Monthly Archives: June 2018

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To Infinity, and Not a Parsec Beyond

I have been quite active on the Black Widow Cosplay Community on Facebook. I liked the new eskrima stick weapons introduced for Black Widow for Infinity War and when Vanity Fair published some high quality still photographs of the new costume and props, I started working on an Infinity War version of Black Widow.

I’m probably not going to write blog posts on how I made the costume, but I think it makes sense for me to post links to my MyMinifactory profile page, where you will find STL files for 3D printing many of the required props for that costume: https://www.myminifactory.com/users/jmunkki

As of this writing, you can find models for the sticks, the backpack, the widow bite wrists, the shoulder, elbow and knee pads and some models for the tactical belt.

Also, a South African web site asked me to write about some of the designs and they published an article on these props, which you can find here: https://www.htxt.co.za/2018/05/11/black-windows-infinity-war-weapons-brought-to-life-with-arduino/

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Of Photos, Photographers and Cosplay

I guess it goes without saying that one of the best compliments a cosplayer can get at a convention is to have their photo taken and then shared. Photographers (unless paid or otherwise convinced to do otherwise) are mostly interested in producing a great photo to show off in a gallery. Obviously there are exceptions (such as Atlanta Fashion Police), but a photographer is just a person with a camera and people tend to do what benefits them and aren’t really that driven by altruism.

I recently went to MCM Comic Con in London and spent all day Saturday in cosplay. I have never been one to attract photographers, probably quite the opposite: I’m old and from their point of view, probably cosplaying the wrong gender too. However, I think this convention marks an all time low for me. At the end of the convention, I had a few photos on my phone that a friend took, a few selfies and a couple from a random stranger that kindly took a few photos on my phone.

Photographers showed zero interest, which really doesn’t make me feel photogenic at all. A few random con-goers took photos with me, so I guess a few people either appreciated the cosplay or felt that it was odd enough to record. I don’t expect to ever see copies of those photos (that’s just the way it is).

I guess the lesson is that if you want to document your cosplay at a convention, bring a trusted friend and ask the friend take photos (ideally with your own camera, so you don’t have to beg for the raw files). I did this at Cosvision two years ago (thank you so much, those photos are awesome) and I also had a friend who likes to do convention photography at Dragon Con last year (thank you). I had some friends in London too, but we didn’t do a proper photo shoot even though I had a my camera with me. For some reason, they were nowhere to be found on Sunday when I was walking around with my camera and showed no interest in doing a photo shoot at dusk on Saturday when we were all in cosplay.

I was taking photos on Sunday and decided to focus on Black Widow cosplays, because I felt they could find their photos through the Facebook group. I think that worked out really well for a few cosplay Natashas (and made me very happy too to have been able to do that for them), but I also got completely ignored by a couple of people (in other word, got treated like a total creep).

What do you do if having a friend take photos doesn’t work for you and you don’t want to pay a professional? You can either go with a huge cosplay (huge robot, massive armor, furry beast, …) or look really sexy & show a lot of cleavage. It doesn’t matter if your cosplay is accurate or if it’s something you made yourself or bought and barely modified. (OK, so if you are a virtual doppelganger of your cosplay character, that might actually score some points.)