Wonder Woman?

Free Comic book day was this past Saturday, and My wife and I like to cosplay for it, it's a lot of fun!

My wife last year, so cool!

Last year we had a week till the day, and I said lets come up with an easy new costume and only take a week to assemble it... this year we gave ourselves two weeks! I thought, "Two whole weeks?! I can do something I've never done, a full foam armor costume!" Let me stop here and tell you two weeks for a nice foam armor costume is not enough! (that is to say with a full time job and a toddler). I had to work pretty late into the night the 2nd week with Friday being even later to finally finish!
But lets go over the process I took and check out what I could do better or what was pretty good (for my first time)...

To start I had to decide on a costume, First, I find that most of my favourite super heroes are actually Heroines, so when I want to pick a hero I like, I have a hard time not picking a girl, I also find that coming up with a new take on a hero (or heroine) is one of my favorite things to do. Couple those two together, and you get Genderbending. For those that don't know this is the common practice of taking a hero you like who isn't your gender, and turning the costume into you gender. It can be quite the challenge to change the gender of a female costume to male. Many of the female costumes have designs specific to the body shape of a female, but I love the challenge...
With the Wonder Woman movie coming out I thought I would be wonder woman. You may say, well you can't be Wonder Woman, you'd be Wonder Man, and on the day, all dressed up nobody called me wonder woman, they all called me Wonder Man. But when I was looking at her costume designs I ran into these old comic panels, which show when she switched from wearing the 'Eagle' design to the double 'w' design.

If you take a look you'll find that she doesn't specifically think that the 2nd 'W' stands for herself so much as it stands for Women Everywhere!

So this means that I could actually be Wonder Woman in the sense that if I went with the double 'W' I could make the backstory of my Wonder Woman that he chose to be called that to stand for Women everywhere and his main mission in his hero life was protect and serve them.

I thought about it a lot, and would take breaks and search different ideas and even found that On Earth 11, there was a Wonder Man (because on this earth everybody was the opposite gender). Further findings found a time in the comics where Mr. mxyzptlk changed everyone's gender to mess with superman. In this case Wonder Woman became Wonder Warrior! Kinda fun, either way, I decided from all of this, I wanted to keep the Double 'W' on my costume and not have the eagle...

Now on to the actual building of the costume! I started with the skirt. It's not really a big thing in our culture for men to wear bikini bottom's but many of wonder Woman costumes have her wear a skirt, even the movie version (which I referenced muchly since a real person is wearing the costume).

We found at JoAnn's fabric upholstery fabric, which I thought looked really nice. Also? I wouldn't have to sew it, I could use Hot Glue! Which since I'm only a novice sew-er, was right up my ally... 

I drew many designs of the costume, even drawing them late into the process as things changed or I got confused by how something was working, so I highly recommend keeping a sketch pad handy when working on a costume!

here you see what look I was going for...

 So I spent way to much time working on the skirt, and I'd say it's pretty good!

Here it's not quite finished but it's close to what it will look like when it's done!

Now because I have a hard time sticking with one thing at a time, I bounced from working on this to working on the gauntlets and the headpiece. 

Oh let me pause here and mention that I totally thought with only two weeks time that I was actually going to use sheet metal for the chest piece... hahaha, right um no. so I had bought a piece before I came to my senses, and I still wanted to use it, so I made the gauntlets out of metal...

They worked out pretty good, but I learned something about metal gauntlets, that will change how I draw them in the future, if not designed well, they dig into your skin a bit... not fun, but I sanded them and cut bits off and got most of the trouble spots... 
Leaving us with:

I've always liked the comic book look of her's that had the stars on the bullet deflecting bracers, really not many of her comic versions have this feature after WonderGirl gained it on her costume. But it worked pretty good, I used a red spray paint and then weathered it with silver paint... I have to say I learned the 'weathering' technique from doing transformer mods. But weathering is Always a good idea... things don't look real when they are new... or at least a cartoon looks perfect and weathering makes something look less cartoon.

