If you’re like me and haven’t glanced at a calendar in a while, you may be stunned to discover that today Halloween.
It’s okay. Just take a moment to let that sink in.
For many of us, Halloween is that strange annual event on which it is not only normal to dress in costumes, it’s expected. If you can’t attend conventions, Halloween is a great chance to let your cosplay skills shine and to impress all your non-geeky friends. If you’re a regular con-goer, however, this isn’t really the time to pull out the big guns.
It’s also a great time to tool around the internets looking for costume tips, inspiration, and other resources for your next con, since this is the one time of year that the average person gives a flying fuck about costumes. Just replace the word “Halloween” with “con” and you’ve got a cosplay guide.
The Daily Candy has a flipbook of super easy and fairly clever DIY costumes, an inordinate number of which involve flannel.
Just as lazy and exponentially more geeky are io9's “20 Zero Effort High Concept Costumes Guaranteed to Alienate your friends”. Personally, I’d love to see someone dressed as the monolith from 2001.
For those who are both lazy and demure, Jezebel has “Eight Alternatives to the ‘Sexy’ Halloween Costume”, as well as “The Last Minute Half-Assed Guide to Halloween Costumes”.
Unfortunately, Halloween is also the time when evil, cheap, tacky costumes come scuttling out of the dark, wretched sweat houses in which they were created to lurk on supermarket shelves, waiting to spring out upon unsuspecting shoppers. We must know this evil, fellow cosplayers, that we may wage war against it.
Another horror to watch out for is tacky pet costumes. As with human costumes, there are fine lines between adorable, clever, and just plain dumb. Exhibit A: The Tompkins Square Dog Parade. Occupy Wall St. Dog, FTW.
Exhibit B: Pure awesome.
Sometimes, the best costumes are born out of fusing things that have absolutely nothing to do with each other, as with this example from Chris Hardwick.
For further costume inspiration (or just an excuse to waste half an hour), The Mary Sue has links to galleries from NYCC, with some beyond cool costumes, and Adult Swim has video from the NYCC Venture Bros. costume contest, which is always entertaining.
If you’re still trying to decide what cons to hit next year, LA Weekly has a point-by-point comparision between San Diego Comic-Con and Dragon*Con, which hits some points that we didn’t address and also declares D*C the best place for cosplay.
Finally, whether you’re scrambling to prepare for Halloween or planning your wardrobe for the con, it’s important to remember that some costumes are just not okay. Now, I’m not talking about the follies of spandex and skimpy outfits; feel free to display as much of your physique as your personal confidence and region-specific weather will allow. I’m talking about costumes that, consciously or not, reveal your “inner racism”. Remember, fellow cosplayers: don’t be a dick.
-shadowen
Monday, October 31, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Cosplay Linkspam, 19 October 2011
I’ve got a math problem for you, fellow cosplayers. Let’s see if you can work this one out:
Full time job + 2 (part-time theatre work) + occasional need to sleep = ?
If your answer was “No time to blog”, congratulations, you officially understand my life. But never fear, friends! For I have not abandoned you, and, today, I bring you many shiny links from across the interwebs.
First of all we have two very different but equally epic costume contests happening:
For you nerdcore fans (and really, who doesn’t love nerdcore?) Sabine thinks you should know that, “mc chris is running a cosplay contest on his latest tour, picking a winner from every show. The winners so far have been pretty epic. Updates can be had at his facebook:”. Geek rap and costuming, all in one place. Sounds like a party to me.
I may be showing my age, here, by I used to LOVE watching the old Tintin cartoons on... was it PBS? Anyway, I’m super excited about the new film, and so is star Jamie Bell. He’s so excited, in fact, he’s inviting fans to send in pictures of their Tintin cosplay and offering the winner free tickets to the London premiere of the movie. Unfortunately, the deadline is 19 October, so I kind of dropped the ball on that one. Still, it’s a cool thing to know, and hopefully we’ll get to see pics from the contest, later. Fingers crossed that this will inspire a new wave of Tintin love at next year’s cons.
Speaking of which, if you’re a parent, you probably strive daily to fill your children’s lives with the kind of quality geekery that will help them grow into tasteful, well-adjusted adult nerds. Tintin cartoons are that kind of geekery, this Catwoman costume is not. Weep for that child, my friends. Weep.
Another good example of doing right by your geeky family, is dressing them all up as post-apocalyptic zombie hunters for family portraits.
And, as The Venture Bros. Blog shows us, cosplay can also be a way to bond with that special someone.
If, by the way, you’re planning for a Venture-tastic con, The Venture Bros. Blog (Gods bless Marc Ilagan, for serious.) has
a brand new cosplay guide, to which they are steadily adding tutorials and pictures. Especially useful to those who are relatively new to cosplay.
Some folks are more devoted than others. Like
this guy, who is undergoing several cosmetic surgery procedures in order to look more like Superman.*
Finally, I’d like to give two shout-outs to some of the most bad ass cosplayers at this week’s New York Comic Con.
