Yo Joe! SF*2009 Group Costume Planning Thread

Started a thread because I thought it was an excellent idea... and we really ought to start now if we're really going to pull this thing off anyways.

So... any ideas?

 

X-Men
Venture Brothers
The 5th Element

Now you've got me thinking...

The Island of Dr Moreau would be interesting...
Or even planet of the Apes...

Ooo... or half of us could dress as Pirates and the other half as Ninjas... and we can do Ninjas vs Pirates.

 

justice league


green lantern corp. there are so many differnet lanterns you can look like whatever you want for the most part.

 

I was talking to a few people about doing the Mystery Men Recruitment Party, which would be a few main characters but a TON of crazy off the wall characters. I even offered to organize and head up the effort, I was just going to wait until people had a chance to rest up after this weekend.

So far I have plans for Baby Bowler (me), The Spleen (Nigel) and Casanova Frankenstein (Dan). Nige and I tossed around ideas for who could do what and we think Jonathan would make an excellent Captain Amazing, but that's entirely up to y'all. What do you think?

 

He would make an awesome Captain Amazing

 

I'm up for either Feni's idea, or the Venture Brothers with dibs on Doc Venture.

 

I'm definitely up for Mystery Men (considering I don't really have any idea about what Venture Bros. is... unless it's that one cartoon on Adult Swim that had the weird wolverine-looking character that was more like a pigeon)

I wouldn't mind dressing up as Eddie Izzard's character. Disco. Love it.

 

Venture bros. makes fun of Johnny Quest. It's awesome.

My brother and his friend Tim would make a PERFECT Hank and Dean. And they're totally willing, trick would be guaranteeing they'll be in the state and not away at college in New York.

I know Josh mentioned he wanted to be the Monarch and Rachel be Dr Girlfriend.

As for Mystrey men, it would be fun. I can't think off the top of my head which one I'd want to be. I'll have to go back and watch the movie.

 

I've never seen Mystery Men all the way through, but from what little I saw of it, it held no interest, and IMHO is too obscure to really hold any relevance.


If the goal is to go specatular and WIN the costume contest, then it MUST be both funny, AND be ingrained into the geek culture.

Let's look at the winners from last year, and this year:

Leah's Spaceballs troupe: 9 people, absolutely great looking, and it was hilarious! Who doesn't love Spaceballs?

The Night at the Museum: large troupe, extremely well done, good look alikes, and it is both recent and undrestandable, even if you haven't seen the movie. It was played well, and the crowd went nuts!

The Lego Stormtroopers: Although their costumes were just plain cardboard, it played well, was totally recognized by the kid in all of us (who hasn't played with Legos?!?!?), and the non-cardboard parts looked and worked great! Even when the guy lost his head (and I have it frame by frame at 3 frames per second), the crowd loved it and they played it well. I even have pics of his "suicide! LOL

The Gundam: I'm more of a Robotech guy myself, but I can recognize a Gundam and see incredible work, dedication and skill. While lacking in the humor element, this proves that if done RIGHT, something semi-obscure can win, and win big.

I'll post pics later of all of these, but from what I saw from the audience, those that work within the pop culture, really can make it go big. The more humor there is, and the more coreography for the stage there is, the better it goes. Sound helps a lot, but bad lip synching does NOT. (There was one couple, *not Leah's* that did a craptastic job of lip synching and it bombed.) And solo folks just lack the panache, unless it's an over the top Gundam.

But to me, the humor element is huge. Parody is great, and I think that some kind of Weird Al or Mel Brooks type of parody would be better than something so obsucre that people would scratch their heads, saying WTF is that? Like the frakking cube with hearts. huh?!?!?



....so on to things I'd personally like to do as a group build, but maybe not as a costume contest:

1) Finish the Endor Rebel Trooper. This has to be a group effort, and we troop it as a group, otherwise we'll look like the BSG or SG1 folks. I recently got one of the blasters from Jim Enger and it is amazing! I know the twins saw it this weekend, and can comment on how it looks, but at $65 for the kit and $28 for the airsoft base, it's cheap and looks great and is pretty solid!

2) I'd love to do the Spaceballs ***hole troopers, en masse. "I'm surrounded by ***holes!" I think both the white bobbleheads, and the black/grey armed troopers would be a blast.

3) Zombies. Not sure if we could get the "Shaun of the Dead" guy that was there this weekend, but he was spot-on. Add a mass of RMFF zobies getting whacked, and the crowd would go nuts!

4) Moria orcs: While lacking the humor element, I think these could be relatively cheap, with found items making some of the armor. And as a group, we could really pull this off and look good --and freaky! and as we have seen with the Tuskens, bad guys play well, and the LOTR DVD's have a wealth of info on the armor, and how they got the actors to do the body language to make it look authentic. I think an mass of Orcs currying around would look amazing!

5) USCM Colonial Marines: Maybe a bit pricey, but it's still on my list of to-do's, but I'd rather do this as a group run than as a solo. Like the RFT, or the ERT, one Marine looks like a goob. But a squad of them is great!!! And IIRC Kurt Weinrich has both the Alien and Predator costumes done, and we could do an AVP the way it should be done. Add in some of Hyperdyne's expertiese and this could absolutely be done and win in a HUGE way.

 

I know one I've been working on for a while is a Farscape costume. Some other's were interested in doing PeaceKeepers as a group, and I've got a preliminary pattern and even a nice mock up so far.

 

---

You show your true colors!

 

I'm still not sure yet. Lots of cool ideas, but I'll wait a bit before committing to anything.

 

I like the Farscape idea....

 

Spaceballs has been done...and very well.

I have to say the night at the museum was pretttty cool.

 

I liked the idea of 'Night at the Museum' theme. It took imagination to think of that, not just making costumes that look alike.

Jennay said something about Willow, we do have tons of kids to dress up too. But for the life of me I can't remember the movie too well right now.

I've always wanted to do Cenobites from Hellraiser.

Dark Crystal, Princess Bride, Demolition Man, give me time I could think of a ton more, but until we can all agree on something (which could take a year in itself ).....


Zombies would be good, we gave that guys our # & told him if he was going to do it again we could get him zombies. MHC, we are thinking.

 

what about

Labyrinth


or


Neverending Story


?

 

Dangit! SC is reading my mind again... I was totally going to suggest "Dark Crystal" because of the new movie.













Note to SC: Please ignore that Batman stuff in the back corner of my mind... I don't want to scare you. Trust me, it's not worth the pain.

 

Jana and I had suggested Futurama for this year. So how about next year?

 

I think that XMen or Marvel Super Heroes would be cool. There are so many of them, there would be a lot to choose from.

 

You could always do DUNE, we could have a couple people in a giant worm costume.

 

There is supposed to be a Justice League movie coming out in 2009.

I liked Mystery Men, except that with the exception of Baby Bowler, there's not much for us chicks to do.

Dark Crystal could be a BLAST!

Night Watch would have some really cool costumes too, though really uber-obscure.

Dark City would be cool too. Pale guys in trenchcoats. Tee hee.

Has anyone ever attempted the aliens from Independence Day?

 

I think the Dune idea is awesome, specially bringing in some of the ideas from the new books that haven't turned into movies yet

but I think the Dune group project idea would go over better at Opus next march as it's theme is going to be the Dune Universe

 

I was thinking about mentioning this earlier. Narnia would be fun. centars...and aslan...the kids...prince caspin. the white witch. I think there are a lot of different options.