I Honestly don't have any in progress pictures of the head piece because...
Though it was my first foam build, the first one I built worked so fast it was done before I started... but I had tried a technique that didn't work, so I looked up a way to sand foam and give it angles... A DREMEL!!! So I re-did the head piece. 

You may notice that, besides the star, it's pretty much the movie version. I went with this because strangely this version looks more masculine than the classic 'tiara' look. But I still wanted the classic star on it... 

I went back to the skirt in between both of these, but that took the first whole week and weekend... oops. Guess when I started staying up late and working on everything with more fervor? yeah Tuesday of the last week... Should have started sooner!

I was honestly a bit worried about working on the chest piece, and cape. I had never made foam armor before, and the cape could have involved sewing... So NATURALLY put off the hardest things to work on... right good job...

But now that I knew that a dremel would make it easier, I got started. I bought a big EVA Workout mat. They're pretty cheap at Meijer and had plenty of nice gray foam. 

in the left corner you can see the start of he head piece!

I Cut it out in the shape of me and used the stove and some rounded things to heat the foam and then push it onto the objects shaping it into a muscled chest, vaguely with the intent to look more 'roman armor' styled. This went so well, that I thought, I got this, and slowed down a small bit... smart right?? 

WELL as Wednesday rolled around I realized I needed to pick up the pace and I entered frantic making mode! 

I mod podged the chest and then started cutting out the 'w' and figuring out how to place it on the chest armor. I got it on pretty well, using the dremel to bevel the edges of the 'W' which really made It look nice, but also meant that I had to do it to every foam piece I attached to make it look uniform and cool... more time added! 

I got it on and then spray painted the back piece and the edges of the chest piece where I knew the foam pieces I'd add would end... Also I should take a moment to let everyone know that mod podge doesn't dry under things. if you look at the above picture you can see where the middle of the 'w's met the costume has yet to dry. yeah next time I'll hot glue only (which worked really well). 

At this point It was Thursday and I was no longer taking pictures of the process. I had no time! At some point I realized I wanted to paint my lasso of truth to be more golden and I simultaneously I realized that I had forgotten to add a loop to my skirt belt to hold it on!!!! So I paused on the armor (WHY!!!!!) and added a couple more skirt pieces that could then hold a couple loops (one for 'if I had time to make a sword... serious delusions going on).  Then back to the chest plate... I got the foam on and painted Friday night. My wife also helped me figure out the cape, which required no sewing,  just some ripping and safety pins! Woot super easy and it looked more like the comic version cape than the movie version, which was the way I had wanted it anyway! YAY! Oh and I totally threw together some horrible shin guards (which I plan to rework)...

Well 1:30 at night rolls in and I'm just finishing weathering it all together... I can't try it on since it's still wet, so I go to bed hoping in the morning that it all fits together! 

Saturday I wake up put it on and it all works!!!!!! But I realized, superheroes don't seem to need to hold I.d.s and money so I took some time to add interior chest pockets that you can awkwardly reach through my armpits! Ha! They worked though...

And the finished product:

Trying to be fierce, not my specialty...

my daughter held her arm up in a hero pose!

So I should have posed the other way instead of the side where I hooked my keys!!

Honestly for my first time working with EVA Foam, I think it went VERY well. So what could I do better?

Well more time would be good, but who am I kidding? More time would mean relaxing more and then the last few days would still be a rush! 

The gauntlet straps should be looser so that they are further back on my arm or at least the design needs to change so they wont bump my wrist.

The Skirt? Well it had a hole where it connects in the back... it needs two more straps to cover my butt! That's what the cape is for right? Well not when the wind blows!! 

Shin guards? Great idea, but they should be longer.

Also I wanted to make sandals that matched the costume (these are just my running shoes that look super cool).

Chest piece, this needed more time. I wanted to wrap the foam design pieces all the way around, but they only go in the visible front. Also hot glue leaves junk everywhere, that I wanted to sand down, but really didn't have time! Also sitting was harder, I'd like to shave off a bit to make it easier to sit down for awhile!

