Outland Armour at Teslacon 2010!
Posted by Laura on August 7th, 2010 filed in UncategorizedComment now »
BREAKING NEWS!
Outland Armour has just been booked for Teslacon 2010! Check out their website and register here: http://teslacon.org/
Teslacon is a brand new steampunk convention in Madison, Wisconsin coming this November 5th through 7th! This three day event focuses on fully immersing the congoer into a unique steampunk world through theatrical performances, period Victorian atmosphere, and entertainment by costumed actors.
Events include story readings, artisan demonstrations, and various performances and panel topics!
Teslacon.org
Teslacon on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Madison-WI/Teslacon/128909967150085?ref=mf
<3 Laura
Florida Supercon Schedule
Posted by Laura on June 18th, 2010 filed in UncategorizedComment now »
Sorry to be posting this a little late, but here is our schedule for this weekend’s Florida Supercon!
FRIDAY
11:30PM – 12:30AM: OUTLAND ARMOUR Q&A
Join the crew of Outland Armour for a question and answer session with topics ranging from costume design and construction techniques to character backgrounds, and other topics.
1 Hour – Room 900 (COSPLAY)
SATURDAY
12:00PM – 1:00PM: OUTLAND ARMOUR FILM SCREENINGS
Featuring Short Films: Steampunk Star Wars imperial Propaganda, Professor Dantes and the Severin Conundrum and Professor Dantes Gag Reel. Join Outland Armour for a screening of their two indepedently produced short films. First off we have Professor Dantes and the Severin Conundrum, a lighthearted horror-comedy in the early silent film style. Also join us for our newest creation – A propaganda reel encouraging enlistment in the Empire by none other than Steampunk Darth Vader himself! Discussion and gag reel footage will follow the screenings, so come to the movies with us!
1 Hour – Room 800 (FILM)
2:00PM – 3:30PM: STEAMPUNK COSTUMING AND GADGETRY
No steampunk costume is complete without props! Join the Outlanders for tips on construction techniques, sources of materials, and design for your steampunk weaponry. The crew will also be showcasing their massive arsenal of weapons and armor, discussing the origins of steampunk, and sharing their experiences thus far as the crew of the H.M.S. Amaranth.
90 Minutes – Room 100A (COSPLAY)
And of course the crew will be at our booth in the dealer’s room all weekend as well!
This weekend’s event will be a first Outlander appearance for a couple of new members, and a celebratory welcome back for a previously retired member who is returning to the crew! Please welcome Austin Sirkin and Miss Megan Maude to our crew, and please welcome back Jessyca Hamel! Other crew members representing us this weekend are Danny Ashby, Ryan Kightlinger, Duncan Sirah, Mike Kasiske, and Miranda Fawke.
Unfortunately, I (Laura) will not be attending this weekend. Apparently I am very allergic to mangoes. :/ It’s not pretty.
Have fun this weekend guys!
~Laura
World Steam Expo and Florida Supercon!
Posted by Laura on May 27th, 2010 filed in UncategorizedComment now »
Announcing today that Outland Armour will be appearing at Florida Supercon in June! http://floridasupercon.com/
We will be presenting several panels at the show and will be running our vending booth in the dealer’s room! I’m looking forward to visiting Miami for the first time!
In other, more present news, World Steam Expo is this weekend! Danny, Ryan, and Laura will be representing Outland Armour at this show.
Here’s our schedule of events for World Steam Expo:
Costuming and Gadgetry Panel – 1PM-3PM on Saturday
How-To Weaponry Panel – 7pm Saturday
The Outlanders Q&A – 11:30 AM – 12:30PM on Sunday
Star Wars Imperial Propaganda Film Screening (Which we still need to get up online somewhere too!) 10pm – 11PM on Sunday
I don’t have locations for these events. I’m assuming they will be listed in the program handed out at the convention. If not, I can Tweet them from our Twitter account for everyone. Which is http://twitter.com/OutlandArmour by the way!
Also come see us at our vending table all weekend long! We will have goggles, headwings, bloomers, other steampunk accessories, and signed prints for sale!
Also we should be hosting a raffle game drawing at our Costuming and Gadgetry Panel, so remember to bring a dollar or two if you wish to buy a ticket!
See you there!
~Laura
Steampunk World’s Fair Schedule
Posted by Laura on May 12th, 2010 filed in UncategorizedComment now »
FRIDAY
Iron Modder: 6-7:30pm Miracle Ballroom
Miss Elizabeth Ainesworth,, of the good ship “Our Lady Most Fair”, will be hosting a steampunk modder/costuming version of the infamous Iron Chef! With special guest judge Laurilye Hutchinson from The Outlanders, it’s sure to be a… stitch. 
Sign up in groups of 3 to 5 people, limited spaces available! Teams will be given a special steampunk job, some images to pull ideas from, and then will have at donated sewing and modding materials to try to make their vision come to life in less than one hour!
