LadyMegatron's Transformer Line-up (Pic Heavy!)

[LadyMegatron]

Being new here, but not new at the costuming, I did want to show some photos of my past builds, but didn't want to post up a thread for each one, so I'm going to post my past finished builds in the Transformers genre. So here is the line-up, as I call out roll from my first build to the most current and tell a little about each as I go. If anyone wants WIP pics, details on the build or such, I can then separate it into it's own Build Thread if need be, or can answer some questions in here.



First on the roll, my first ever 'armor' style costume....

Prince Starscream

I've done plenty of what I call 'walkabout' or 'softie' costumes (which is basically anything that isn't full armor and is something that is similar or is actual clothing or made from only various cloth or material that is soft and your face and whole body is not covered completely. What I call Armor builds are like Starscream here, or like, for example, Master Chief, IronMan, Darth Vader etc, where most of your body is covered by 'armor' whether it be soft or actual armor in build. What I call Softies are like, a jedi, a pirate, an X-Men character, etc where your body is seen or just covered in clothing and accessories or weaponry.) but this was my first ever full armor build. My son asked one day almost 3 years ago, 'Hey Mommy, can I be a Transformer for Halloween?' and the rest they say, is history. He is a G1 fan like his Mom and chose this character himself, wanting one that would be recognized not only out and about, but at the Conventions we planned to go to. Starscream went out on Halloween weekend, unfinished, 2009, and won his first costume contest at AdventureCon in Pigeon Forge Tennessee. He cosplayed Starscream for 2 years total, so far, with three 'upgrades' to build up pieces to account for the fact he was growing up as we went, and was 'crowned' the Prince at BotCon 2010, by King Starscream and his 'fans' and friends, and the crown and cape become a permanent part of the ensemble at the request of the King from there forward. There are 6 jewels now in the crown- one for each contest he's won first place in as The Prince.

Here he is with the King:

And my absolute most favorite picture of them....the King and the Prince, walking away together, going shopping on the BotCon sales floor:

Starscream started it all for this part of our cosplay. I had NO idea what I was doing on him, and scrwed up...A LOT. But it all worked out in the end, and lead to me deciding to make my own.
I went a little bolder and made an original. I built my namesake....

Lady Megatron, aka Meg, Megara, Meggie to my friends and the cosplay group.

Meg made her debut at BotCon 2010, in the company of King Starscream (my amazing buddy Ken) and the Prince.

I still had little clue to what I was doing on armor costumes, but I made a real working cannon that shot confetti for her, and managed to get short little me up to 6 feet in the costume thanks to very tall boots that made her feet (the lower legs are built over it, so it just looks like I'm taller than I really am and not in 5 inch block heels). Only problem is, my feet hurt like heck after four hours in the thing! :wacko DUH. And I was still super short in comparison to the 15 foot tall King Starscream! (Then again, we ALL looked small compared to him! :lol )

I could move well and was uber proud of my Megatron helmet. I was hooked at this point. Only problem was Meg was heavy (about 50 pounds total) and was really hot. And in the Florida heat where we were at BotCon, her outer layer of glue that held the vinyl exterior on, was actually melting and making it fall apart, and I was having shoulder problems. So, after BotCon, I stripped off all the exterior material, and took it back down to bare framework, and used thin vinyl on her instead. It gave her a much better, shinier look and lightened up the costume to about 20-25 pounds instead of 50. I sported her new shiny look, along with a G1 style energon wrecking ball mace and new reflective optics (eyes) at Baltimore ComicCon, where she won her first contest (only time I entered her in one). Her eyes also flash red like Megatron's do in the G1 cartoons, and is set up on a hidden switch on my side, and her cannon now had a confetti six-shooter in it instead of a single shot.

Comparison from BotCon to BCC:

Lady Megatron and Lady Galvatron, the head G1 Ladies at BotCon 2010:

(This one shows how much taller the costume made me. I was actually shorter than the lady who did the girl Galvatron out of costume, and I am a lot taller than her in Meg)

Lady Meg and Prince Starscream, Mother and son duo, at BCC:

And a very bad picture, because you can see my mask sides, but still so cool at the same time! Lady Meg taking on the Lambo twins' Sunstreaker, as Sideswipe is coming to aide and Blaster is ready to pounce her too. Taking on three bots, all one handed, at NJCC!

