Your San Jose Sharks!
May. 28th, 2006 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ebonlockSo I can finally reveal the Super Secret Project to the world, woo-hoo! The brilliant ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tamago and chrisber came up with a wonderful plot to create a group Baycon masquerade costume...the San Jose Sharks Quidditch team. I was asked to join as one of the Chasers and semi-official team artist...and Wanda "Socks" Wildersock was born.
The other members of our conspiracy, dubbed "Sovereign" werejimweasel, aelfsciene, tersa, melimus, and ravenmb. C- and J- were my fellow Chasers, M- was our Keeper, C- and LA- Beaters, and of course A- as our Seeker.
I suspect thattamago will be posting all of our documentation photos later on, we photo-documented everything during the creation phase. We made our own robes and brooms if you can believe that, the latter teaching me that I am quite allergic to broom corn. We had handmade leg pads, hockey pants and black tops, black socks and black Chuck Taylors as they were the closest visually to the actual shoes we saw in movie stills. Speaking of which, we spent hours going through the films trying to figure out the numbering pattern for the players. Finally we had to make an educated guess or two:
1 - Keeper
2, 3, 4 - Chasers
5, 6 - Beaters
7 - Seeker
But there seemed to be a reasonable amount of evidence to back up our guess.
I re-created the Sharks logo with the broom crunch rather than hockey stick by hand. I drew the design twice (we needed to rework the look of the broom end), hand colored it, and then tweaked it on the computer. Managed to match the teal in our uniforms exactly! Then printed the design directly onto white cotton to give it a patch look. Also designed an American Quidditch League logo to wear on our right sleeves, whereas we had our numbers on the left. We wanted to make sure that our uniforms looked enough like the British ones to make them easily recognizable, but different enough to make it clear that we were a different league and that as Americans we'd worked in our own specific alterations to account for differences in conditions over here.
For instance we surmised that most of American Quidditch is played in indoor stadiums (at least on the professional level). One of the little tweaks thatchrisber came up with was to take our pointed hoods and roll them into a zippered collar. It was a brilliant idea and not only fit into the whole concept but also on a practical level made it easier to read our names on the back of our robes. And to see that sweet logo, of course ;)
We spent a lot of time together over the past few weeks, and got to actually bond a bit as a team, which was a lot of fun. Broom Day in particular was a bonding experience, and it was funny that as we were working on the brooms we all bonded with our equipment as well. By the end of the day we'd all chosen our favorite brooms and even after they'd been boxed up and not looked at for a while we all still had no trouble identifying our own.
So yesterday was the big day, and we got suited up partially in C- and C-'s hotel room before eading over to the check-in. Walking through the hotel in our black numbered under-outfits was a hoot. As we passed one guy the overheard comment that set us all giggling was, "Oh good, the number people are here."
What felt even better was to be back in the green room and really suiting up. The expressions on peoples' faces when they realized what we were was just fantastic! We quickly realized who our main competitors were, a fantastic bunch doing Monty Python's Holy grail (Edit: "the Spammish Inquisition"), and a Lego Qui-Gon Jin and Darth Maul. Fortunately they were both so great that we quickly contented ourselves that losing to either wouldn't be too awful. There was a fun Bab5 group, a Sailor Moon bunch whose costumes were completely constructed of balloons, and a crowd favorite the Go-Go Boy from Jupiter with light up undies. Although a personal favorite of mine was the Captain Jack Sparrow who stayed completely in character from the time he arrived in the Green Room (around 7-ish I think) until the awards were announced about quarter after 11. I managed to grab him for a photo op with Aelf, though my camera gave up the ghost at that point so I'll have to wait for M- or LA- (whoever's camera the photo ended up on) to post theirs.
Our stage time was incredibly brief, but a helluva lot of fun. C- and I were "flying blind", so to speak, but J- said he'd keep us from running off the stage if that seemed likely. We got the crowd into it and were jazzed and grinning from ear to ear by the time we'd finished. Thankfully it took hours for that high to wear off 'cause we had hours to kill before the judges finally finished up. We managed to amuse ourselves with the other entrants and one another until we finally got the head's up to go back to the masquerade auditorium. We ended up entering with Captain Jack, and when Aelf groused, "What do they expect us to do now? Stand around here?" without missing a beat he replied in perfectly rum-slurred Jack-voice, "I suppose they expect us to dance." and proceeded to do that to the funky music playing in the background.
