Guest Post! Little Bit posts about her recent discovery of the awesomeness of Cosplaying!

My little sister has finally decided to put together her own blog (link at the bottom of this article), and as a part of that, I have asked her to write a guest post for The Hopeless Gamer talking about her favorite nerdy hobby: cosplaying. I know nothing of cosplaying. I've seen it, my wife's done it amazingly, but I don't do it. I can appreciate it in most forms I come across, but it's just not for me. We are in luck though! It is exactly for my sister. So without further ado, take it away Little Bit!

I love all things cosplay…well mostly. As a nerd girl I feel like I get a little bit of a pass if my cosplay isn’t up to snuff, but I am not someone who will roam around a con in a bikini or a powergirl costume (I am in awe of women who will, but sometimes repulsed). I’m the kind of nerd girl who loves her strong female characters and being as accurate as possible. My first cosplay experience was at Gencon 2009. It was also my first convention. My older brother and I decided that we would do a costume. We came up with pretty awesome death eater costumes that I am very proud of.

My next Gencon I sadly did not cosplay, but I highly admired and was jealous of everyone who did and looked awesome. Then I went to C2E2 last spring. This changed my view of cosplay and what kind of cosplay I would do. Before, I didn’t want to cosplay as someone that was iconic. With my death eater costume I came up with my own character, but was clearly part of the death eater group. At C2E2, I saw tons of people cosplay as specific charcters, and while they may not have looked exactly like the person they were dressed up as, they still pulled it off and were recognizable. I thought that I could do that to. There is no celebrity that I really look like so I never had a go to, but know I started thinking outside of who I looked like and more about who I connected with the most. Then there was the drive home from C2E2. I had seen the episode “Blink” before, but the Hopeless Gamer really helped me on my way to loving Doctor Who. I returned to my dorm that week and only watched Doctor Who until I was caught up. This past summer I was able to watch Doctor Who series 6 during the actually times it was airing on BBC America.

This brings me to my next series of costuming. My sister-in-law wanted to create a weeping angel costume for Gencon 2011, and of course I was more than willing to join in. I have minor experience in sewing, but enough to follow a pattern and create a skirt with an elastic waist. I helped her create part the main clothing of her costume and decided that I could dress up as the eleventh Doctor one day and Amy Pond another day. My Doctor costume was easy enough to assemble: fez, coat, striped shirt, wig, navy pants, and black boots. I purchased most of it second had or on sale and all in all cost me less the $75. I think it turned out pretty well, even though I was cross dressing, and my sister-in-law obviously looked AMAZING.

Enter my favorite costume I have worn so far. Originally I planned on dressing in the Amy Pond costume from the episodes “The Time of Angles” and “Flesh and Stone.”

I bought the sweatshirt from American Apparel, bought a skirt from goodwill that I modified, and had the tights and shoes. So excited…then I tried it on. This is the first instance of me realizing that size does matter. I am not almost six feet tall like the gorgeous Karen Gillian, so this one size fits all sweatshirt on my 5 foot 4 from looked ridiculous. Of course, this all happened two days before the con. So costume-less, I came up with a new plan. I decided to try to get a kissogram Amy Pond costume accomplished in 2 days time. I ran all around town looking for parts the next day. Easily found the skirt, button up, bowler, checkered fabric, belt, and shoes. The hard part was the vest. I looked everywhere for the stupid vest! Finally, last stop of the day, I found one I could modify at goodwill. I got home and spent the rest of the day making the vest look as best and accurate as I could. I was missing a few things like the radio and the pouches on the belt, but I think it worked well for making it in a day and a half.

One of the reasons this was my favorite costume was the vast amount of Doctor Who cosplayers there were at Gencon. We all met up and took a picture. It was so COOL!

C2E2 was this past weekend and The Hopeless Gamer brought his niece. It was her first convention and she LOVES Doctor Who and wanted to dress up, so I offered to join her. I decided to take my Amy Pond costume and make it awesomer. THG’s niece cosplayed as Liz X and it was awesome. I have other cosplay costumes I am working on for Gencon 2012 and will give some status updates on my own blog. Hope you enjoy reading what I have to say and share! For more information on cosplay, how my kissogram costume was modified, and other awesome things follow my blog: Little Bit: Nerdiness in Fun Size or follow me on twitter: @littlebitnerd

c2e2 2012 Picture Post!

