This weekend, Mario and I had a photoshoot for our costumes for Blizzcon, mostly because I wanted to put together business cards for the convention, but more importantly because we needed to do a trial run. It’s always important to put on everything for your costume, including body paint, tattoos, makeup, wig, whatever is going to be in the final product, at least a few weeks before the convention that you’re going to. That way, if it’s an elaborate costume with lots of pieces, you’ll know how long it’ll take you to get ready, and even if it’s not, it’s good to practice walking around, being in character, posing, and seeing how the costume moves. Then if you’re going to run into any malfunctions with the costume, it will happen in your trial run, instead of while you’re at the convention or on stage for a masquerade, and you’ll have plenty of time to fix it.

Today, we found out that we need to figure out how I need to wear my hair under the wig cap, because it effects how my mask sits on my head in a huge way. My mask is mounted onto the insides of a construction helmet (so the plastic round part without the helmet) and is kind of heavy, so I have to make sure it sits just right, and securely as well. I also have to make sure a wig sits nice and tight on top of that. We also figured out that Mario’s body paint is too flat, mine is okay because I have designs painted onto my body, but his is one solid color. Definitely good to know because now we know to contour and maybe add some tribal tattoos to his body to make it look less flat on the day of the con.

All together, it took us about two hours to get both of us just painted. The day of Blizzcon, it’ll take us a bit longer, maybe an hour or so more, because we didn’t focus much on painting our backs- we did one coat, but didn’t make it look as even as we did with the front part of our bodies. We weren’t having pictures taken from the back today, so we weren’t worried about it.

So, let’s review. Things you should do when your costume is completed before a convention are:

Time how long it takes to put on entire costume, from pants to makeup.

Practice poses, and spend a few hours in costume to see how it flows.

Make notes of any problems, or problem areas that you might be worried about- if you don’t have time to reinforce them, make sure to take emergency supplies.

Speaking of emergency supplies, here’s a list of what we’re going to be taking in our ‘costume emergency bag’ for Blizzcon:

Safety pins

Hot glue gun

Extra feathers

Sharpie (to fill in any spots on black parts of our costume, like my horns)

Hollywood fashion tape

Bobbypins

Fray stop

Liquid stitch

Needle and multiple spools of thread

Clear nail polish (for rips in stockings)

Tide stain pen

Got2B glued spray- all of our wigs had this used for styling, and in case a curl falls out, or my spikes aren’t quite spiky enough, I’d want this on hand.

Curlers- again, in case a curl falls out. Easy to fix with the glued spray and a curler.

All the paints we used for the costume- in case one of us accidentally touches a painted part of the costume while our hands are still wet with body paint, this happened a few times today and it wasn’t pretty, haha.

Lots of extra paint brushes

Ziploc bag full of extra beads for my costume (I’ve had one of the strings break on me before, don’t want to risk the strands catching on something and ruining the costume)

This list is probably unfinished, I know last year Mario took pretty much everything he had used to make the costume just in case something broke so he could fix it quickly. I have several other lists (can you tell I like lists? haha) of each item we’re taking for the costumes, since each one has so many small pieces and mine has a lot of jewelry, and a list for all the makeup we need to take. I might do a post later on doing makeup for cosplay- even if you’re a boy, it’s a good idea to wear foundation to at least even out your skintone for pictures.

Anyway, we had a fantastic time with our photoshoot today- sorry, no pictures though. I might post a few of Kalecgos and Tyrigosa once I get them in, but we really feel that the Witchdoctors are something that people should wait and see day of Blizzcon :) I promise, though, if you aren’t able to make it to Blizzcon, I’ll be posting a few pictures the day of so that everyone can see the awesomeness that is the witchdoctors!