NOTE: If you are coming to the show, keep in mind that the faire is accepting donations of materials like sewing machines, needles and thread, hot glue and glue guns, safety pins, fabric scraps and remnants, or even gently used clothing, for participants to use during the contest. Feel free to bring any of these items and see a staff member about where to drop them off. Your help would be much appreciated!
As stated above, I am co-judging and hosting this event! Should be lots of fun.
Queen of Steam Drag Show: Time and Location N/A
What do you get when you take a two-time winning Miss Trap, three guest judges, and an hour full of drag queen steampunks? You get the “Queen of Steam”! Lucretia Dearfour, your lovely hostess to this event, will be crowning the “Queen of Steam” on Friday night! Guest judges Jha Goh, G.D. Falksen, and Baron Von Lahey!
Danny will be performing at this event. Ooh la la!
SATURDAY
Steampunk’d! Costume Competition: 5-6pm Courtyard Tent
Steampunk’d Competition – Many people love getting dressed up as their own original alter ego, but some of us like to cosplay well-known characters gone steampunk! What if Lord of the Rings had taken place in the Wild West of America? Or Batman lurked the streets of an industrial era Japan? Or what if our leader had been Robo-velt the Steampunk president! Join your hosts and judges, The Outlanders (in their Steampunk Wars cosplays), for a chance to show off your take on an old favorite and be adored by the masses!
As stated above, the Outlanders will be hosting and judging this event, costumed in our Steampunk Star Wars ensembles.
Flooding the Engine: The Outlanders’ Nashville Adventure” Viewing: 9:30 – 10:30pm Embassy Suites Ballroom
We will be sharing some video footage we shot in Nashville during the flood last weekend, as well as still photos. Discussion and Q & A will follow the viewing. We will also be taking a collection to benefit the Nashville area Red Cross at this time.
Tales of the Outlanders Q&A (18+): 1-2am The Blue Room
Our own little Q & A! This is the late night panel where things might get a little more scandalous than usual. ;D Ask us anything! Really. ANYTHING. Steampunk and costume related or otherwise. Anything goes at this panel. Well, almost anything. Lol.
SUNDAY
Steampunk in Lolita Fashion: 12-1pm Miracle Ballroom
Learn tips on how to successfully incorporate steampunk into your lolita outfits.
Mad Science Fair Competition: 1:30-3pm Embassy Suites Ballroom A/B
Hosted by The Brothers McManniss with special judges Jake von Slatt, Adam Smith , Captain Dantes from Outland Armour, and mad scientist Professor Elemental!
If the old Science Fairs went a little mad, you’d be entering ray guns and valmorphenizors- so bring them here! Inventions, contraptions, mods, and salvages. Enter your latest creation, discuss it with attendees for a chance to win crowd favorite, oir impress the judges and have the chance to win The Coveted Golden Gear Award! Message madscientistsguild@gmail.com to get your prized project in early, as tables are limited! [NOTE: Projects may be entered at 3 levels: Henchman, Apprentice, Mad Genius. See THIS FORM for all details.]
As stated above, Danny is co-judging this event!
“A Dreadful Poker Game” Fundraiser: Time and Location N/A
The Outlanders of Outland Armour were at a convention in Tennessee and a whole bunch of their stuff- cars, bus, art, stock, and yes even props and costumes- were lost to the flooding there. If you have things you’d like to donate to the Outlanders for them to work with, or even just a couple bucks you’d like to throw into a bucket for them, The Penny Dreadfuls of S.S. Icarus are here to help you help them!!! Several of the Dreadfuls will be playing loud-and-boisterous poker, in-character, to give folks a fun time while helping raise money and collect gear for our friends and yours, The Outlanders of Outland Armour.
This is so sweet of the Dreadfuls to do for us! Be sure to come out and watch them play! <3
And last but certainly not least, we will be vending at our booth all weekend in the Miracle Ballroom – Booth 8A-B. Look for the Amaranth pirate flag!
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So we have a FULL weekend ahead of us! For everyone coming to the fair, be sure to say hi and come by our table to hang out during the weekend!
See you guys in Piscataway!
~Laura
The Outlanders Aquatic Adventures
Posted by Laura on May 4th, 2010 filed in Uncategorized3 Comments »
Where to begin… I have only just arrived back home in Atlanta a few moments ago, but I want to get this information to you guys as soon as possible. We have had a very exciting weekend for sure…
The important thing is that we The Outlanders are all safe and back home in Atlanta. Many many thank yous to the wonderful volunteers and the US Coast Guard for helping us back to safety today. Thank you so much guys!
As you may know, we were in Nashville, Tennessee for the Middle Tennessee Anime Convention (MTAC) this past weekend. You may also have seen Nashville in the news over the last couple of days; there have been massive floods there after 2 straight days of rain on Saturday and Sunday. Our hotel was actually cut off on all sides by 5 – 15 feet of water, and we were finally ferried out by a fleet of volunteers and Coast Guard boats early this morning.