Another year, another great Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo a.k.a. C2E2! This year marks the third c2e2, and while there were some small disappointments here and there, overall we had a great time and came away with some good memories. Once again, I'm doing a picture mega-post to highlight some of the cooler stuff we got to see at this year's show. The picture above is from a pretty neat point of view. In the foreground you can see the main entrance to the show, then across the way you can see the convention hall itself through the high windows. This year's show was bigger than ever with what felt like an Artist Alley at least twice as big as before! Keep reading after the jump for more pictures.

c2e2 Review: Berona's War Field Guide: A Complete Cartoon RPG Setting, Just Add Water.

Archaia Comics is probably best known for their publishing of the indie hit Mouse Guard (and it's corresponding RPG to boot), but they offer a lot of pretty neat, unique material. At c2e2 they had this insane buy two, get three free deal on their trade paperbacks, and so when we saw that we immediately had to pick up five hardcover books.

Berona's War Field Guide by Anthony Coffey and Jesse Labbe is something I've been looking at for a little while now. Although published by a comic company, it's definitely something different and lives up to its "Field Guide" name. The whole thing is presented as if written by some neutral observer taking notes in a note book and drawing sketches to what he sees. Of course the sketches are full color and posses a huge chunk of personality.

The titular was is between two races of little cartooney peoples, the Cropones and the Ele-Alta. They remind you of two different types of little furry animals, but it's hard to put your finger on exactly what types of animals they're supposed to be, which I consider to be a strength of the design work.

c2e2 Review: Skullkickers Volume 1: What happens when God creates a comic from all of your favorite D&D adventures.

I'm not going to sugarcoat this: Skullkickers will kick your ass. Sitting there reading the first volume of the series, 1,000 Opas and a Dead Body (Opas are the currency of the world) you'll start to freak out and hallucinate. You will believe that the creators, writer Jim Zub, line artist Edwin Huang, and colorist Misty Coats somehow snuck into your gaming group last Friday, cast a spell of confusion on all of you, and recorded the entire session to be meticulously recreated just moments later in this vibrant, ultra-violent dream of a fantasy comic.

Not convinced? Let me tell ya a little bit about the boys. Skullkickers stars two unnamed characters that creatively go by "Baldy" and "Shorty" and the whole thing was designed to feel like a buddy cop flick. It definitely has the feel like someone's about to announce "I'm getting too old for this shit!" at any moment. You see, the Skullkickers are bad-ass monster hunters. They go to the local tavern, get drunk until they hear a rumor about a giant leech monster eating the local children, and then proceed to go kick the skull of said monster. This sounding familiar to anyone yet?

The Hopeless Gamer at c2e2 Part 1 - A Summary of Awesome

I'm having a hard time deciding how to write about c2e2. While they're doing their best to expand their way into more tabletop gaming, there's no doubt that the place is clearly dominated by comic books and the companies that produce them. I don't have a problem with this, in fact, I love comics more than a little, so I'm happy that c2e2 exists (especially given its placement early on in the year). If you read about c2e2 on other sites, you'll find a common sentiment that c2e2, as a convention, just works. It's only been around two years now, but it still reigns as the most pleasant of cons. In the next couple of posts I'll be writing reviews of stuff I picked up at the show that specifically relate to gaming. You think superheros when you hear the word "comicbook" but I was happily surprised by some of the stuff we found. Not only did I get some great gaming fodder in comic form but I actually picked up some really great fantasy stuff. NEW fantasy books with new IP's (as well as one of the oldest fantasy IP). For now though, I've decided to dump a bunch of pictures here and tell a little bit about the cool stuff we did.

