James Wade : Shit shoveller

hello blogosphere,

At this time I should be feverishly completing my Design and tech coursework, but as my room is entirely filled with

1. noise
2. sugar
3. small children

this is impossible, (its my brothers birthday an all his friends are crowded into the little room next to mine watching the giant telly whaaay too loud) So I have decided to do something which I have been neglecting a little recently, BLOG! especially seeing as Karys likes it when I do and I feel like I've been letting her down a lot recently, not majorly just in lots of little ways, almost to the point where I feel like shes putting up with me, like a useless old man rather than enjoying my company like a couple of sprite teenagers that we are. so here it is.

Today, after realsing that work wont be an option until later tonight atleast, my dad enlisted me for help with the infamous WADE allotment, somthing that up untill now I had managed to avoid (the same thing cannot be said for a number of my friends and band-mates, who have been there to toil in the feilds on many occasions while I galavant off elsewhere (having fun)), Luckily i was saved from actual toil and simply had to go to chudliegh with my dad and pick up 5 black sacks of rotten horse shit, (mmmmmmmm lovely) hence the name of this post. In order to obtain said shit from the farm in chudleigh we had to climb atop crap mountain, following the standard crazy-horsefarm-owning-fleece-wearing-toothless-and-amazingly-quick-and-adept-at-climbing-hills-made-entirely-from-excrement, lady, my dad tried to cheer me up afterwards by telling me i could look at the horsey girls that were littered about the place. However I wasnt interested (for 2 reasons

1. (most importantly) Karys!
2. Horsey chicks are a little like chocolate buttons, if youve seen one youve seen them all really, and besides even to a horsey chick, a darthvader hoodie freshly splattered in poop is not a good look.)

after that (and much shouting at/ignoring our pretentious and annoying SATNAV machine) we went to ASDA and had a luncheon of sausage chips and beans, nice!

after that it was home for blogging, a so here we are.

also in the meantime the band perfomed two gigs, one at a night club and one at a chrch, I shall blog about both speparately in a few seconds, which one did we enjoy most?? where were there more people?? where did we get the best reception??? well in short the church, but read the blog to find out why. www.batterypowered-band.blogspot.com

...Wade

So good I had to blog it

Thats Right Kids Its time for the saterday morning WATCHMEN!

Awesome

"nite owl is the leader, and he loves to party down, rorschach loves the animals, yeah when he's not clowning around"

Rorschach

Me and Karys (and a Number of our friends) are going to a party with a super hero theme, And have decided to go as characters from the watchmen.

I therefore now have an excuse other that obsession to get myself a Rorschach costume,

Rorschach is kind of an anti-hero in that he is an extremist, exacting justice on people by killing them, interestingly underneath his cool costume, (more details a litte later on) he is infact very short 5' 4" or something, ginger, ugly and has one leg slightly longer than the other forcing him to wear elevatior shoes to even him out.

Above is an image Rorschach in both his original drawn comic book form and in a still from the new movie (which was very cool, despite the complete lack of giant evil squid from space)

Rorschach's costume comprises of 

• Brown/Brown-Leather Belted Trenchcoat, cut just above the knees, (I'll probably go for a leather one if i can get it (like in the movie, looks slightly better as matt clothes tend not to be very hero-y)
• Pinstriped suit trouers, in many amature costumes people copy the comic colour scheme exactly and wear purple pinstripe trousers, however I want my costume to look realistic rather than exactly accurate, besides which I belivethe purple colour in the comic to represent Black (or at least a dark shade) without drowning the panels in black (black being used quite liberally anyway)
  
• Elastic sided black boots (again if i were being entirely accurate I would wear elevated ones but that would be uncomforable, so normal non-perscription ones it is
• A shirt or vest (doesnt really matter is hidden under trenchcoat 99.99% of the time, If we go on the idea that Rorschach is Heavily based on Steve Ditko's Mr. A and The Question, then it may be fair to assume he is wearing the top half of the suit as well.
• A brown fedora-y trilby type hat (again purple band in the comic will probably stick with black or same colour as hat)
• White Scarf
• And last but not least the mask, 

now this poses a problem, in the comic it is two chemicals sealed between two layers of latex, (Its not explained why it stays symetrical , supposedly is an impossible fabric made by another watchmen character Dr Manhatten) and I cant make that, and obviously in the movie it is done with CGI, and I cant do that either.  I am however of loath to simply draw on a white pair of tights and stick them over my head when the rest of the costume is going to look so awesome. May need to buy a white latex face mask (from one of those, y'know, SPECIALIST shops/websites) and modify it (however even the most gimpy gimp masks have holes in them to breath through, and how do you see) The advantage of the tights approach is apparently you can see through the drawn on bits relatively well annd you can breath through it. Perhaps a black pair of tights painted or bleached in an appropriate manner would do the trick.

this is going to require much pondering.

I found this fan image of rorschach with more detail that looks awesome (i especially like the over detail on the inkblot its a nice touch) 

This also got me thinking about more complex inkblots, now in the film they stick very close and used very bold rounded inkblots, however they shilfted a lot so you couldnt really tell. I'm wondering if I should use more complicated inkblots to add to the realism of my costume and so that it wont matter too much that its not constantly changing.

Inkblots as shown below would be cool. 

I particularly like the one, one up from the bottom and one in from the left hand side. For printing this on I could get ink and actully make a Rorschach style inkblot the traditional way then press it on to the mask to get it absolutely symmetrical and cool. I could always re-ink onto the mask with in the lines afterwards to make sure they are nice and dark, infact come to think of it I think I have some fabric paint under my bead which would be perfect.

The other option is to paint a shape on with a paint that reacts to light, so as Im wandering around it changes depending on where the light is hitting it, if i draw a symetrical pattern with it it will look pretty cool, not entirely acurate, but cool.

Not currently listeing to anything but I have "Kissa me Baby" by "Ray Charles" stuck in my head

...Wade