Oh man, oh man, oh man! The Maker Faire is upon us very soon and we have every reason to latch on like a fly to his favorite flourescent. Infos have been peeping out the Interpipes for at least a few days now and we’re getting a better grasp of what to expect. In fact, a schedule has been whipped up courtesy the Maker site that will tickle your geek fancy:

[via Makerfaire.com]

Boiler Bar Stage
Jon Sarriugarte’s Boiler Bar Theater Presents
Craft Demos
• Soft Circuit Embroidery • How to Make Your Own Shoes…the Easy Way! • Make Your Own Free Range Mini-Monsters • Finger Puppets Who Wish To Not Die • Making Jewelry • Felt Faux Fruit • Create Ribbon Straw Flowers on Vintage Flower Looms • The DIY Bride: Quick & Easy Wedding Projects for Any Budget • Fashioning Technology: DIY Style • Pops! Icy Treats for Everyone • Guerilla Pattern Drafting • Create Your Own Photo Flip Book • Photojojo DIY Photo Blocks
Festival Stage
• EepyBird
Lion Brand Booth
• Lion Brand Yarn Unique Activities

Click through to see more!

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Well, today is an exciting day for Batman fans around the world. Lots of new promotional pictures and posters have been released for the upcoming “The Dark Knight” movie. Here at MyDisguises, we are salivating at all the costume goodness.

This movie keeps looking better and better!

Also, keep your eyes on this website - a new Dark Knight trailer will be released this Sunday.

In closing, I’d like to pay tribute to the 1960’s Batman TV show and the infamous “Batusi” dance. The Dark Knight sure has come a long way, hasn’t he?

Why so serious? Indeed.

ZION, ILLINOIS – A group of students at Zion-Benton Township High School landed in hot water when they pulled a costume prank that disrupted classes. Ten seniors dressed as large bananas ran wildly through the school as they were chased by another student wearing a gorilla costume.

Hah, great costumes! Sounds like an innocent prank, right? But the school administration didn’t think so, and the students found themselves suspended for seven days. That seems too harsh to me, especially when, according to the New-Sun, Zion students recently caught fighting only received a five-day suspension.

Many students planned protests in support of the “Banana Boys,” but the pranksters asked everyone to “relax” and stand down, fearing they might get banned from attending prom and the graduation ceremony.

Well done, Banana Boys, and congratulations on surviving high school. We all know it’s a jungle out there.

Duct tape has so many uses, and can solve all sorts of problems. So should we be surprised that it’s also great for making costumes?

Take a look at Kimberly Timmons and Christian Price as they attend their high school prom. Wow! Using over 50 rolls of blue and silver tape, they created costumes that rival the elegant dress of Cinderella and Prince Charming.

Kimberly entered a contest sponsored by the Duck brand duct tape company, hoping to win the $3,000 prize. According to GTR News, her dress weighed a hefty 25 pounds. Let’s hope she wins.

Looks fun, but is it painful to take off? Fortunately for Kimberly, she planned ahead. By sticking two pieces of duct tape together, she was able to don the dress without having it stick to her skin.

Apparently, duct tape costumes are immensely popular these days. Many duct tape companies and organizations sponsor these artistic contests. Check out more great pictures from ducttapeclub.com and ducttapeguys.com.

Ning… does that word ring sweet in your ear? It should. We’ve become closer to Ning than Joan Rivers to a plastic surgeon.

Ning is a site that lets you set up a social network, and that’s just what we did. We figure that it’s not enough to just have our site bursting with articles, but we need a place for people to talk, share, and make a name for themselves. MyDiguises’ new social network will do just that. What can you do?  Well for example:

• Profiles - Make a page for yourself that identifies you as a real costume buff.
• RSS Feeds - Our blog feeds directly over to NING and will be there for you to read as it updates.
• Events - As we find great events going on, we’ll post em up there and you can know everything that’s going on exactly as it happens.
• Personal Blogs - Did you have a great costume you made? Any classic stories? Yeah, blog em for us.
• Photo Contributions - What’s a costume site without photos??! We believe in the “Pictures, or it didn’t happen” philosophy.
•  Forums and Groups - Link up with people, become a thought leader, be famous, tell all your friends, they’re already jealous.
• Share Videos - Like pictures, but they move all around and have sound!

So basically, you get the idea. Get on the network! Have fun. It will be the best and only community that will let you unleash your passion for costumes on all levels!

I was late to the Twitter party. I also don’t do much photography, so Flickr was always out of the question. I’ve been on Facebook for awhile now, but haven’t used it for its costume powers. You might say I’m a tad old school. Funny, since I proud myself on my unbearably geeky nature that seems to have no end.

I’ve come to the light, however, and have seen the future of costume fans across the globe. The web has grown up a lot and is always giving out more tools to keep people together. With more and more collective genius mixing into the pool with the social revolution, it’s without hesitation that any costume fan can immediately jump into the mix.

So here’s our mash up of web tools that will put your disguise on the map and open the floodgates of costume fan goodness to you.

Tools To Get You Known

Flickr is the ideal photo sharing website. Why? Well it just is. It’s clean, easy to use, attractive, and a repository for all images that are interesting. There are so many widgets and tools developed around Flickr that you can even add your Flickr album to your blog. Flickr is all about empowering the user to get their photos out and across the web.