The Hopeless Gamer at c2e2

We were fortunate enough again this year to make it to the second annual Chicago Comics & Entertainment Expo, or c2e2, again this year, and it was a complete blast. We were there for only about 24 hours over the course of Friday and Saturday, but there's a ton of highlights that spring to mind. Over the course of the next week I'll be writing about some of our experiences from the celebrities to the panels to the insane comic book deals we found, it was a really great experience that I can't recommend enough to people who aren't sure if they want to make the trip to Chicago.

I don't have a whole lot to say right now, but it's been a couple of days, and rather than leave an empty front page here (although you guys really delivered on my post about completing a campaign, and that's much appreciated!) I just wanted to give a little teaser. I also want to say that I officially survived another con, albeit with a bit of con crud for good measure.

c2e2 - The Most Pleasant of Comic Conventions.

I'm going to say this right up front - the running theme of our one day at c2e2 in Chicago was "pleasant." The most surprising thing of the entire event wasn't the huge guest list or how nice the carpetting throughout the place was to walk on. No, it was the giant windows lining all the walls of the main convention hall and most of the hallways and large rooms as well. Seriously, last Saturday in Chicago, while incredibly windy and more than a little brisk outside, was bright and sunny and our view of Lake Michigan was gorgeous pretty much throughout the entire convention.

I have to say that the McCormick Place is my dream convention center. Having gone to c2e2, I'm now deeply lamenting that Gencon Indy isn't Gencon Chicago. I couldn't imagine how pleasant it would be to play a pick-up game of Werewolf or something similar on the dais just outside the convention center right on the Lake at night. If you don't believe me, you should check out the public pool account on flickr generated by attendees of the show (thanks to the flickr account and its participants for some of the photos!). You'll notice that there was a ton of cosplaying, which is cool in its own way, but the big thing you'll notice is all the natural light. Yes I'm gushing, but you don't really know how big a deal this is until you've experienced it!

So what did we really think about it?

c2e2 Propworx Iron Man Auction Preview!

So we survived our one day of c2e2 yesterday, and I have to say that I was deeply impressed by this convention. There's going to be a more proper write-up of the interviews, observations, and overall experience of c2e2 (hint: it's pretty much all strongly positive!), but for now I just wanted to give a shout out to Propworx and their Iron Man prop and costume auction that's going to be happening later today only at c2e2. Before getting into more details I wanted to thank Shelley at Propworx for giving us permission to use images from Propworx as well as being very encouraging to small press guys like myself. Thanks Shelley! Propworx are the folks responsible for the epic Battlestar Galactica auction that was able to get pretty much every costume, prop gun, and crimped-corner piece of paper that appeared on the show to the fans.

Ok, on with the info!

Four Days and Counting Before c2e2!

The Gamer Wife and I are going to be at c2e2 this Saturday, and as our first con of the real con season and obviously our first c2e2 bein' that it's the first one of its kinda and all, I am incredibly excited. It's been a couple years since I had a chance to go to Wizard World (in fact the last time was for part of my bachelor party the summer before The Gamer Wife earned her name), and while we've been doing Gencons and most recently Con of the North, there's something special about comic conventions.

Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo - C2E2!

In what is turning out to be a supers power-hour here at The Hopeless Gamer, I can announce that just yesterday I received confirmation that The Gamer Wife and I are going to be at C2E2 as official representatives of the press! If you haven't heard of C2E2 yet, I don't blame you - it is the first year of the show afterall. However, a quick summary might be in order. Basically C2E2 is shaping up to be a mini Comic-Con, and I mean in the good lots-of-access-to-the-people-who-make-the-stuff-that's-really-neat kind of way, not the sold-out-crowded-floor kind of way.

While C2E2 is mostly a comic convention, it's impossible nowadays to avoid general pop culture when you start discussing comics. That being said, the list of guests appearing at the show is quite daunting. Because of the prolific... ness of the list, I'm wondering what people would be interested in reading about when it comes to our C2E2 coverage? The show itself is still a month away, but it's never to early to start brainstorming and planning. Because of this I'm looking for your input. You can either leave a comment in reply to this blog or you can send an email to TheHopelessGamer@gmail.com with your coverage request.