New Clockwork Droid Elements

This past weekend was Dragon*Con!  I had a blast, and my new clockwork droid elements worked out perfectly.  I have a new mask, which my husband made, and a new wig.  I decided to keep count of all the photos taken of me, and by the end of the weekend (three days of costuming) I had almost 600 people snap pictures of my costume!  We saw another clockwork droid, but its mask wasn't even as good as my first mask.  It looks like there was a group of four other droids there as well, but we never saw them.  According to pictures, though, my costume was the best (am I modest or what?)

If you know nothing about Dragon*Con, let me enlighten you - it's four days of everything geeky: costumes, celebrity guests, science panels, podcasts, supernatural stuff, sci-fi TV, novels, you name it.  Over 40,000 people converge on five hotels in Atlanta every Labor Day weekend for Dragon*Con!  There are literally thousands of events to attend, a costume contest, a masquerade, several balls, tons of parties, and floor upon floor of drinking and socializing with other nerds!  Oh, and queues!  LOTS of queues!

My friends Samm and Sera with Kermit

It is a very scary concept if you're not into all of that - last year I came across a family of four clutching their bags in terror, clearly not aware of what was going on around them.  They had just come to Atlanta for vacation or something, and appeared terrified.  We also saw some pilots last year who had the same bewildered expressions on their faces - I'm sure they'd been complimented on their "costumes"!

Dragon*Con is totally surreal.  While in costume, I had a girl hug me, another girl tell me that I was the creepiest thing at the entire con, a drunk guy kissed me on my clockworky lips (eeeewwwwww ....) and I had several people thank me because The Girl in the Fireplace was their favorite Doctor Who episode.  At least a dozen people told me that they wanted to make a clockwork droid costume.

My friends Samm and Sera went as the Snowths from The Muppet Show and were the hit of the con.  Everywhere they went, people were singing, "Manah manah!"  We even heard people singing it when they weren't around.  It really got into the con-goers heads!  They had their picture taken with Felicia Day of The Guild and she tweeted the photo on her Twitter stream.  So Samm and Sera are famous!

One of my favorite things to do as a clockwork droid is to just stand in a corner, or in front of a pillar, and not move.  Sometimes I'd turn my head or arm or something, especially if it was for a picture, but most of the time, I'm just frozen.  A girl even poked me in the chest because she didn't think I was real, then practically ran away screaming after discovering that I wasn't a mannequin (although, you'd think the badge would be a dead giveaway).

Bob and Carl and Bellatrix Lestrange

I posed with quite a few interesting characters, and one of my favorite photos was taken with Bob and Carl: Sci-Fi Janitors, who are the stars of many, many Dragon*ConTV sketches, and Bellatrix Lestrange.

Matt was the Tenth Doctor again, and I think he just looks fantastic when he's trussed up like David Tennant.  We saw a TON of Eleventh Doctors, and most of them were just sloppy and lazy.  Trousers, bow tie, and tweed coat does not an Eleventh Doctor make.  I will constantly be baffled by the people who don't put effort into researching their costume.

Two Tens and an Eleven

All weekend long, Dragon*Con TV runs bumpers, videos, and live panels.  It is total geek saturation for four days straight.  There are panels on Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, Buffy, Firefly, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and practically every sci-fi show that's on the air.  Costumes include superheroes, comic book characters, TV and movie characters, original characters, steampunk, and crazy interpretations of all of them.  The very best cosplayers come out and it is just amazing to hear people talk about how they create their costumes.  I mentioned how some of the Eleventh Doctor costumes were sloppy - even the worst Eleventh Doctor costume is better than most costumes you'll see at other cons.  Dragon*Con attendees are dedicated.  Serious art goes into the best costumes, and I can't even imagine how many hundreds of hours the winners of the costume contest and masquerade put into their costume.

I'll eventually post official Clockwork Droid pictures up here and at my profile on Cosplay.com, with a side-by-side comparison to the original masks from the show.  Now the big question is - what do I do next year?