Dragon Con Part 1: Wayne's Story

After two had years of preparation we made our first ever appearance at Dragon*Con 2010 located in down town Atlanta Georgia. For three days we proudly showed off our creations and had some really interesting experiences. After getting back into Huntsville yesterday night we are all tired, but would like to share some of our experiences while the convention is still fresh in our heads, as well as mention some news about upcoming projects.

Friday:

ODST Suit Laid Out Before Suiting UP

After waiting in line two hours Friday morning to get our D*Con badges David and I suited up in our ODST Hell jumper suits and hit the convention. For about the next four hours as we tried to make our way around the hotels we could barley move as wave after wave of people stopped us to take our picture. The general scenario played out something like us.

Patron: [Exact second we take our helmets off for air] “Excuse me, can I get a picture?”

Us: “Sure” [Put helmet back on]

Then a mob forms and cameras are flashing for about 5 min. When the flashing stops we look around to see if anybody is still taking our picture. We don’t see anybody and begin to take our helmets off…

Patron: [Exact second we take our helmets off for air] “Excuse me, can I get a picture?”

And repeat that about 5000 times ;-)

While we were wearing our ODST gear Jecca (David’s girlfriend) was also a big camera draw as she showed off her female version of the Tim Burton Mad Hatter. Dave will put some pictures up in his post but I have to say that Jecca’s costume was the best Mad Hatter costume I have seen. Period. She nailed the make up perfectly and everything about the outfit was just awesome.

After trooping for a few hours David and I met up with a friend of his and we found a parking garage for a professional ODST photo shoot. I haven’t seen the final pictures yet but based on the other work he showed us on his iPad (after we washed off Dave’s drool) we are going to have some really nice pictures of our gear.

Saturday:

Saturday brought on the Dragon*Con parade for which we broke out the Rocket City Ghostbusters. David, Ethan, and I suited up in our gear while Jecca went all out and pulled off an amazing Janine costume. We made our way down Peachtree and met up with an army of Ghostbusters from franchises across the country including Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Palm Beach, and Denver just to name a few. Not only were there enough “unlicensed nuclear accelerator” to power a small country, but there were SEVEN Ecto mobiles! Seeing this many Ghostbusters in one place was defiantly a sight to see.

Who you gonna call?

The Rocket City Ghostbusters (I was taking the picture)

Marching in the parade was defiantly one of those moments in life you never forget. For four blocks thousands of people were lined up on the streets taking pictures of the parade, yelling, “Who you gonna call” and chanting “Ghostbusters! Ghostbusters! Ghostbusters!” like in the movie. I won’t lie, I was crying a little bit under my sunglasses. Going from being a little kid 20 years ago playing with the toys and pretending to be a Ghostbuster to having parents and kids alike point to us and say, “There ARE the Ghostbusters!”. It was a very emotional experience for me.

Me and David in the Parade

After the parade while the other guys were checking out some of the celebrities and panels I kept my gear on and made my way through the main three hotels stopping every few minutes to have my picture taken, and luckily get pictures of other people since I can wear a camera on the Ghostbuster gear. In addition to some really good costumes, I saw my first real life R2-D2! For a while I decided to hang out at the GBfans booth in the Hyatt to mingle with some of the other busters. I received a lot of complements about my game pack and Dan AKA was nice enough to make a video vouching that despite popular belief my proton pack is in fact wearable. Later that night the RCGB group headed out to the Ghostbusters awards dinner at the Mellow Mushroom for some excellent pizza and good conversation about busting.

Hungry Ghostbusters

After dinner the awards were presented, and I was given the Golden Crunch Bar Award for Best Representation of a Ghostbuster thanks to my work on the video game version of the pack! Unfortunalty the gentlemen making the awards had some issues and couldn’t make the convention, but my award will be mailed here when it’s done: A golden PKE meter!

Sunday:

By Sunday most of us were pretty worn out and decided to spend our last day in civilian close, but I decided to put my bruised feet and aching back aside and take the game pack out for one last spin, this time with a khaki uniform. I spent a few hours traveling around the hotels and was stopped many times for pictures, and even an interview with CNN Student News! I saw a lot of great costumes that I have posted in the flicker account, but one of my favorite shots defiantly has to one where we found Gozer the Gozerian!

Aim for the Flat Top!

All in all my first Dragon Con defiantly lived up to the hype I have been putting on it for the last 2 years (we did not have suits ready by D*Con 2009 and by the time David and I met all the hotels would have been booked anyway) and we have already booked our rooms for next year! As far as projects for D*Con 2011 go, David is working hard on the Daft Punk suits and we are going to see if we can maybe do something special in the parade with them like have a moving pyramid so we can “D.J.” the parade. The ODST and RCGB suits may make an appearance as well although they would not be worn for the full day again since we have to fit in the other suits as well. Personally, I had a secret project in mind that I was planning, but the abundance of Splicers and Little Sisters I saw and the total lack of Big Daddies is causing me to take another look at Subject Delta……

Dragon Con 2010 Pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/2storyprops/sets/72157624893699774/