Popcorn Munching - The Hulk

Yeah... it's Soap Box time!
Well not really... but as a tried-and-true comic book fan from further back than you think... I am constantly a little disappointed when I hear people panning comic book movies.

Case in point, Ang Lee's "Hulk" from 2003.

Yes, it took almost 40 minutes for us to SEE the big green monstrosity... yes, his size seemed to fluctuate more than the Sean Connery dragon in Dragonheart... and people claim 'there was no plot... and no point' to the movie.

See... you're not understanding.

That IS the point.

The Hulk is a seething gamma-irradiated ball of angry.

ALL. THE. TIME.

(And... for those who didn't know... in the comics, the Hulk was written as being almost ten feet tall... so a lot of the size proportions in Lee's film were pretty accurate...)

The direction Lee took The Hulk might not have been the best, nor was it completely in 'canon', but it made sense from a 'flow' standpoint... here we have a child that grew up knowing abuse... and then experiments... a bad accident literally unleashes the 'Hyde' from our meek Doctor Jeckyl... and much thrashing and thunderous fist-trashing (of a military base, San Francisco, and Nick Nolte in that order) ensued. If anyone has ever known a victim of abuse, they will recognize the non-assertive, passive-aggressive nature that Bana tried to portray in Bruce Banner.

There is also the 'victim of abuse turning into the abuser themselves' metaphor that literally, PHYSICALLY manifests. This is the worst fears of the victim come to life - a very big, very green and very angry life.

People saw the Hulk tearing the turret off the top of a tank and wondered 'What was the point? How did that add to the movie?"

What they don't know is that THAT is what the Hulk comics were all about.

Con-ward-bound!

It turns out, AV has her 10-year college reunion on the weekend of April 21st/22nd...
... so guess who's going to Fan Expo!

http://www.fanexpovancouver.com/

Well that's the plan, anyway...

As much of a perfectionist as I am, I won't be wearing the armor unless it measures up to my exacting standards.
Which means I'm effectively moving the finish date up two weeks from its original May 1st point.
I'll be registering shortly, but whether I go for one day or two will depend upon the other itinerary points on that weekend... and whether or not I get the armor done 'up to spec'.

I guess I'd better get cracking, then... LOL

On a somewhat related note... anyone want to make contributions to get me to San Diego Comic Con this year?   ;)

"Sitting Here, Wasted and Wounded, On This Old Piano..."

(With apologies to New Jersey's #1 Son, Jon Bon Jovi...)

I was told I should 'muse' more to fill in the 'gaps' between times where I have enough pics to make a post about the actual costuming part of my cosplaying blog...
Truth be told... I can't honestly think of what to muse ABOUT.

I mean... do I talk about the first time I wore a costume for myself... my first convention?

Or shall we skip past all my closet-skeletons and focus on the present... I'm going to do that for now... mainly because I have many more pics of my recent stuff... and I'd have to call in favours (and "suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" from my old friends) to get pics of my older stuff.

Unless you guys WANT to hear about me dressing like a Klingon?  o.O

LOL

Pimpin' My Ride...

I've recently spread the word a little bit over Facebook in regards to my little slice of blog on the interweb here... and it seems to have worked - traffic went from a suburban side-street to a four-lane highway overnight!

You guys rock!
(Props will be coming shortly for the folks that have spread the word thus far! Just let me get through my next couple of midterms this week... /sigh)

So to everyone that's recently popped up to take a peek, I say "Welcome!"
Feel free to leave some comments! I'm always open to suggestions if you have ideas - or you want to plug your own blog, or know a good cosplayer or photographer OF cosplayers...
The sky's the limit... and I really don't have a firm direction as to where this blog is heading... so I welcome everyone to help steer the boat!  =)

Excelsior!

The Masks We Wear: Part I - The Quality of One's Character...

Why do we choose certain characters over others?
I mean... some people I know would possibly wear a spandex-costume if it wasn't too revealing or flattered their figure enough... (*cough* Poison Ivy *cough* Power Girl *cough*)
... but is that ALL there is?

I mean... as I said before... I'm 6'2" and a semi-husky 210lb... I'm not small. Despite my love for some superheroes, I simply don't or wouldn't feel right wearing some costumes - like Spiderman.
(I'll probably do Venom at some point in the future, though... maybe even the pointy-toothed shark-smile and a latex articulating jaw, but I digress...)
I like Peter Parker - I *identify* with Peter Parker to an extent... and well... who doesn't really... it's how he was designed... the 'underdog' 'everyman' hero with foibles and weaknesses and 'humanity'.
But Peter Parker is (depending on the source material) anywhere from 5'8" to 5'10" and a lean 165lb... WAY smaller than I am). I kind of feel that I would be doing the character a disservice to wear that costume.
How weird is THAT, right?

Marvel Comics I have found to be far superior to DC in regards to 'three-dimensional' character development... consistently pulling out heroes that don't forget who they were before they put on the cape... and even WHEN they're wearing the cape.

