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

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!

Re-do's, repairs, and redpool

Re-Do's
Back to work!
I have a few things I need to repair and re-do and a few things to start. Wasp and Greypool are my main concerns but spandex world is out of the fabric I need for Greypool's shoulders.
 I have another project I am REALLY excited about but I'm not going to say anything until I know I can get it going and have it ready to sell by October.
G and I have a lot of pep ready and in the works to be folded and molded. Haha that rhymed. I also have some baby stuff to start sewing for people. So much to do, I'm so excited!!!

Until all of those projects are more fleshed out, here is the promised work- up on how I made my Wasp wings.

I researched bug wings for an entire night before I found the ones I liked. Surprisingly, her wings are based very close to actual wasp's wings, go figure, I just thought they would find whatever was pretty and go with it.
I then drew a pattern of sorts to scale on giant grid paper.



After I had this outline, I used  two different thickness's of armature wire and hot glue to make the skeleton of the wings.





Then I used this crazy stuff I found called Fantasy Film to make them iridescent.I thought the color I had picked out would be more yellow or clear, it ended up being "pinker" than I thought. I still like it. I am going to try something different when I go to make Pixie's wings. If I like how that comes out better than these then I'll re-make these. For now they work, they as durable as wire covered in shrink-wrap can be and they're pretty.
 This stuff is like pretty shrink-wrap and I suggest testing it in small sections first. It had a pretty big learning curve when you are doing something on this scale. All the tutorials I watched were for wings people were making for bears and dolls. You have to work in small sections, one side at a time, and be very, very sparse with your glue or it looks like a literal hot mess. Glue only the armature wire, do not glue the film to itself, it will look horrible and not translucent anymore. Make sure not to get the heat too close or you get holes in it and then you have to rip it up and start over. I re-did these about 3 times before I was happy with them.



I then built a wing harness out of heavy-duty elastic (it ended up looking like a tactical sports bra) that the wings could be inserted in through the back of the catsuit.
Meredith gave me an idea on how to cover where the wings lay in the suit. (I was down to the wire on this build so covering the wire was not my top priority at the time.) She told me to build a small triangular sheath, kind of like the ones Wolverine has on his gloves for his claws. Genius!

 Repairs
I have to re-do the palms of my gloves. I used this awesome fabric paint Jacquard, but it it not good for things that go through continual stretching. The yellow cracked (but the silver stayed!) and peeled at PCC so my hands are behind my back most of the time in all the pictures. I am going to order some milli skin that I need for the Monarchs and use some for the palms. I.hate.sewing.gloves. Have I mentioned this before, because I do, with a passion.



AND....like I said before, I will be re-doing the armor pieces so they are removable..

Redpool
We sold G's Redpool and I was also commissioned to make another, yay! I might post some of the new things I have decided to do with it, we shall see. This blog is going to turn into "One Red Deadpool" soon, oh well, I have fun sewing him and everyone still loves him so good for me good for you the reader. ;)

Next week... Monarch plans? or Project Hero? Redpool? New Projects? Who Knows?! Stay tuned....!

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!

Wasp and Deadpool progress

Oh boy....there's nothing like the 2 weeks before a con, especially if you are getting a booth for the first time. There have been days that eating, showering, and leaving the house have not happened (you think I'm joking..)
One such day was the day before Free Comic Book Day (I did shower...I promise) I spent 14-16 hours the day before trying to get Wasp wear-able and I did! I also passed out in the upright position when we got home and made some horrible faces in pictures but damnit it was mostly done!

Whitney and myself

Ryan, Todd, Deb, Garrick, Paul and myself
(Avengers assemble! now with Batman, Bane, and Deadpool...)

WHY would you give Deadpool the hammer?!

Garrick posted about the armor pieces and the awesome spray paint we found here. He did a great job on it too! Only problem was something that we coined as "handruff"...read his post, the explanation is in there and it's not a gross as it sounds.

Big thank you to Hero Comics and Samurai Comics for having us, sleep deprived and all!

I still have to do the piping on the gloves and the wings on Wasp, looking to try to finish the gloves this weekend and the wings next week. Let me tell you, piping is AWESOME but it is way time consuming! You have to pin everything especially when it is mirroring itself on both sides of a costume. Oh and welting feet have saved my life, I love gadgets. I am currently collecting interesting presser feet if anyone has any suggestions. I love things that make my life easier! Don't you?

Awkward crotch shot...but it was the only way to show the piping!

I think I would have imploded if it didn't turn out to by symmetrical.
I did a little piping on Deadpool as well and have a little more to do on the mask and the legs. So far so good! I will be finishing the shoulders, gloves, and arms this weekend. I'm excited to get the eyes finished, they are squinty eyes! I think I've talked about this before...anyway Deadpool should always have awesome facial expressions. Once PhxCC is over we might start casting those in urethane....we shall see...




Oh and I think the wig I got for Wasp is an Ouran Host Club wig, Haruhi's to be exact...whatever it's still cute and she is a girl and so am I so there.

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We did see the Avnegers and it was AMAZING! Glad to get excited about a movie again especially one with lots of props and costumes in it. I think I need to see it again so I can focus on the movie and not go nuts over all of the design elements and have a bagillion ideas about how to use them running through my head while trying to focus on the story. Lady Loki is in my future...let's just say that.
When I get paid this week I will be donating our ticket prices to this charity Hero Initiative. If you love comics and all great things that come from them donate to help take care of their creators. Most comic artists are freelance which means no benefits. This organization provides help for those artists when they need it.