Now I had kinda gotten the feel of this armor costume stuff...sort of. Matt decided to do a mini-con this time, and have a second suit to take to BotCon 2010. He chose to be FRENZY, because he'd be close to correct size, and we'd not seen anyone do a Frenzy yet. So I set to work on the next one, using my light frame and vinyl method that I used on Meg's re-work, and here's what we come up with:

Frenzy I have to say, has been the best costume I've made in this line up as far as wear and tear and taking abuse, because this kid of mine as beat the crap out of the costume and it's not fallen apart yet! I have had to glue back his guns a few times, and we added the Frenzy hand drills from the All Hail Megatron comics line, and I've had to fix the mask once, but other than that, we've not had any problems. Frenzy debuted on the second day of BotCon 2010, and has been driving me crazy ever since! :lol My son REALLY gets into character with this one, he can climb, run, breakdance on the floor, sit, monkey around, get into shenanigans and torment Autobot cosplayers in Frenzy. Our group was leaving the costume panel (where I was a speaker and Matt was in the crowd in Frenzy jumping around... LOL!) and next thing we knew, he was RUNNING full blast down the hall, arms waving like a lunatic (mimicking a scene in G1). :lol

Frenzy as he walked around somewhat calm on the sales floor at BotCon, boppin' around to music coming from his small Soundwave tape deck prop.

And here's Mom and son as Lady Meg and Frenzy, at New Jersey Collector's Con-

For BotCon 2011, our friends that were the makers of the King, decided to make a huge Grimlock, and Devastator. They live the closest to us of any of our group (we in TN and they in VA) and BotCon was going to literally be all the way across the country in California for us, so we had to come up with something MUCH lighter, and would fit in a suitcase, and wouldn't break if squished.

My son decided if Grimlock was going to be there, he couldn't be without his little buddy, WHEELIE. So I set to work on turning my son into the minibot buddy of Grimlock. I was working on a very tight budget and under certain specs for getting it in a suitcase and on the plane. I found orange sheets in a pack at a second hand store for $4, and a huge roll of foam for $10, and Wheelie was under way! He wound up being pretty much a giant plushie, with flexible plastic framing for the parts that needed to stay in form, and foam everywhere else, all covered in the material. The helmet had the attached face mask, and left it open on the face for him to be able to move and actually talk with just facepaint on, since Matt can mimic Wheelie's voice almost perfectly, and was able to walk around BotCon actually talking in rhymes as the character, complete with working slingshot that actually shot glowing purple 'energon rocks'.


Here he is walking around at BotCon-

And here he met Gregg Berger, the voice of Grimlock, with our buddy's giant Grimlock cosplay, and Matt was actually exchanging movie lines with Mr Berger in his Grimlock voice and he was talking to him as Wheelie.

Here, Wheelie, the littlest of the minibots, takes on big old bad Devastator with his slingshot, and I got this awesome shot of it! The guy in Devvy is actually our close friend who did King Starscream, and let Wheelie shoot him with the slingshot. :lol

And now this brings me up to date to our current ones!


(Posting them in another entry so this one isn't any longer than it already is.)

 

[James Kenobi 1138]

Those are some crazy impressive costumes !

 

[LadyMegatron]

Thank you. Those were our early ones. We are just getting started really. I've been into homemade costumes all my life, I don't ever remember as a kid having a pre-made costume, and I was in some plays and such as a kid too, and was in performing arts in high school. I've been full cosplaying/costuming for about 15 years now myself (over half my life, I'm 29)...and Matt's been at it since, well, birth pretty much, but actual fully cosplaying and into full characters and really getting into it since he was 5. He's never really had pre-made anything either. Our Transformers cosplay work started when he was 9 with Starscream, and he wore it at age 10, so we are coming up close to three years now in the TF Cosplay Genre. It's been a crazy trip too!

 

[Azurial]

Great work! I did a few Megatron Pep files a while back, so PM me if you want them. They should be able to give you some degree of mobility as well as having some breathing room to keep you a bit cooler.

 

[LadyMegatron]

Now our most current ones from late this year....



Matt at the last minute decided he wanted to do another Transformer for some local things going on even after we'd already finished his Ghostbusters uniform and proton pack, but he wanted something that local people not into the cosplay circuit or really big into Transformers would still know and recognize fairly well. That meant Wheelie was out, because unless you really are a fan of G1, you'd not recognize that version of him (because the 'Bayformer' version in the movies is VERY different and I'm not particularly fond of the Bayformer movies myself ).