Really the cape and the tiara were the best parts that I probably wouldn't change! 

I know I didn't give much detail on process or tool use, if you are interested in that, I might be persuaded to take pictures while I fix things and make a more detailed tutorial!

All in all I think it went very well! I got a lot of compliments and a few people wanted to take my picture! If I work out the problems with sitting and such, I will probably wear it to go see the Wonder Woman movie! Maybe by then I will have added a sword and shield (that I wont know what to do with in the theatre)! 

Thanks for reading! 

So you want to do book art?

A friend posted to facebook.
This is something that many people do, but this particular post caught my interest.
It was asking if anyone would be interested in doing some artwork for a book he was writing.

I have always thought that it would be fun to do this! Illustration isn't one of those things I went to school for, but I've always loved doodling and drawing. So doing more in it is always interesting to me...
So, I said I was interested and he offered me the spot of drawing 3 maps for the book. I thought, how perfect! I love drawing maps, my dad and I used to draw maps for fun, I'm totally, completely prepared! Hah!
Did you know there is a difference between drawing maps from your head and drawing maps of the existing world? The difference is that it's hard…
Where would I begin?


MAP ONE!
The first map needed to be of the world (from France to Mt Ararat)
getting the profile of the world is difficult, so I started with a clean map…

Clean? Man, shores are hard!

I then remembered that the inside art was black and white… no blue?! What do I do? Well I have, black and white to work with, let's do black!

I unfortunately don't have much of the rest of this maps process pictures, but here we jump a few steps:

I think black turned out pretty good, you may also look at some of the continents that aren't near the routes and go, um Michael they don't totally look right. This was actually intentional, the time period of the book is during the byzantine Empire. Though this is a great Empire, I wanted to make a map that someone might due during that era. Maps of the past are really interesting, (look up a few), some are really well done, some lack some accuracy, most are really only focused on the main thing related to that particular map. I wanted some things 'wrong' to give the impression that the Cartographer's concern was the parts related to the route from France to Mr Ararat. Though it's a minor detail I enjoyed throwing it in! 

I cleaned up the colours and added names that were important, and boy do I like it! But boy did it take longer than I thought it would! 

Moving on…

MAP TWO!

Constantinople is the next map. When researching this place (which you can't find today, Why? well listen to 'They might be Giants' Istanbul song and hear for yourself), I found many maps. Many MANY  Maps! They were similar yet widely different! 

I chose to do another unique (in my opinion) approach to the angle:

I really enjoyed this view point and I really liked how it turned out, so many walls!!!
Moving on!
MAP THREE!
Map three was the nicest for creative purposes because it was a specific place, but with liberal interpretation of what it might have been like back then.
See in St. Albain France is a Castle currently called the 'Chateau' though there isn't much left of the old Castle (it's still worth looking up), I got to take what was there and add to it!


This was fun! Making the Castle was such a delight! If you draw and have never drawn a Castle, you should, it's quite a bit of fun…




















Anyway after some talking the author asked me if I'd like to do the cover as well!
Oh man, I wasn't sure I could do it…
But I wanted to do it!
So he gave me a description, and I got to work on some rough ideas…
He mentioned that he liked the middle most sketch (which happened to be my favourite as well)!
So then I went about taking that, and making it bigger and such that I could use it in Photoshop… Did I mention we don't own Illustrator?
So I typically draw something, scan it, work in photoshop, then print off things and draw on it and scan it again… it's a lengthy process but works decently well…


This is an example of this process, if you look you can see where I erased things that weren't drawn well and needed changing (you can also see where the scanner messed up the side)…



After a draft, Thomas (the author) asked if there could be more rocks… so I printed off this, so I could draw rocks to add in…

To the right you can see where I drew the profile (which fit the last picture's frame)
Then I photoshoped rocks…
Nothing to impressive so far right? But process is fun to look back on and go, wow, that's where it all started!?




