Indiana Comic Con 2014: The Review

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Last weekend, I went to Indiana’s first ever Comic Con!  Held at the Indianapolis Convention Center (where Gen Con is held), Indy Comic Con promised to be a fun little convention.  As it was in its first year, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I planned on having a fun time anyway – after all, how can you not have fun dressed up as Pinkie Pie? 😀

Come on everypony, smile smile smile!

Come on everypony, smile smile smile!

A friend of mine (Ross, whom I met at Gen Con and became friends with thanks to the magic of the internet) and I planned on going all three days, and Mr. Crafty Nerd and another friend made plans to join us on Saturday and possibly Sunday.  And come Friday afternoon, Ross and I ventured to the Convention Center to see what Comic Con would be like.

Rainbow Dash dislikes waiting in line...

Rainbow Dash dislikes waiting in line…

The first thing we ended up doing was waiting in line – despite having bought our tickets online.  Comic Con used Ticketmaster to handle the registration process (which made paying for our tickets painful, what with all the fees), and sent us a strip of tickets like we were going to a concert.  (Tickets don’t fit terribly well into badge holders.)  Once we got to the convention, there were a number of lines you could enter to get into the convention, all snaking around together – we ended up going through the will-call line, despite having our tickets already, and then got funneled out when getting to the part where we’d need to pay for tickets.  It wasn’t a long process, as we got there maybe an hour after the convention started, but it was still somewhat confusing and tedious.  We had our tickets checked, and then received three wristbands – one for each day of the convention.

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The section of the convention center that Comic Con was being held in was one of the exhibition halls (D and E, for those familiar with the convention center), and that was all.  One part of the hall was sectioned off for the theater (where panels and the costume contest were held), another was sectioned off for the entry lines and ticket purchasing, and the rest was exhibitor booths and artist tables.  All in all, it was… small.  I made one circuit around the exhibitor area, bought a handful of things, and decided I was done with the booths.  After a few hours at Comic Con on Friday, Ross and I decided we’d save our energy for Saturday and went home.

Ready for action on Saturday!

Ready for action on Saturday!

 

We got to the convention center around 10 or 11 am, and as we ambled our way over to where Comic Con was being held, we noticed there were way more people there than on Friday.  I mean, the con was practically a ghost town, compared to what I’m used to with Gen Con and I-CON and such, and then Saturday? BOOM.  Everyone wanted to be there Saturday.  Ross and I made one circuit through the main room where the convention was being held, pushed along by the insane stream of people surging through the aisles, made a quick stop at the costume contest registration booth, and then didn’t spend much time inside the main area for the rest of the con.  We weren’t at the convention for more than an hour when we heard that they were turning people away at the doors, and the convention was at capacity.  Apparently the organizers didn’t realize that 10,000 people wanted to attend Indiana’s first Comic Con.  (They also picked a pretty poor weekend to host it, as the majority of the convention center was host to a public librarian conference that weekend.)  Bryan, Ross, Gina, and I ended up spending the majority of our time roaming the halls and taking pictures and talking with people about how crazy things were, how the convention could have been planned better, and so on.  After lunch, and more wandering around the convention center, Ross and I figured we should go wait in line for costume contest pre-judging.

The line was INSANE.  I think over half the people in line hadn’t actually registered for the contest, and about 15 minutes into when pre-judging was supposed to start, rumors floated down the line that pre-judging was canceled, they were just going to send a judge down the line to check everyone out, and that anyone who didn’t have a number wasn’t getting in.  After the abbreviated pre-judging process (where a judge came by and asked us about our costumes, what our inspiration was, did we make them ourselves), we all filed into the theater (which was packed!  apparently everyone wanted to see the costume contest), all nearly one hundred and thirty of us.  They didn’t realize so many people were interested in participating!  Everyone in the contest had amazing costumes (I was in line next to a girl dressed as Toothless who made her costume in A WEEK holy crap), and it was fun getting to prance across the stage with Ross as Rainbow Factory Dash.  However, the costume contest could also have been handled a little better…  By the end of Saturday, the four of us were exhausted, and decided it’d probably be better not to go on Sunday.

