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!!!

Santapool, complete with cotton ball beard and Deadpool Santa hat

Hope everyone is having a good holiday! I know we are! Sorry for lack of posts, despite this, we have been super busy. As is every winter here in Az we have to take the few weeks of cold to do some out door projects and stuff to the house. We also did a photo shoot of our X-Force costumes in Flagstaff since it was snowing a bit. You can see some of those in the X-Force Deadpool post, one our Facebook, on my main blog, and on our new Project Hero page.
Super fun!
We (KnowOne's Designs with Project Hero) adopted a family this year for Christmas and are still taking donations for them on Project Hero's website if anyone is able to donate.

We also filmed a short holiday video with "Santapool." It's pretty funny if I do say so myself and features KnowOne's Designs very own Deadpool. This is the start of something we have been talking about in Project Hero for awhile. We have many more ideas for some fun short videos we plan on making in the future to post on the new site and on Youtube.

Oh I also made this sweet Christmas wreath. I simultaneously found out how much I loathe crafting. I think I would go as far to say as I hate it. Anyone who enjoys decoupaging and I can not get along, that was just painful. I know do some pretty intense sewing and prop projects, but i feel that the end justifies the means. This did not. It only resulted in 3 unnecessary trips to Michael's the store that makes me impulse by and want to take a nap at the same time. I do think those balls I made would make cute Christmas ornaments to sell, however at this point I didn't even enjoy typing this paragraph let alone thinking of making those again. We'll see, they are pretty darn cute!

You know, I forgot to make a Deadpool one....

I have a lot of projects planned for the new year including some new Deadpool stuff, a Cobra group (yours truley will be Baroness and Garrick will be the scariest Cobra Commander you have ever seen), some Loki action, more Venture Bros, and maybe even some new and improved TRON stuff so you'll just have to stay tuned to see!

I will be updating both blogs soon, but I don't have a regular schedule as of yet since the holidays are still upon us. Hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday and thank you for all your support, questions, commission requests, and views. :D

~Jackie and Garrick of KnowOne's Designs

Aurora Rise

Hello!

As you can see, I am really working on trying to have a section dedicated to Deadpool. It started out as a joke...then it just made sense! It's still under construction so bear with me.


I would like to take the rest of this post to talk about the event  Project Hero   ourselves are putting together. We are working with the wonderful people at Aurora Rise to hold a raffle to help the victims of the shooting in Aurora Colorado at the midnight release of the Dark Knight Rises.
Aurora Rise was already able to reach 20,000 dollars so far to help pay for some much needed surgeries. We hope to add to that and continue their efforts.
We are having it September 22nd at Samurai Comics (Camelback location) where we will be holding a raffle with some pretty awesome prizes, artists will be drawing and signing, and you might just see a few Bat-fam members walking around talking to people and taking pictures. I am hoping to have the raffle live by next week. We will start with the items we have but will be adding additional ones up until the day of the event. You do not have to be at the event to win or to enter. We will be taking raffle purchases through paypal (info for that coming soon) and will be able to ship out prizes to winners, all you have to do is answer your phone when we call to tell you, you've won!

Check the link above at the Project Hero facebook to see the raffle prizes we currently have and check back to see what we've added. Any support is welcome, please spread the word. What happened to these people is an awful thing and we want to do our part to help.

Pictures of the raffle items we have so far....

Lovely trio of Bat-themed busts from the ever-talented Meredith McClaren

Awesome Batman drawing by Brandon G. James

2 signed Prints and an art book from Jamie Tyndall
Jamie is just one of those genuinely nice people. He was so generous to donate some pieces when we met him at ACE! and he was such a great guy to be around. Check out his stuff!

Stunning Catwoman replica goggles from the Dark Knight Rises by Ron
(Watch the video, they work!!)
youtube.com/watch?v=bUeebvYDZyw&feature=youtu.be

We (Know One's Designs) will be donating an 89 Batman replica batarang as well, I just don't have a picture of it yet since it's being molded. ;)

More to come!!

One Red Deadpool

Let's sum up what's happened since my last post....

I broke myself on a trampoline, twice. I spent two weekends laying on the couch in a percoset daze since the second time was my neck taking it's Revengeance on me for bouncing and bending my back the wrong direction the week prior. (Yes I sound old...I'm not. My health and my cat habits just make me seem that way)

I have been planning a charity event with our friends in Project Hero to help out the victims of the shooting in Aurora. We got the good folks from Aurora Rise on board for it too. They are having their big event this weekend. Check them out they are doing a great thing and I hope to add to their efforts in September.

