Phoenix Comicon is Arizona's largest Pop-Culture event with a final count for 2014 of over 77,000 attendees. My family has enjoyed attending for a few years now and with our recent interest in cosplay, we decided to do Phoenix Comicon 2014 in full nerd style and go in costume. I myself recently started building my own costumes and props, so I wanted to display my chops in a very public way and thought this would be a great way to start with a bang!

Planning for this affair started for me back in late December/early January with deciding what characters we wanted to play. The original idea was for my wife Andi, my daughter Tristan, and myself to pick out one costume to work on and be done in time for the ‘con in early June. My wife couldn't decide at first, but my daughter and I had big dreams. Tristan had two characters she was very interested in playing, Alessa Gillespie from the Silent Hill movies and games and the Little Sister from the Bioshock games. Looking at the character design for Alessa, it seemed pretty simple as the clothes and makeup looked reasonable easy. The Little Sister seemed a bit more in depth, but still very do-able, and her prop, an ADAM syringe looked like a really cool and easy to do prop. I was very much sold on the latter of the two, since it would allow me to build a prop I had seen done many times and wanted to put my own twist on. But, Tristan couldn't decide. We eventually decided, heck, lets do both!

I myself had been wanting to play a character that had not really been done that much in costume but was still fairly known, Android 16 from the Dragon Ball Z anime. I had already been thinking up ways to do his armor in a way I hadn't seen done before by the few others who have tackled it, and I also felt that the character closely fit my size and hairstyle (no wig!! Bonus!). But I thought, how can Android 16 show up solo? So I talked the kiddo into being my partner for a DBZ day and also doing an Android 18 costume.

In February, once we had the ideas pretty much locked in, we started sourcing the clothes for her costumes. Android 18 and Alessa were easily pieced together in a day at our local Goodwill store and a stop at Old Navy. Goodwill took some searching, but we managed to find just the pieces we needed to complete Android 18 in one stop. I got some input from a wonderful local cosplayer on how to make the large patch for the back of 18's vest since we couldn't find one big enough online. The patch turned out so nice, I actually sold an extra one I made to an Australian cosplayer!

On Alessa we were stumped. So on a whim, we hit Old Navy, grabbed a sales associate by the name of Rachael and showed her what we wanted to do for Alessa. She was taken aback for a moment, then dove right in setting us up with a number of dresses and tops. We walked out an hour or so later with exactly what we needed. Thanks Rachael!

The Little Sister was a bit harder. We looked at a number of off the rack dresses that sort of worked, but nothing really looked perfect, so we took to the internet. We ended up finding a cosplay shop that made custom fit dresses for a reasonable price. Now by reasonable, we're not talking prices you would pay for an off the rack dress at a department store. This was a quality dress, well above what you would find at the Halloween stores that open here annually. For just under $100 we got a dress that was made to fit my daughter, theoretically, and was made based on the actual game character. I made a mental note to myself then, “Dude, you need to learn to sew, you would make a killing.” We ordered the dress and wigs online in February, which was a good idea because we found that most of the online costume makers have about a 6 week turnaround time on most items.

In early March, my wife had finally landed on a character she was really stoked about: Marceline the Vampire Queen from Adventure Time, and I was elated! We love the show, the costume seemed relatively easy, and I got to do another really cool prop, Marceline's Axe bass! The bass was constructed out of foam insulation boards we found at the local hardware store. The shape was really easy to cut out and assemble. The longest part of the project was finishing, such as sanding and prepping for paint. I was able to knock out the guitar over a couple weekends and the wife was really pleased. We went large scale, since many we had seen done by other cosplayers were relatively small. This ended up looking awesome, but was a pain to handle at the convention. More on that later.

We ordered a long black wig, vampire bite temporary tattoos, and makeup online. The wife got to go shopping for the right tank top and pants, and she already had the red boots, so Marceline was pretty much done. It was time I got to work on the ADAM syringe.

Most of the parts needed for the syringe were easily obtained from the hardware store: PVC pipe and fittings, wooden dowel and some clear tubing. Electronics were picked up at Radio Shack for relatively cheap. The main part, a gas pump handle, I had to order online, but arrived in short order. The syringe itself, once I had all the necessary parts, took about 2 days to construct, and to this day is one of my most prized pieces. With the lit ADAM chamber, the prop really looks great in dark lighting. Since I had other commissioned prop work going, I was able to get this prop done by mid-April. Little Sister was done as far as I could get it since we were waiting on the dress.

