Slobsofgaming.com is highlighting 31 Amazing Video Game Costumes and wow, they are fantastic! Very realistic renditions of characters from The Legend of Zelda, Streetfighter, Halo, Soul Calibur and more.
The levels of detail, creativity, passion of these gamers are really quite touching. These costumes are the best of the best. Head on over to Slobsofgaming.com to view them all.
Check out the incredible costumes from last month’s Blizzcon in Anaheim, CA. Talk about putting the WOW in World of Warcraft (thanks, I’ll be here all week).
Blizzcon is a celebration of the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo, and the gamers who love them. For two days, blissful gamers participated in informative developer panels, live tournaments, hands-on gaming and best of all — a mind blowing Costume Contest!
These costumes are so great, even Yahoo! got in on the action and featured them on their home page.
I’ve never been to Blizzcon, but it looks like a TON of fun. To learn more, head on over to Blizzcon.com, and be sure to check out their extensive Photo Galleries!
This is extremely cool. A complete, authentic vampire slaying kit! A must have for all Vampire Hunters.
Made in the year 1800, this kit contains stakes, holy water, a gun (with silver bullets), crosses, a Bible, mirrors, candles and garlic! It comes in a hand-crafted walnut case with a carved cross on top.
The antique kit recently sold at an auction in Mississippi for a mere $14,850. WOW.
This is the real thing, it’s not a toy. Someone wasn’t playing around, eh? I wasn’t completely convinced before, but now I’m sure vampires are real. And I NEED a kit like this one ASAP.
[Via AntiquesAndTheArts.com]
Just when you think you’ve seen it all. Chocolate costumes!!
The Chocolate Show in New York City debuted with a chocolate superhero fashion show. These costumes were created by chocolatiers and pastry chefs, and I must say they look very tasty!
Shown above are photos of a chocolate Batgirl and Laura Croft in this “edible catwalk extravaganza.”
Via Telegraph.co.uk:
Bat Girl sported a fitted chocolate bodice as well as large chocolate wings with the classic comic-book words ‘Kapow’ and ‘Bang’ painted onto them.
The Lara Croft outfit comprised a chocolate bikini top and chocolate hotpants complete with a chocolate holster and guns.
Of course, no superhero fashion show would be complete without Wonder Woman and Iron Man. There was also a bodybuilder outfit complete with giant chocolate dumbells, as well as a fantastic Warrior Woman made of French chocolate that reportedly took 120 hours to make.
Wow, that’s pretty crazy. Let’s hope they kept the room temperature nice and cool.
Simply amazing! Wouldn’t this make a great “Got Milk?” commercial?
[Via Telegraph.co.uk and Trendhunter.com]
This is the story of how I made a costume out of newspaper!
Some advice for anyone who wants to try this at home: Try it! It’s fun, and you can experiment with fashion ideas without worrying about ruining expensive fabric. Be careful though — newspaper is very stiff and fragile. This makes it difficult to work with, or simply, it’s very different than working with fabric.
The first thing I did was come up with a design idea. I wanted something that would look awesome, but would be pretty easy to make. I decided on a fairly simple Victorian-style dress. Not that easy, maybe, but it definitely would look awesome. I also decided to use black and silver duct tape, which would not only hold it together, but would look like a nice trim.
I decided on a long, pleated skirt, with a few embellishments in the back to simulate a bustle, but in a way that really emphasized the medium of newspaper. I decided on pleats because I knew that newspaper would be basically impossible to gather, but pleats achieve nearly the same effect and would work much more nicely with the stiffness of the medium.
The skirt was easy. I didn’t need a pattern, I just taped a lot of sheets of newspaper together into one very long piece, and cut it off to the correct length for a skirt. Then I pleated the middle of it, taping down the pleats at the top, until it was a good length to fit around my waist with enough overlap. Here’s a photo of the skirt at that point.
The skirt just wraps around and tapes closed in the front. I also added a cool folded detail to the edge of the front overlap.
From there it was a simple matter of rolling up a few sheets of newspaper for the bustle in the back, and adding more duct tape for embellishment.
Now, unfortunately, I didn’t get any work in progress photos of the top of the dress, so I’ll just have to describe it to you. I knew that making the top wouldn’t be as easy as the skirt, so I decided to use a pattern for it. Even with that, I ended up choosing a kind of advanced pattern. The only reason I chose it was because I had used it before, and because I thought it would work well with the newspaper (I was half right and half wrong on that count).
So I started out just like I was sewing something normal–finding the pattern pieces I needed and cutting them out of the newspaper (okay, so the newspaper part wasn’t normal, but the process was). From there, I actually had to cut the newspaper pattern pieces smaller. Because I wouldn’t be making real seams, I cut off the seam allowance so that I could tape the pieces together, with the edges right next to each other. By the way, taping is much faster than sewing. I was surprised at how quickly I made this costume! Sewing it would have taken weeks!
So I just taped the pieces together to make the bodice of the dress. There was one unlucky surprise–I didn’t realize that the sleeves were supposed to be gathered into the armscye, so I had to make do by making tiny pleats until the sleeves fit onto the bodice. Overall I think it made the sleeves look kind of crumpled, but I don’t think there was any way to prevent that.
The bodice pattern is designed to close in the front with buttons–instead I just used pieces of black tape to serve that purpose.
Then I decided to go one step further to make the costume even more awesome, and added a hat. My original idea was to have a witch hat with a very wide brim, with rolled up newspaper to match the “bustle” on the skirt. So I made the brim first . . . only to discover that it was far too heavy. It was just too much newspaper, and it couldn’t support its own weight!