All in all?  For the inaugural year of Indiana Comic Con, while it had its issues – mostly organization related – I had a lot of fun.  I got to see lots of cool costumes, and being part of the first year of what promises to be a big convention was pretty exciting as well.  I got to meet one of the writers/artists for the My Little Pony comic, I got to see lots of fun art and cool toys, and I had loads of fun (as always) dressing as Pinkie Pie.  I think I will go back next year – here’s hoping they take up more of the convention center, though.  The rough start for Indiana Comic Con makes me a little leery of going to Indy Pop Con at the end of May, even though there’ll be many big names there (like Sylvester McCoy and Nicholas Brendon!  XANDER OMG) – instead of three days, I’m going to stick to Saturday – and definitely register ahead of time, in hopes it holds my spot.  I do believe they’re taking up more of the convention center, which will be a good thing – I anticipate Pop Con being very popular.

Alright, enough rambling about the convention – on to the pictures!

 

Convention season, and remembering my first con

Well, GenCon opened up preregistration today.  And Bryan and I have been talking about the upcoming Indiana Comic Con, and how many days we’re going/what costumes we’re wearing/who should go with us.  With all this talk about conventions, and planning for them, it’s got me thinking about the first convention I ever went to…

Most of SUNY Potsdam's Gaming Club, from early 2005.  Ahh, those were the days...

Most of SUNY Potsdam’s Gaming Club, from Spirit Night back in early 2005. Ahh, those were the days…

Way back in 2004, the SUNY Potsdam Gaming club learned about this most amazing convention that happened down on the other side of the state.  It was called I-CON (short for International Convention of Nerds), and one of our members had gone quite a few times and said it was epic.  And we’d heard that the Student Government Association would possibly fund trips for clubs, as long as they had a legitimate purpose for going on a specific trip.  So, we gamers formulated a plan.  We decided that we would go to I-CON, and we would call it “research”.  (And, well, we did do some game-related research, so our reason for going was valid!)  We put together the proposal. submitted it to the Student Government Association, and waited not so patiently to hear back about whether we’d get the funding or not.

Well, we just about died when SGA said they’d fund our entire trip – hotel, badges, and even gas there and back.  Not only were most of us going to our first convention, but we were going for free.  We were so so excited it was ridiculous.  My only knowledge of conventions involved knowing people wore costumes to them, and there were lots of other people interested in all sorts of nerdy things.  So, I dusted off my renfaire garb, as I didn’t have any idea of what else to wear, and in April packed my bags and got ready for the incredibly long trip to I-CON 24.

The ride was long and somewhat eventful – people kept getting lost, one person’s car couldn’t go faster than 40 miles an hour, and we got there so late on Friday that we almost weren’t able to pick up our badges, and we wandered around for a half hour before returning to our hotel and passing out, saving our energy for Saturday.

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The Cheat!

Saturday was… amazing.  Overwhelming.  Insane.  I was positively surrounded by delightful geekery.  So many costumes.  So much excitement.  So many things to watch and see and do and buy.  It was geeky heaven.  Especially… the dealer’s room.

BUY ALL THE THINGS

BUY ALL THE THINGS

Oh, the things we could buy.  I don’t even know how much money I spent at that first I-CON – probably an entirely irresponsible amount.  I think we all did.  (I distinctly remember one of my friends coming home with a giant staff – trying to wedge that into a tiny car was interesting, to say the least)  I remember buying a gigantic plushie of Shippo from Inuyasha, and a ridiculous amount of Sailor Moon gashapon figurines…  I got a few pictures of people in costume, mostly because I was too shy to ask people for their picture and because I didn’t actually have a digital camera of my own back then.  In fact, aside from a picture of me and my friend with The Cheat, the only picture I got of myself with anyone was with someone dressed as Edward Elric.

The Fullmetal Alchemist and The Crafty Nerd!

The Fullmetal Alchemist and The Crafty Nerd!