First, let’s give it up for this fantastic Spider Jerusalem cosplayer, who perfectly exhibits all the hallmarks of great cosplay:
A character who’s distinctive and recognizable (to comics fans) without being done to death.
A costume adapted to to the wearer that still hits those iconic points. (Painting the tattoos onto a flesh-colored shirt? Genius.)
Attitude.
Last, but not least, you’ve got to love the two guys who dressed as Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick. Because, when cosplaying characters just isn’t hardcore enough, you cosplay creators. (The best part of that image is the “mind=blown” look on Jackson’s face.)
That’s all I have for you, today, fellow cosplayers. Stay tuned for more sporadic and incoherent updates on the wide world of cons, cosplay, and costuming.
-shadowen
*I want to make it clear that I’m linking this article as a point of interest, not to snark. Body image and the personal appropriation of media images are serious-face subjects, and we at Frenemy Cosplay maintain a 100% judgment-free zone. (Although, to be fair, I’m still judging that kids’ Catwoman costume so hard.) So, if that guy wants to be Superman, then, godsdamnit, he can be Superman.
That being said... And this is random and still non-snarky... There was an episode of some sit-com, I wanna say in the late 90s, that took place at a Star Trek/SF-F convention, wherein George Takei briefly played a Trekker who had gotten cheek implants in order to look more like George Takei. The phrase “iconic cheekbones” was used. Does anyone know what I’m talking about, or did I dream this?
Full time job + 2 (part-time theatre work) + occasional need to sleep = ?
If your answer was “No time to blog”, congratulations, you officially understand my life. But never fear, friends! For I have not abandoned you, and, today, I bring you many shiny links from across the interwebs.
First of all we have two very different but equally epic costume contests happening:
For you nerdcore fans (and really, who doesn’t love nerdcore?) Sabine thinks you should know that, “mc chris is running a cosplay contest on his latest tour, picking a winner from every show. The winners so far have been pretty epic. Updates can be had at his facebook:”. Geek rap and costuming, all in one place. Sounds like a party to me.
I may be showing my age, here, by I used to LOVE watching the old Tintin cartoons on... was it PBS? Anyway, I’m super excited about the new film, and so is star Jamie Bell. He’s so excited, in fact, he’s inviting fans to send in pictures of their Tintin cosplay and offering the winner free tickets to the London premiere of the movie. Unfortunately, the deadline is 19 October, so I kind of dropped the ball on that one. Still, it’s a cool thing to know, and hopefully we’ll get to see pics from the contest, later. Fingers crossed that this will inspire a new wave of Tintin love at next year’s cons.
Speaking of which, if you’re a parent, you probably strive daily to fill your children’s lives with the kind of quality geekery that will help them grow into tasteful, well-adjusted adult nerds. Tintin cartoons are that kind of geekery, this Catwoman costume is not. Weep for that child, my friends. Weep.
Another good example of doing right by your geeky family, is dressing them all up as post-apocalyptic zombie hunters for family portraits.
And, as The Venture Bros. Blog shows us, cosplay can also be a way to bond with that special someone.
If, by the way, you’re planning for a Venture-tastic con, The Venture Bros. Blog (Gods bless Marc Ilagan, for serious.) has
a brand new cosplay guide, to which they are steadily adding tutorials and pictures. Especially useful to those who are relatively new to cosplay.
Some folks are more devoted than others. Like
this guy, who is undergoing several cosmetic surgery procedures in order to look more like Superman.*
Finally, I’d like to give two shout-outs to some of the most bad ass cosplayers at this week’s New York Comic Con.
First, let’s give it up for this fantastic Spider Jerusalem cosplayer, who perfectly exhibits all the hallmarks of great cosplay:
A character who’s distinctive and recognizable (to comics fans) without being done to death.
A costume adapted to to the wearer that still hits those iconic points. (Painting the tattoos onto a flesh-colored shirt? Genius.)
Attitude.
Last, but not least, you’ve got to love the two guys who dressed as Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick. Because, when cosplaying characters just isn’t hardcore enough, you cosplay creators. (The best part of that image is the “mind=blown” look on Jackson’s face.)
That’s all I have for you, today, fellow cosplayers. Stay tuned for more sporadic and incoherent updates on the wide world of cons, cosplay, and costuming.
-shadowen
*I want to make it clear that I’m linking this article as a point of interest, not to snark. Body image and the personal appropriation of media images are serious-face subjects, and we at Frenemy Cosplay maintain a 100% judgment-free zone. (Although, to be fair, I’m still judging that kids’ Catwoman costume so hard.) So, if that guy wants to be Superman, then, godsdamnit, he can be Superman.
That being said... And this is random and still non-snarky... There was an episode of some sit-com, I wanna say in the late 90s, that took place at a Star Trek/SF-F convention, wherein George Takei briefly played a Trekker who had gotten cheek implants in order to look more like George Takei. The phrase “iconic cheekbones” was used. Does anyone know what I’m talking about, or did I dream this?
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