I have a few commissions I have been trying to work on.

I have gotten a TON of interest in Deadpool lately. Thanks for all the excitement everyone! I DO have one request. If you have a simple, quick question that's fine ask me here or on Facebook. If you have questions about commission pricing etc, please go to our "Like" page on Facebook and in the notes section is a commission form, PLEASE fill this out before you send us an email. I love the interest in what we do, but remember I do work another 40hr a week job, have a side job (this), a blog (also this), house, husband, and cat that all need my attention as well and I don't have a lot of time to try to decipher requests. The commission form has everything I need to know to give you a quote. Remember I am visual too, I love when people send me lots of pictures to explain their ideas. :)

I know I have said this before am seriously considering making an additional link on here called "Deadpool's Corner" or "One Red Deadpool" just to put all of my posts for him.
I am almost done re-doing Garrick's X-Force Deadpool. I did it to show my very patient and awesome customer commissions the updates I wanted to make to it before I did it to theirs and asked what they thought. This is a situation where the phrase "It's better to ask for forgiveness after than permission first" does NOT apply! I am making some different changes to Garrick's that I will show when I am all done and I think they're pretty B.A. if I do say so myself....and I do say so...myself.  Expect some more Deadpool posts in the near future.

Greypool before with the vinyl

Shoulders with the vinyl

Re-done "athletic-cut" shoulders with matte metallic spandex

Re-done torso black parts pinned waiting for top stitching. The red lines are where Deadpool's  black normally extends to. I made it cover more for Garrick to hide the seam ripping from the vinyl and to create more heroic proportions. Commission 1 wanted the black to not extend past the red lines, see I told you I like visuals!

I had another idea awhile back and I just decided to put it on here. I usually listen to Pandora when I sew. I don't like silence when I'm trying to be creative. Every once-in-awhile I here a song that I feel the character I am working on would have on their personal playlist. this first happened when I was making Black Cat. Taio Cruz's "Break Your Heart" ft Ludacris came on and for whatever reason, I just felt this would defiantly be something she would listen to. It fit her "love em' and leave em' mentality and if I were a thief I would want a good beat to steal to ;).

Speaking of Black Cat and what super heroes would do in real life, check out Meredith's latest post in her gallery section for what they would look like. She took a few of the more famous DC and Marvel ladies and drew some more "real world" outfits and based their body-types off of Olympians. I'm in love and have been fan-girling over this for a week now. Remember, Meredith is the one that we worked with on the Wasp re-design. She's awesome on concepts and well, art in general.

Having Deadpool be the subject of most of my time lately, I feel he could be anything goes. This song is also a clue to the version I am basing Garrick's Greypool off of as well. Deadpool would probably go from something ridiculous to something hard and heavy. This week is ridiculous, Carley Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" Don't even tell me you can't see him dancing to this!
Is this nerdy? Yes. Am I maybe going through Glee deprivation? Yes definitely. Lots of things I do don't make sense or even go together, get over it.

More projects to come! I think I've got enough to post weekly for a while, woohoo!

ACE Comic Expo 2012

Just when we thought we could recover from Phoenix Con we remembered we said we would go to Albuquerque for ACE Comic Expo 2 weeks later. I know what some of you are thinking...suck it up! I go to :insert number: cons a year! We just had a table for the first time... we have a lot to learn ;).

We drove up with Deb and Paul on Saturday. Best. Carpool. Ever. You guys are our standard travel buddies from now on. If we weren't on a deadline we would have stopped at waay more awful roadside stops. We did stop at a few awful dinosaur ones (couldn't resist!!) we missed knife world and the world's largest dream catcher...



We got there, met up with Jason and got into X-Force and pranced around, literally...
This con was nice because it was big enough to be interesting but small enough that you could really talk to the artists and people there without being rushed. This was also our actual debut of Project Hero so it was good to make connections. I have a few things I'm waiting on before I officially announce Project Hero on here so hold tight. It's for charity and it's awesome...that's all I'll say for now.
We decided that with group costumes we need positions and to decide on poses before hand so we don't look so disorganized. We did that here and it worked! I also made a big effort and drank a few energy drinks so I wouldn't make awful tired faces in all the pictures. :P

We met a really awesome artist Jaime Tyndall who generously donated a bunch of stuff to the Project Hero cause. We will be raffling some of it off soon. It's nice to meet people like him who are so supportive of the community and who are very talented as well!