What's this you say? This is a picture of my wife holding a lamp. I needed a model for the person holding a torch (not the British version, you know flames and such)
I had the hardest time getting a torch to look right with fog. It doesn't do what you would think it would do… I thought it would light up everything really well… it doesn't. Really flames on sticks only light up a small area around themselves… so then I got this…

My wife is cute...

Doesn't look good yet, right? But it's coming along…

Finally here is an almost finished copy

She looks great right? Non-descript, person holding torch, check!
Big tall cave like structure, check!

Door with symbols, check, fog and ice, check, rocks, check!

You may be wondering as to the top of the image, yeah this was added to make room for the title of the book and the author's name. I'd forgotten originally to have a space for that! Silly me! That's kinda important!

ooooh ahhh...

I was actually surprised the day it all came together and looked like this… I was like, wow, did I do that?! So cool!

But wait there's more!

A back cover!

Notice all this white space around it?? Yeah I forgot that for the longest time, and I probably drove the Author crazy, everytime he asked me to put it in, and I kept not understanding it's importance… it's part of the printing process…

But there you go! The book is out now too! So if you'd like a copy for my art being in a book then order it! If you want to read it, I'll take a moment to mention that the author has two books!
(also if you click the link and for some reason it's only a link to buying the digital copy, then wait a bit, I'm told the ability to buy a physical copy will show up soon).

I Had a lot of Fun doing this! So many thanks to Thomas for hiring me to do it! I hope you all find it exciting enough to buy a copy (support up and coming authors)!!!
And if you have a project that needs art work for it, let me know! I'm sure between my super talented Wife and my aspiring to be like her talent, we can probably make you something pretty great!

So you want to be a LEGO MASTER BUILDER?

I kinda wish I could start this post by letting you assume that I got the job and became a LEGO MASTER BUILDER, but I didn't…However I don't think that means you shouldn't keep reading…


If you dream to be a LEGO MASTER BUILDER or if you want to know all about the whole process and how it felt, then keep reading! I know before I went, I wanted to know all I could about the whole process...

So to be a Lego Master Builder you compete in a Lego Brick Factor Competition.
It typically starts with a build that they tell you about the theme in advance, then they narrow it down, and then once again and pick the winner from that last group.

So build one…
I'm nervous.
  
When I arrived there had already been a build, and the next section was starting…
Round one was broken up into about 5 different groups of about 15-20 people… we started with 79 people. I was in build 3. It was kinda nice to see what people had already built and watch people build, to get a feel for how it was going to go.

My goal? To make it to the 2nd round. I just wanted to make it past the first round…
They told us that the first build was your favourite Animal.
They also told us a big part of the selection process was how we interacted with the crowd… which I was a bit bummed that my wife and child couldn't come, but I was going to interact with the crowd I didn't know as best as I could…

My time finally came up, and did I mention I was nervous?
We got 30 mins and when I started my hands were shaking a bit…
You see I had planned and practiced to build an Orca. I had built it with a lot of small bricks from my collection… but what I came to realize was that there was no small Lego Bricks!
Furthermore each colour had only 2-3 types of bricks. So when I went to use the black, that I wanted for my Orca, I found that there was only 2x 8 and 1x6 thin… I actually almost didn't go with building the orca…
but…

I went for it, and boy am I glad I did… everyone loved it…
10mins in I wasn't shaking and was having fun building my orca, talking with the crowd and the judges.
I finished the orca and knew it needed something more than just a whale sitting on a table for everyone to see, so I started building the water base…


Yeah so see the blue pieces that it's leaning on?
In the last 30seconds I attached them and made the orca balance on it. I had shaky hands again…

But I was so glad I went for it and got it to display properly… Display after all is almost more important than what you built…





Well After my round finished I ate lunch and then came back to watch the final section of round 1 build.
Also we had name tags on, so I regularly got asked, 'what did you build' To which I would say the 'orca' or 'killer whale', to which everyone replied, really? I was just saying how that was my favourite build!' or something to that affect… really I don't joke everyone mentioned that they loved my whale…
They had all of our builds displayed throughout the whole process for the growing crowds to see.

