Dragon*Con 2012

Over labor day weekend, I attended Dragon*Con (not sure why the asterisk is used in the title). From their own website, Dragon*Con claims to be "the largest multi-media, popular culture convention focusing on science fiction and fantasy, gaming, comics, literature, art, music, and film in the universe!" The Con is housed in several hotels and since it's located in Atlanta, Georgia, it gets pretty hot as you're standing outside buildings and walking to and from buildings. But it includes many special guests that are interesting to see and many costumes.

This is my second year attending, the first year I didn't have time to put anything together but this year I had a little advance warning so I planned out a referential Captain America costume. This means I didn't wear the full suit with my Chris Evans-esk physique, instead I put together an ensemble with hints of Captain America flavor.

So here's me at the convention:

And here are all the elements that went into my costume:

First was all the makeup I used for my face and nails:



I didn't know what to do specifically for my eyeshadow, so I went with a shooting star motif.



 And then I added some gems to this because sparkly eyeshadow wasn't sparkly enough.


Next were the colors for my hair. I did a french braid on both sides interweaving red, white and blue hair pieces:



Then we have the Captain America hoodie (from hot topic) and blue jeans.



My red shoes (instead of red boots) and a blue tank top for under the hoodie.



These were some potential additions to the costume, red gloves, Captain American themed temporary tattoos, and sunglasses. I only ended up using the white with silver gems sunglasses.



In addition to all that jazz, I spent some time crafting a clay Captain America shield ring seen here with my red nail polish.



Last but not least, my handmade (in two days none-the-less) Captain America shield backpack. While I initially was cool with just having the shield ring, I realized that I was going to need a place to put my sunglasses when I was indoors. I didn't want to mar my costume by having them out and around my person when they weren't needed so then I thought of what I could design to conceal them. Then the idea of a large backpack came to mind, a backpack that I could either wear on my back or on my arm like a shield, and then this baby was born:



Even though the backpack had space on the inside for my glasses, I made a pocket on the back side just for them so I could access them easily when moving between buildings/outdoors and indoors.



A top view of the backpack:

 Okay, so you put all that together and you have a Captain America costume for years to come...

Or until he's no longer cool. ;p