Rise of Cobra: Baroness and Cobra Commander

Long time no see!
I'm back.
After much holiday fun time, getting the flu, and devoting my life truly and completely to everything Deadpool I have returned with a new black catsuit costume!
Surprised I haven't run out of new ones?
Are you kidding?
Seriously, I don't think in two life times I could even attempt to make every comic character's costume that is a black catsuit.
Yes, I know that was good planning on my part.
Thank you. :)

A year has come and passed since they decided to delay the next G.I. Joe movie until 2013. I cried a little too. FOR JOY! There was NO WAY IN HELL I was going to be able to finish it when it was supposed to be released last year. Also, the first movie was ehh...Snake Eyes costume is way more B.A. in this movie and Cobra Commanders new outfit is also significantly more awesome than the one they made J.G.L wear. I am bummed out about lack of J.G.L although he's probably ok with it. The marketing they're doing is pretty cool too. Lots of billboards with a steel cobra on them saying "Do you have what it takes?" making them look like military recruiting ads. Cobra Commanders new outfit is way more awesome than the one they made J.G.L wear.

 Good thing for Project Hero that we're doing a Cobra group this year. We have, Storm Shadow, Serpentor, Zartan, and Shipwreck so far. (yes I know Shipwreck is a Joe).

Can you guess what Cobra's Garrick and I will be?

You're right!

Cobra Commander and Baroness. Who else would we pick?! Garrick loves playing characters with grating, nasally voices. Plus, he gets to walk around and yell at people to do his bidding. Much like he does as the Monarch. Fun times shall be had by all!

This is what I'm basing Baroness off of.

I like the gauntlets on this one best.

I Like the belt in this one.

I would like to add a few details to this to make mine a little different from the ones previously done. I found some awesome black small snake skin print vinyl to use as an accent. I am going to add some inserts to the suit with this and do most of her accessories out of this i.e. belts, holsters etc.

I just finished the contouring on the catsuit and adding the snake skin inserts down the sides. I'm going to be sewing the details on the legs instead of having them as armor. I don't think my thighs would work or look right if i tried to fit them in that armor. I'm going to off-set this difference by using a matte black spandex and outlining it in piping. It sounds good in my head, let's hope it's just as awesome executed.

Garrick is working on my armor for me. He just finished his vacu-form table and is going to try to vac this. Were trading since I'm sewing his Cobra Commander. If the armor is a success we might be offering this for sale. Stay tuned on our Facebook page to see if that comes to fruition.

Garrick wanted a creepy version of Cobra Commander so the voice would sound even more ridiculous coming out of this mask. His is going to be black and red to match me and because the jacket we found is black. (Deadpool is taking up all my time ((you're welcome)) so we are buying a coat and mask for this to save time. The mask is SOOOO creepy I love it.

Progress pics soon!

**Updates**

After a few re-designs, some errand running, and a few back to back work nights, we have some progress to show you! We have had to pick up the pace on this one since my job told me last week they are flying me out the week of the event for a training thing. Sooooo that mean's all my shiz needs to be finished before I leave, in 2 days!!
Garrick's cowl and coat are STILL not here. I'm sweating this a little. If his cowl doesn't come in I can make a passable one on Friday. If his coat doesn't come in, I don't know what we're going to do....

I have my suit all sewed and am pretty happy with it. There are always things I would like to fix/add but this is good for a trial run on the 30th. I still have time to change and add things before PCC. I'll show pictures of it when I do a make-up test with my wig and glasses.

I did decide on a last minute belt change. I am using the Batman begins belt they sell in costume stores and before you say anything, I know EVERYONE uses this belt for EVERYTHING but look at this Adam Hughes drawing above! He totally based her belt off of that batman one!! It even has the little cylinder and the small pouches on the side. I think my decisions are justified here...

Garrick has the work-up on the buck we made to vaccu-form the Baroness armor. You can click the link to his blog "KnowOne's Designs" at the top of the page to get to it. We should be doing the back of it tomorrow and then I'll be strapping it together with nylon webbing and the snake skin vinyl I've been using as accents for all of our accessories.

I had the buckle laser cut after many failed attempts at trying to cut something this small out of foamies with a dull exacto knife. I had had enough! I think we'll probably be going the laser cutting route form now on, it just looks so clean!

 This is going to be the bracer for Baroness. I originally had this cut laser cut too but it ended up being too small. I decided to go with an easier design to cut out of foamies and based it off of the Sideshow statue above. I am pretty proud of it and it's symmetry. Still laser cutting things in the future, but I'm down to the wire on this one.

