanted to be able to sit down without showing her underpants." Good thinking. . .
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A bit of a Japan digression, true believers: Here's Tim Gunn discussing superhero fashion in a two part interview with Crazy Sexy Geeks. I can't find part two--I don't think it has been posted yet. I'll post it when it's up. Excelsior!
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Time for the Gratz Industries annual Halloween party! Once again this year, Jo chose to be a witch. The old witch costume was too small, so she got a new one made up by Wendi, the whiz in the Gratz Industries costume department. The feather trim at the bottom and on the hat was Jo's idea though, and we all agreed it pretty much made the costume.
We met up with friends at a funeral home in Bakersville (it seemed apropos) and hit the town for trick-or-treating.
We did a combination of the town's organized downtown trick-or-treating and a few side streets. We live out in the boonies, where neighborhood walking isn't really possible, so the downtown festival is a really nice way to get out and trick-or-treat without having to drive to some subdivision closer to Asheville.
This time we brought a back-up bag for Jo, so she could keep loading up on the candy when her little cat bag got too full. We saw a lot of store-bought costumes (as usually) but some more creative efforts as well:
Not sure what that last one is supposed to be...but it gets an E for effort. Hope your Halloween was happy (and not to soggy) wherever you were!
One last batch of DragonCon costume pics. These are the pics that were hard to classify, so we'll just call them "Around the Con."
The forbidden love of a Starfleet officer and Rorschach!
A Jedi and Amidala from Clone Wars have a picture taken of taking their picture.
Jo and Tink
A great prop at the Venture Bros. Fan Club table.
Jo meets a rave Hello Kitty.
Anubis?
Um...?
A great historical costume.
Not the best picture, but there was a phalanx of Greek soldiers, ala 300, who put on a show in the Marriott one night. Hrm. A phalanx is Roman, isn't it? What's the word for that in Greek?
Thriller! This guy got his picture taken so many times he almost fell over.
A great Red Queen in the costume contest. Once that Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland comes out, costumes like this are going to be everywhere.
Darth Elvis!
Um...?
Bippity-boppity-bo!
I think that's the cheerleader in there. Is that a clue? Is she from Cinderella? Or am I getting that confused with Snow White? It's been a while since I've seen either movie.
You can always find great sci-fi themed costumes at DragonCon, and this year was no exception:
This poor robot had a cup in hand--that was attached to a change sorter. We saw the guy who owned him collecting change from it. He was making a killing!
Star Trek costumes had been waning of late, but the new movie saw a reboot in Original Series costumes...
...including Captain Pike! This poor fellow sat by the escalators all night, communicating only with a beeping red light on his wheelchair. Somebody get this guy back to Talos IV!
And check out this Scotty! No, it's not James Doohan, but dang if he couldn't pass for him!
There are always plenty of Klingons around too.
But this is the first time we've seen First Mate Piggy from Swinetrek!
There were a great many homebrew bounty hunters this year...
...including a young bounty hunter in training...
...and there are a growing number of R2 units from the R2-D2 Builders Group--one of Jo's favorite places to hang out.
There's always a bunch of Jayne hats floating around...
...but this Kaylee dress took the cake!
These Alien space suits were immaculate, and well-deserving winners in the Friday Night Costume Contest. Just amazing detail on these suits. Like they walked out of the movie.
Let the wookiee win!
A couple of biker scouts mix things up among the hundreds of stormtroopers that always represent well.
But our favorite might have been this Mighty Mugg version of Chewie!
And this was a hall costume only--it never appeared in either of the costume competitions. Come on, people, get those costumes in the shows! More people need to see them!
One last round to go--random photos from around the con...
So, there weren't as many heroes and villains at this year's DragonCon, despite Gratz Industries' best efforts (above). Even so, we did catch a few who were pose-worthy:
Bride of Freakazoid!
Black Manta--complete with voice modulator. Don't know what's being modulated by that codpiece though...
Indy and Willie Scott from Temple of Doom. (Not comic book, but they count!) The Willie Scott dress was really amazing, and won a Friday Night Costume Contest prize.
There were two Flashes this year, AND a Professor Zoom (in the yellow).
Flash #2 came with Impulse.
And they all posed with the Trickster. (Let's call one of the Flashes Barry, and the other Wally.)
Professor Zoom (aka the Reverse Flash), Heat Wave, and Weather Wizard. Props for bringing the Weather Wizard to life, dude! Now THAT'S an obscure one.
The ever-popular Harley Quinn and a Nurse Joker.
A good Spider-man, and some chick who jumped in as we were taking the picture.
And since I put Wendi in at the beginning, I'll reciprocate with this pic of me trying on an INSANELY COOL, handmade leather jacket with the Flash insignia on the shoulder and the back. What I like most is it makes me look buff! I would wear this every day if I owned it. It wasn't even laced up all the way. This and a variety of other hero-inspired doublets can be purchased from Pendragon Costumes for a mere $405 each--which is why I only have a picture, and not a leather jacket.
If there was an unofficial theme to DragonCon 2009, it had to be "steampunk." The little subculture that could started to gather steam (as it were) last year, but this year was when the goggles and brass really hit the fandom. So for our first collection of themed pics from DragonCon, we offer you an Eclectic Selection and Fantastical Steampunkery.
A "Portable Riot Control Box," complete with electro-baton and helmet, below.
A steampunk tinker...
...complete with a hot burner for generating that all-useful steam!
A steampunk baby carriage.
Steampunk finery...
...including Diabolical Gauntlet.
Masquerade Best-in-Show winners, the "Abolition Abolishers"--steampunk Ghostbusters! Their catch-phrase: "Whom shall you telegraph?"
The Apparition Abolishers' R5 Steamdroid.
Desert steampunk. Very nice rifle.
Steampunk fliers.
"Smile like it's 1884!"
The Steampunk X-Men, winner in the Friday Night Costume Contest. The tricked out wheelchair moved and smoked! (On purpose.)
Even I got into the act with a new pair of goggles.
More pics of Aku and Samurai Jack to come, including the construction of both costumes, but before we hit the road (again!) tomorrow, we wanted to show off our DragonCon 2009 Masquerade costumes! Gratz Industries won Best Animated Character--a major award for our first entry!
To me, best costume was Samurai Jack and Aku, with the former played by a seven year old girl squaring off against her dad who was hidden inside an Aku puppet essentially that stretched fifteen feet high, making it the first properly proportioned SJ/Aku confrontation I’ve ever seen.
Thanks, Peter! He and George Perez were terrific hosts.
And we were thrilled to find this clip on YouTube--Aku (Alan) navigating the escalators at the Marriott! Mwahahahaha!
The eyes of Aku--the Shapeshifting Master of Darkness, the Shogun of Sorrow, the Daimyo of Destruction--are upon you, Marriott! And for those of you who have made it this far and have no idea who Samurai Jack and Aku are, here they are in their original animated forms!