I'd also been at the local costume supply studio the same week as well, buying a belt to rework into a costume piece for his Ghostbuster uniform, and they'd recognized me as the pirate lady and the one who did Transformers with her son (I previously did a lot of pirate stuff too and still do) and was asked to come to a big costume party as well. So I had started on something new for myself too.

So less than four weeks til Halloween I'm sitting there going....oh boy. You want me to do WHAT? :confused


I decided to buckle down with Matt's choice first, and to use the same construction method as Wheelie, going with the flexible plastic and soft foam frame and material over top.

Matt's choice for this Halloween and his next convention costume?

Bumblebee from the Transformers Animated series.
I can't say it wasn't a logical choice either. Unless you've pretty much lived under a rock for the past oh, say 20 years at least, you've known and seen at least one version or another of one of the most famous Transformers characters. Kids of the new generation knew TF:Animated cartoons, and if not, then you knew at least who he was thanks to either G1, TFA, or the Bayformer movies, so he'd at least be somewhat known, right? Worth a shot.

I set to work, and on the 27th, he was done, and on the 28th, made his debut at a local mall to a resound of kid voices yelling 'BUMBLEBEE!!! BUMBLEBEE!!!'. He was indeed well known, recognized and highly loved by the kids and adults alike, and Matt was the happiest kiddo among them all.

Here is TFA Bumblebee:

The picture on left top shows the cartoon, and the pic in the middle bottom is a screencap I took that shows what Bee's back looks like to show comparison to the costume, and the rest are of the actual costume.

Matt really got into character with Bee. He's his favorite character in ALL genres of TF, from G1 to TFA and Movies, and now in the TF: Prime series, and even I have to admit, he's my favorite Autobot. So it was lots of fun for us both with this build, and we even took it a step further this time....

This costume has sound. It's wired so Matt has a small mp3 player under his armor in his hand, that runs to two speakers inside his chestplate, that makes Bee 'talk' with random voice clips I found or made from the cartoons and plays the TFA theme, and a very edited by me version of 'Black n' Yellow' and also plays back sounds, so it sounds like his horn honking or tires squealing. :lol Matt had a blast, and he played Black n Yellow on stage in a costume contest.

One of the voice clips says this: "Being a star ROCKS! If the titanium alloy plating FITS, WEAR IT! And, I make it look GOOD!"

Here he is living that statement as Bee:

And playing around in character at other local events:

Now that brings me to my costume for this year. I had to hurry, and was building Bee at the same time too. So, frazzled, was I? YES, very much so!

But I chose one to go with one of my son's other costumes, and something that seemed like it might be fairly easy enough to make.....


Yeah. Right...:confused

I finished him about 2 hours before I needed him. Yes. Him. The character is male, so when I wore it I tried to make sure no one realized or saw that I was actually female underneath. And he made his debut to high fives from random people and people dancing to the full, loud 6 speaker sound system I wired into him.

Of course he had to have sound! He's SOUNDWAVE!

Mine, like Matt's Bee, had voice clips as well, all wired in with 6 speakers in his 'backpack' area on the back, all controlled by a hidden little mp3 player run under my armor and through the sleeve of my shirt to my hand, and powered by an USB battery pack, and Frenzy, who is Soundwave's mini-con, joined me for my debut in Soundwave at our little town's local mall. The tape deck also opens (magnetic catch) when ejected, and I can take a 'tape' out, and I have nearly FULL movement in this costume. In Soundwave I was able to bend all the way down to one knee to get down with a three year old little girl who wanted a picture with 'the transformers' with no problems, and could dance around, run, and move around really well. I can even sit down in a chair, and I was playing games with my son while he was in Frenzy at the arcade in costume, no major problems (other than I see everything tinted red, because my optical visor is red). This costume also has been great as far as not being hard to get off and on and the mask is fairly breathable too (Meg was HOT...Soundwave is not bad at all).

Me and my son, once again, as a Decepticon duo, Soundwave and Frenzy:

 

[LadyMegatron]

Great work! I did a few Megatron Pep files a while back, so PM me if you want them. They should be able to give you some degree of mobility as well as having some breathing room to keep you a bit cooler.

Pep files? I'm not sure I know what that is, actually. I've always made my own pattern or built as I went. You'll have to explain and show me. Sorry if I sound like a newbie! :behave

 

[STEALTH]

I love the Soundwave ! He was one of my favorites
I know he transformed into a stereo but I liked his robot form

same with Blaster...who..also... transformed into ...a Stereo.

I sure know how to pick my Transformers.