This is what I have done for Garrick so far.... His pants, his belt and sword, and his shoulder rope thing.....yea... Keep your fingers crossed our stuff gets here in time!

Since I haven't been able to do too much work on Cobra Commander due to supplies not getting here, my song choices have been aimed at Baroness.
She would listen to a lot of Florence + the Machine and Marina and the Diamonds as both are very classical sounding but totally weird at the same time, just her style.

Here's to cramming. I did it all through school, why would I stop now? ;)
More updates soon!

**UPDATES**

So I know you were all waiting for pictures and we have them! We haven't been able to do a photo shoot of them yet but some of the ones we got were pretty impressive if I do say so myself. Before we get to those you need to read my rant on how we got to the pictures....oh it's good...

I woke up the Friday before the event fairly optimistic that fate was going to smile down upon Garrick and I and deliver the pieces to our costumes that day. Wouldn't that have been nice? Well the mail came a little early that day and there was nothing. Abso-frigga-lutely NOTHING. So I panicked. Everyone needs a good panic every now and then. Mine are just more frequent than others, whatevs, get the creative juices flowing.
I ran to the closes costuming store hoping (here that optimism again) they would have something I could use as a base for this Cobra Commander hood. I wanted it to look executioner style and kind of weathered and messy so it was extra creepy.
I found nothing. I walked around a second time and found nothing. I don't know what I was expecting to find the second time, honestly, but I gave it the old college try. I decided I needed build this thing with stuff I could find in an hour. I went back to the "batman aisle" as I called it to see if there was something there that had a good base to use as a scowling brow profile. I found one of those kids masks, that have the batman face and ears and are a weird rubbery-hard plastic. Good place to start. I then looked for some pre-made executioners hoods (trying to cut down on time people!) Nothing. they had gimp masks, but not and executioner hood. Really costuming store? This is a Halloween staple! Took my Batman mask and bought some more crepe wool so I would have to come back later to get it when I go to re-make Garrick's Monarch eyebrows and beard. I still needed a coat and some coffee, so it was onto those two.
I stopped at a few Goodwills and they had nothing. My optimism is waning at this point. I decided to use the coat Garrick had at the house that he got from his Dad when he was in the Navy and start there. (I still can't tell if the thing is navy or black, it's so close to both it looks like whatever you put it up against) I went to SAS to get some silver buttons for it so the gold didn't clash. Then it was time for coffee.
Let me just put this out there, I am an introvert, I have to prepare myself to be in groups of people. When I go to drive-through place I am going there to get something and not commiserate with anyone. Then enters Dutch Bros. I love that they have coconut milk. What I don't love is that they basically crawl into your car and ask you how your day is. They don;t care that I have less than 24hrs to build a Cobra Commander costume and would porbably think I'm nuts if I told them. So after this dude basically held my coffee hostage while he gave me a weird pep talk I was onto the actual construction of this beast.
I was very focused so I didn't take too many progress pics, but this is basically how it went down.
I cut the Batman mask down to just a face shell, as seen below

Then I made rough pattern out of wrapping paper and came up with this:

I was pretty impressed with myself. I believe I yelled to Bastion that "I am a magical costuming unicorn!" This weird combination of mis-placed optimism and unwanted pep-talks I guess had worked!
We then stayed up till about 3 in the morning putting the final touches on my armor and Garrick's costume.
Here's the part you really wanted to see, PICTURES!

Bam! I cam together! I need to get Garrick a coat that isn't wool so he doesn't die and I think I'll make the hood a little bigger so I can get some more creepy wrinkles around the eyes. I am also going to spray it with Plasti-dip to it gives it a cool texture. I am going to make new gloves for Baroness so they're not so bulky. Also going to trim the armor out on the back so it has more shape.

You can see my bracers better here, I'm going to weather them before PCC

Yea weathering! I learned a new skill, yay life achievement!

Cobra motorboat!

Garrick's really liked being in the turret.

We were able to raise about $430.00 for Wounded Warriors so far with Project Hero. Check out our facebook page to see the auctions of the sketch cards that Ben Glendenning did for us to raise even more money for them.

Thanks to everyone who came out to support the cause and Deb and Paul for putting together such a great event! Ok well thanks to everyone for that day, the Morgan family for helping out and generally being awesome, Jason and his wife for driving out here, Charlotte and Bill for making me ride that bull (you know what I'm talking about) and Brian and Whitney for filming it. Love you guys!!!