Is there more to it... or am I merely trying to nerdily justify which characters I want to portray and which I do not? I mean... some characters simply LOOK cooler than others... which is obviously a factor... and usually enough for most people (Hence the sheer humber of Batman costumes out there)... but cosplayers seem to take things a bit further... and identify with certain characteristics within their chosen characters' mindsets...
... which is why we get looked at askance... we read the comics not just to look at the colourful action shots, but to immerse ourselves in the lives of our favorite heroes (or villains)... to reaffirm that bond of appreciation and understanding - of empathy - of the character's foibles, life and all that happens within it.
(It's also why real 'fans' of comic characters get passionately upset when the storylines of their favorite characters are ret-conned.)
("Ret-con: Short for 'retroactive continuity'... a process by which the creator/writer/editor of the comic or character drastically (or subtly) alters the timeframe and process of a character AFTER significant events so as to fit the character's current story to an event that happened in the past)
Cosplayers - serious ones - love the characters they portray... or else they wouldn't spend so much time crafting the costume OF that character and subsequently wearing it.

My initial thought is this:
Which of Jung's Archetypes - the Persona, the Shadow, the Soul or the 'Wisdom' - are cosplayers adopting when they put on the costume?
The easiest would be to say 'Persona' - the face they show the world... but that would not only be naive of Jung's philosophies, it wouldn't even be completely accurate... as the *character* underneath the costume is what appeals to the cosplayer, not necessarily the 'face' of the spandex mask itself.
It's never really simple, is it?
The 'Persona' in this instance is the character underneath the spandex... the appeal to the mask behind the mask... so is it a multi-layered Persona... or something altogether different - a sort of reverence to the Soul of the character?

Thoughts to ponder...

Not For the Faint of Heart...

Yeah... I'm not gonna lie to you.
If you Google 'Iron Man costume', you will invariably be taken to a page or three wherein the costumer is wearing a pretty damned spiffy-looking replica suit... and the comments read like a bunch of grasping desperate panhandlers: "ZOMG Awesome! Can u make one adn send it 2 me?", etc.
This is a project not to be undertaken without full knowledge of what it is you are getting into.
We're talking hundreds upon hundreds of hours of stuff to do... spread over a fair chunk of time.
As an example, I consider my lifestyle 'moderately' busy... I have a number of things that eat away a good deal of my free time (family obligations, homework, full-time University, part-time Massage Therapist practice, plus the invariable commutes between all those places) but I estimate that I can probably squeeze an hour or two per evening where I am otherwise doing nothing (aka 'watching television')
If this is you, read on.
I started this project on December 16th, 2011.
It is now January 27th, 2012... I haven't yet finished the paper cutting... I gotta tell ya... it's mind-numbing... you need a LOT of patience for it... conservatively, cutting all the little pieces out of each page, then contact cementing them together at their respective tabs... I'd estimate around 30-45 minutes PER PAGE. Closer to 45 if you include the time I spent in Adobe Illustrator re-sizing the pages to fit my physique.
How many pages?
Around 350 after all is said and done... allowing for errors, re-sizing and print errors, mistakes and 're-do's... I 're-did' the left bicep piece three times before I finally settled on the size that fit the most accurately.
Which for me was 105% of the adjusted template.
Add to this the resining - which is smelly, fussy, sticky and generally unpleasant... but goes a lot faster... then the fiberglassing (even more messy and sticky when you add fiberglass tendrils that stick out everywhere)...
... I haven't even STARTED the autobody filler stage.  =/

It's a labour of love... but it's been a LOT of labour so far.

What do the British have to do with Iron Man?

Where to begin?
Those who know me - or have read about my exploits on Facebook - know that I'm into superheroes in a rather geeky way... having worn Green Lantern and then Cyclops for the past two successive Hallowe'ens.
I'm THAT kind of geeky, though... that is a bit sticklish about 'realism' (such as it is)... I vastly prefer to wear a costume that fits my body size and frame... so I won't likely wear a Spiderman... but I WOULD wear a Venom, for example... and even Cyclops (statistically 6'3" and 175lb) is smaller than my 6'2", 210lb... but the way he was illustrated in the Claremont/Lee days of the 1990s, you would have thought he was more my size.
(Hullo! Comic book geek? LOL)
So that said... I had decided to (and still eventually will) wear something I have yet to see done WELL in the cosplay community - Brian Braddock, aka Captain Britain.

(Hey shaddap... *I* like him. Also... please refrain from the obvious 'wearing white spandex pants' issue... I'll deal with it when the time comes. LOL)
The spandex part of the costume should be easy enough... I'll just commission it out... I know enough costumers that I could get this done easily and well within a decent budget (I anticipate $200 per bodysuit conservatively... hey at 6'2" and 210lb I have a fair bit of terrain to cover... let alone the labour of sewing lycra/spandex, the colour matching, the specific angles and shapes of the areas of the costume... no... far better for me to fork out the cash to someone who can and will do it right the first time rather than stumbling through it myself...
The PROBLEM I anticipated was with Cap's helmet.
Rounded ear cups, solid back... in any number of comics, ol' Cap has clearly taken off the helmet... so it's a legit piece of the costume (and doesn't change much from illustrator to illustrator) but the fact remains that I had ZERO idea how to go about making it.
I asked a Facebook friend - Panda Valentine (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=820205600&ref=ts) - whose partner Jason (http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=830935186&sk=photos) seems to have gotten the hang of helmet making... as he appears in a number of Panda's photos as Magneto (another costume plan of mine, but that's for later).
I had geared up to send Jason a couple or a dozen questions or so (I really did intend on getting back to you guys!) when I had stumbled across a number of posts on the Replica Prop Forum (www.thereplicapropforum.com) where members were discussing Iron Man armor builds (and the helmets).
I read one builder state that it took him 'five months of weekends' to complete his armor... and I started thinking.
... and anyone who knows me KNOWS that when I start thinking... bad things happen.

The rest, as they say... is history.