Hit the jump for more of our ideas…

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Do your friends think you spend way too much time on the Internet? Yeah, well mine do. It’s okay I’m over it… really.

Whatever, my problems aren’t the point. I’m here to lull you into a haze of Internet obsession you won’t want to cure. Unfortunately, I’m not clever enough nor do I have the resources to build an empire of distractions fit for your attention deficit disorder pleasures. Therefore, I will employ the masterful art of sharing links to keep your brain satisfied.

In my never ending search for jolly good costume weirdness I find some gems. But few are as gloriously self exposing and yet simultaneously gratifying as the page of Unfortunate Star Wars Costumes. Yes, that’s right. Captain Wacky is here to deliver a good list of fully embarrassing costumes that are enough to make you turn to the dark side. It makes me wonder why I don’t have friends who do things like this.

According to a note posted on Mediumatlarge.net at least 64,000 people were in attendance at the New York Comic Con over this last weekend. That’s a hearty boost up from the previous year which rolled in just under 50k.

Yeah, comics and comic book culture are big in a big way. It seems to only be getting better too.

Put together the combined efforts of film, print media, and now a growing video game market and it makes a lot of sense. This kind of growth has been a common trend for the last seven years, and it looks to grow even more through 2008 with the big Iron Man release.

With so much going on, it’s hard to highlight just one thing. However, I’d say the emergence of Frank Miller’s new on screen project will do just fine. This time, Miller is taking on The Spirit in tribute to Will Eisner’s core comic classic. Fans will be watching this project and trying to keep pace with the success of the artsy combination of animation and live action that Miller does so well.

Here’s a bit of a teaser to sharpen your comic wits on for now…

I’m officially going to get a bit unofficial right now.

I believe that everyone needs to live a Polaroid lifestyle. What does that mean? It means that on a nearly daily basis you should be doing something that’s worthy of at least a Polaroid shot. Life is, afterall, such a heavy grind and it takes real effort to make sure you do something memorable and fun on a daily basis.  And well, if life is a grind, then my weekend was industrial sized.

So, it came as a huge surprise then when I was sitting at a friends apartment for a visit and Lord Vader came to the door. Yeah, that’s no joke. The man/Jedi loomed over standing at about 6′5″ (yeah I’m short). It definitely warmed my heart. Sadly, no camera was present and I couldn’t get a shot.

The guy who came by just wanted to show off his creation. It was a totally homespun version and looked pretty amazing. Costume fans seem to lurk everywhere and every once in awhile you find one with the chops to share it and not feel funny. Props to our Sith lord friend for making a public appearance.

It then got to me, it sure would be fun to try to get people to take various pictures wearing their favorite costumes in strange public places.

Right place, right time, right hobby. Sorry for no picture!

I don’t normally read the Harvard Independent. It’s a weekly journal for the students there, and it would seem utterly silly for a “wannabe” student like me to even embrace the idea. BUT they wrote about costumes…

According to the site:

he Harvard Independent co-sponsored the Great Literary Figure Costume Contest on April 12, 2008. Along with the Harvard Square Business Association and as part of the Square’s “Bookish Ball” festivities, the Independent coordinated the Costume Contest to give contestants an opportunity to dress up as their favorite literary character and compete for a range of fantastic prizes.

(via Harvard Independent) click for higher res

I wonder if I can go in and vote….

Oh, guess what. You can. I put my money on the characters of N.I.M.H.

Leave it to the Ivy League to host costume contests based on literary icons. Voting closes on the 20th, so cast your vote now and maybe you’ll get an A+ for participation.

2009 will be more than just the year before 2010.

It will also be the year that Dragonball Z superfans will emerge from their lairs to go see the live action film. Anime-to-film adaptation? You bet your tomagotchi, amigo.

Over a week ago a few leaked photos from the set and costumes made it onto the Internet and generated enough buzz to get the attention of Twentieth Century Fox Films. Naturally, to protect the IP and prevent rampant rumor spreading, they asked for the photos to be taken down. Fan reactions were all over the place, despite the work likely not being done.

So what was seen?

From the pulse we found around blogs and sites who had the pictures, it looks as though the makers are taking some liberties with the film and the outfits. How much of those are due to restrictions of translating manga to live action remain to be seen, but the general disapproval will prove to be a marketing obstacle if these unfinished photos spread too far. We’ll keep checking back to see how this story develops.

We all know the feeling of dissapointment when you realize you have an inner Spielberg that needs to awaken. Then, like a no-show prom date you are knocked down to harsh reality when you don’t find the green to hire a crew, build a set, and film a masterpiece. It’s okay, just swede a film.

If you are a fan of Gondry, you know what we’re talking about. Jack Black and Mos Def brought to life the reality of sweding movies in their recent film “Be Kind, Rewind”. Basic premise? Well, a small time VHS store gets all its videos erased when Jack Black mystically clears the movies from the tapes whilst donning a full tin foil getup. In order to not go completely bankrupt they decide to re-make the films with whatever they got. Thus, sweding was born.

Yeah, I’m jumping out of my seat too. We’re totally in support of sweding here on MyDisguises. The costumes are the best part.

Well, because the Internet is such a repository of awesomeness, you could expect that eventually the common man was going to swede himself. Therefore we humbly direct you to this site. Who knows, maybe we’ll do some MyDisguises hosted Sweding ourselves. Check back for that. In the meantime, enjoy this pick…

Can’t deny the coolness of the drawn on muscles…