I discovered the Avatar: The Last Airbender anime just in time to get excited for the motion picture movie – aka, the Shamalonga-ding-dong atrocity. Seriously – Worst. Movie. Ever. This is the only movie that we’ve ever been to that has been openly and aggressively booed at the midnight release. Jonathan called it a “standing boovation”. The anime = amazing. The movie = shite.
Again, this was pre-crafting our own costumes, so my mum made all these costumes in time for the midnight showing in Fresno. And by “in time” I mean… sewing on the way to the theater. The box office threw us a curveball and moved the release date up a day. I was stuck at work and unable to come home and help when we figured that out hours till the movie release. It was a cosplayers nightmare come to life. (You know the ones.. where you’re on the way to the convention and forget the costumes, or run out of time to finish a vital piece for an event?)
Anyhoo, I’m cosplaying Katara, Jonathan went as Prince Zuko, my sister went as Princess Azula and our friend Eric went as Sokka. The pictures were taken near Hospital Rock in the Sequoias National Forest in California. The photoshoot was another race against time since we got a late start and had to rush to get to the mountains before the sun went down. We literally shot everything in quicklyly fading light. Man, the more I reflect, the more I realize how unorganized we were in those early days. Dang.
I remember when you said you wanted to do the cosplay for the movie release. I told you to find some good images from the movie trailer for me…you said no, you wanted the anime costumes, I asked why, “in case the movie sucks’! I love how good everything turned out, considering the rush. Cracks me up that Jessi’s was made from the scraps of Jonathan’s costume! All the little bits I cut his yellow flames from made up a good design on her’s!
Yeah, I thoroughly learned my lesson on watch the movie first THEN cosplay from Star Wars Episode 1, haha…. ^_^