My friends and I left my house at about 09:30 for the Convention Center. As we got closer, the traffic stopped moving, so we just walked the rest of the way.

We eventually got bored of all the walking and walked the wrong way on the moving sidewalks. xD

Oh, look! We’re inside the building!

We arrived around 12:00 and got lost inside the building. After several minutes, we finally reached our destination: Hall D…almost. I was in a group of three people; one had an advance ticket, but the other and I had to wait about an hour in line.

Once we were finally in, the first thing I took a picture, of course, was cosplay!

We started exploring and found some cool shirts and messenger bags.

Next we come across the booth of a professional model, cosplayer, and costume designer. You might remember Yaya Han! She dressed up as Scarlet Witch for MegaCon.

She even let me get a pic in with her! :)

Further on, I found some awesome looking Legend of Zelda posters.

There’s always plenty of blades being sold.

Oh, look! It’s Link! I didn’t see any Zelda’s, though.

There were plenty of furries there!

There were some cool Lego creations, including Yoda!

Dark Helmet and four assholes were there!

Wow, if there’s a companion cube in Portal 2, I sure hope it looks like this!

Superman even showed up! His eyes are eerily blue…

I was almost killed by some girls from Soul Calibur! :O

I’m sure you recognize Cortona on the left. I’m not quite sure who’s on the right, though.

You’ve gotta catch them all…in the pokècar!

I only escaped these Klingons by an act of mercy!

You may remember Krishna from PC Weenies.

So i herd u liek them…

Thank goodness it’s not a Yaoi paddle!

Someone from Avatar and Wolverine fight it out!

Someone outside let me borrow a Hollow mask and a Zanpakutō for this picture. My friend beside me has a finger blade on my neck, if you look closely.

This is the person that let me borrow the mask and sword. He goes by the name “meow”, if I recall correctly.

This is me, with my new Tai Chi sword and Hamtaro in my other hand. :)

Well, that’s it. I took many, many more pictures than this, but I’m not putting more than 200 pictures in a single blog post. :P I hope you enjoyed the sights!

[via Hawtness]

Like what other costumes you may ask? Well how about Bumblee from Transformers? Or Maybe a Megazord from Power Rangers? And how about my new favorite, PREDATOR!

 

Check out more Voltron process photos here and Grim Hammer’s blog here.

Artist of the Week continues with this week’s featured artist Yaya Han. A recent guest on the Pixelated Podcast, Yaya has been a cosplayer/model for about 10 years. If you’ve ever attended a Convention you’ve probably seen Yaya. Be sure to check out her new website www.yayahan.com for more Cosplaying fun.

Artist of the Week: Yaya Han
Website | Deviant Art

Tell us a bit about yourself?

Hello, my name is Yaya Han and I am a cosplay idol and costume designer currently residing in Atlanta, GA. I have been making costumes and modeling for over 10 years now and am one of the only cosplayers in the world to turn this hobbyist activity into a career. I guess you can say that I’m a household name in the world of geekdom. I travel world-wide to teach workshops and panels on costume making, and to judge contests and host events, not to mention constantly working on new costume projects. I have a lot of fun playing dress up every week but also work hard and never have a day off lol.

What’s been your inspiration for art?

I have a fairly wide range of interest when it comes to costume design and crafting, and get inspiration from music, movies, traditional art, novels, history, photography… whatever has depth and a solid theme.

What supplies do you use for your art?

The sky is the limit! I’ve used everything from traditional fabrics to plastic, metal, foam, wood, fiberglass, feathers and fur. Truly, when it comes to costume design, the creative process is endless.

Any advice for beginners?

For beginner cosplayers, my biggest advice is to do a lot of research as many techniques are available in tutorial form online, and practice each technique a lot. Be it sewing, sculpting, jewelry making… keep working on each technique and take your time with the project. This is an expensive pass-time to be prepared to save up money for materials.

How do you know if a video game is good? Fans cosplay as the game characters.  How do you know if a video game is great? Fans create a live action film around it. Left 4 Dead is one of those great games.

[via http://left4deadmovie.us.splinder.com/]

Ever wonder what James Rhodes does while off duty? He flys to his local bar, disguises himself as an Asian cosplayer, and enjoys a good cold bottle of Corona.  Check out more photos of this cosplayer past the break.

