You mentioned in your first post that the Gipsy Danger body was a pep file. Do you have any link to this file? I might start a build of my own since my helmet is going so well
talk to SriLanKING or check on here for "pacific rim pepakura files" since that's where I got everything besides the head file you're using (which I got from the 405th.com)
Now then, if you're underage or reading this to your underage kids, feel free to skip this bit and just go right to the next bit:
Mother**** me ***** ****ing ****** I am sooooo ****ing achy...Hailee too. We were up late for days before the Con and while my suit was rigged MUCH better this time round (with the exception of me getting my abs mixed up on attachment) I wore two suits so my shoulders are ****ing killing me. Hailee on the other hand needs serious help with her stilts, since she's
so small walking with those stilts all day wasn't just hard it was crippling, and her suit really took it out of her too...we'll be working on that. Some altered rigging to her stilts and her cone and such. Also her ****ing lights failed again, so I'm looking into a better way to fix that...and a more dedicated/rechargable power source
Anyways, Saturday started off for serious suck. Hailee's stilts really weighed her down and she wasn't used to walking in them (pains of a rushed production schedule and my own fault for underestimating the toll they'd take on her) so she moved really slowly, but it was doable until we got inside the con. At that point we'd been taking tons of pictures (which was exhilarating to see so many people appreciated our hard work for sure!) when the suit got to Hailee and she nearly passed out. There was a guy (and our handler Charlie) who very kindly helped get her safely over to a wall where we could get her some water and food and make sure she was doing ok. I took that opportunity to go notify the masquerade judges that we were there for prejudging, since prejudging was supposed to end in 15 minutes, only to find out that there was a mix up and prejudging actually had ended 15 minutes prior and had actually
gone over its intended time, contrary to what the website said. Needless to say at that point we were a little disappointed but we figured that we'd come that far we might as well enjoy the masquerade, plus the
immense popularity of both myself and her was wonderful to experience. We also saw some seriously
awesome costumes, including a tru-scale Space Wolf! Mercifully once we got inside the hall (which took the better part of an hour from so many people wanting pictures!) a woman came rushing up to us to tell us that if we showed up to the masquerade at 6:30 we could still participate...which at that point really cemented how well the day had turned around, to go from not being able to walk besides other great cosplayers and Cherno proving too hot to Hailee being able to wander the con by herself and being allowed to participate.
From there the day just got better, there were a lot of awesome people at the con, many of whom absolutely lost their minds at our costumes, or had awesome costumes themselves (there were a lot of truly excellent clones and storm troopers, particularly a Captain Rex that was very crisp and smooth with an excellent finish on all his armor components as well as a very friendly Desert Trooper who we chatted up while Hailee was eating, also a pretty cool Juggernaut and Magneto, both of whom had some great helmets). There was also a
very enthusiastic woman who was so happy to see our costumes she gave us posters for free of Gipsy and Cherno!
Anyways, the masquerade finally came, and I spent the 15 minutes leading up to it rushing back and forth between Charlie (who had my phone with all our progress pics and ref pics) and the judges so that they could get in some "prejudging"...which was actually really cool. They asked a lot of really in depth questions about our design process and detail choices, it was really fun to geek out with them over it...once I saw who we were up against though I was super nervous, especially since the judges said that, while we had a chance at winning, it was a very slim one. There was a frankly spectacular Odin that was a mix of the Marvel and Old Norse designs of the character, riddled with details and armor and chainmail and bells and tons of little things that, coupled with the Valkyrie and Thor he had with him, made him just spectacular. There was also an awesome triplet of Witches from Hocus Pocus, a AC2 Era Ezio Auditoire da Firenze, a black-suited armored gun wielding Spiderman (whose series escapes me atm...), a 2004 animated Joker, the aformentioned 7 foot tall Space Wolf, a Rapunzel, a Batgirl, a "Dark Knight Returns" era Batman (the Superman defeating armor specifically), the awesome Captain Rex, and a truly epic Rocket Racoon (and a prime example to me of why furry costumes are really, really impressive), and a truly disgusting Slimer...definitely some stiff competition, especially when, as I would later find out, many of them were in the "novice" category that we had entered.
Which is why, when they read out the three winners for the novice section and none of them were us, I was sad, but totally understood. The people they picked did absolutely fantastic jobs, and Rocket Raccoon totally deserved her win (her mouth moved and you could see her natural eyes under the mask, letting her be really emotive). Plus I wasn't expecting us to even place, really, since the judges had mentioned how slim our chances were before the show.
Turns out though that some of our competiton wasn't actually our competition, as I found out when Rex won third and an elf (who hand sculpted and cast her ears even) won second...then they said, for the winners of expert, "these two" and my heart skipped a beat. You see, there were several groups in the masquerade...but they were all threes...we were the only pair. And I honestly couldn't believe it...until they said "these guys did such a good job, we had to bump them up" and that's when I got
really excited.
Turns out the PPDF earned its second win on saturday, despite everything! Quite possibly the most awesome day of any con I'd been to, that it started off pretty rubbish and turned into such an awesome day with so many awesome people. Also, we ran into the woman who took video of me from Taiyou con, so that's also awesome since she does such awesome work and I felt so lucky not just to be featured twice, but also that Hailee got so much recognition after all her hard work too!
But enough rambling! Here's the pics I've found from the con so far!
Credit for these goes to Charlie Eberspacher and Deep Patel:
Credit for these goes to Gage Skidmore
Next step is to improve all the little flaws we found in Cherno, just like I did after Taiyou con for myself. We'll also be making both our new hands that will move and transform and stuff, making her telescoping hands, making my sword, and looking for a more dedicated/rechargable power source (if any of you know of a viable replacement for 9 volt batteries that is reasonably cheap, lightweight, portable, and long lasting it would be awesome, especially if it's rechargable) Fortunately our next planned event is PHXCC, so we have plenty of time to improve on our tech!
Also if you have any pics of Hailee in Cherno I'd love to see them
One more thing: I ran into a Spartan III and IV on sunday that I just wanted to say had some pretty awesome armor for how young they looked. Keep up the good work kiddos!