New Wonder Woman and Donna Troy photoshoot shot by the ever amazing Chris Burns

So it was an honor to sit down with her for a Marvel.com cosplay interview (Click below image for the full interview).

http://fans.marvel.com/jstephens/blog/2011/11/28/cosplay_profile:_chris__miracole_burns

Big thanks to Judy for taking the time out to make sense of our costumed insanity!

And what’s an evil Villainess without her goons?!?! I was joined by the very loyal Chris Burns and Christian Sanchez

Here are just a few shots that are begining to serface from sets with the amazing Judy Stephens (Marvel.com) and Anna Fischer

I hope to update my Cosplay Gallery gallery with a section just for Madame Hydra very soon!

In the meantime… HAIL HYDRA!!

And here is a little video of me and my whip in action!

http://yfrog.com/jj2rcz

Click the link below for the full interview.

MTV_Geek_Dragon-Con-2011_Anatomy-of-a-Cosplayer

11/16 – Relocated myself, the husband, 2 dogs and a fish to our apartment on St. Simon’s Island which will be our home for the next 2 months. No small task.

11/17-12/5- 2 weeks of unpacking, inventorying, and organizing all Wardrobe from England and rentals from Western Costume. Summoning superhuman strength to fully control my spontaneous Nerd seizures from the awesomeness that is these movie costumes. All while having fun answering questions like, “What is a Hell Fire Club”, ‘What are So-and-so’s powers’ etc. Yep, I am SO in my element as resident wardrobe comic nerd.

I also got to violate, I mean dress Kevin Bacon’s dummy since he was so life-like, no one else wanted to touch him (after working FX makeup on Walking Dead, this was a cake-walk).

11/6- First Day of shooting! I watch our US Supervisors 7-yr old son Hunter pass Jennifer Lawrence in full Mystique makeup on a turn table for a promotional photo-shoot. She sees him, says hi and waves. He just non-nonchalantly says ‘Hey’ and continues down the hall like this is an every-day occurrence. We exchange looks, flabbergasted by his lack of reaction. She laughingly responds, ‘Kids these days; I fully blame video games! They ruin everything!’

During lunch, I remind all our CIA extras that they are wearing vintage suits and that if they get anything on them, I will cut them.  Needles to say, no extras needed to be harmed that day.

12/17- Chris makes the drive out to Jekyll Island where we are filming the beach battle at the end of the movie, passing at-least 10 signs stating this island is a park and there is NO Gas stations! Makes it on fumes. Thankfully Transpo saves the day with some gas. Returned the favor with a nice bottle of Whiskey.

Holy shit!! I touched Kevin Bacon.. Now how many degrees does that make me?!

The beach set (beached sub, downed Black Bird and the dunes)

Chris standing in with the cast as Alex/Riptide since he wasn’t in the states yet.

Can you see why he ended up becoming his Photo Double?

The Black Bird has seen better days.

Stunt men hanging out inside the Black Bird shell trying to keep warm. This thing was HUGE!

The kids suited up for the final battle

1st AD (2nd unit) Lee Cleary standing in for Riptide. He was a trip to work with!

Teased Jason Flemming about something he was seeing in the ocean. Completely had him going that it was a piece of the X-jet wing and was set dec (it was really a rock that you can only see at low tide). When he figured out I was pulling his leg, I was promptly chased down the beach by a howling Azazel.

12/6- Seriously cold today with 15 degree windchill. Helicopter was on set, the cast/crew got buzzed quite a few times. Still finding mini-sand dunes in my clothes from that one.

Kevin’s dummy waiting for his closeup.

Sebastian Shaw defeated.. or taking a nap.. Not sure which..

12/10- Open box labeled ‘Headdress’ from England. Gasp like a little girl when I see Magneto’s ‘End-game’ helmet. Immediately put it on and run around the wardrobe room like I’m 12.

Also got in Wolverine’s principal wardrobe from ‘Origins’. Guess that settled if there was going to be a cameo or not. Promptly put on his belt and ran around like an 18 year old fangirl.

12/11- Fassbender gets bored between takes , ‘borrows’ a Gator from the grips and takes off down the beach in full Magneto attire. I don’t know why, but seeing Magneto speeding around on a 4 wheeler makes me giggle.

12/13- Currently wearing at least 5 layers of clothing. Look a bit like a terrorist Ninja. It is so cold on the beach that the sand freezes solid. *eep*

12/14- Helping an X-men pee is funny. There is NO WAY they can do it unassisted. Ah the glamorous side of being a Set Costumer. If someone told me that in 3 years I would be helping leather-clad superhero’s use the restroom, I would have had them institutionalized.  (And F.Y.I. the worst suit to get in and out of is Havok. That suit is like a puzzle!!)

12/15- Mesmerized by watching stunt Azazal and stunt Beast cuddling for warmth wile hanging from wires spinning 10 feet in the air. Even covered in paint, fur, prosthesis, leather and wardrobe, they were sill freezing.
Beast had just finished his fight scene. This was his ‘mean’ face.

