Showing posts with label Cos Play. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Top 10 alternatives to "Slave Leia".

Now, maybe someone who has gone as "Hunter S. Thompson" for the last ten years has no room to judge, but Halloween is coming up and you know what that means.

Fucking Slave Leia costumes. I don't know why, but I am so sick and tired of slave leia costumes. I'd rather see a parade of Jugglos tromping down santa monica than one more slave Leia.

The polar opposite of the slave leia is the Silent Hill Zombie nurse. These will never get old and are always the best choice for any alterna-chix who are stumped what to whear on the Halloween Party Rounds:

But what if you were a Silent Hill nurse the last three years? Why not dust off the old Slave Leia you might be thinking. First things first. Stop. Quit winding up your hair buns. I have an alternative. Here are my top ten alternatives to Slave Leia.

10. The Witch

Alright, plain and simple. This one is a fucking classic. You can not go wrong with a sexy witch. And I'm talking a "Wizard of Oz" style pointy hat witch, not a sassy pre-teen witch like in Harry Potter. There are some "sexy" harry potter hogwarts costumes out there. But those give me the serious "ut oh feeling" so don't go there.

9. The Geisha

This one is not just for the AZN CHIX. You walk into a party, you will turn heads.

8. The Nun

Another classic. Let's say your really dedicated to the goth scene like a few people on my friends list who will remain nameless (but you know who you are). This will allow you to wear a costume, but not feel to "normal" when you head out to the Malediction Halloween victorian ball.

7. The Gladiatrix

Personally I think if you covered yourself with blood spatter and walked around with a big sword this costume might move up a few spaces.

6. Bat Girl

I really debated on this one. I mean the obvious choice is Harley Quinn, but most of the costumes I could find (see the link) were all aimed at tweens for some reason. Not sure why, are there any 12 year old girls out there clamouring to be HQ? The other alternative was Cat Woman. But that's borderline Slave Leia lame, especially when half the costumes are based on that horrible cat woman movie from a few years back.

So yeah, Bat Girl. A classy alternative. Especially if you can get one of your tattooed hipster chix friends to go as Robin.

5. Ghostbuster

Paula Veinkman, Edna Spangler, Rachel Stanz, Wendy Zedmore? You and three of your friends walk in wearing these and it's pretty much "game over" for any other poseurs trying to walk away with the costume contest trophy at the bowling alley come halloween.

4. Jessica Rabbit

The main aspect of this costume that makes it a winner is that it involves red heads. The more red heads at a halloween party is always better in my opinion.

3. Silk Spectre (Modern)

What can I saw, If you've got the moxie to walk around in this thing all night then I'd say this is the last Halloween costume you ever need to buy. I mean look at this thing. Fucking Silk Spectre, giving the Mai Shiranui Cos Players something to wear on the 2nd day of Comic Con.

2. Silk Spectre (Classic)

Oh yes. This is secretly my number one. But officially it's number 2, for political reasons. Damn, this is maybe the greatest costume of all time. Maybe even better than the Zombie Nurses.

1. New Hope Princess Leia

But of course, the die hard Star Wars chix are going to have a hard time putting aside a costume that gets them so much attention from the neck bearded counterparts. So here is an alternative. The Sexy "new hope" leia costume. It's classy and will still allow for plenty of photo ops with all the darth vaders, han solos, and Jar Jar cos players partying down at Universal City walk.

Bonus Halloween Story

When I was a kid, my mom made me the sweetest Han Solo costume. It had a bad as vest and a holster and the whole bit. It was amazing. I was so excited for weeks to wear it. Unfortunatly, for me my 2nd Grade Teacher went as Princess Leia. Not Slave Leia, but the hoth snow leia. The one that kisses Han. so the whole day everyone was teasing me and telling me to kiss her. God it was horrible. Maybe that's why I hate slave leia so much.

Anyway, most of these costumes should all be available here, so do us all a favor and leave the gold bikini at Jabba's this year.

Update

Fucking internets. I should have seen this coming. The google ads in my feed all point to this:

I'm part of the problem. Sigh.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Game Blog Design - The ubiquitous cos play gallery

So I have a friend who is working on creating a "professional grade" blog. Meaning not just a place that he'll jot down what he had for lunch or what he thought of Inglorious Basterds, but a blog that will intelligently discuss a variety of specific topics related to a facet of the entertainment industry.

Lately we've been discussing blog design. And this has been causing me to take a closer look at some of the blogs that I frequent. Mostly I've been paying attention to the usability of the design decisions. It's interesting as I know that most of these blogs are revenue based so a lot of my problems with the web design is usually stuff that's only there because these sites need to get their clicks.

As anyone who reads my twitter feed knows, I'm no stranger to cosplay. So I've read through a lot of the cos play posts that the game sites have been throwing up last week and I definatly notice a few differences. Here's my thumbnail thoughts...what do you think?

First, you've got joystiq:

Starts off pretty good with a nice grid of clickable thumbnails.

Then when you click an image it drops the grid down and puts the clicked picture up. The "forward and backward buttons" are awkwardly placed so that they incorporate the ad to the right of the image...kind of lame, but I'm sure it gets a few accidental add clicks. Over all clean and straight forward.

Then you get Kotaku:

I like this one as it uses the same "grid pattern" but the thumbnails are a little bit easier to see. Also, the "Next" button is incorported a little bit better. They used to have a nice flash "arrow" overlay so you could browse without mousing around too much, but that also hid the images behind a flash wall so you couldn't download them. which isn't a big deal for a cosplay gallery, but is kind of lame if it's a screenshot or wallpaper you'd like to download.

Then there's Destructoid:

This thing is a hot mess. Naturally basicaly just says 'here's the babes" in usual destructoid "this is why no one respects gamers" narrative voice. The flash encoding is totally broken. I get the images over running hte horrible 90's style "next" hyperlink in both Google Chrome AND firefox. The images themselves are better than Kotakus or Joystiqs. Like they have a bit of fun and personality, where as kotaku's come off sort voyeristic.

Finally, you've got Wired's.

As usual wired keeps it classy and "periodical". Meaning it looks like it could be a Time Magazine "slide show". the pictures are all high quality and each is accompanied by a caption with just enough editorial discussion that even my mom could click through and get some idea of who "chun li" is or what exactly is going on in that crazy Tokyo she's heard so much about.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Comic Con cosplayer let's you check out her "pika pika"s

Source: Kotaku via Maximum PC

Friday, October 31, 2008

THQ Halloween costume contest pics.

I imagine that most video game companies have a pretty good stock of Halloween Costume contests. THQ is no exception. Click on these dedicated members of the marketing department for and check out the full gallery: