Bowser Cosplay

Today is the day of the Boxwars! My Bowser costume is now fully complete, including a styrofoam Chain Chomp as my weapon. I created the headgear from a program called Cubeecraft. This program was much easier to use than Pepakura, although I had to take the texture into Photoshop to change it around a little bit. The shell was made from a box with 29 spikes glued to it. I painted Chain Chomp onto a styrofoam ball and attached zip ties for the chain.
Once we all geared up, we headed down to the student union - in costume - to battle it out. My weapon didn't last long, so I had to resort to running into people backwards and stab them with my shell spikes. It was a lot of fun, and we difinitely attracted a big audience.

3D Wolf

For our last collaborative project, I, along with a team of 3 other students, created a 3D cardboard wold made from Pepakura. Our process started when we created a survey asking students what kind of sculpture they would like to see on campus. Many of the responses we got were to create a wolf. We decided that we didn't want the crowd sourcing to stop there, so we came up with the idea to paint the wold with chalkboard paint and have students write on the wolf when it was installed. The overall piece ended up being very successful, and although we faced some inclement weather, we did have many people participate in the chalking of the wolf.

Emily Rogers - Photographer

On April 15th at 5:30pm, MFA candidate Emily Rogers gave a lecture about her work as a photographer. She began discussing work that inspired her, and is very interested in photography that shows feeling and emotion. Her subjects in her photos are not people, but rather the absence of people. The feelings that people get from photos is what Rogers loves the most about photography. Her first set of photos that she shared were inspired by her grandmother. They were pictures of mourning from the loss of her grandmother, and showed silence and emptiness in photographs. Rogers then began photographing houses when she went to Denver for Habitat for Humanity. She really liked capturing the shape of the homes, and the community and family that the homes were about. Rogers then began photographing local homes in Reno. She started with the fronts of the homes, but eventually moved into the neighborhood and got to know the people who lived in the homes. Her photos started to change as she was telling the stories of the people in the homes by photographing their homes. She enjoyed finding old stories about something that happened in the houses, and then photographed the houses to tell that particular story. She hung the story by the picture of the house in her exhibition.
Rogers' work was very powerful, and I enjoyed the emotion and stories that she told in her photos.

Genevieve Erin O'Brien

On March 26th, at 6pm, Genevieve Erin O'Brien gave a talk about her experience and her work as a performance artist. O'Brien is a Vietnamese-Irish-American artist who heavily identifies with each of her cultures. She likes to express her heritage through her artwork. One of her pieces was called "Astounding Race" and was about the idea that we only think of Vietnam as a war rather than a country. She had joe paper with her, and went to public areas where she silently asked people to write down what they think about Vietnam. A lot of the responses were about war, which was an astonishing finding. Another performance work she did was called Peace Salon, in which she asked for volunteers to come and she would shave their head for peace. This was a very powerful piece that reflected not only people's personal struggles, but also the bigger picture of peace.
The talk was very interesting and let me see a who new type of art.

Cosplay Boxfight Character

BOWSER!!

Bowser is the original villain of gaming. For this project, I would like to focus on creating his shell and his head. His bracelets and necklace will be add ons. Here are some other people's attempts at creating their own Bowser costume:

Since Bowser doesn't have a weapon, I would like to incorporate his comrade, Chain Chomp into my costume. While Chain Chomp isn't really recognized as an individual character, he is highly destructive and an ultimate badass.

The REAL Steve Madden

Steve Madden is a household name in the fashion world, particularly for his shoe designs. There have been many copycats to the design of his notable pumps, but none quite like this. This shoe was scanned using an Xbox Kinect, then transferred to Pepakura, where it was printed and folded. Included in the installation is Steve Madden's copyright notice.

Show Me The Money!

The game, Show Me The Money, is about how our lives revolve all around money. Whether we are spending money or getting money, it is an important aspect of our daily lives. You can beat the game when you successfully collect all the money. Good luck!