 

[LadyMegatron]

Soundwave was an old school tape deck walkman. Blaster was an old school boombox. A friend of mine cosplays Blaster, and I made this 'poster' of our cosplays, because we plan to get the two tape decks together at the next Convention for a full out music battle of the sound bots. XD Her Blaster plays music from speakers in his legs, and my Soundwave plays music from six speakers in his 'battery pack' in his back and in the chest area.

 

[LadyMegatron]

Bumping this thread up for Jan, who is a fellow Tennessee Transformer (YAY!!!), because I found a picture of her awesome Bumblebee with my son at AdventureCon.

Check out her Bee with Lil'Jack Sparrow!

We'd just started working on his Starscream a week or two before when we took a break and headed down to Knoxville for this convention we'd heard about in our pirate gear, and decided to enter the parade of costumes, and ran into BUMBLEBEE. Matt FLIPS OUT in line and just HAS to go see Bee! The parade of costumes ends in this room where they are going to announce the costume contest winner and standing back in a dark corner with real working lights and glowing blue eyes stands Bee, and Matt goes running. We talk to the Bee for a little while, he's a happy kid, we watch Star Wars characters dance to Poker Face (LOL!, I'm NOT kidding! Even Darth Vader got up and bust a move! I have video to prove it!), he played Guitar Hero as Jack, we got a couple pictures with Bee and some other characters, he got to cosplay Indiana Jones later in the day, and when all was said and done, he looked at me at the end of the event and said, Mom, we REALLY gotta get my Starscream done now so I can come back next time and see that Bumblebee again!
Before AdventureCon part 2 a couple months later in October, we had Starscream done, but we didn't see Bee again.
It took us til now to find her again! But we found her! And now we both have more Transformers and are only a few hours away from each other so maybe some events will come up soon and we can get a whole crew together! The pictures and the fun would be EPIC!

 

[superDrool]

Holy Canolie! You gots the talents. :eek
Those look pretty complicated, especially the New Bumblebee, which is friggin' awesome. I know your son is only ten, but with those costumes on him, it's really hard to tell that there's a little fella in there. The scaling is dead on to him and is form fitting. If my 6 yr old saw this stuff right now, he'd be so upset and jealous. :lol

 

[LadyMegatron]

Thank you.
Matt's 12 now, Super. He was 9 when we started Starscream, but he's kinda small for a twelve year old, really skinny, still kind of short for his age, but he's easy to work with and he loves doing it. He's almost as big as me in some of his costumes! I keep telling him he can't grow anymore because I can't keep up with him. XD Pretty soon I'll be the mini-con if he keeps it up! And I think so far If you ask him which one's his favorite, he'll tell you it's Bumblebee. It's the easiest to get on and off him, is the one that lets him breathe the easiest, and he can wear his eyeglasses under the helmet under Bee's eyes so he can see good too. And Bumblebee is his favorite character. He's my favorite autobot so I'm kinda partial to that one too.

Who does your son like?

 

[superDrool]

He loves Bumble Bee. He wore his store bought toon costume around the house a month before and a year after last Halloween. He's all about dressing up like I did at that age...pssh...okay, who am I kidding. I still do it.
As you can see in the Wolverine thread. :lol

 

[jonmelton]

I have to add my Megatron Pics. I was Megatron and my friend was Optimus.

 

[LadyMegatron]

The Transformers Animated version?


LOL! You aren't the only one who still does the dressing up thing. No worries! I still do! And all year long. Halloween isn't just a day for me, it's a major event. And costuming isn't just a hobby, it's part of life!


Ever thought about building him a Bee costume?

 

[superDrool]

Yeah the same version you made your son.
I don't have time lately to shop for materials and make any detailed costumes. I wish I did, but I have been up to my eyeballs in work and prepping for the coming NE winter. But maybe if you gave me tips or pointers to get started on ideas, I can have a good head start when spring rolls around and have a cool birthday present for him.

 

[LadyMegatron]

More than happy to, and some of my tips are things that will make you scratch your head and think 'Why didn't I think of that?!'

Would it be easier to show you the build WIP? Maybe that might help some.

 

[superDrool]

You have those pics to share? That might help out a lot actually.

 

[LadyMegatron]

Yeah. Got them all posted in a work log on my Facebook. You can find me there and see all the stuff I've made. I don't have them all up here. Or, I can post the WIP work log here separately.

 

[superDrool]

You under the same name? If not I can PM you.

 

[LadyMegatron]

Yep, same name.