[via SuperHeroHype]

 

Hint: From an 80’s music video

Well the MCM London Expo is over for this year and the long wait till May 2010 is upon us. It’s been a decent outing for the London Expo, which has expanded in size and seen more games attention than ever before, including the unveiling of the Operation Chastity Warthog! But before we go, here’s a little wrap up in pictures for you to browse. We’ve got cosplay galore, the good, the bad and the down right sexy. So what are you waiting for, hit the jump and see what you missed.The Good (yes that idiot with the Ghostbusters is me, sorry I just couldn’t resist)

 

The Hot

 

and finally The Not (fair play to them though, you wouldn’t catch me dressed up like that)

 

[Photo credits to Ben Smith]

Here are the photos that we tried to upload during the weekend of the show. But as you read from Bill’s articles, the internet was non-existent due to a lame hotel and internet problems at the con. Also, there were hardly any cosplayers and/or booth babes to take photos of. Nonetheless, here they are. Enjoy them past the break.

Again, big thanks to the GameX staff for a kick ass event.

Cosplayers

 

Booth Babes

 

Around the Show Floor

 

Day 2 of GameX, while starting an hour late for us due to an alarm clock failure, has proven to be just as fun and successful as Day 1.  More, actually, on both fronts.  I’ve never managed to have this much fun at a gaming convention before.  The staff is smart, hard working, friendly and willing to help with whatever anyone needs.  The exhibitors were, with one small exception I will mention later, top notch and full of win.  The floor? Packed today, people old and young, hardcore gamer and people new to the scene.

Let’s start with the booths, shall we?  There is a clear winner at GameX as far as booth quality.  EA’s Dante’s Inferno booth was sheer perfection, the pinnacle of what you would expect to see at a con of this size.  As you’ll see in our photo gallery it was a gothic looking both with obvious hellish themes, quality enough in and of itself, filled and covered with screens to play the game on, both inside and out.  The most notable feature, to me at least, was the life size, highly detailed Dante standing inside the booth.  The rest of  were noticeably less flashy than the EA setup, but none were in any way insufficient to deliver the content they were designed to.  My one complaint?  A severe lack of booth babes.  Now, I do not require them to be present to enjoy a booth in any way, but it just seems like some unspoken tradition to have at least a handful at each con.

Just like the book! Or not. Still badass.

The panels at GameX were all well though out and all of the ones I managed to attend were well executed and more informative than I could have hoped for.  The panel schedule was divided into “Left Brain” and “Right Brain”, each matching up to their content as expected.  The panels themselves were constantly changing, happening and flowing smoothly.  My personal favorite was the one about how next gen MMOGs can succeed without trying to follow in WoW’s footsteps.  Being my favorite genre, that has captured most of my attention since 1999, I was very happy with the content the three speakers put out for us, very insightful to the world of what a MMOG designer has to think about and go through.  Also, this panel sold me on Fallen Earth.  Cannot wait to get in that game!

GameX’s  theater area was not a huge draw for myself or Dave., so I cannot coment with much authority on this subject.  The schedule posted looked like solid content, ranging from a Clerks panel with Brian O’Halloran and Marilyn Ghigliotti and a panel about The Guild with the three attending cast members, to panels about how younger adults and kids about to enter college can break into the gaming industry.  I sat in on The Guild panel for a few moments as well as the Clerks Redux one.  Both were very well done, entertaining.

The worst failure at GameX was not on the con’s behalf, but on the fans, if it can be blamed on anyone really. The cosplay was damn near nonexistent, though the little that was there was generally of high quality.  There was so few cosplayers in fact that the cosplay contest had to be canceled due to lack of sign ups.  Lame, but I understand their reasoning.  Watching 4 people compete is a bit lackluster at best.  Next year people, you need to encourage all cosplayers to come! All other elements of GameX fell into place nicely, we just needed more shows on the cool costumes, is all.  But, I suppose it being this con’s first year played a part in the cosplayers not knowing much about it.  It can only get better.

We managed to get two really good interviews with a community manager and producer of Mythic’s WarHammer Online, as well as a producer from the very fun, very promising MMO Action Shooter Global Agenda, from Hi-Rez Studios.  Keep an eye out for those to appear here on the site in short order.  Day 2?  Complete and awesome!  Day 3, here we come!  Possibly.