Loooong post ahead, and chock-full of dorky goodness. Just a warning :)
(I won't feel bad if you ignore this one)
Yep, it's that time of year again- when I excite (bore?) you with photos of our recent convention!
PAX East is a video game convention held in Boston each year, and Dave and I always show up in costume!
We kind of threw this one together at the last minute...I'd say we started making the costumes approx. 2 weeks before the convention. Now, that may seem like a lot of time, but don't forget- Dave and I have full time jobs! Plus, we don't like spending a lot of money, so we need to carefully scour for the best deal on many items, or make them from scratch. But you know what? That's the way we like it! :)
We had recently been taking turns playing DmC: Devil May Cry (Dave with his own save file, and myself with my own...because heaven forbid we played on the same one! ha!). It's violent and not really a fun-for-all-ages type of game, so if you want to know more, you can click
here. It
is totally awesome though!
Before we get to the good stuff, did you ever wonder what our tiny apartment looks like during cosplay time? Well, here it is:
And this was AFTER we had already started to tidy up!
Enter our characters: Dante and Kat
Ignore the guy on the left. That's Vergil, and sadly we didn't have a friend to wear that costume!
Now, part of the problem with going to the convention in costume is the fact that we don't have our camera with us....so we have to either rely on our phone for pics, or hope someone with a nice camera takes one. In the latter case, we also have to hope that we stumble upon the picture later online!
Excuse the poor quality, but hopefully you will get the basic idea of how we looked together:
There exist only a few pictures of Dave and I together! lame.
The morning of the convention, I managed to get Dave to take a few pictures of the details of my costume- not sure why, but he didn't want me to do the same for him!
Kat has these cool tattoos on her hands:
I replicated as best as I could with some "henna" temporary tattoos. These took longer than expected to apply!
I thought I looked pretty hilarious with the straight hair and dark eye makeup...so I took it one step further and Photoshopped some green eyes, since Kat has greenish eyes!
bizarre.
Here's my completed costume:
I wasn't really sure how to pose...haha! I look confused!
I tried to get the details as accurate as possible, down to the necklaces and sweatshirt:
I purchased the grey sweatshirt, and sewed it to tailor it to fit, then used fabric dye and paints to make it orange. I painted the bird on the front with acrylic paint- I reaaaaaaaly wanted to embroider it, but there was no time! The top necklace was purchased for a few dollars, and the one below it was made with hand-painted beads. For the final necklace, I sculpted the pendant from polymer clay and strung it onto suede cording.
Her costume didn't leave any places for me to carry my phone (umm..the short-shorts wouldn't even fit my iPhone in the pocket!). So I improvised, and sewed a secret pocket into the boots!
At first I was going to just put the phone in there, but I was too scared of stepping on it if it slipped down. This worked well to keep it in a convenient place, safe and sound!
Kat also has this tube that she carries around:
I used a poster tube and some thrifted belts and paint to make mine. Although it didn't come out as good as I had envisioned, it
does have its own little secret....
A little place at the bottom for me to stash goodies like money and makeup!
The tube is pretty important because it holds her stencil (Ooooh! Stencil! Now this post has something to do with paper crafting!). She uses the stencil and her trusty spraypaint to create glyphs for Dante, so he can use them as a gateway to move between the two worlds.
Here's mine:
I started making this at around 10pm the night before the convention, and luckily it only took about an hour and a half to do. I drew it all by hand, but I wish I took the time to at least make the circle more accurate! haha. At least you don't really notice that unless you look at it from above:
The spraypaint can was really fun to replicate (you can see hers a few photos up):
I used a can of hairspray (which I actually recycled from when we did
THESE costumes a few years ago). I covered it with a custom label I made in Photoshop and printed out, complete with little stickers just like Kat's spraypaint! I also added some drips down the side. She has a little holster for it, so I sewed a pouch to hang from my belt:
Now, Dave was a little camera shy that day, but luckily I was able to snap this pic of him after we ate some lunch. I love how we did his makeup to look like he was just in a bad fight!! You can also kind of see the details of his coat in this picture too.
This leather jacket didn't have a hood, so I sewed one by making my own pattern and some faux leather I grabbed in the discount bin from Joann's. I was so excited with how perfectly it fit on the coat! Dave did the rest - he sewed the lining on and painted the accents on the sleeves.
Here's a better view of Dante's necklace, and the one that Dave made (although I sculpted the pendant for him):
Dante has two guns: Ebony and Ivory...
...and Dave did a great job replicating them! Especially since he really only started the night before (gosh, next time we will have to see if we can make costumes without procrastinating!). I love the details he painted on them to match the ones from the game!
We had some fun strolling around on the convention floor on Saturday, and ran into this Handsome Jack statue from Borderlands:
It's pretty funny too, because Dave dressed up as Handsome Jack for Pax East last year! (aaaaaannd I am SO late on posting those! I promise I'll get to it eventually!)
Since the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center doesn't have a Subway nearby, we can't do our favorite New York Comic Con sandwich pictures. Maybe drinking a soda will become a new PAX East tradition?? eehhh, probably not :)
I was cracking up because I ran into this Wario:
It's hilarious because when I saw him, I immediately remembered him from PAX 2011!!
btw, I slacked off and never shared the pictures from PAX 2011...I'll get around to that one too some time!
Best (and cutest) cosplay of the day goes to this group....do you know who they are??
It's Spike, Jet, and Edward from Cowboy Bebop! (An amazing anime series! If you have never watched it, give it a try!).
Ed even has her very own Ein- the corgi!! When Dave and I have kids, you better believe we will be doing family costumes!!
On Sunday, we had more time to play around. I feel like every convention has a green screen photo op, and this one even included some prop weapons!
Some other random shots from the day....
not sure if you can grasp its big-ness...but this thing was almost 2 stories high!
Fun Fact: the most entertaining game that we tried at PAX is called
Max Gentleman. They had it set up arcade-style, complete with books in the lower half of the cabinet for some old-timey nostalgia. Every time we walked past there was a HUGE crowd - luckily there was a TV streaming the game over the arcade cabinet so that we could all see how the player was doing. It was rowdy good fun!!
*phew* And that's a wrap!
For other cosplay posts, please check out...
NYCC '13 (Clobberella)
PAX East '13 (Gaige and Handsome Jack)
NYCC '12 (Black Widow and Hawkeye)
PAX East '12 (Beat and Gum)
NYCC '11 (Rogue and Gambit)
PAX East '11 coming soon
NYCC '10 coming soon