I don’t remember much else about Saturday except for wandering into a couple of viewing rooms and watching random episodes of animes I’d never heard of, wandering aimlessly about the Dealer’s Room spending stupid amounts of money, and beginning my tradition of inadvertantly con-stalking Michael “Mookie” Terraciano of Dominic Deegan fame.    Sunday was more of the same, but with a few more pictures!

At the end of the weekend, we all loaded our goodies into various cars and settled in for what was actually a rather uneventful 8 and a half hour trip back up to Potsdam.  I may have spent that trip with part of a giant wizard’s staff across my lap, using my ridiculously large Shippo plushie as a pillow, wearing my Death from Above t-shirt, trying to sleep through a bumpy car ride.   Ahh, car trips to and from conventions…

This is the convention that sparked my desire to go to more and more conventions.  Later that year I went to Otakon for the first time ever, which was absolutely amazing, and then I continued going to I-CON until I graduated from Potsdam.  I also went to the first ever Bear Con in 2011, which was so much fun!  Now I’m hoping to make it to three conventions this year – which is more than I’ve ever been to in a convention season!  I’ve got Indy Comic Con coming up in March, then PopCon in late May/early June, and then, of course, GenCon in August.  I’m so ridiculously excited.

Is it convention season yet?

Embarking on a new cosplay project!

Or, as I’ve been titling this project in my head, “How To Turn Yourself Into A Dragon”.

Toothless is best dragon.

Toothless is best dragon.

Yes, I’m going to try to put together a Toothless costume for the 2014 convention season.  I may even start as early as tomorrow.  And it’ll be my first time assembling a costume this complicated, especially without any sort of pattern!  I’m excited.  And kinda nervous.

I’m no stranger to the world of do-it-yourself cosplay.  While I don’t exactly have the skills for super frilly over-the-top costumes, I know where my strengths lie, and I work with that to make costumes that will look good, even being simple.  Like my Pinkie Pie costume, or my Fourth Doctor costume.  And I have done work without patterns before – Pinkie Pie’s skirt was done completely freehand.  I’ve also done three sailor fukus with no pattern (yes, not only did I dress as Sailor Moon and Sailor Jupiter, but I also dressed as my own fan character, embarrassing as it is to admit), and an entire Princess Peach costume as well – with varying levels of success.  I know what I’m about to enter into – this isn’t unfamiliar territory.

cute_black_dragon_hoodie_by_calgarycosplay-d31u6dkAnd I do have some visuals to work off of.  I’ve seen this around the internet in a number of places – this is one of them, as well as on DeviantArt – and while I’d love to buy one, I can’t really justify spending $300+ on a sweatshirt.  (And having made a Toothless plush myself, I know that a fair bit of work went into it, I’m quite sure, but is it really $300 worth of work?)  I’d much rather make one myself, too.  I had a blast making Toothless, and I’d love to do something similar, something on a slightly bigger scale, something fun.  And not to mention pretty darn recognizable, especially for the summer conventions, with How To Train Your Dragon 2 coming out in June.

So, how the heck am I going to approach this?  How am I going to start?

Determined dragon is determined.

Determined dragon is determined.

With determination, that’s how!  Heh. I figure I’ll start with stuff I’ve already got – I’ll be using the pattern from the Toothless plush for inspiration on how to construct the head and tail.  I’ll also take advantage of ready-made stuff – such as a pre-made sweatshirt and pair of sweatpants.  And the pictures posted of the sweatshirt give me quite a few ideas of how to construct things.  From there, I can construct Toothless’s little… head tentacles?  Not-quite-horns?  You guys know what I mean.  Anyhow.  I can construct a way to add those to a sweatshirt hood, and then add hand covers and wings and a tail.  (And maybe foot covers, for the sweatpants, if I can swing it.)  The most laborious part will likely be the scales – I have no idea how I’m doing those yet, but those aren’t my main concern anyway.  Those’ll likely be the last things I put on.