I thought about reinforcing it with cardboard, but ultimately decided that a change of hat design was a better idea. Instead of wide, I would go with tall, and to continue the rolled-up newspaper motif, I made two long “plumes” to go on the side of the hat. The hat itself would just be a cone, like a witch hat, but without a brim at all.
I’m not sure how many hours it took, but I used up about 3 full newspapers making this costume!
So, did everyone have a good Halloween? For the folks in Grand Rapids, Michigan, it was killer.
Over 3,000 zombies gathered in the streets, apparently breaking a world record. This is awesome.
If you’re a Star Wars fan AND a Barry Manilow Copacabana fan, then this video is too good to be true.
Not necessarily costume related, but we’ve blogged about Star Wars often enough and this is just weirdly awesome.
Here at MyDisguises, we are deadly excited for World Zombie Day on Oct. 26th. I thought it would fun to look back on a few of our posts regarding Zombies.
Costumes of the Dead
If you’re interested in learning how to make fake blood and wounds, Camilla wrote a great piece about DIY zombie makeup.
Who knew that corn syrup, cotton balls and marshmellows could be used so effectively? This is a great read for all wannabe zombies. [link]
Zombie Haiku
Everyone enjoys good Haiku poetry, and zombies are no different. Check out this post for some fun zombie Haiku examples, a link to a zombie Haiku website and a few submissions from our own commenters. [link]
moaning and groaning
walking dead are chasing me
but i run faster
Stevil and his Zombies
In an application to join the Evil Leage of Evil, Steve demonstrates his abilities to conjur zombies with a snap of his fingers.
Heh, I love the song he sings with the zombies. [link]
Zombie Kid Likes Turtles
This is one of the funniest Youtube videos I’ve ever seen. The poor kid is nervous about being on live TV, and when the reporter asks him about his zombie makeup, he blurts out, “I like turtles!”
The many parodies that cropped up in response are hilarious as well. [link]
Good times here at MyDiguises. I hope everyone gets an awesome facepaint job for World Zombie Day. We like zombies!
And so do turtles… 
Waylou.com has a great collection of geeky Jack O Lanterns made by master pumpkin carvers. The talent and creativity of genre fans never cease to amaze me. These are fantastic!
Great stuff! Head on over to Waylou to view all 34 Geeky Pumpkins.
There are 30 acres of land in Harveysburg, Ohio which are unlike any other plot of land in the whole state. They are not especially fertile, nor do they host any sort of exotic flora or fauna — unless costumed enthusiasts can be included in the latter. It IS home, however, to a permanent 16th century English village which is in turn the home of the Ohio Renaissance Festival!
An ever-changing spectacle of sight and sound, the Ren Fest (as it is familiarly called) runs from Aug. 30th to Oct. 19th, 2008 and will re-open again around the same time in 2009. A $20 ticket will gain you entrance to the winding lanes of this piece of transplanted history and all the delights contained therein.
The shops sell just about anything the historically minded tourist could desire, from mass-produced costumes to intricately hand-crafted clothing pieces, custom leatherwork, handmade masks, weapons, handmade musical instruments and more.
There is also a great deal of entertainment to be had, no matter your age and preference for muddiness. The Swordsmen put on a dashing show, instructing the male half of the population in the ways of masculine Renaissance charm after attempting to cut each other to pieces with (hopefully blunted) rapiers, much to the delight of the audience.
Musicians of consummate skill were to be found at every corner, peddling their wares to any who would listen in a cascade of poignant notes from harp, lute, dulcimer and guitar. And last—and I fear I must categorize it as the least—were the gentlemen who felt that mud was the ideal medium for the re-telling of such great literary works as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Beowulf.
I’m sure I would have enjoyed their recounting of the Viking’s voyage to America more if they had not managed to spatter my 13th century dress with mud from thirty feet away.
Amidst this delightful and somewhat bewildering cacophony are the employees and tourists who have turned gaily out in their best fancy-dress for the occasion. We saw fantasy costumes, elaborate Renaissance period pieces that were hundreds of hours in the making, medieval ladies and knights, archers, monks, and various sprites and spirits.
Whether you spend the day costume hunting with a camera, sipping a drink, eating hearty stew out of a bread bowl whilst listening to the best sorts of music, riding a camel (yes, there ARE camels there. Why? No one is quite sure) or browsing the endless selection of fine wares, there is something for everyone at the Ohio Renaissance Festival!
The famous Forbidden City in China gets tens of thousands of visitors each day. But now anyone in the world can visit this cultural landmark for free through a new 3-D Virtual recreation of the palace.
When you enter the Forbidden City, you choose one of nine historical costumes! Virtual visitors can partake of activities such as guided tours, Wei Qi, the game of Go, and archery. You can also watch Qing dynasty emperor feast at dinner, surrounded by his imperial servants.
The museum teamed up with IBM to develop this project, which took three years and three million dollars. You can enter the Forbidden City by visiting www.beyondspaceandtime.com and downloading the free program.
PinkRaygun.com has a great Dr. Horrible pumpkin carving template. This is a must-have for all Horrible fans. What a fun idea.
They also have templates for Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Firefly and more.
If you are a patient person with some carving skills, these shouldn’t be that hard to make. You’ll have the best fronch porch in your neighborhood in no time.
PinkRaygun.com is asking for photos of your pumpkins and they will be posting them during the next several weeks. Good luck!
