Blizzcon approaches, no costume for me

I haven't updated this blog in a while, but in short, I've bailed out on the costume. Too much procrastination, too much other stuff going on in my life ... and then three weeks until Blizzcon, I realize that only 20% of the costume was done.

But I don't see it as a complete waste. I still have the Pandaren Death Knight idea and the partially-done costume, and barring anyone doing the same thing this year, I could still do the costume next year.

One thing I've noticed, but I've kind of known for a long time, is that the quality of costumes at Blizzcon has been going up every year. I don't know if I really wanted to do one if my costume looked shoddy compared to the rest. I mean, take a look at this sexy costume from 2010 (a girl dressed up as a demon hunter from Diablo III):

(More from the Blizzcon site and the Blizzcon Facebook gallery.)

Might be easier to just take photos and see what all the other cosplayers are doing. I will definitely be posting photos of my Blizzcon trip on my Facebook account (http://www.facebook.com/allenkim96) as well as this blog.

So what do I have planned for Blizzcon? A lot, actually. This is the first time I'll be going with coworkers of mine from Intel Corp. (Yes, I'm a computer engineer working there.) We plan to meet up on the first day and try to coordinate what we want to do for the rest of the convention.

Also, this year is the year when Starcraft II eSports is taking off. There are some YouTube channels I subscribe to revolving around SC2, including one which has reached over 500K subscribers (http://www.youtube.com/user/HuskyStarcraft). This guy will be at Blizzcon along with several other SC2 YouTube casters and professional players. More than in previous years, this Blizzcon will be the most interactive and the most exciting in terms of eSports. All thanks to Starcraft II, which is just over a year old now.

Of course, there are the usual Blizzard presentations, like on World of Warcraft, Diablo III, the next SC2 installment called Heart of the Swarm. Then there're the usual contests, including the costume contest of course. Foo Fighters will be performing there. And so on and so forth.

Plus this will be the first time I'll be headed to a Blizzcon afterparty. This one is hosted by an SC2 gaming clan called Liquid, and it will be held at the Marriot near the site of Blizzcon (Anaheim convention center).

Talk about a very jam-packed two days. I sure can't wait.

The concept

By revealing my idea online, I run the risk of someone stealing my idea. But since I can count on one hand the number of people following this blog at the moment, I'll take that chance.

My costume idea: Pandaren Death Knight.

For those of you not familiar with World of Warcraft, a Pandaren is a race of panda-like humanoids. It's just like Kung Fu Panda (although the Warcraft universe had Pandarens well before that Dreamworks movie was first released).

Here is a Pandaren:

And here is a Death Knight:

Put them together and what do you have? This concept drawing, done by an artist that was found and commissioned at Anime Expo 2011:

This should be a good challenge for me.

I found the pro photo

And just like that, I found the photo:

Blizzcon Cosplay 2011 - Prologue

Well here we go. This is the start of my new blog where I talk about all topics related to gaming.

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a big fan of Blizzard games, especially World of Warcraft and Starcraft II. Hence it's only natural that I attend Blizzcon, though for the past three years I missed the ticket selling window which is incredibly narrow. Not this year, however.

Of course, a lot of the people that attend nerd conventions like these go in costume, and I decided to make one this year. The last time I went to Blizzcon was in 2007, and I was dressed up as a Paladin:

Although I was rather proud that I was able to make this costume all my myself (with some help from my wonderful wife), I wasn't too satisfied with the quality. Specifically the armor pieces look too yellow, the chest decals look chintzy, and the gauntlets look very amateurish. Basically, my excuse is that I ran out of time and couldn't fix up these blatant mistakes.

By the way, there's a professional photo of me in this costume, taken backstage before the costume contest, but I can't seem to find that photo anymore. It used to be on the Blizzcon web site, but I guess they no longer have the photos from that long ago. If I find it, I'll post it.