Halloween

Welcome to GeekGetup's Halloween Special. I hope everyone enjoys all the Trick-or-Treating, candy, parties and costumes tonight. This week I have invited my wife to join me here on GeekGetup. Today we want to talk a bit about our Halloween experiences from this year and last.

Hi! I’m Kiersty. Like Jacob, I love costumes. So, where do we want to start?

How about we start with last year’s costumes.

Sounds good! Last year we went as Mara Jade and Luke Skywalker, from the Star Wars Expanded Universe, specifically from Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy. I’d cosplayed Mara Jade for WorldCon last year, but I did a different outfit this time.

Staff Tutorial

Welcome back to GeekGetup. This week I'll be going into more details on how to make a 6 foot staff that can separate into three pieces for easy transportation. I have made five of these that I will be using for my Mystogan cosplay for WorldCon.

Reference photo found here.

As I mentioned last week, transportation was one obstacle that I was trying to overcome. My wife and I are flying to Kansas for WorldCon and the idea of traveling with five 6 foot staffs seemed difficult. I needed to find a way to separate them into smaller pieces for easy transportation. As I was asking around for ideas, one person had mentioned using lamp posts that could screw together. One of the problems I saw with that was getting all the lamp posts I needed without spending too much money. I came up with the idea of using PVC pipe, and a wooden dowel. I used fifteen 1/2 inch x 2 feet pipes and one forty-eight inch length of 5/8 inch thick wooden dowel. I used the dowel to connect each pipe piece. Since I want the end results to look like wood, I got a Rust-oleum Painter's Touch khaki colored spray paint and Kilz Complete primer. I am sure that there are other brands out there that would work just as well. (I got my supplies at Home Depot, but they can also be found at the links above. You can check your favorite local hardware store, too, and shop around for the best price.)

Introduction

Welcome to GeekGetup. I am relatively new to Cons and Cosplay. When I first started looking online for cosplay tutorials, I found a lot of information, but nothing that suited my specific needs as a beginner.

Just because I am a beginner doesn't mean that I don't want to do advanced costumes. I've been looking for tutorials that will help me create what I want in a way that matches my skill level. Most of the things I found were intense videos that either had no simplified introduction or required a lot of previous knowledge that was not provided there or in any earlier post or video. Most of the props and cosplays I have planned have involved doing something that is new to me. I have had to ask for advice from friends on different aspects of costume designing. And even then, I have had to change around some of that information to work with my personal resources. Not everyone has a house of their own or even a garage in which to work. I live in an apartment and have had to do a lot of things outside. As I am starting out I may end up relying on other people's ideas and adapting them to my own needs. When I do so I will include my own experiences and personal changes that I use as I work on them and adaptations as well as the original source.