Costuming

Cosplayers tend to dress up in costume and act as that character. Costumers tend to dress up in costume but still act normally. While I might throw out some quotes from movies, I remain mostly a costumer.
That said, I need to speak out about costume contests at conventions. I’ve been in a few, my children have been in a few, we’ve both won some contests, and been in contests without winning. Granted, we’ve only been at the small-to-middle-sized conventions so they may have vast differences at the big conventions.

Prizes
The prizes for the contests have been mostly improving over the years. The top prize can usually be a membership to next year’s convention but most of the time it is merchandise. Sometimes, if the convention truly values the costume contest, the prizes make sense – like gift certificates to a local fabric place or the convention dealer’s room, or even theme-related prizes but they are usually random items donated by the dealers in the dealer’s room.
Sometimes they will also give certificates, ribbons, or medals. I know the kids like the ribbons and medals. For me, we’re really not in the contests for the prizes. (Especially with most prizes being what they are). The recognition is more what we are after.

Often they will have some categories in mind – workmanship, junior, group, but a lot of times we have found that they decide on winners and then pick a category to assign them. This helps to cover if there are no costumes in a category and allows them to recognize extra costumes that might miss out by being the second or third in a category. This allowed our friend Sean to win as Best Female Hormonal Response.

Time
While some costumes can be pulled together in short time, a lot of costumers will spend a lot of time working on their costumes. This is not to say that we haven’t been working on the final touches of a costume the night before or even final modifications just before the contest. Any extra time allows for extra touches or tweaking up until the last minute. The bad part about some judging is the amount of time it eats up of the convention. A lot of contests will want you to show up for a walkthrough to show you the contest space and where they will often do some prejudging. Even with this, you have to be there before the contest itself, the entire length of the contest, and then wait around while the judges take their time to decide on the winners. At one convention we were at, that ate up over four hours in a row on a Saturday for the kids’ part of the costume contest. Judges
Often the judges will include the guest, who may or may not know anything about costumes. Sometimes you will also have at least one judge who does know about costuming and will look for details like stitching, materials, and techniques. Hopefully this knowledgeable judge will be at the prejudging and can check for all this at that time. The other judges will often be committee members who have been rounded up to judge without haven been given much instruction.
At the smaller conventions the judging may even be done by crowd response – which can allow a store-bought costume of a popular character to beat a fabulous costume of an obscure character. Sometime the MC will be the judge although it often works quicker if they aren’t.

Prejudging
During the walkthrough the judges will sometimes take the time to inspect the costumes up close and ask questions. This allows them to take their time and helps to speed up the actual contest. This should allow them to have those portions already scored and only require them to note presentation and crowd response during the actual contest and then add them to the totals, but it still seems to take an hour for the judging to finish.

MCs
A good MC can help explain a costume or help to bridge those who don’t have a good write-up or music. A bad MC can distract from a good presentation. We’ve seen an MC treat the costume contest as her own personal stand up routine. They can definitely lead an audience if the judging is by audience response.

So, of the three conventions we go to, while some of us will costume (to varying degrees) at all of them, my daughter only really enters the costume contest at Keycon now. Although, if we get a great costume idea done, we might try again at Valleycon.

Shopping across the border in the USA

We were in the states for Valleycon and to do some shopping. I had a few specific items I was looking for and was mostly denied in many of them. While my shopping trip to the states was a bust in what I was looking for, it did pay off in unexpected ways.

I was hoping to pick up some of the Heroclix Giant Size X-Men big figures from Toys R Us but they didn't have any.

I was also hoping Target or some other places might still have some Tron light cycles for the Tron game I made but was unable to find any anywhere I looked. I was able to pick up a Jarvis figure to go with all the others I had picked up at Dollarama.

I also wanted to get some more socks from Scheels but they didn't have any of the multi-packs. I was able to pick up another four pairs but it was a far cry from the dozen I was hoping to get.

I did pick up the Tetris card game - which looks interesting and has rules for solo play.

One of the dealers at ValleyCon was Paradox and they were blowing out their stock of Arcane Legions. They had the starter for $10, the army boxes for $4 and the boosters for $2. After much consideration, I fiured I'd give it a try. I picked up the starter, an infantry and cavalry army pack for the Romans, Egyptians, and Han armies, and one Roman booster and two Han boosters. This was almost all they had left.
If this wasn't cheap enough, when I was unable to convince any friend of the value of this and decided to buy it myself, it was a further 20% off. This meant that I got the starter, 6 army boxes, and 3 boosters for $32. I figured that I could always use the figures for Bushido and Valley of the Pharoahs at the least but the game seems solid enough. It will be a big hit to my painting versus buying total but the value was too good to pass up.