At this point in the project, though, I was starting to feel the crunch. I was into May and I still had all of my Android 16 armor to make, and I'd never done a full set of armor made to fit. I had done a previous costume made from EVA foam matting, but it was made to be large and most of it fit over a vest and attached to stilts. How was I going to make armor to fit me, when I couldn’t really work on myself? Once again, I turned to a cosplayers number one resource, other cosplayers. I was turned on to a video on YouTube by The Heroes Workshop on how to make a mannequin to your own body proportions with duct tape, stuffing and PVC. So, back to the hardware store where I picked up rolls of duct tape and the PVC piping to make a rigid skeleton for the mannequin. I looked at cotton batting for the stuffing at craft stores and fabric stores, but it was a bit on the expensive side. But the wife had an idea; she had seen pillows on sale at Walmart for half the cost of the stuffing. We then spent a weekend wrapping my body in two to three layers of duct tape, cutting it off, putting it on the PVC frame, and stuffing it. A quick tip here; if you do this project, make sure you have medical style scissors! Regular scissors just chop you up, so ended up spending about thirty minutes stuck in duct tape while Andi ran to the store for the proper shears. I ended up with a pot-bellied mannequin of my exact size and build. On to the armor!

Now, a lot of cosplayers build armor out of EVA foam mats, and many of the armor sets can be found online in a format made to work with papakura programs. You just find the armor pattern, load it into a papakura program like Tama's Papakura Designer. You then set your printer to the specs and you print the armor out of card stock to make templates to use on your material, or build right out of the card stock, then resin and fiberglass and finish. Easy peasy. However, I couldn't find one file online for Android 16. I contacted a number of builders who had done spectacular Halo Spartan armor and Iron Man armors of every model (and some that were mashups), but no one had seen one for my character. Most of the cosplayers I'd seen do Android 16 made their armors out of cloth, but that wasn’t the look I wanted. Using plastic wrap and masking tape, I made my own patterns. In the end, Android 16 took about a month's worth of weekends to cut, paint, and detail.

During the middle of May as I was working on Android 16, the Little Sister dress arrived, and somewhen in there I decided to partner up a costume to go with Tristan’s Little Sister. Another stop at the Goodwill and pulling a venetian masquerade mask I had in my costume trunk later, and I had the makings for a Bioshock Splicer. Tristan and I spent a few days distressing the clothes with sandpaper and a cheese grater, then spattered everything with stage blood and tissue. Applying some of the blood with tissue, we found out by happy accident, gave a really gory, fleshy effect. We ended up putting the final touches on all of the costumes 2 weeks before ‘con, giving us one final weekend to rest and prepare for the even itself.

The event!

Finally the weekend of Phoenix Comicon 2014 was upon us. As I said previously, we had been planning this affair since the beginning of the year. With the number of costumes and props we were taking, and knowing we would be attending three of the four days, we did what ended up being one of the best things we could: we reserved a hotel room. This ended up being our saving grace. We got up early and loaded the car, making sure to go over our checklists for each costume to ensure every wig, prop, makeup sponge and bottle of blood made it with us. We arrived at the hotel and were fortunate to get early check in. We showered, got dressed and did makeup in fairly good time. I was unable to get my mohawk to do what I wanted to do after a few attempts, so rather than get frustrated, I opted to skip the hair. No sense in making something that is supposed to be fun into a grouch session. Once we were ready, we hopped in the car and headed for the ‘con!

Now, if you've ever spent a day at an amusement park or a convention, you know that the one thing you will do the most of is walking. We probably logged 20 miles over the course of the weekend. One recommendation I would like to make right here is, if you can absolutely help it, bring comfortable shoes. IF you can incorporate comfy shoes into your cosplay, all the better. But if you are going to suffer for your fashion, at least bring backup shoes. Friday's costume line up was myself and my kiddo as Androids 16 and 18 and the wife as Marceline. I clumped around in rubber boots just a wee bit too big for me, the wife wore her red Doc Martins and Tristan in high heeled knee high boots. The girls made it about three or four hours in their shoes before they had to run back to the hotel to get comfy shoes, and even then, they had flip flops. Not the best choice for worn out feet it turns out, since they were still beat on Saturday. I managed to make it all day in my boots, but was very sore footed at the end of the day, and barely limped the four blocks to our car. But even with the sore feet, we had a blast Friday.