This has been a weird, crazy week full of cat bites and hospital visits so this post is short.... but full of pictures....
and Tumblr!! I finally figured it out and how to use it (shut up) and will be developing the layout more. I will be posting pictures on there that I don't post here or on Facebook, so if you want to see our sneak peaks and awesome stuff and you Tumbl (is that how it's used as a verb?) you should follow us here!

I don't know why I thought this was so funny, but it is!

Little Ang!!

Awesome!

X-Force!

Project Hero in action!

We got our poses down ;)

Next week:
Fixing stuff: Wasp, Deadpool, Domino, and ideas for Antman

Phoenix Comicon 2012

I know this is a little delayed but we had a lot going on during PCC and after so it took me awhile to get around to this. I think I have so much to talk about from events since the last time i posted I might have at least 3 weeks straight of Friday blog posts, woohoo!!

Let's start with my story...
Garrick decided 6 months ago that we were going to have a booth at PCC 2012 this year. I laughed. I laughed a lot. I didn't laugh when he bought the table. This meant we had to haul ass on producing stuff, like finishing the TRON costumes (that we had been talking about for 2 years), trying to put together our Avengers costumes (which worked out really well since we tied that in with Meredith), X-Force Domino and Deadpool, oh, and we bought a house in the middle of this, a house that needed fixing. It didn't need a major overhaul, but as you've read, I definitely waged full blown chemical warfare on the backyard. We also painted the entire house, patched holes, replaced plumbing, sealed the garage, and tried to nurse the rest of the landscape that I wasn't trying to kill back to life. So long story short, we were REALLY busy!!

Our stuff!!

Batman wears underwear too....

We had a lot of other things we wanted to have done by the show, but we worked around it. (Quorra helmet mold breaking). It was a good learning experience all in all and we got a lot of really good ideas for next year. We are even going to have stuff for sale next year! We also met a lot of really great people through this. Despite my disbelief, scoffing, and general unhappiness with being on a forced deadline I'm really glad we did it (Garrick is also glad I'm glad lol). Meredith is also an awesome booth buddy and next year we will be having someone (volunteers?!) watch the table while we're away so she is not bombarded with questions of EL, urethane, and general construction questions.
All in all, we had a lot of fun seeing everyone, hanging out and finding terrifying dolls in a basement, watching girl ponies gather around pretty boys, trying to create photo-bomb opp for Shannon and the Samurai crew, taking pictures of phallic foods, and generally watching Garrick, Paul, and Jason play together, skip in costume hand-in-hand, all while Deb and I laughed hysterically/played damage control. (Thanks guys for staying with us!)

  (on a side note, Garrick and I need rooms with separate computers. As I'm trying to type this while he is spinning my chair around and thrashing in his boxers to Ke$ha trying his hardest to get me to pay attention to him....yesss separate work rooms....)

I have, as I do after every con for at least one costume, some things I need to fix on Wasp. I'm going to make her armor removable (so I can sit down!!) and redesign the general shape of it so it's not so linear and severe. I need to make a "wing sheath" as well. Meredith gave me a very good idea!

I am working on the faces I make... I promise....

Garrick is also deciding is he wants to try to build a War Machine or Ant/Giant Man for our Avengers group with Project Hero (more to come on them in a future blog post!!).
Ideas? Comments? Suggestions?! Let me know. Also Meredith and I will be doing another collaboration on a costume since that went over so well. I'm not telling what it is yet....
 
Last PCC comment, would have liked to have been able to walk around more and talk to people and see other booths. Will need volunteers next year!

Anyhoo...here's some pictures!!!

yay!

Little Gohan was so cute!!!

Garrick finally got to play with Power Rangers!

I'm starting to envy Paul's wig collection

Best Barda ever!!!

Project Hero! (minus Garrick)

X-Force Project Hero

We made the New Times!

They do exist...and light up!

I thought this was a great picture, you all look great!

Oh an if anyone finds the picture of me as Domino hanging on a wall with Jay and Silent Bob, I NEED that picture kthxbai!