This mask was easily the toughest part of my male Witch Doctor costume. This was a totally new realm for me, I’d never done leather work before, and since it was made out of a solid piece of leather, with no cuts, it was simply formed over my face to get the proper shape. Continue reading
This is my last post on my series of how I made the female Witch Doctor Costume, and Mario is working on writing up his posts now so you should see them soon.
To find the perfect shades for our body paint, we went to San Francisco (which is just over an hour away) and, of course with our trusty iPhones out with the pictures loaded up, compared swatch after swatch of paint to what was in the picture. Mario’s turned out to be a mix of two grays: 501 and FF7. Mine was a red/brown called 046. It was easier to order these by calling Kryolan, because I couldn’t find one of the shades anywhere online. If you don’t have a store around you that allows you to swatch the colors for your body paint, then make sure to look online for pictures and videos of swatches that others have done, to see how the shade looks on different skin types, and how it photographs. Continue reading
The staff and dagger were really some of the easiest (but kind of time consuming) parts of the costume.
Honestly I thought I took more pictures, but again… I either didn’t, or I’ve lost them. Lame. Continue reading
The lady Witch Doctor has an awful lot of jewelry and accessories going on. She’s got several gold bracelets on each wrist, one on her left upper arm, two gold bands on her right leg, a bone and feather leg band on her left leg, two completely different sandals, two gold hoop earrings in each ear, and what we have been lovingly referring to as the ‘crotch skull’. Yes, it is that skull with feathers that is clipped to the …crotch part of the skirt. Oh, and she’s got really long nails, too, which I did not get any pictures of at all when I was wearing them. Lame. Continue reading
The mask really required a lot of planning and ingenuity to keep it light and secure on my head, while being under the wig so that you couldn’t see the strapping. We went with the inside of a construction helmet (the strappy bits) to keep it held on my head, and balsa wood for the mask and details on the mask. It was actually the most time consuming part of the entire costume. Continue reading
Alice Comstock as Witch Doctor from “Diablo 3”
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Mario Roy as Tier 8 Priest from “World of Warcraft”
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This post will cover the Witch Doctor’s neck rings, leather collar thing (is there a name for that? I dunno.), and necklaces. (Also, the picture above has a different mask than the one I made, I just used it because it has a close up on the necklaces.) Continue reading
After squinting at and studying the female witchdoctor concept art for a few weeks, I finally felt sure of what kind of fabric it was I was looking for. Mario and I made a trip out to our local JoAnns, and proceeded to wander around with our cellphones out and the picture up, holding up the picture to every reddish fabric we could find. We decided that it needed to be a good stretchy fabric that would fray and rip nicely, and it didn’t take us long to find it. We only got two yards because really, the costume doesn’t call for a lot of fabric. We also got leather lacing in the same color (lucky for us that it matched so well!), some beads that looked like they were similar to the one in the picture, and a button/claw thing that looked like a tooth that isn’t in the picture, but would help secure the skirt onto me so that I wouldn’t have to worry about anything falling off, since the leather lacing is kind of hard to tie (and would be bulky under the skirt anyway, and I didn’t trust a simple clasp to hold this heavy skirt up. Continue reading
When we first saw the picture I was going to base my witch doctor off of, I had no idea what the hair was supposed to be like. We didn’t know if it was dreads, just spikes, feathers, what. We finally decided that we would make the wig two toned: Purple on the top, spiked, and then with longer braids going down the back (pink, but covered with ribbon so it didn’t matter) with large beads on them.
I don’t have an awful lot of progress pictures for this wig, so I apologize, but there ya go. Continue reading
So, yes, we are a bit late to get our Blizzcon review up, but come on- we didn’t have a computer for the entire week we were out there, haha. Slightly our problem, we got rid of the laptop we had before due to problems to build a desktop, and had plans on getting at least a mini laptop before Blizzcon, but we got so busy we didn’t even think about it, and to be honest, we were too busy to blog anyway.
On October 22-23, Mario and I attended Blizzcon 2010 in Anaheim, California.
For the first day, we were both in full body paint, wearing huge masks and it was honestly hard to see much of the convention. We were up at four in the morning, painting each other, and had two other people helping us- my painting took the longest because I had white designs on my legs and stomach that needed to be painted in and then carefully painted around.
We got outside right around 9:30 and were bombarded with people taking our pictures. It was really hard to move much, and we need to walk around to find some friends, but it took a little bit of time, haha.
Really quickly we want to thank everybody who helped us throughout the weekend. Pocket was awesome with helping me with the designs on my legs, it would have been impossible to draw them myself, and the Deeters were amazing as well- they all helped us by carrying around tissues, getting us water, helping with costumes and costume fixes, making sure we ate, and helping me when I needed someone to hold my staff (it was really heavy, and hard to balance with my left arm). They also helped us immensely backstage, and helped to keep me calm when I was honestly about to just drop out of the contest due to nerves. Thank you all! It was also awesome meeting all of the other cosplayers there, Jenny, Leslie, Jen, Christina, and anybody else whose name I have forgotten (I’m really sorry, terrible at names!).
