Attending Emerald City ComiCon for the First Time

My Viking and I have attended a fair number of comic book conventions over the span of several decades, from WonderCon in Oakland/San Francisco to the Anaheim/San Diego ComiCon to the latest additions of Silicon Valley ComiCon, ComicFest, or BigWow!

However, this year was our very first year to Emerald City ComiCon in Seattle, Washington. A few of our friends attend, and we wanted to see for ourselves as they very much enjoyed this convention.

The convention is not as big as SDCC, but much much larger than Silicon Valley ComiCon, and we had an amazing time! It also helped that the entire crew of the Animaniacs were there in attendance! I'm quite the fan...snarf!

One of the highlights of the whole show was the Twisted Toonz event, where various voice actors for a variety of cartoons read the script for Return of the Jedi. It was so hilariously funny that I cried tears of laughter and one of the voice actors fell off his chair!  I suggest checking out the ECCC versions as they did all three of the original Star Wars Trilogy!

Aside from the main events, we also attended quite a number of the smaller panels. I was pleasantly surprised by the diversity and depth of many of the panels. And there were quite a few that I couldn't attend because there were too many attendees to fit safely into the rooms. The ECCC app was a worthy download and help me keep track of everything I wanted to attend.

I went to a few cosplay-based panels, such as styling wigs, prop building, etc. There were a few writer workshops as well.

The Dealer's Room was fairly massive and including some big names like Weta and Dark Horse, as well as some smaller local shops, such as Mishu from Seattle.

The Artist alley was also huge! Just when I thought I had finished it up, there was another one around the corner (three in total). We might have purchased a few prints....

(Photos taken with permission from the artists)

I got to see some of my favorite artists and get a few things autographed. Artist alley was just as extensive as the Dealer's Room.

The cosplay was incredible.

 

(Tefiti from Moana) 

There was an huge parent/child cosplay contigent. This father and daughter duo in the Weapon-X series is awesome.

And even some unborn children got into the act too!

There was also quite a number of panels dealing with cosplaying with your children and exposing your children to geek culture. There's some good parenting done there!

And some of the entries into the cosplay contest were pretty stunning.(The Lion Armor took first across the board)....

A nearly life-size tauntaun was pretty cool, as was all of the armor entries.

As for myself, I wore two previous cosplay outfits as I really didn't have time to make anything new --- Shego and Go Go Tomago. I neglected to take photos of GoGo's outfit, but I did run into another Shego while we were running around the convention. It was nice to see another Shego!

Sufficed to say, we had a BLAST at Emerald City. We got to hang out with our Pacific Northwest friends and family and seriously enjoyed ourselves.

We will be returning to ECCC. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to experience a large comic book convention without going to a mega-con like San Diego ComiCon.

Cosplaying Gogo Tomago

For Fanime 2015, I decided to do a last minute hall costume of Gogo Tomago from Big Hero 6, because she's a kick-ass character, who is super smart, athletic and tough-as-nails. In essence, she is wicked cool.

Her street outfit was pretty straight forward, and it was comfortable for running around the convention. It took me about a day to purchase all of the clothes & materials, then a few hours to make what needed to be made.

I went to my local thrift shop, clothing store, pharmacy, and Joanns for the "raw" materials. I also pulled stuff from my own closet, which helped cut down on some costs. The only thing I had to order online was the wig.

I love thrifting for costumes, because it usually means I have minimal modifications that need to be done, which means I can spend more time sewing other costumes.

Stuff I had to make:
For Gogo, the only thing I had to make from scratch were her bike reflector bands. I found purple waistband elastic (1.5 inches) and white fold over elastic (5/8 inches) that were slightly reflective. I sewed them together. They pretty much came out perfectly. Overall cost for both of these items: $5.00

 

From the Thrift Store:
Here's what I managed to thrift:

• Used black leather jacket from my local thrift store  - $8.00
• Black running shorts - $2.00

The black leather jacket wasn't a perfect match since hers is more of a half-jacket, but it would work in a pinch.

The black running shorts had to be modified slightly to add the red stripes down the side as well as the small "V". These shorts were popular in the 1980s, but good luck finding them now! I added red satin ribbon down the sides and made a "V" by seam ripping the bottom portion of the shorts then restitching.

From Kohls and my local costume shop:

I was going to have buy leggings and purple tights for Gogo's outfit and do some modifications.  I found cheap dark grey capri leggings from Kohl's and some opaque purple tights from Leg Avenue from my local costume shop.

In order to get her look, I put on both tights and leggings. My Viking carefully pinned the tights to the leggings while I was wearing them so that both were stretched appropriately. Afterwards, I cut off the feet of the purple tights and sewed them together around the bottom of the legs. Then it was a matter of adding "artistic" holes.

Overall cost for both of these items: $20.00

From my closet:

For the rest of the outfit, I had a few things, including her white tank top, shoes, and bicycle gloves (that you can probably buy at any bike shop or on Amazon.) And bonus, there's a "G" for Gogo. :-)

I love it when I can re-use stuff for cosplay!

For the Wig:

The wig was the biggest cost for the outfit. I found the right wig from Arda Wigs (Magnum short at $30.00). I also ordered some purple wefts that I sewed into the wig. Luckily, Arda wigs has some pretty good tutorials for wig modification.

The wig was the biggest expense for the outfit, plus, it took a few days to arrive. The hardest part of this costume was sewing the purple wefts into the wig so that they would look correctly when worn.

From the Pharamacy:

I also did have to purchase special makeup for Gogo, as she wears purple eye shadow and pink blush, which are not in my normal makeup kit. (Cost: $10.00). Also, there are some excellent makeup tutorials for Gogo on YouTube. I practiced putting on this makeup for a few days, wearing it to work.

And my absolute last purchase for the costume was the bubble gum. (Cost: $1.50)

Because, well, it's Gogo and you need the bubble gum!

Time to Woman UP!