Costume Outings:

Archon20:

I attended Archon20 much on a lark, I hadn't really intended to win and Korul wasn't even finished by that point.. but a friend suggested I go and since Ray Harryhausen was going to be there, I pushed up production schedule by a month and made a minimal gargoyle for the show. Turns out Harryhausen wasn't a very nice person, but I'd admired him since I was tiny little monster-maker, so I got his autograph, that being my first and last. You can imagine my surprise when I won first for novice, and there I was up against some damn stiff competition.  
As soon as I get pictures and videos back from Archon20, I'll try to capture some of them for you and make them available here. 

CFE2:

People were so nice to me there, and made such a fuss, it was just wonderful. Thank you to all the herpetophiles who enjoyed the costume so much, even if you did think I was a dragon :/ All I really won was a T-Shirt, but the real award for me was the grand fuss everyone made of me in costume.. Made me feel marvellous.. It made all those months worth it.  

Montreal

CF8

Korul appeared at CF8, but took nothing. 

AAC

Loopy and Korul were at AAC.  It was Loopy's first appearance. 
 

Future Appearances:

The following are places I plan to go, all subject to change: 

• Haunted Verdun Manor at Hallowe'en
• Rio for Mardi Gras
• Archon21 - simple the best as competitions go
• CF9
• Con*Cept (montreal)
• AdAstra (toronto)
• AAC

Costumers R Cool:

I do like the way costume people treat each other. It's the way I wish all of society worked. We all work hard on our costumes, and when we meet each other it's often we meet someone who has done better than us, and we are usually in competition with each other, but there is no question of pettiness or jealousy. We love costumes, we know the work that went into them.. We appreciate one another.  At Ad Astra, costumers were complimenting me and ready in an instant to help me, and at CF8 it was plain to me that Lance's lion suit was far an away superior to mine and I'd have been glad to see him win. 

We share an interest and somehow (magically) we focus on that and forget the other. Costumers are always there to help you out, help you in and out of costume, help you down stairs, hand you a drink.. they'll even help you make spot repairs to your suit and they sometimes know that means they'll lose, but I guess they love your costume and yes they want to win, but they want to win fair and square.. not because they sabotage or refuse to help another costume, but because their costume is best. We all need help, so we all help each other out. Isn't it a shame that so few groups and society in general doesn't know this simple, little lesson?  

Cool Costume People:

• The Orrs
• Archon 20 etc.
• Christina Carr and Martin Hunger
• Fur Fibre Technologies (508)686 2964 FAX -1497 ask for John
• 
• Sheila Lenkhman and Scott Corwin - I knew these guys before but didn't list them because I didn't know they were fond of me.. but they recognized me and were real friendly, so here they are. Sheila and Scott are very professional and run an excellent show.

Uncool Uncostume people

I learned at Hallowe'en that, unfortunately, it is not the workmanship you put into a costume or the quality of the costume itself that wins, but a lot of it is presentation. What's unfair about this is the amount of work it takes to make a costume like this is just hours and hours and hours.. I started Korul 4 months before Hallowe'en and I was still rushing come Hallowe'en and to be honest on the night I was exhausted.. I'd been up till 2am every day beforehand, trying to finish. It therefore kinda stings that you're not judged on that effort, but on how you perform when you arrive.. do you have a routine, is there sex involved, is it a man or a woman underneath.. bla bla-? Usually, this is when audiences are polled: They seldom understand what went into a costume.  

At Hard Rock Cafe, Korul lost to an dominatrix and her alien pet. Now, while not denegrating the leatherwork that went into the alien (it was impressive), it was a one-technique costume.. The gargoyle required sewing, prosthetics, molding, casting, .. a few minor miracles both mechanical and artistic, to pull off and it's a shame that wasn't taken into consideration.. At the Dome, I even went to the unbelievable lengths of building a castle-costume for a friend to wear in the afternoon before the contest (and I still don't know how I pulled that off!), that I would climb up onto to spread my wings and that didn't put me over the top, either.