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Click here for the pictures.
First of all, don't fly Vanguard Airlines - they lost my luggage on Friday and didn't get
it back to me until Sunday night. Fortunately, I had nothing to wear all weekend
except an X-wing pilot costume. For this weekend, that's all I needed!
I took two X-wing costumes to Denver, one for my best friend Matt Smith and the other for
myself. Smith's wife, Nikki, attended the convention with us and was an all-around
good sport about the whole silly deal.
We arrived at the con early Saturday morning, but not too early as there were already
about 1000 people in line (really). Before leaving the truck we put on the finishing
touches to our costumes and had the funny self-conscience feeling that we were the only
ones dressed up. That feeling wore off quickly.
As we approached the massive line of Star Wars fans, the people in line started digging
out their cameras to take pictures of us, then others wanted pictures of their kids with
us, and then still more. It was incredible, it was like we were celebrities.
After we stood in line for a while, a reporter from the AP came up and interviewed
us. He took a picture and it ended up in the next morning's Denver Post.
As we finally entered the hangar, a TV cameraman was filming us. I took the
opportunity to voice my experience with Vanguard Airlines losing my luggage.
There were many many other fans in costume. I had the opportunity to meet with
several people that I had only communicated with via email. The biggest thrill for
me was meeting the people that had visited my website. The costumers were really
impressive, I'm always interested in creative people. Any time we stopped to talk to
someone with a really great costume, the people around us wanted pictures, it was
unbelievable. There must have been hundreds of pictures taken of us that weekend and
I'm not saying this to boast about our costumes, I'm saying this to illustrate just how
many people were there.
How many?
About 30,000!
The best thing about Star Wars costumers is how they are mutually supportive. They
really love to talk about building skills and sources for materials . . . my kind of
people!
On Sunday we were able to see Ray Park do an incredible martial arts demonstration.
We also saw Anthony Daniels and even Doug Chang. Outside the tent we saw Jake Lloyd
and Rick McCallum. Matt and Nikki got Rick's autograph on the back of their
convention passes.
The props from the movie were great, the new costumes and masks were impressive, the new
soft drink and fast food merchandising were corny, the video games kicked serious butt.
I was able to pull measurements from a real X-wing pilot costume and from an R2-D2
replica. Now I can't resist remaking the molds for the X-wing chest box and flak
vest. Work on R2-D2 will begin this summer as well.
STAR WARS, BABY...
You gotta believe it! |
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