I can't remember precisely who won what, but I do know that Jupiter Boy and the Lego team got called up front a lot. The Holy Grail team won at least two, maybe three awards, and then it was our turn.
When we took Best Workmanship for our class there was much rejoicing. However, when the final award of the night was announced they got as far as "Your..." and my heart was pounding so fast and loud that I couldn't hear another thing. Fortunately my teammates didn't have a similar problem and began whooping it up before we'd even made it to our feet. Yep, we took the big one, Best in Show for Baycon 2006! Edit: I should say one of two Best in Show, "Spammish Inquisition" took best presentation and I want to say we got Best Original, but I need to confirm that withtamago who I think has the official award.
The accolades afterwards were extremely sweet, particularly when one of the judges ran over to just drool over the costumes and tell us how brilliant we all were. C- and C- were all but glowing. All the work, the stress, the hives, the sunburn and splinters, the stuck fingers and frustration...they were all so worth it and I honestly can't remember the last time I had so much fun with a project in my life. I'm very proud to have been a member of the 2006 San Jose Sharks Quidditch team.
And now for your viewing pleasure, Best in Show 2006, the San Jose Sharks:
My gallery of photos and art from the project.
ShoutingBoy's shots from the Baycon official photo shoot.
tamago and chrisber came up with a wonderful plot to create a group Baycon masquerade costume...the San Jose Sharks Quidditch team. I was asked to join as one of the Chasers and semi-official team artist...and Wanda "Socks" Wildersock was born.The other members of our conspiracy, dubbed "Sovereign" were
jimweasel, aelfsciene, tersa, melimus, and ravenmb. C- and J- were my fellow Chasers, M- was our Keeper, C- and LA- Beaters, and of course A- as our Seeker.I suspect that
tamago will be posting all of our documentation photos later on, we photo-documented everything during the creation phase. We made our own robes and brooms if you can believe that, the latter teaching me that I am quite allergic to broom corn. We had handmade leg pads, hockey pants and black tops, black socks and black Chuck Taylors as they were the closest visually to the actual shoes we saw in movie stills. Speaking of which, we spent hours going through the films trying to figure out the numbering pattern for the players. Finally we had to make an educated guess or two:1 - Keeper
2, 3, 4 - Chasers
5, 6 - Beaters
7 - Seeker
But there seemed to be a reasonable amount of evidence to back up our guess.
I re-created the Sharks logo with the broom crunch rather than hockey stick by hand. I drew the design twice (we needed to rework the look of the broom end), hand colored it, and then tweaked it on the computer. Managed to match the teal in our uniforms exactly! Then printed the design directly onto white cotton to give it a patch look. Also designed an American Quidditch League logo to wear on our right sleeves, whereas we had our numbers on the left. We wanted to make sure that our uniforms looked enough like the British ones to make them easily recognizable, but different enough to make it clear that we were a different league and that as Americans we'd worked in our own specific alterations to account for differences in conditions over here.
For instance we surmised that most of American Quidditch is played in indoor stadiums (at least on the professional level). One of the little tweaks that
chrisber came up with was to take our pointed hoods and roll them into a zippered collar. It was a brilliant idea and not only fit into the whole concept but also on a practical level made it easier to read our names on the back of our robes. And to see that sweet logo, of course ;)We spent a lot of time together over the past few weeks, and got to actually bond a bit as a team, which was a lot of fun. Broom Day in particular was a bonding experience, and it was funny that as we were working on the brooms we all bonded with our equipment as well. By the end of the day we'd all chosen our favorite brooms and even after they'd been boxed up and not looked at for a while we all still had no trouble identifying our own.
So yesterday was the big day, and we got suited up partially in C- and C-'s hotel room before eading over to the check-in. Walking through the hotel in our black numbered under-outfits was a hoot. As we passed one guy the overheard comment that set us all giggling was, "Oh good, the number people are here."
