West Coast Haunter's Convention

 

http://westcoasthaunters.homestead.com/

The new and original ghostbusters

The winning costumes

The West Coast Haunter's Convention was June 1st-3rd in Portland Oregon. I had a great time at the costume ball, and attending the seminars. Just being around so many people who love Halloween was excellent. I brought out the steampunk ghostbuster costume again (fixed the smoking barrel and remembered to add the green glow to the chamber). While I didn't win the costume constest, I have no problems losing to the couple who won with their fabulous vampire count and countess costumes My full photo gallery is public on Facebook HERE.

Sean and I on CBC Early Edition

Sean and I were invited to come and talk about our costumes and Halloween on the Early Edition, Early on Halloween morning. You can listen to the interview here (skip to 0:31:00)

2011 Costume: Steampunk Ghostbuster

Front

Back

This year's costume reused (with several modifications) the backpack from my steampunk Frankenstein Monster costume. I took a month off from work to build the ray gun, and enlisted my friend to do some circuit building and arduino programming. The backpack smoked, there was a nixie tube countdown, a custom mixed audio track, the gears turned, the green on the side of the gun is a plasma disk, and it shot a rotating laserbeam. The barrel was supposed to Gatling around some green cathodes, but something went wrong with the 800+ volts that went to them. I hope to post a video of the thing in action one day. Oh, and I grew the facial hair for the costume.