Hello to all!
I am back from the Con.
Now that the Masquerade is over, we can talk about it. The secret is over, we can be revealed.
Last night at San D Con, we performed our TMNT skit and ended up with a Best Movie Character award.
Brina was Don, Rosemary was Mikey, Dawn was Raph, and I was Leo. We also had Greenwillow with her wonderful Splinter costume. Some of these people are not active on the TMNT message boards, some of them you know well. ;P
This has been over a year in the making. In fact, I think it's been 3 years in the making? hmm....
Anyway...onto the current stuff.
I have no pictures to post, I didn't bring my camera because I knew I would be unable to use it. And I didn't want to risk it going missing. Sooner or later there will be pictures posted on the San D Con official site, and other places. I think Brina had her camera there that some of our "handlers" used.
It's been a long, challenging process getting these costumes together. Lots and lots of customizing work, solving problems, and things like putting my sword harness and and scabbards together.
I have a lot of amusing stories about our practicing until 2 am on the patio of one of our rooms for the two nights before the Con with some people across the way watching us and probably wondering what the heck we were doing
. Our on the the practice stage rehersal where I was wearing my Kenshin costume, and THAT would have made a hilarious video if we'd had anyone there to film it. The night before the Masq most of us got about 1 hour of sleep due to the agony of fine tuning these costumes so they would hold up for what we were doing. What it was to wear them for around 5 hours and perform and go through the photo shoots and quickie interviews (yes, we were interviewed briefly by G4 and it might be on TV Monday or Tuesday). The great assistance we got from Leah, Kris, and Cherubae who helped us move through everything we had to do that night. It was an amazing thing to not be attending the Masq. but be part of it, and it was a great group of people running it at the Convention, too. Our fellow Masqueraders were wonderful and loved us, too. It was a great experience, and we were highly praised by many. The best part was the roar of the crowd and how they got into our skit.
In brief, we ran out on stage to the theme of the old cartoon. We turned and bowed to Splinter.
Then moved through kata, with Splinter watching. Mikey and Raph got into it a bit with each other, and got rapped by Splinter. Then the music changed to Ninja Rap, and Mikey started dancing away. The rest of us at first acted shocked, puzzled, then...well, okay, lets join in. And then we all get into it at the key point, performing a section of the dance that was in Movie 2. We then mixed around while dancing and finished in a pose. As the music stopped, there was a pause, and Splinter's voice comes up "practice harder" and we all droop like "awwwww bummer". Then the lights go down.
The crowd cheered when we came out, then the roar went up with Mikey dancing, then again when we all started the dance sequence together, and at the end. They loved us.
I also cosplayed my Kenshin costume yesterday, and wore it while meeting the creator of the Rurouni Kenshin series. When I walked up, his eyes got very very wide and he had a really big grin.
The TMNT movie 4 panel was interesting to hear Kevin Munroe speaking about things that concern us all about the movie. It sounds to me like they will do their best to give us a really good (probably PG-13) movie. I'll also talk about this in better detail after I get in a good night's sleep.
Kevin Eastman is a proud daddy! And it was great to see Stan Sakai.
Trying to get those costumes done meant a lot of very late nights recently. And during the Con, I was working on parts of them, so I have had about a week of nights of 3 hours or less of sleep a night.
That means...right now? I need sleep!!!!