I also picked up the Warhammer 40,000 Apocalypse rulebook - which was still covered by the 20% off.

Dreadfleet is the newest Big Box release from Gamesworkshop. While it has a lot going for it, I wasn't going to pre-order it or rush out to get it. That said, if this had been a rerelease of Man O' War, I would have snapped it up. I had the original Space Hulk when it came out and snapped up the new set when it came out.
I had missed the boat when Man O' War first came out but was able to get the rules for them later. I haven't played it nearly enough to chase down all the figures on ebay. We did upsize it for one of the Wincons - I made a Dwarf fleet and JP made a Bretonnian fleet. But, since he didn't use the magic rules when he ran it, the Dwarves crushed the Bretonnians.

Dreadfleet is its own game. The beautifully detailed ships are larger than the Man O' War scale. The plastic islands look nice in the pictures. It is certainly a tempting set - but not enough to tip me into a buyer - not at the price it is listed at (over $100). However, with the lack of other purchases, I decided to get the Dreadfleet. With the 20% off that would cost $85 but when I went back, they had raised the price from $115 to $150. I couldn't justify it at that price. We went by the store itself which was also was giving the 20% off for convention members. They had it listed there at $115 but said it was excluded from the sale. The wife was okay with it though so we still picked it up.

All-in-all a worthwhile trip, even though I didn't get what I was looking for, I did get some cool stuff.

Hit-Girl - Valleycon update

The costume contest was a bit of a muddled affair this year. They didn’t have a marshalling area and didn’t take info beyond name and costume name. They also didn’t have a kids category – which is fine as we had put enough work in it to be judged with the adults.

D3 didn’t want to go in the contest. A few people did recognize his costume though –
'Fezes are cool!' There was even another Eleventh Doctor there, and a pair of other Doctors in the costume contest. But we failed to get a shot of D3 with any of them.





Gee was in the contest. D3 was sure that she was going to win. She had a bit of presentation but mostly just zipped across the stage and was off - as did most of the costumers. This gave me a spot of concern as her costume is a bit obscure and involved. Without being checked in the marshalling, and explanations in the pre-judging, and the minimal presentation, I thought she might get overlooked – especially for the Clone Trooper who both looked great and had good presentation.
Luckily, they called them up again to get another look at them before judging. When the audience called out for Hit-Girl to step forward to pose for some pictures, I figured she might have a decent shot.




When the judging was done, Hit-Girl had indeed won.

Valleycon recap

We managed to get down to Valleycon last weekend. None of our friends went so it wasn’t a great time but still pretty good. At least I didn’t lose a camera this year.
The kids weren’t in the costume contest this year and were missed – by the nice person at the registration desk.

The guest, Peter Jurasik, played Londo Mollari on Babylon 5 and also Crom from Tron. He was very personable and friendly. He was very much more like the Crom character – quiet and approachable. I suppose it is a testament of just how good an actor he is that I never associated the two characters as being played by the same person. As Mollari, I always assumed the actor himself was louder and had an accent.

I had hoped to get some more KODTs, Monsterpocalypse singles, or even some Starship Troopers modules. I did get a Baneblade (for Christmas) and Ork Stormboys for 40% off. I also got West End’s Escape from the Death Star and GW Space Fleet as well as TSR Battle System 2nd edition and Skirmishes.

I was also able to get 2 Jango Fett guns - so I can work at a Jango Fett costume after all. For another year anyways.

Short for a trooper?

So, even those I had lost my camera, I was able to find some pictures of the kids in their Clone Trooper armor from the Valleycon website.

Valleycon - postdate

So, back from holidays. I had last week off up to Tuesday of this week. I was able to finish the costumes for Halloween and they wore them at Valleycon. Another shared win for them both in the children's catagory.
I ended up wearing my Captain Hammer Saturday night but not going into the costume contest - it seems I left the boots back in the city and they already had a Horrible/Penny/Capt Hammer group (both guys had goatees though).

We got a picture from Tracy Scoggins - she seemed very nice to talk to - quite the sci-fi keener.

I did get a few games - finally got some Monsterpocalpse, the Serenity RPG, and Starship Troopers miniture rules.

