A Wandering Mind

Okay, so I honestly have been doing a little bit of work.
I've been studiously reading up on how to do my wings...
Reliably researching horns and animatronics...
Stubbornly playing with models and tests to understand the mechanics of such animatronics...
I've been good.

But for every time I am good, I have to be bad...so aside from the cosplay work I've been doing, the house work that I've been doing, and the general shirking of work that I've been doing, I've also been letting my mind wander...and its been wandering through X-Men!

For a while now I've wanted to do a cosplay from X-Men.
I've loved the series since I was a kid, and used to love the 90's cartoon more than anything in the world. As I grew older, that love stayed with me through X-men Evolution and the X-men movies, and more lately, Wolverine and the X-men. Only recently, however, did i start to read the comics. Its kinda a huge deal when you think about it; the cartoons can be hard enough to understand, especially when you try and fit their mutilated timeline together, but the comics are a thousand times worse. Not only is there no steady time-line, there's a billion different artists(which for a manga fan is a little confusing) and almost that many different versions. There's alternate universes...what-if scenarios, age-changes, time-line gnawing...there's even a story called X-men Babies.
It was confusing.
Nevertheless, I'm sticking with it and enjoying it more than ever. Of course, this new obsession with the series and shows causes some old wants to resurface.

When I was a kid, my favorite character was Gambit. I effin' loved that crazy cajun.
When Evolution was on TV for the first time, Avalanche was my favorite. That changed when I grew a little older, and became infatuated with the character Quicksilver.

Not infatuated like, make-out with the tv sort of infatuated, but an absolute adoration for his mannerisms and completely annoying nature. I've been wanting to make a cosplay for him since...a long time. xD He's just such a snarky little twit-head!! I love it! xD

One of my best friends--while not as obsessed as me--also wants to cosplay X-men...so that's when we began to really look into this. One of her favorite outfits is worn by Jubilee, so we began to search for one of the series that had Jubilee in it, but also allowed me to wear a costume I enjoyed.

 Jubilee was one of the main characters in the original X-men animated series. Because of the time period though, half of the X-men look fabulous, and the other half make me cringe a little. I'm not a huge fan of most of the female's outfits, and all the guys are so buff-tastic that I couldn't pull them off with a muscle suit. One of the ones that I could pull off, however, and actually like, is Rogue.

Rogue's got a good outfit, a fun attitude, and accent pretty close to my own. xD Her hair is a bit intimidating, but otherwise its a pretty good choice for me. However, Kaasan and I weren't willing to leave it there. As much as I like Rogue--and love Rogue x Gambit, and therefore like Rogue even more because of Gambit--her costume has been pulled off so  well by some amazing people, and its seriously intimidating. xD; It doesn't help that, of all the girls, Rogue's not my top pick...and her 90's animation-outfit is even further from my top choice.
So the hunt continued.

Eventually, and almost entirely by lucky-chance, we stumbled upon this image:

It was kinda a match made in heaven.
Not only is it Jubilee--who is my Kaasan's costume choice--its a vampire Jubilee wearing slimming black and that fabulous yellow coat we all know and love. I started reading the new X-men series immediately. And what do I see on one of the first pages?

Pixie! Her character design is one of my absolute favorites, and while I actually dislike the color pink, I am ecstatic to find that her and Jubilee have such great designs right off the bat of this series. I'm super excited about potentially making this costume and wandering around with Kaasan in it. I'm already trying to recruit others into this, and with some mega luck, might be able to have this as early as A-kon 2012!

Okay...so it isn't what I should be working on...but  can you blame me? Its effin' X-men, yo.

Jackalope over and OUT!