A Geek Girl's Castle: New York Comic Con Cosplay!

I got to see some awesome cosplay this weekend at New York Comic Con. There's always tons of cosplayers these days. Some are more store-bought costumes and nothing more. Some are a mix of handmade and store-bought and then there are the cosplayers who take months and months to build or make their costumes from mostly scratch or pieces of raw materials. I opt usually for the inbetween kind, where most of my costume is store-bought or in pieces from stores and then revamp them to suit my style, my take on the character or to make the costume fit better for my body type.

First up, we'll start with mine. I was Silk Spectre from Watchmen (the daughter) for Saturday. I had a store-bought costume and revamped it. It is meant for a 5' 10" Amazonian woman honestly. So being petite I knew I had to shorten the costume a bit on my own.

I ended up ripping out the waist seam, cutting off about an inch or two from that, then resewing it back on. I learned a lot about costuming or clothing in general-- like how costumes use stretchy thread instead of regular sewing thread (or quilting thread) so there's more give when you have to put on or take off clothing multiple times, they of course use a serger to strengthen the seams which I do not own, and matching up patterned seams/colored pieces of your costume is harder then it looks. None of this is shocking to me mind you, as I have been quilting since I was in middle school. But it definitely made me look at costuming and clothes-making under a microscope more.

I also looked at the crotch area to see if I could then revamp that into snaps so that I could use the restroom more easily. In this particular costume, the outfit is much like a scuba suit, where it's one piece of clothing and you only have the zipper in front to let yourself in or out of it. So using the restroom could get very R-rated if you weren't careful of those gaps in bathroom stall doors. I should have of course, done these snaps before I chopped the waist apart, because now the outfit was probably a half inch too short. But I did it anyway and again, learned the value of snaps and realized too late that maybe I should have gone for the sew-on snaps instead of the metal ones. Reason? Because the metal ones, needed to be hammered on and if not done right, the prongs don't all make it into the snap to hold it in place properly. And case in point, the morning I put it on to go to the con, two of those snaps managed to come off- resulting in an emergency fix before I left the house. I'm only glad they fell off while still at home or I'd be an R-rated Silk Spectre at the con. Yeesh.

I managed to get some real thigh high pieces that were meant to be held with stirrups, at Hot Topic. The ones that came in the costume pack were the cheap shiny pleather that looks cheap. I then just used whatever most comfortable flat black leather boots I had on hand. I'm not a stickler for exactness, clearly. I do take practical measures of comfort whenever possible. Especially when it comes to footwear at a convention hall.

But in the end the costume worked really well.

Then Sunday, I went with a more kid-friendly costume as a slightly updated Indiana Jones. Sunday is kid's day at the con so I thought this might be a little more appropriate.

I had bought an official Indiana Jones hat at Disney World at one of my many visits this year, finally finding a small size that fit me properly. I had bought a white button down for my headshots anyway, so figured I would use for this purpose too. Had khakis on hand, who doesn't? I went with practical sneakers that day as walking in those boots above, despite much padding in them, hurt like hell by days end. So I let my feet go easy this day. And I went with a steel grey biker jacket as a modern take. Found a cheap cosplay whip at Hot Topic for about five bucks that worked easily too. I chose to not get a gun even if it's fake and bright orange tip because it's NYC and I don't need that kind of trouble. The whip and hat make the outfit plenty.

Now onto the other awesome cosplay I took note of during the four days I was there. There were plenty more that were just as awesome but sometimes I just didn't want to break the flow of traffic for a picture or just couldn't mentally handle the crowds to stop people every five minutes to take photos. So this is just a small sampling of what I saw this weekend, in no particular order.