Downside - it seems that I have lost my digital camera. I've had no luck tracking it down and can't even narrow down when it was lost. Major drat - I was really enjoying taking progress pics of the projects.
The one upside - I had transfered the pictures on the card to disc last week so only really lost the Halloween decoration pictures and the Valleycon pictures. Still annoying though.

(no picts to follow)

Manitoba Comiccon update

Okay, I’ll give my thoughts on the Comiccon compared to the other conventions I’ve been to – Gencon, Keycon, and Valleycon. There was a good crowd – it seemed like several hundred people in the main room. I have tremendous trouble believing the 11,000 attendees that they have reported but could easily believe 1100 over the weekend. That would make it bigger than Keycon and Valleycon but tiny compared to Gencon. I’ll rant later about the way conventions count attendees.

The dealer's room was easily as big as Valleycon but nowhere near the Gencons that I recall. There was a good mix of comics, games, collectibles, and a few clothing dealers. There was a good mix of prices from crazy expensive to super reasonable.

They had an Anime room that was always dark and seemed busy; a programming room that was decently attended; a gaming room that was quite busy with a good mix of card gamers, miniature tables, and open tables.

As mentioned earlier, I didn’t get to much of the programs. I did attend the costume contest. This could have been handled much better. There was a delay in starting as they hadn’t thought to get proper information when signing up the costumers. The prizes were also the minimal, near-insulting prizes that we who do costumes have come to expect from most conventions. There were quite a few costumers about in the dealer hall both on the Saturday and the Sunday and many of the costumes were of respectable quality with a few stunning costumes - like the guy who made Halo armor.

The guests were very visible and easy to get to. They charged for autographs, which is pretty standard, but were pretty good about posing for pictures. There were a lot of comic book artists in attendance as well who were also good about chatting with the fans.

Originally, there was some talk of them losing the contract for the hotel for next year, but it sounds like they are fine after all. It was a good time and, with the low cost, we were able to bring the entire family and stay in the convention hotel. There were none of the party rooms that Keycon or Valleycon have, but since the cost was only a fraction of Keycon’s admission, they weren’t missed all that much.

home again, home again

Just a quick update. I popped in to work to send out the email for the work Survivor pool. I had cleaned down my wallet for the trip and had forgotten to put back in my security ID so I had to get a visitor tag.

We're back from the states - since we had already booked the week off for the Valleycon that was moved, we decided to still go down for the weekend. As holidays go, it was pretty relaxing. The vehicle handled well, and we had no trouble with it.
Crossing back over the border was as easy as it usually was. We came back earlier on Sunday afternoon so the lines weren't anywhere as bad as they were last year.

More and more of our stores are closed. On Friday we did a day trip to Albertville and Bloomington. The KB Toys outlet used to be a fantastic place to shop. I had picked up a trunk of Star Wars models for $1 - $5 back in the day. This time, we hardly found anything worthwhile.

The Mall of America was a bust as well. We still managed to spend a lot there, but more of our stores are on the missing side. Suncoast and Magic Max join Scientific Revolutions, the Bone Store, Techno Comix, KB Toys, Gamekeeper and the other stores that used to make the drive worthwhile.

With Suncoast and the Media Play out, I was unable to find any of the Master Replica's Pirates of the Caribbean things I was looking for. I did finally find some foam cutters at the Hobby Lobby. That was something that I've been trying to find again since I passed on them at GenCon close to a decade ago.

Valley-KHAN!!!

We had started watching 24 on Friday night – but only managed to get through 5 hours on the weekend due to the barbeques – both good, but they really cut into our viewing time. So we should be finished after the long weekend instead.

We did find out that Valleycon has quietly moved their convention from Sept 21-23 to Oct 27 – 28. While this does give me an entire extra month to finish the costumes for the kids, it does kind of mess up the holidays that I already had to book back in April. Plus, the weekend it is now on will conflict with the Manitoba Comicon. So we’re a bit torn.
Links: http://www.valleycon.com/ - which might have William Shatner (Denny Crane!)
http://www.manitobacomiccon.com/ - which will have David Prowse and Richard Hatch


Even though it’s too hot for much else, I was able to work on a few planes – finishing the paper DVII and assembling the ERTL Spad XII. I also started work on an Airfix Avro 504K. My planes are two Central, two Allies – but they are deeply balanced towards the Central side. Once I finish the Albatros and another Spad and a Nieuport, we should be able to try Canvas Eagles.