Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Dragon Con

So we totally spent a few days at Dragon*Con this weekend. If you don't know what that is it's a HUGE nerd convention that happens every year in Downtown Atlanta. We went for a couple of days. It was way too much fun.

The Convention has tons of panels for nearly every type of Nerd-dom. Most of the panels are grouped into tracks based on topics. There was a Trek Track, a Star Wars Track, a Video Game Track, a Supernatural Track, a Skeptics Track, a Boardgame Track, and the list goes on and on.  I mostly went to the Costuming Track Panels. The classes that I took involved pattern drafting, wig construction, historical costuming, and Burlesque costuming.  Fiance was a Science Track Guy. He did things like go to panels about the recent changes in the classification of objects in our solar system, went to a sun viewing (apparently saw huge solar flares and sunspots), and panels on where the American Space Program is headed.

There were some great retro inspired costumes at the convention. Fiance was the photographer during the convention so all these photos were taken by him.

Retro Space Girl. She was very cute. I'm told that she's posing with someone from the Watchmen. I am ashamed to say that I have never read the comic nor seen the movie so I cannot verify this.

Loved this Lady's cute sailor dress. The guy she was with was sporting the Steampunk look.

Not really sure if these girls are something or whether they just made cute Mardi Gras themed dancer costumes. I loved their feathery headpieces.

This Lady was very my Fair Lady-esque. Gotta love the hat. It seemed larger in person.

Here is the lovely lady who taught the Costuming for Burlesque Panel, Pinky Shear. She is a costumer for Big City Burlesque in Atlanta, GA. Her shoes have over $200 worth of crystal attached to them. This Lady really takes the time to craft her costumes. She was awesome.

Holmes.

Nifty 1910 inspired costume.

This was the retro/throwback portion of the Dragon*Con Parade. I love the A League of Their Own costumes. You can see some of the Pinup girls in the background there too.

And then we stumbled across Jem and Holograms, the Misfits, and Synergy. How cool is that? Totally geeked out over these guys for a while. They were outrageous. Also, is it bad that I'm lusting over their shoes?

I went a little retro myself and sported my interpretation of the old Playboy Bunny girls.

Wooooo. Magical disappearing legs.

Later I got to hang out with Bud Trooper. It was pretty sweet.

We also attended a few of the celebrity panels. The cast of I Dream of Jeannie was there.

Picture blurry, but we were sitting pretty far back and were using a cheap camera. From left to right Host, Barbara Eden (Jeannie), Bill Daily (Major Robert Healy), and Larry Hagman (Major Tony Nelson).

We also went to see Kevin Sorbo's panel (HERCULES!!!), but it was too dark in there to get any good pictures. FiancĂ© did manage to snap this one of him during the parade.

We also had to stop for a photo opp with Rogue from Cruxshadows. Awesome! He totally touched my shoulder, then gave us each a big hug. I heart the Cruxshadows. Yes we're washed out, but some nice random guy snapped this photo for us so I can't complain.

Another one of the Tracks that was very very popular was the Steampunk Track. The idea behind it is that they take things in the modern world and recreate them as if they were in an alternate reality where steam power is the dominant technology (rather than electricity). Confused yet? Well the Steampunks definitely put some serious effort into their costumes.

Steampunk-ified Super Heroes. Batman on the left, Superman on the right. I think that's the Joker and the Penguin between them. 

Correction! The lovely lady in purple in this photo tells me that she is portraying Catwoman. The lovely lady in the tux is portraying Zatanna. Thanks for the update!

Steampunk Wizard of Oz. This group made my jaw drop. Do you see that Tinman in the back? How many hours of work went into that?! And Glinda! And the wicked witch! And check out the flying monkey with the jet pack next to Dorothy on the ground. Wow. These guys invested some serious time and some serious dough into these.

All and all I had a lot of fun. I'd like to go back next year. 

8 comments:

Eleanor said...

You. Look. Amazing!

I am so jealous! I would have loved to have gone!!!! :D

Matt Steninger said...

Hey, that's my wife and I up there as the steampunk guy and WWII sailor girl. Sadly, I didn't have an outfit to coordinate with her, hopefully next year. She had another more pinup~ish WWII outfit as well, but it suffered from a wardrobe malfunction.

Funny thing is, that's not really a costume for her outside of the hat, she wears that dress quite often! Thanks for taking the pic!

Nancy said...

CJ: Too funny! I was wondering when I put up these pictures if anyone who was in them would see these. How'd you stumble across my blog?

I do the same thing she did all the time. I have lots of retro-esque dresses and other bits and pieces. Add a few accessories and you've got yourself that fabulous pinup look. That's totally what I did for my bunny costume. It's just an over bust corset I had laying around. Add some tights, some black panties, bunny ears and a tail and you're all set.

Matt Steninger said...

I was looking for pics of us, and I think I googled "Dragoncon sailor girl" or something like that, and there we were!

BaronessVonVintage said...

wow, these are some seriously creative and talented people!! My husband suggested I should rig up a Baroness costume (Baroness from GI Joe, that is). I don't think so, but I am seriously inspired by some of the outfits (JEM and the HOLOGRAMS!?! Too cool!)

Nancy said...

Baroness: There is no place in the world like Dragon*Con for finding inspiration. That convention is amazing!

LaughingMagpie said...

A friend of mine happened to google retro 60s space girl and your blog entry showed up...

She had to tell me about the result because I am that Retro Space Girl from DragonCon! Thank you for the kind words :-)

I adore your Bunny costume, and you looked fabulous in it.

Don't be creeped out, but I've now read great portions of your blog and we have a crazy amount in common, including buying budget vintage.

It's too bad we are on different blogging platforms (I'm on LJ) because I'd totally follow you. I'll try figuring out how to make your blog feed to my LJ Friends Page.

Most of my interesting LJ posts are friends-locked, so unless you have an LJ account you can't see them, but I happen to have several posts about 1933 Delineator magazines that are public.

And - believe it or not - one of them is the Wedding edition you blogged about. It's actually from June 1933, not 1932:

Part One: http://laughingmagpie.livejournal.com/67973.html

Part Two:
http://laughingmagpie.livejournal.com/68162.html

A couple other Delineator posts here:
http://laughingmagpie.livejournal.com/tag/delineator

This inspires me to do some more Delineator posts! I have all of 1933 (my fav vintage year).

Best wishes to you :-)

On the Go Dinners said...

Just so you know, the Steampunk Superheroes are: Batman, CATWOMAN (golden age Catwoman work a purple dress) ZATANNA, and Superman.

I am the Catwoman.
My friend Les wasn't too excited that she was called the Penguin. ;)
Not really a sexy character.