Right before the opening ceremonies, we were asked by a Blizzard employee to come upstairs for some photos and a photoshoot, which was pretty awesome. We haven’t seen the pictures from it yet, though, but neither have our friends who were interviewed as well.
For the opening ceremonies, we were actually backstage, watching the screen, because Mario needed to fix his wig really quickly, and then right when we walked back out we were asked by Direct TV to be interviewed about our views for the opening ceremony, which hadn’t even ended yet, haha.
We weren’t too impressed with it, to be honest. Last year, there seemed to be a ton more excitement, and a ton more announcements. There were all the excitement about Cataclysm, about being able to fly in old world, about all the new guild stuff that’s going on. This year, it seemed like it was just ‘Hey, happy to be here, we’re awesome’ and then the (awesome, yes) ‘Geek is’ presentation by Chris Metzen.
http://www.youtube.com/v/Z_uAbmka5Ko?fs=1&hl=en_US
The last Diablo 3 class was also announced, the Demon Hunter. It looks like a fun, ranged class to play (though I’ll be playing around with every class until I find the one I love) and the costume looks pretty fun too, though I doubt I’d be making it since they had a model walking around wearing it, and they’ll probably be walking around wearing it in upcoming Blizzcons as well.
The rest of the day was honestly a blur to me, we were running around a lot and went back to the hotel room several times to fix wigs/masks/eat something. Before we knew it, it was 4:00 and we needed to head to backstage for the costume contest.
I feel like it was more organized that I heard it was in past years, though it was my first year entering so I really don’t know. They did have seats for people to sit in, and bottles of water for everyone, which was nice.
I was so, so very nervous going into the contest. I was nauseous while standing in line, and it all felt very rushed to me. I did feel like they didn’t spend much time judging costumes, they walked around with a clipboard and asked us our number for the contest, and then silently looked at us and moved on. I think it would have been nice if they at least asked a few questions about the costumes first.
However, I did get to the top five! I’m pretty excited about that, and the girl who won first place (Christina) did an absolutely phenomenal job, she hand tooled all of her leather on her costume herself, and the details were amazing. For those of you who haven’t seen her:
Simply gorgeous.
It was pretty exciting, because apparently after I was pulled away to get in line to go on stage again for top five, Mario was approached by one of the guys who worked on the Diablo 3 concept art for the Witch Doctors, and he thanked us for doing such an awesome job on the costumes. Woot!
We didn’t attend any panels or go to any booths on the first day, and barely made it past the first 20 feet of the convention center.
On the second day, we dressed as Kalecgos and Tyrigosa:
I was pretty happy because I got to get a manicure in the hotel spa that morning! My nails were torn up from wearing the long fake nails the day before, and definitely needed it.
We actually didn’t do much second day, we wandered and checked out some booths, got some stuff from the Blizzard store, and got our picture taken on the Frozen Throne.
What could be more awesome than that, you ask? Well…
Mario proposed on the Frozen Throne! (of course I said yes!) Best. Geeky. Proposal. Ever. I mean, not just for the Frozen Throne, but add that in with it being AT Blizzcon (where we first met, by the way) and us being in costume as Kalecgos as Tyrigosa, who are betrothed in the lore.
Oh, and because I’m proud of my boots (even though I didn’t wear them for longer than a few hours, I forgot to wrap my feet) here’s a quick picture of those:
Woot. I ended up keeping on the leg pieces and putting on tennis shoes… Tyri’s going to the gym! Just remember, people, if your shoes or boots aren’t completely tight/rub when you walk on your feet, then wrap them/get something to cover the rub points. Because it hurts.
We found the photobooth, but we were pretty upset that we didn’t see it on the first day. Boo.
So then we all met up with our friends, and sat and waited for Tenacious D.
The first few songs were pretty awesome, but to be honest, we weren’t too impressed. It seemed more of a show than a concert, I guess, and though they were entertaining, they just didn’t seem to please the crowd quite as much as Ozzy did last year. Last year, every person was on their feet, cheering, singing along, and this year… it was only maybe 1/3 of the people who stood up, there wasn’t much cheering and screaming, or singing along. While it was amusing, it just doesn’t hold the same amount of interest for us as last year, and we ended up walking around and going to some booths we weren’t able to before because of the lines.
It was amusing that they had the Lich King fight the Metal, and then they became friends. That was pretty awesome.
So, I guess that’s it for our roundup about Blizzcon. This was pretty much from a cosplayer’s point of view, and so that’s why I didn’t cover the panels or many announcements. Next up, a review on the official, unofficial Blizzcon after party, and a quick review of the Hilton.
Arms, Armor and Awesome 