The final section finished the judges had deliberated and it was time to pick 30 of us to move on to the next round…

I was so nervous, this was the moment I found out if I achieved my goal…
They were going to have 2 sections of the 2nd build so they announced it in 2 sections.
After the first 15 people were announced, I was starting to tell myself things like, well maybe you're in the 2nd round, or maybe you didn't make it, and that's okay right? you had fun right?

14 more people announced and I was, as one of the judges mentioned to me later, (in a British accent), 'you were literally having a heart attack'…
And the last name is… Michael Jennys! I MADE IT! I'm in the next round!!! OH I made it!!! YAY!
The next rounds theme was then announced:
Your Favourite Vacation Spot.
-Well that's gonna be hard…
But I'm in the 2nd heat so I have 30+ mins to think about what I wanted to build…
Did I mention that at this point people were just standing taking pictures of my Orca? This one girl probably maxed our her phone's memory… I had a fan following!

Soon it was my time, this time I wasn't nervous, I had made my goal, I was golden!
I had also decided on building Yellowstone, which I have to say is hard to explain to people who haven't been there… but I did, and I did it a lot…

I planned on building Old faithful, and a generic thermal feature with a board walk.


Not as good as my orca, but I think it looked pretty good, and there were a few people that had been to yellowstone and totally recognized what I had built, which is always the dream… it's bad when you build something and they're like, 'uhh it's some legos?'
Which I should take a moment and say, officially there is no such thing as 'legos' it's Lego Bricks.
They informed us of this fact so that we wouldn't say anything silly on the radio interviews and such…

have you ever taken a selfi across a table with lego bricks?

Well the judges had deliberated and decided on the top 10 finalists that would come back the next day for an interview and a final build.

And…

They called my name!? Whaaa?! ME! I'm in the final 10!? Wow! 

Wait? I actually have a chance now to be a LEGO MASTER BUILDER!!! Also a free t-shirt??

The topic? 

Something that sums me up…

Well what sums me up in Lego Bricks? Transformers and sci-fi? yeah… that.

So the day arrives, this time, people came to see me build!

Also let me take a second to mention, I had not thought I would get this far, so I didn't spend a lot of time on my resume… my guess? Resume is a big part of this final build… we 10 had already demonstrated that we could build, but what else qualified us? 

Well we had an hour to help our resume, and…

They gave us a kid helper… these kids were great, and my kid, Sophia was amazing! 

Welp we had an hour to build this time, I was going to build optimus prime holding an x-wing…

I had a crowd of people that knew me, and a big crowd of kids that loved star wars and transformers…


It was so much fun… I think I could have done better, but I enjoyed myself and build cool things…


I built it and honestly I think it looked like a transformer holding an x wing…

Then after that we switched roles and we helped our helper build something they wanted to build… Sophia wanted to build a grey and white dog… I was like, well would black or brown work? Cause there's no grey…
Brown was fine, and she built a great dog…







Then the judges told us who the winner was...
It wasn't me... I didn't win… The guy that won built a computer… it was a square… but I think he had a great resume…





But it was fun! And a super great experience…Well worth going and doing… and Hey, I made it to the top 10 of 79…
 

X-Men Days of Future Retcon...

So I just so x-men Days of Future Past, and I have mixed feelings. Here are my thoughts...

With a mix of what I thought was Good, and what I thought was bad.

Let us start with the Good...

Mutant Powers:
The new mutants portrayed in the movies were really cool.

