Geek Girls Guild: Our Successful Cosplay Debut!

Today our Guild made its group cosplay debut as a zombie wedding party at Awesome Con and we ROCKED it. We got lots of photos taken of us and we had the chance to talk to lots of people about our group and what we do. ANNDD... we won Most Creative in the group cosplay contest! They actually made the category for us which was pretty amazing and flattering. The audience loved us, we got lots of laughs and applause which so made it worth the aching backs and pure exhaustion. Speaking of....

Here was our morning makeup session which surprisingly ended up taking as long as I estimated: 3 hours for the 4 makeup jobs and then throwing my own costume on. We left on time! It was a miracle!

Here are the bite imprints I made awhile ago, finally making their way onto Beverly's arm.

Beth needed a lot of blending paste but her custom made cheek and the scratches I made from a ready mold turned out pretty amazing. I highly recommend the blending paste for edges. The cheek was pretty badass, I just molded it with clay using fake nails as teeth, made a mold out of Fantastic Plastic, poured in the liquid latex, and painted the teeth. I made the torn skin over it separately with a couple layers of tissue and latex that I glued over it and tore open leaving a little bit attached still. Once bloodied up it looked pretty damn amazing:

I used both the drippy stage blood and blood paste to give it some nastiness. Beth also used some tooth paint to get her actual teeth to match these. That's some dedication.

And here we have Kelly pre-gored......... and Megan post gore! Kelly's jugular wound, Beth's cheek I custom sculpted and molded myself while the forehead wounds on Kelly and Megan are both from mold trays I bought and were painted by the group one night when I showed them how to make and paint our own latex appliances.

Here I am as a no-gore zombie herder because another makeup to do was not really at the top of my list and Beverly already had 3 bridesmaid dresses to make. Notice my handy dandy cattle prod which is made of moldable plastic for the prongs, a marshmallow roaster for the base, and pieces of a toy lightsaber kit glued and painted (The white tie lets con organizers know my "weapon" was cleared). My little thigh holster pack was where I kept all of the extra blood, tooth paint, and blending supplies needed to keep my zombies looking not so fresh.

The beautiful bridesmaid dresses were actually made from an old dress of Beth's that Beverly took apart and turned into 3 bodices. She made the skirts out of tulle over a shell and tied them off with a sash. While Bev may think twice about ever again using the nightmare that is tulle they definitely turned out as lovely dresses perfectly fit for a zombie wedding.

Notice the lovely bits of groom they're munching on? The original hands and one foot were purchased off Amazon and after some paint, gore, and a Goodwill suit they turned into the remnants of a well meaning groom. Kelly bloodied her leg snack with yarn and torn old towels and Kelly made the groom's ring out of moldable plastic. All in all these props ended up being pretty awesome and not too expensive.

The ladies worked the crowd like proper zombies and I kept them in line with my prod and the a bit of the groom. We made sure to have a "bit" and it really made people laugh to see us in character hamming it up. Otherwise it'd be a bunch of bloodied ladies standing around with some weird chick in black.

Check out the tons of photos we took of ourselves here if you just can't get enough of the zombie bridal party. Luckily we had a just amazing wedding photographer (aka boyfriend Nirmal) who was willing to spend all day taking photos of our ridiculousness. We decided not to eat him.

Lessons Learned From this Project:

*A simple idea can quickly turn into a full on group cosplay when creative minds fueled with some wine start throwing in ideas and expanding on them.

*Details make it funny, people will notice.

*Use what you have lying around whether its a bridal gown or plastic lightsaber pieces. It's amazing what some paint can do to turn it into something awesome.

*Try, fail, try again. If you don't try things out- whether its making body parts, sewing, or making your own prosthetic molds- you will never know what you're capable of. It's amazing what a confidence booster it is when something turns out better than you expected.

*We are stronger together than solo.

*It's easy to have a meltdown if you bite off more than you can chew so work with your team to make sure nobody loses their mind. You learn something and nobody gets hurt.