As a pair from the same show, Tristan and I were stopped every few minutes for photos with DBZ fans. I was the only Android 16 at the ‘con, and Tristan was only one of three 18s to make an appearance. Tristan had seen some of Dragon Ball Z and I had given her plenty of photos and videos of her character to work on poses for photos and the kid had her surly look down to a T. I think the only photos we have of Android 18 smiling is when we got our pictures taken with John Barrowman of Torchwood/Arrow and when we ran into superstar cosplayer Jessica Nigri.

For some reason, Andi's Marceline costume just didn’t get that much attention, which bummed us both out. We had both worked hard to put the costume together and build the guitar, but she was only stopped for a couple photos. We saw a few Marcelines by the end of the convention, and I think ours was the best. There weren't as many younger kids there Friday, so I thought maybe it was more an audience issue. Needless to say, between the shoes and the prop, Andi was ready to get out of costume by lunchtime. Ah yes, I must also mention Marceline's Axe Bass. The prop looked great, but it was unwieldy. The prop stands about 5 feet tall, is just under 3 feet at its widest, but only weighs about four pounds at most. I put an actual guitar strap on it, hoping this would make it easier for the wife to carry. Carrying was not the problem though, it was managing it through the 77,000 plus attendees.

Friday also marked our one major hiccup with any of the costumes. Between the heat of the day and the movement of walking the exhibition hall, one of my straps came loose from the armor. The hot glue failed completely. I was pretty crushed. My first day at con, in my first real cosplay and I had a wardrobe malfunction. I wasn't ready to go back to the hotel and change, but didn't know what else to do. But then I remembered something that someone had mentioned in a Comicon group: The Cosplay Lounge and Medic Station.

Set back in a hall, off the main floor and available to costumed ‘con-goers only, there was a room set aside for people to escape the requests for photos every five minutes, rest and cool off, and most importantly at that moment, to repair your costumes!! We found the room to be very quiet, cool and comfortable, and stocked with bobby pins, safety pins, and a glue gun hot and ready to go. Thirty minutes in the lounge and Android 16 was ready again to get back in the game! Fortunately, the rest of Friday went off without any other issues.

Saturday was surprisingly our rock star day in our Bioshock costumes. We had our photo ops with Nathan Fillion and The King, Bruce Campbell, first thing. What an excellent couple of guys! Nathan Fillion's op was fairly rushed, but he shook our hands, said hi and lined us up for the shot. “Uncle Bruce” as he referred to himself, was a class act. I got a hearty handshake, the wife a warm hello and he called my daughter “Darlin” as he lined us up for a “nice family photo”.

Early on in the day, Tristan had a lot of attention with her costume and carrying the lit ADAM syringe. We had a number of folks stop us for photos and we even ran into a very nice female Splicer to get some shots with. Then, later on in the afternoon, we heard there was a Big Daddy somewhere in the exhibition hall. We finally tracked him down, and found our Splicer friend from earlier and another Little Sister with him. They ended up being really nice people as well as talented cosplayers and makers. For the rest of the afternoon, the group of us were fairly constantly surrounded by fans and photographers wanting pictures with and of our group. We were attempting to get the Big Daddy closer to the doors for an easy exit when closing time came, and it ended up taking us what would have been a ten minute walk over an hour to get to. But it was awesome! We met local photographer Larry Alan, as well as other photographers and fans, and had a wonderful time. We got back to the hotel exhausted, but feeling like we just walked off the red carpet at the Oscars.

Since the wife had to work Sunday, it was just the kiddo and I. We had originally planned on Tristan wearing her Alessa, but with the success of our Bioshock costumes, we went to bed Saturday wanting to wear them again for our last day. We woke up Sunday so sore, it just wasn't happening. We also decided that we wanted a day, just to ourselves, not worrying about photo ops, and maybe catching some photos of our own with the excellent cosplays we had been seeing all weekend. So we spent the day walking, shopping, and admiring the craftsmanship of our fellow cosplayers.

All in all, it was an excellent experience. OK, I'll be honest: I could do this just about every day. I imagine cosplaying at conventions must feel like the people who get to dress up as Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. I definitely learned a few things from the experience, and got to chat with a lot of other cosplayers, prop builders and makers. As someone trying to break into the prop making business, it was a great networking experience. As a Dad of a young cosplayer, it was beyond magical. Seeing my kid having so much fun, even when she was wearing a deadly android's scowl, made all the time and money spent and aches and pains of walking for three days more than worth it.

Next time, I'll be sharing some detailed tips on attending conventions for first timers. I'll also talk about cosplaying conventions, not only from the point of view from cosplayers, but also from non-costumed folks as far as dos and don'ts, and later I'll be sharing ideas on building your own costumes and props.