But yes.  I am going to make a Toothless costume.  And it will either be epic, or be an epic failure.  I’m leaning more towards epic, myself.  And of course, as I build the costume, I’ll keep everyone updated.  I know I have a lot of fellow Toothless fans who read the blog, and I want to share the process with you guys!

So, stay tuned – Project How To Make Yourself Into A Dragon will start soon.

 

 

The Crafty Nerd goes to the renfaire!

I absolutely love renaissance faires.  It’s so much fun to get dressed up in costume and pretend you’ve slipped back in time to the Renaissance days… 028

…just like Bryan and I did last weekend, at the Ohio Renaissance Festival!  Despite me coming down with a cold, we still had lots of fun.  We watched some stage swordfighting, perused the wares of many a shop, and got to enjoy my favorite part of any renaissance faire – jousting.

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Yes, the Knights of Valour were there at the Ohio Renaissance Festival, including a couple of favorites from the TV show Full Metal Jousting.  They do real, full-contact jousting – it’s really exciting to watch!  (And a little frightening when someone gets violently unhorsed…)

While sitting at the joust, waiting for the queen to arrive, I happened to see a rather familiar pair of people in the stands…

031Yes, even the Doctor and Amy Pond were in attendance at the joust!

040I do love finding the Doctor at renaissance faires… at last year’s Ohio faire, I saw a Tenth Doctor wandering around outside the castle walls, waiting for the faire to open with the rest of the crowd.  I also saw a fair amount of people wearing Doctor Who t-shirts, heheh.

If you’d like to see the rest of the photos I took at the faire, here’s a gallery of them all!  I will say, my new camera did a very good job of taking good photos from a fair distance.  I think this was a good investment for my blogging, that’s for sure.

 

 

“I’m not that crafty,” he says.

My husband, who I’ve affectionately dubbed Mr. Crafty Nerd, claims he’s not crafty.
Mister Crafty Nerd, pondering his allegedly uncrafty status...

Mister Crafty Nerd, pondering his allegedly uncrafty status…

“I’m not a designer or anything,” Bryan says.  “I’m not crafty.”  But as you peek into his office, you can see some evidence of his creativity.  There’s a bookshelf that’s been turned into a standing desk.  A Nerf gun that’s been disassembled, painted, and reworked to look very steampunky.  Costume elements from his steampunk costume, worn at Gencon.  A backlit monitor stand, with LEDs adding some ambient light to his computer setup.  If you wake up his tablet, you’ll see a background with a space-commander-esque insignia and a widget proclaiming “Welcome Commander Hoey”.
Sure, he may not consider himself crafty in the conventional sense, but he’s definitely a creative guy.

My Little Pony: Conventions are Magic! (and so are games!)

There is one thing I can definitely say about the My Little Pony community – they are INCREDIBLY friendly people.

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Like Rainbow Factory Dash, who started to laugh every time we ran into each other.

I’ve never noticed this so much as I did at GenCon this year.  Now, as I’m sure most of you who know me know, or those of you who’ve been reading the blog for any length of time know, I deal with anxiety and a heck of a lot of social awkwardness.  And because of that, it’s hard for me to just strike up a conversation with people, especially random people I’ve never met that I’m chasing down to take their picture.  (More often than not, by the time I worked up the nerve to ask someone for their picture, they’d wandered too far away – thank goodness for Mister Crafty Nerd hunting them down for me and snagging them for pictures!)  Or random people I meet in panels.  I mean, if there’s a My Little Pony community here in Bloomington, I sure haven’t found it – and even if I did, I’d be a little nervous to just jump right in, hollering “OMG PONIES!”  But the My Little Pony fans (or bronies, as I’ll call them for short – I know not everyone identifies as a brony, but it’s just quicker than saying My Little Pony fans every time I want to refer to the group as a whole, heh) at GenCon were just so welcoming and friendly and easy to talk to.  I found this out in both of the Enterplay My Little Pony: Collectible Card Game panels I went to, as well as in my wanderings around the con.  (One of those Enterplay panels was supposed to be My Little Pony: This Panel is MAGIC, but it got rescheduled…)  People commented on how awesome my costume was, and there were a few people who I recognized from when they took my picture earlier in the day.  And a magical thing happened – I actually started to talk to people.  People I didn’t know.  It was amazing.