12/16- My stunt Banshee was doing wing tests for the producers/director today. He was in the flight suit with this ‘full’ wings laced into the costume, propped up on the back lift of the stunt truck. He looked a-bit like a leather clad yellow and black flying squirrel. I was lacing up his shoes when a black bird came to rest on the back of the truck, then another, and another. Before we knew it, there were about 20 black birds in very close proximity to their new winged pal. I called him Banshee the bird whisperer the rest of the day.

Watched the Azazal vs Azazal fight practice. Felt like I was seeing double all day (but it might have just been the hangover from the pub the night before). After catching a glimpse of my wrist tattoos (Phoenix and Dark Phoenix symbols) Flemming called me a ‘proper nerd’ and we had a nice little discussion about ‘how’ Nightcrawler was made.

The shiny balls and Azazal’s tail for FX

12/17- Spent the day watching the beach scene where ‘Charles’ get crippled by Magneto (deflecting bullets shot at him by Moria). I am happy to say that I have the shells that cripple Charles. Another neat X-Men nerd keepsake. This scene is so intense to watch. This collection of actors couldn’t have been chosen better for this film.

Charles with Moria and Raven

12/20-Spent a cold rainy night at ‘Atomic’ casino. Home of the Hell Fire Club

12/21- Got pulled over on the way to set going 60 in a 35. Thank goodness the cop was cool, I got off with a warning. One of our actors was 2 hours late to set. Our director left that actor dangling over the beach set on wire’s until he learned his lesson.

Note to self, don’t be late to set.. Even if I do get a ticket getting there.

12/22- The last day of principal photography in Georgia happened to be on my Birthday, what a present!! Everyone kicked butt and the day was amazing. I was even gifted a piece of the Black Bird as a Birthday present. It now sits on a special shelf in my nerd-cave. This film was such a blast to work on! I only hope it’s not the last epic superhero movie I have the pleasure to work on.

Well director Ruckus Skye answers this question with this fun little short film (shot on 8mm) for Avengers Assemble the Series

I have to admit, it was a lot of fun running around town dressed as Ms. Marvel. I only wish we had someone filming the reactions of those around us as we shot this. Every location was ’stolen’, so there were no closed sets, only real people getting a bit of a shock when they run into a ’superhero’.

Fun little side note, our film crew and I did get kicked out of a grocery store for this footage!

I hope you enjoy!

When I first started seeing teaser art for Marvel’s ‘Age of X’ Legacy (aka Reaper or Rogue), I knew immediately I had to do the new design. Thanks to the amazing help of Clay Mann, we were able to make these costumes a reality. My wonderful partner Chris Burns allowed me to dress him as Rogue’s favorite counterpart, Gambit (armor fabrication tutorial coming soon) for the first time. These shots were taken by the amazing LJinto at MegaCon 2011 in Orlando, Florida.

First, Felipe sends me a rough sketch of the approved cover. With the sketch he includes specific notes on lighting, costume, movement etc.

In this case, I don’t cosplay Arisia, so I do my best to mimic the form and lines of the costume as closely as I can. (Same thing with guns, swords and props in general.) I then set up my studio with the requested lighting and try to exactly match the thumbnail. With the help of my talented Husband, I get the pose correct from camera POV and we shoot away. Once we feel we have a few good options, we movie on to close-ups of the hands, feet and face (if needed). Since this cover is already so close, we only added a closeup on the gloved hand with the ring for detail. Then we send them all off to the artist.

*To get the movement in the wig like that thumbnail, I was holding a hairdryer in my other hand for this picture. It was quite comical to look at, but it worked which is all that matters!

Then somehow Felipe takes the images above and makes an amazingly beautiful art piece that becomes the cover below.

I first ventured into costuming because of my love of comic art. So now that I get to help produce pieces like the one above, blows my mind. I will always be eternally thankful to Felipe and the other amazing artists I have the pleasure to work with (and that always make me look so super).

While still on ‘The Change Up‘, I got an email that made me stop in the middle of Lenox mall and squeal like a 14-year-old that just saw Justin Bieber. I got am email to work ‘X-Men: First Class‘ as a costumer *passes out from awesome*. I am pretty sure all my cosplay, all my comic book nerddom, all my who-would-beat-who-in-a-fight conversations has been building to this, my nerd-dream job.

So here I am on the beautiful East-coast of Georgia working with an amazing cast/ crew and loving my job every day. I have a list a million miles long of things I can’t talk about via FOX, so unfortunately no neat pictures yet. But after the film comes out, I will post all sorts of funny and interesting things.

I will tell you 2 things though.

• I have read the script (considering the time-line / character restrictions it had to maneuver around) and it is good.

• I have lovingly named Kevin Bacon’s dummy, Fake’n Bacon..