What felt even better was to be back in the green room and really suiting up. The expressions on peoples' faces when they realized what we were was just fantastic! We quickly realized who our main competitors were, a fantastic bunch doing Monty Python's Holy grail (Edit: "the Spammish Inquisition"), and a Lego Qui-Gon Jin and Darth Maul. Fortunately they were both so great that we quickly contented ourselves that losing to either wouldn't be too awful. There was a fun Bab5 group, a Sailor Moon bunch whose costumes were completely constructed of balloons, and a crowd favorite the Go-Go Boy from Jupiter with light up undies. Although a personal favorite of mine was the Captain Jack Sparrow who stayed completely in character from the time he arrived in the Green Room (around 7-ish I think) until the awards were announced about quarter after 11. I managed to grab him for a photo op with Aelf, though my camera gave up the ghost at that point so I'll have to wait for M- or LA- (whoever's camera the photo ended up on) to post theirs.
Our stage time was incredibly brief, but a helluva lot of fun. C- and I were "flying blind", so to speak, but J- said he'd keep us from running off the stage if that seemed likely. We got the crowd into it and were jazzed and grinning from ear to ear by the time we'd finished. Thankfully it took hours for that high to wear off 'cause we had hours to kill before the judges finally finished up. We managed to amuse ourselves with the other entrants and one another until we finally got the head's up to go back to the masquerade auditorium. We ended up entering with Captain Jack, and when Aelf groused, "What do they expect us to do now? Stand around here?" without missing a beat he replied in perfectly rum-slurred Jack-voice, "I suppose they expect us to dance." and proceeded to do that to the funky music playing in the background.
I can't remember precisely who won what, but I do know that Jupiter Boy and the Lego team got called up front a lot. The Holy Grail team won at least two, maybe three awards, and then it was our turn.
When we took Best Workmanship for our class there was much rejoicing. However, when the final award of the night was announced they got as far as "Your..." and my heart was pounding so fast and loud that I couldn't hear another thing. Fortunately my teammates didn't have a similar problem and began whooping it up before we'd even made it to our feet. Yep, we took the big one, Best in Show for Baycon 2006! Edit: I should say one of two Best in Show, "Spammish Inquisition" took best presentation and I want to say we got Best Original, but I need to confirm that with
tamago who I think has the official award.The accolades afterwards were extremely sweet, particularly when one of the judges ran over to just drool over the costumes and tell us how brilliant we all were. C- and C- were all but glowing. All the work, the stress, the hives, the sunburn and splinters, the stuck fingers and frustration...they were all so worth it and I honestly can't remember the last time I had so much fun with a project in my life. I'm very proud to have been a member of the 2006 San Jose Sharks Quidditch team.
And now for your viewing pleasure, Best in Show 2006, the San Jose Sharks:
My gallery of photos and art from the project.
ShoutingBoy's shots from the Baycon official photo shoot.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 08:53 pm (UTC)Yay for seeing you this weekend! (eventually)
no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 09:10 pm (UTC)congrats
Date: 2006-05-28 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-28 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-29 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-29 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-29 04:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-29 05:11 am (UTC)thank you all!!!
Date: 2006-05-29 11:00 pm (UTC)You ppl made my weekend!!! Ok, yeah, I'm both a huge Sharks fan & Harry Potter fan, but above & beyond that, your group did a stunningly brilliant job of everything. The details & construction were perfect, the presentation was right on, the whole package was everything that a costume should be IMNSHO. I worship you!
I'll be posting my pix (75% of what I took @ the con were of your group, & YES I MUST make my own robe/jersey!!!), plus a slobberingly praiseful post about your costumes soon, so I added everyone I could tell who's in the group to my f-list.
FYI
Date: 2006-05-29 11:01 pm (UTC)Re: FYI
Date: 2006-05-30 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-30 01:05 am (UTC)Thanks again, and I hope we'll see you guys next year!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-30 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-30 06:46 am (UTC)Re: Thank you...
Date: 2006-05-30 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-30 07:33 am (UTC)**hugs**