Immediately surrounding me at the first MLP:CCG panel I went to were a bunch of older guys, and a couple of younger girls and their moms who seemed to enjoy the show as much as their kids did.  And we all talked.  We discussed our favorite episodes, I showed off pictures of my ridiculous collection of My Little Pony plush, we talked about who our favorite ponies were, and wondered what the collectible card game would be like.  It was like we were all old friends – and the fact that it was My Little Pony that brought us all together made it even more awesome.

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GenCon 2013 Photos: Days 3 and 4

This is the other post you’ve all been waiting for – the second chunk of photos from GenCon 2013!  Again, a few of these shots were taken by Mr. Crafty Nerd, and many of the Doctor Who photoshoot images were taken by my wonderful friend Michael. Due to the fact that there are so many pictures, shots from Day 1 and 2 are in a separate post so that way things don’t run as slow as molasses!  Enjoy! 😀

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GenCon 2013 Photos: Day 1 and 2

This is the post you’ve all been waiting for (or one of them, anyway) – part one of my massive photo dump of shots from GenCon 2013!  There are plenty of pictures that I took, with a little assistance from Mr. Crafty Nerd – hope everyone enjoys them! Due to the fact that there are so many pictures, shots from Day 3 and 4 are in a separate post so that way things don’t slow to a crawl here!  Enjoy! 😀

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GenCon, Day 2 (Or, The Crafty Nerd battles her social anxiety)

Today has been… a day, we’ll put it at that.  There were good parts, there were bad parts, and there were absolutely exhausting parts.

It’s no secret to those who know me well, but for those who don’t know me, I deal with some bad social anxiety and can get seriously awkward as a result.  For the most part, it doesn’t bother me, unless I’m in situations where there are lots of people/lots of noises or I’m an unfamiliar place.  And, well, GenCon hits all three.  I don’t know my way around too well, there are way too many people everywhere, and more often than not I have to REALLY work up the nerve to ask a favorite author or webcomic artist to sign something for me because I feel bad bothering them.  I know, I know, they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t want their fans to talk to them or flail about in their general presence, but still.  Social anxiety is irrational.  And it was incredibly irrational today, that is for sure.  I ended up retreating back to the hotel room mid-day to hide and recharge my batteries, so to speak.

My day was fun, though, I won’t deny it.  I ended up at another instance of the Enterplay My Little Pony trading card game, and ended up with more swag – I have only bought one pony related thing so far this trip, haha.  I got a trading card folio and this card:

2013-08-16 11.10.10-2Yes, this is one of the more rare Rainbow Dash cards for the trading card series – rumor has it that one went for $700 on eBay recently.  (It’s going for around $180 at the time of this writing, which isn’t $700, but still!)  I’m ridiculously lucky to have gotten this – the guys at Enterplay are amazing.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll likely say it again, hah.

After the pony panel, I wandered around the exhibition hall before having a slight meltdown/freakout because I couldn’t work up the nerve to ask Jeph Jacques (of Questionable Content fame) to draw me a picture of Marigold, so I ended up going back to the room and just sat there for a while, overwhelmed and overtired.  (I didn’t sleep much last night, which probably contributed to it.)  Bryan, wonderful husband that he is, ended up going back and getting me the sketch.  I am very thankful that he is so patient with me.  Thankfully, sleep and quiet did the trick, and I braved the exhibition hall for one last round of goodies before getting dinner and camping out in front of the room where An Evening with Patrick Rothfuss was scheduled to happen.

I am ridiculously glad I got there early.  Apparently the event was sold out – and since I got in line early enough, I got to sit right up front.  It was amazing.  Patrick is just so… I don’t know how to explain it, except it feels like he’s just one of the gang, an awesome person the likes of which I’d love to just hang out with.  And it felt like we were hanging out, him and around 200 other people, myself included.  He talked candidly.  He cussed a lot.  He talked about feminism and sexism in fantasy novels, and he read stuff to us from when he wrote a humorous advice column back in college, he told us about his writing processes, he talked about tons of other stuff which I cannot remember, and then we all sang “You Are My Sunshine” together.