Now back to work...

Avengers Wasp

Are you excited for this?! I am! I am so happy to be working with Meredith McClaren on this costume. She has such an eye for costumes and design in her work I couldn't wait to make this. It will be even better since Garrick and I are sharing a table with her at Phoenix Comic-con this year (table 433!). You should stop by...just sayin' :)
Meredith and I were talking about making certain characters costumes more "visually interesting" by trying to incorporate more tactical designs and lines and this is what she came up with



I LOVE the piping on the legs and gloves. I had never though of this  and it is going to be awesome. The only change I made to her concept is the palm of the gloves are going to be a similar yellow to that of the bug parts. I even got a wig that is pretty dead-on for this, hell yea for plans coming together!

Wig:





The bug pieces I am basing off of this girl. She does amazing work and goes by "Riddle" as her pseudonym. She sculpted the bug parts for Wasp and then had them Chromed in gold (there is another term for Chroming something in gold but I don't know it so deal). I am not that fancy right now and I want to try sculpting something smaller first like a new Black Cat mask before I take on body armor. That being said, Garrick is helping me out with this (We're trading, I'm sewing his new D.Pool and Nick Fury) and we are making it out of foam. We made boob molds out of giant Easter egg bottom so we could heat mold the foam on top of those, we're so smart. He should be posting his progress soon.
 I also love her eye for tactical and small practical details in her costumes. You can't see it in this picture but she made wing holes in the back! If you turned into a bug you would need holes for your wings to go through too! Small, but great detail. Check out her gallery, it's super impressive!
 I will have wings with mine purely because I have been dying to make to make them! I am going to use the wing hole idea so I can go with or without wings depending on the event. So there. My bug parts will not be identical to this but similar, I want to put my own spin on it as well.

 

I wanted to give you a little glimpse into my work process since I had to re-make all of the patterns for Deadpool (they were lost in the move).

First there is planning...



then nomming....



Ok I really just wanted to post those to show what I have to go through to get the cat to leave me alone anytime I have to do things on the floor. I use wrapping paper for my patterns for two reasons. 1. it's gridded on the back side! Measuring I own you now... 2. I can pin through it. Almost everyone has it laying around the house so you might as well use it!

Long post long...I got a lot of my pieces cut out and seams ripped this week and once I get my welting foot in the mail I'll post some pictures/tutorial of how that goes.

Finished Domino X-Force

That presser foot is amazing!! If you haven't been reading my rambles (that's silly of course you are....) I just bought a Teflon presser foot to finish Domino up before and Avengers vs X-Men party at Samurai Comics.  I got everything done but the elbow and knee pads (even the "tactical" parts, those were made out of drawer liner, I'm so resourceful...).
::Special thank you to Hero Comics for inviting us!! Sorry we couldn't make it dressed up but it was fun hanging out!::
Here are some pictures that the wonderful Peter Vincent took (He's the Spiderman in the photos) and let me tell you, I am making some absolutely great faces in these....



Man...do other people make faces like this or is it something you're born with...ugh



Garrick also wore red Deadpool for the last time...(it was starting to smell...even after we washed it...)

 

This one is for all my homies...or maybe personalities? Definitely personalities for Deadpool...

My make-up came out great! I was super pleased with it! You know what I didn't do...was take a close up shot of the black eye. I was finally able to blend some blue into the black and match the white eye to it so that way I wouldn't have the focusing issues I did before. (didn't help with all the dumb faces apparently...)  I'll take some pictures next time I do Domino and post a make-up tutorial for it.

Onto X-Force Deadpool! I'm using this as my main reference photo



I will also be working on this Wasp, and Nick Fury  intermittently since we need Wasp and Nick Fury done by the Avengers premiere. Since we haven't ordered any of the material...I will work on Deadpool first so I am using my time most efficiently. Look at me time manage like a pro. Wings for Wasp may not be done in time for the premiere....definitely by PHXCC.

Did you notice something different? Yes! I fixed my banner to have Wasp on their instead of Black Widow. that costume never happened and it probably never will...

Phoenix Comic Con

I've gotten most of our pictures back from Phoenix Comic Con so here's a few of my favorites!

We stayed at the Hyatt right next to the con so we could just suit up and walk over.

We had a great time and met a lot of awesome people. They guys at the Top Cow booth were especially helpful and friendly and hopefully G and I made a friend with one! I'm glad that they and Wildstorm were able to show up this year it helped to give it a bigger con feel with some big name publishing companies. This year was 4 times bigger than last year as far as the amount of people attending, the quality, and the events. Hopefully it will continue to grow and we'll have an awesome con in our own state!

I still need to work on some new poses, also no prosthetic adhesive in the world can keep anything glued to you in 100+ degree weather... Poor sweaty mask... just thought I'd share the tip!

Now that Black Cat has made her big debut i can move on with some of my other projects in the wings, that'll be for another post though. Now we just need some professional pictures shot of the 4 of us. I hope to continue to do that for every costume we make because it's such a great thing to have to build a portfolio. I think I've convinced one of our friends to do it, we just need to get together.

(note: guilty pleasure was G dressed up as "vacation Green Ranger" and went down the the Anime Rave in the hotel and did his thing with some green glow sticks every night for about 10 minutes and every night my stomach hurt from laughing so hard...)

Next on the agenda: X-Men day, Black Widow, and Avatar: The Last Airbender