Blink's powers were amazing! They did such a good job of showing them, without showcasing them. In case you didn't know she can open portals to other spots. In the comics she's from the Age of Apocalypse Universe check it out here. Sometimes in movies they make a big deal about, 'hey here's the new person, and oh Check out how Cool they are!!!' So it was really nice to see her being there (for the first time) and just using her powers.
Bishop might have been confusing for non-comic-viewers, but again I think they did a good job of, just having him there and using his powers...
Warpath was cool, but being that his powers aren't as 'visible' he may have been perceived as just a token ethnic character... actually all three of these 'new' mutants pulled a bit of the ethnic card... which is nice; since not all mutants in the comics are white, it's good that they are shown in the movies!

And

Quicksilver
no Explanation, but great show of his powers (in a funny and amazing way). Loved it a lot.
Also the line he said, my mom used to see a guy that could move metal, was great! Yay comic book references to Magneto being your dad, without you knowing! Pretty Good job with special effects for his speeding around powers etc...
Though for the big deal everyone made about him being in the movie, he wasn't in it very long... I guess that's the trouble with being a speedster... ;)

Story Line:
okay, not really the same as the comic arc... but I think the gist of it was there... Sentinels get created, they eventually go bad, and they cause the Future of badness...  we gotta send someone back in time to change this future!!
Who cares if they don't seem to like kitty Pryde and didn't want her to be the main character...
Wolverine man, wolverine...
But as a movie, it was good, the story made sense and flowed pretty good... but I think I need to switch to my perceived 'bad parts' of the movie...

Bad Story line:
A lot of this movie, felt like a push to retcon the other movies.
Where the movies didn't make sense, or where fans complained about something they didn't like (cough x-men 3 cough).
There are very specific scenes that do (old footage) flashbacks (forwards?) to X-men 2,3 and even wolverine origins. (though they did seem to forget that if wolverine origins was cannon to the original story line, logan would have been in vietnam with sabretooth, not in some  bedroom in the united states, oh well)...
To say, hey these happened for real, and we want you to be aware of this. ARE YOU AWARE???
I felt like they were yelling it at times... "HEY DIDN'T YOU KNOW X-MEN 3 WAS REAL." And later "SEE!!! WE RETCONED X-MEN 3 AWAY!!!! AREN'T YOU HAPPY??"
I feel that if there had been less time spent using the established storyline of 'days of future past' to retcon something that you could have just ignored I personally may have felt better about the movie's plotline...

back to good...
Good Story line:

Jennifer Lawrence did a great acting job, I'm still scratching my head about why she's not wearing clothes, the comic book version wore clothes and was 'sexy' but more importantly was cool and BA...
Maybe it's to add more vulnerability? Probably not...
Anyway great acting, very nice with the power portrayal, very good.
If anything, go see this movie so you can see her.

The back and forth between young Magneto and Prof.-X was amazing!
Also the way they kept Magneto as the coolest Mutant that he is, was amazing! (personal bias included). The betrayal, the raw emotion, the awesomeness of his acting was great too!

Really the way the movie let characters act and move through the story (without being forced) was Great!

Bad:
Did anyone really need a whole movie to retcon the other ones?
Was it just so they could say "we've had a movie universe this whole time! See See See!"???

Okay really this is most of the bad feelings I feel towards this movie, why? Because I left the theatre feeling like wow this was an amazing movie, but why do I feel like I didn't like it? Because it worked so hard to tell you it was retconning things!

Oh well, at least halle berry wasn't given a bigger part... she's still a terrible storm.

General musings:
Toad didn't look like that in x-men 1, even though, if this is the same storyline, he should have... but it looks more like the comics, so that's good...

How many guys have been pyro?
































Good acting, weird costumes still... but okay weird, but still leather straps and stuff... Where do you get such nice armour and leather in the Sentinel controlled future?!


This was definitely a movie about Wolverine, Magneto and Professor Xavier...


The end credits scene for age of apocalypse was weird... is it hard to make someone look like the person they look like in the comics? Probably for Fox it is...



Sigh, wish the movie rights would go back to Marvel/Disney, but if that wont happen (it wont) then this movie was probably in line with the 'best we are going to get' category...

Still go see it...