I love you, ono. Diamond ring, cha cha.

Over the weekend I was at Metrocon in downtown tampa. As per usual there was a theme to the convention and many people dressed up including Erica and Mike.
Last year Mike went to the con dressed as the merchant from Resident Evil 4.
A very difficult costume to make that weighed alot and had alot of detail to it (including all the various fake jewels, fake ammo boxes, fake healing sprays, guns, and other things the in-game merchant carried in his cloak, all of which had to be built, painted, and bought).

From Ye Oldde Blogge

This year's metrocon was very different. Apparently the theme was Steampunk. Of course this meant alot of people in very Victorian outfits with lots of gadgets and robotics attached to them. Some were very simple (oh hey i'm in a vest with goggles lookit me!!!) and some were extremely complex including one girl who had a GIANT ROBOT HAND that functioned. Her friend ate my pizza crusts for some reason.

Mike dressed as the Spy from Team Fortress 2. It took several days but a few good photos of him finally cropped up onto the internet.

Raphael was there with a camera but he spent all his time photographing all the worst costumes he could find. He failed us greatly.

So, all the pictures I have on this blog (besides the painting) are images I stole off of cosplay.com, myspace, flickr, photobucket, and other various places people dumped their image cache.
I take no credit for these images but oh noone reads this blog hardly anyway except a small smattering of people in other states. SUE ME.

Here's some pictures of Mike as the Spy:





Not the best pictures, but still pretty good.
We made quite a few masks for the costume. All from various anime and videogames.
There was also a pyro, two scouts, an engineer, and a sniper there. Sadly none of them ever got together for a group shot.


There was also a really cool professional photographer there (with one of those uber-fancy black and white canon cameras that national geographic peeps use). His name was Ricardo Sevilla and he was a nice chap.
These are pictures he took of Mike in costume.
His website is Here.








During the con one of the people in steampunk costumes was a tall lanky chap with a crazy face and crazy goggles. But most interesting were his crazy leg extensions and stilts he had on his crazy hands which he used to gallop crazily about. Nice guy he and me and mike got to talk to him a few times over the course of the convention.
I never caught his name so I shall call him Stilty McGee
This is him:



Little did we know this guy was actually a madman musician whom he and his friend built two teslacoils in their garage and somehow made them produce music.
What followed shortly was a rave late at night featuring the teslacoils playing famous techno songs by exploding violent bolts of lightning at each other.
Noone has been able to take a decent pic or video of the phenomenal sight. As the music continued, Stilty McGee appeared, and his insane height-defying costume was covered in crazy glowing tubes of light.

I did a quick speed painting to try to capture all the ruckus that was going down at this rave.




Either way it was a pretty great con.



Pros of Metrocon:

1.) the videogame room had smuggled in a copy of Tatsunoko vs Capcom for the wii which was a freaking great fighting game.

2.) GREAT steampunk costumes everywhere.

3.) a delicious fruit smoothie stand at the con that I bought several cups of god from.

4.) free drinks at the hotel bar.

5.) Abney Park, and the Singing Teslacoils at the rave.

6.) cleavage everywhere

7.) bought an original dark crystal poster and a copy of Paprika by Satoshi Kon

8.) got some free Atomic Robo comics. its a really fun comic series all should read.

9.) some really good artists at the artist panel. also some HILARIOUSLY bad ones including some guy who had some blue chick with giant shameless basketball sized boobs on a banner. it was so desperate i chortled each time i saw it.

10.) one of the artists left a drawing of Heifer the Cow at their desk that said "Gone to Chokey Chicken. Out 2 Lunch." I wish I'd stolen it, honestly. It was so cute.

11.) really good obscure costumes. a girl dressed as the shamwow guy. a girl dressed as terry mcguiness from batman beyond. later on she dressed as spock. a girl dressed as a character from Persona 4. I dont think most people knew she was in costume.

12.) there was a guy there wearing a Doctor Steel t-shirt which warmed the cockles of my heart.


Cons of the Con:

1.) for whatever reason the con seems to have embraced the sick community of sexual outcasts known as furries and let them have 3 whole rooms to themselves. many people unfamiliar with them wanted to have their photos taken with these people and their jizz-encrusted animal sports mascot costumes. including small unaware children. i cringed each fucking time.

2.) i hate cover charge. i hate bars with a cover charge. i hate rooms with a cover charge. a cover charge seems like a desperate "we might suck but just in case we'll take your money anyway" thing. which is usually the case. and was here. hence 3

3.) maybe my memory is faulty but i recall the last couple of cons having more rooms devoted to card games and role playing and fun. this year most of the rooms seemed to be about how to do easy-as-pie internet shit. like "how to make an internet blog" and "how to make a webcomic" and "how to breathe with your nose"

4.) there were a couple of douchebags dressed as ganondorf and zelda. and holy christ i wouldnt think people could be arrogant about something like dressing up like a freaking videogame character, but boy did they prove otherwise. this goes double toward the stupid dumb newfag scum dressed as "Anonymous" And triple to the 198 billion people dressed as kingdom hearts characters. and quadruple to the girl who jumped in front of me to sing some horrid song and hand me a business card with a link to her bloody youtube page. sheesh!


Despite all that it was very fun. Just way too expensive overall. Probably wont do it again any time soon.
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In other news me, mike, and raphael all saw Transformers 2 tonight.

The good was that it featured more John Tuturro, Starscream and Megatron getting the most screen time, and Optimus Prime becoming a fucking Gundam by the end. And Jetfire as a crazy scottish old robot. Soundwave scary as hell and lots of gross tiny robots who were badass and wildly inventive.

The bad is that it had two jar-jar-binks-esque twin robots and the decepticons got their asses completely kicked with little to no trouble. on top of that, Devastator who seemed so huge and foreboding in the trailer spends his 5 minutes of fame trying to grapple his shiny metal ass up a pyramid and failing at it miserably.

Also megatron and starscream get away at the end so I assume a 3rd one will have to get made now.
whoop dee doo.
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And speaking of movies based on toys and games since hollywood is creatively bankrupt.

I decided to redo an old fake movie poster for a fake (but very possible in this day and age) movie.

anyone who's seen alot of modern day b-movies should get a kick out of this little thing.

thats lance henriksen and danny trejo, for those wondering. in retrospect i should have put the logo for "the asylum" on there as well. they're the ones pumping out the most shitacular b-movies these days.