My First Con, and My First Cosplay

Over the weekend, MrsGryphon and I attended SiouxperCon, our very first con, where we debuted our BioShock Big Daddy and Little Sister costumes.

MrGryphon as a Big Daddy
MrGryphon as a Big Daddy
MrsGryphon as a Little Sister
MrsGryphon as a Little Sister

For years, I harbored the secret dream of becoming a Disney Imagineer when I grew up. Through my teen years, I played with stop-action animation, robotics, and made the occasional foray into making costumes. Then, I started growing up and a lot of these things fell by the wayside.

I made a few costumes over the years, but I’d accepted that I would never be an Imagineer. Then I met MrsGryphon, and she rekindled that spark in me. We made a few costumes for Halloween and Renaissance Faires, and I started getting excited about those dreams again. Did I need to be an Imagineer to make cool props and animatronics? Actually, no…

When we found out about SiouxperCon, a local convention, we decided it was time to try cosplay. Then we worked for months putting together our cosplay.

I had a blast!

Making the costume was rewarding in itself. I knew how to glue things together and cut PVC, but I’d never worked with EVA foam (which has a learning curve), but learning to cut it, shape it, and make complex shapes from the flat sheets was incredible.

The hours spent making patterns for the costume, puzzling out how to get the desired shapes out of foam, and figuring out how to re-purpose cardboard tubes and plumbing fixtures into fake pressure tanks and rivet guns took a long time, and there was a point where I hated my costume.

I spent hours with paint, sanding, glue, and more paint trying to make it look as good as I could, and all I could see was what was wrong with the costume. I’m starting to get over that as I see pictures, but I know I don’t see it the same way other people do. Other people see what appear to be ragged claw scratches in metal, but I see some marks I carved in with a rotary tool to disguise a chunk of the costume that was dented in and I couldn’t reshape.

Despite the hate, though, I loved my costume. Me and the costume had a battle of wills. It wanted to be cobbled together crap, but I wanted it to be cobbled together NOT crap. I think that paid off. Only being able to see what was wrong gave me the focus to improve the costume and take it from Okay to Pretty Good Amazing.

Of course, after all that, I still had the Con. The Big Daddy was heavy, hot, awkward to move in, and almost impossible to see out of, even with the camera I put inside, and it was fantastic to wear. Hearing the gasps and “Wow!”s as people saw me, seeing their excited faces on the 4” LCD screen mounted inside my costume, and feeling people rap on the painted foam (Did they think I wouldn’t notice?) because they thought it was real metal.

I still don’t know what other people see when they look at the costume, but I think I have an idea – I saw a reflection of it in people’s faces, and I’m hooked!

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MrGryphon

Jake (a.k.a. Mr. Gryphon) is the mystical Golden Gryphon an Alpha Geek who enjoys building and destroying things. He's also an author of supernatural fiction and a fan of the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Visit his author website here: http://jacobcox.us/

Comments

  1. Thanks for posting your story. Keep up the good work! I was the Rocket Man at Siouxpercon. Hope to see you at Siouxland Renaissance Festival on June 11,12. Wear your garb! Look for Leatherhelms tent. You guys will have a 10% discount on anything in stock.

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