And then I had him sign my iPad.  Which I will post pictures of tomorrow, when I am actually near my iPad and my phone.  Apparently it was not the first electronic device he had signed.  Awesome.  He is now, officially, my most favorite author.  Not only are his books amazing, but he is frigging awesome.  Sorry, Anne Bishop, but Patrick has dethroned you.

And entirely unrelated to anything – there’s a guy sitting not too far away from where I’m parked in the lobby with my laptop who has been playing the Game of Thrones theme on his guitar for, well, about an hour.  I am not kidding.  I’m pretty sure I never want to hear that song again.

Until tomorrow, everyone!  I’ll be dressed as the 4th Doctor, which I am incredibly excited about.  I am also excited about the fact that I have enough stuff to post about to fill the site for a week straight.  😀  And we’re only halfway through the con!

 

GenCon, day 1!

Haha, I am coming to you live from Steak N Shake in downtown Indy, because our hotel charges $15 a day for internet!  So, the daily GenCon reports I promised may not exactly be daily – but trust me, I’ll definitely go into crazy amounts of detail once home.

Yesterday was a fun day – I dressed as Pinkie Pie, and lots of people stopped to take pictures, it was awesome.  I ended up getting quite a few pictures taken with Rainbow Factory Dash, a steampunk grimdark Rainbow Dash who was pretty awesome about everyone saying “OH GOD PINKIE AND DASH WE NEED YOUR PICTURES”, aheheh.  The first thing I did at the convention was take pictures with Rainbow Factory Dash, and then dash (haha) to the Exhibition Hall, where everyone’s money ends up going, hahah.  I snagged another set of Impact Miniatures’ pony minis (I need the mane 6!), then wandered around the exhibition hall for a couple of hours and spent stupid amounts of money.  Which is fine – I’ve been waiting for GenCon all summer!  During my wanders through the hall, I stumbled across the Worldbuilders booth – and Patrick Rothfuss, an author whose books I adore.  (I may have torn through both of his books in two weeks, if that says anything)

I promptly stopped and flailed a little bit.  Bryan encouraged me to go say hi to him – so I did.  And told him I loved his books, and I was excited to meet him, and then after he thanked me and we exchanged other pleasantries, I bought a t-shirt from his booth and then agonized over taking his picture.  Bryan then went up and asked Patrick if I could get my picture taken with him, and he said “sure!”  And stood up, AND GAVE ME A HUG AND I ALMOST DIED OMG. I think that made my convention, aheheh.

AAAH PATRICK ROTHFUSS HUGGED ME *flails*

The afternoon/evening was spent doing My Little Pony related things – I met some awesome people, and learned quite a bit about the new My Little Pony trading card game that’s coming out.  The Enterplay group was awesome – they told us about how they hired fans to work on the game to make sure it’s as show accurate as possible, and seemed to have a lot of fun with the panel in general.  There were plenty of goodies handed out (Rainbow Factory Dash got a rare Rainbow Dash foil card handed to him, and I got a Pinkie Pie play mat for the TCG!), lots of good questions asked, and lots of fun was had.  The TCG playtest tournament went really well, too – I had a lot of fun and am likely going to write an entire post dedicated to just that.  I played against – you guessed it – Rainbow Factory Dash, haha. I thoroughly wiped the floor with him, and we declared it was a good game. 😀

Afterwards, I wandered around a bit, went back to my hotel room to switch into more comfortable clothes, and got some dinner before calling it a day. And what a day it was!  Today has had a pretty good start, too – delicious breakfast and free internet at Steak N Shake, and – get this – the waitress recognized me from a shot of people wandering around at the convention on a local news station!  😀  I’ll hunt down the clip when I am connected to better wi-fi.

For now, though, time to finish breakfast and get ready for Day 2!