At this time, all of our steampunk props and costumes, as well as all of our luggage are still in Nashville, some in our hotel room and some in our bus which is now flooded in the parking lot under 5 feet of water. We do not know the status of our gear inside the bus. We waded into chest deep water last night to move things to the top storage rack, as far away from the rising flood waters as possible, and we are hoping it is still safe. But, when we were ferried out this morning, authorities were telling us that they estimated the waters would continue to rise at least another 1 – 2 feet before finally coming to a stop. So we cannot be certain that anything inside the bus will remain safe at this point. What we do know for certain is that our bus is dead in the water and is not likely to ever start again. In addition to the bus, we lost 4 personal cars to the flood. We were only able to get home to Atlanta after several of our crew were able to obtain rental cars in town. We were told that the earliest we may be able to get back into the area and retrieve our belongings will likely be Thursday. So at that time we will be going back to Nashville to assess the damage and get our things.
So, where does this leave us? Basically, we don’t know how we are going to travel to either Steampunk World’s Fair or the World Steam Expo. We’re trying to make some plans now, involving forming a caravan with several cars, but we haven’t had a chance to make absolute plans yet. We just can’t know anything for sure right now.
If we can find a mode of transportation, we can guarantee our attendance at our upcoming cons. After all, props can be rebuilt! Right now, we just don’t know how we’re going to get there since all we have are several small cars.
I just wanted to let all of our friends and fans know what’s going on with us and that we are all safe.
Thanks for your support, and I’ll keep everyone updated on upcoming events with information as soon as possible.
~Laura and The Outlanders
Recent Photoshoots!
Posted by Laura on February 24th, 2010 filed in UncategorizedComment now »
During these past winter months, things have been kind of quiet here at the Outland Armour workshop (aside from the recent Bioshock 2 Big Sister scramble for Danny, Adam, and Joe; more on that later!). Summertime is our big convention season, so we have been enjoying a little time to relax, do a few photoshoots, and prepare for the con season that is fast approaching! I thought we might share some of the things we’ve been working on recently.
Laura and Lindsay recently did a photoshoot with our wonderful photographer friend – Matt Nicholson. In this studio shoot, the girls showcase some of our new steampunk products including winged hair clips, bloomers, goggles, and jewelry! Some of these products are available for purchase in our shoppe! Click the image below to see the full gallery on our website:
This past weekend, Laura, Lindsey, and Lindsay did another shoot, this time at the Sope Creek Mill ruins in Marietta, Georgia. Click the image below to see the full gallery on our website:
Earlier this year, we attended Ikkicon in Austin, Texas! While there, Danny had the chance to do a new photoset with Yaya Han in their steampunk costumes. Yaya’s fan and Danny’s jetpack were both made by Outland Armour. The jetpack is actually part of his Steampunk Boba Fett costume that he just threw on for this quick shoot, lol. Speaking of Steampunk Fett, if you’d like to see photos of our Steampunk Star Wars costumes, click here! Yaya’s steampunk costume is her own creation. To see more of her amazing costume work and modeling portfolio, check out her website here: YayaHan.com. And finally click the image below to see the full gallery of Danny and Yaya’s Ikkicon steampunk photos on our site:
<3 Laura
Megacon and Website Upgrades
Posted by Laura on January 18th, 2010 filed in UncategorizedComment now »
Hey guys,
Just a quick update here! First of all, Ikkicon was awesome and a huge thank you to everyone who came out to see us there. Also a huge thank you to the Ikkicon staff for having us as guests; we had a blast! It was a fantastic way to spend our New Year’s. ^_^
Next up on the convention front, we have Megacon March 12-14 in Orlando, Florida. We had initially planned on skipping Megacon this year in light of Momocon being so soon afterwards, but in the end a good number of the crew have decided they’re up for it, so off to Florida we shall go! We are not currently scheduled to present any panels at Megacon (I’m afraid I may have contacted them about it a bit too late) but we will have a sales table in the Independent Press section of the dealer’s hall. Be sure to stop by and take a look at our shinies.
Some of you who frequent our site may have noticed a few changes over the past several days. Lindsay and I have been working our tails off on this new site redesign. I say redesign, but for those familiar with our old site, you will notice that the color scheme and style have remained relatively the same. The main difference is that I have implemented frames to compartmentalize the content on each page, and I’ve also converted all of the code over to CSS. I know, I’m super old-fashioned and amateur for using straight HTML. But it’s all the coding language I knew when I started this whole shabang, so it’s what I used at the time. It ended up being such a task to change any little thing on the site, having to go through all that complicated code. So, thank goodness for CSS! I still know next to nothing about how to write it from scratch, but I’ve learned a lot already and I’m learning more as I continue to use it, so yay for self-education.
As I mentioned, Lindsay helped me a lot with the site redesign, specifically with all our little buttons and graphics. Thanks a ton, Linds! We will be continuing to work on the site for several weeks I imagine, as there is still a lot of content to be added and updates to be made.
I’ll be posting here again later this evening with information about our auctions to benefit the Haiti earthquake relief effort. So stay tuned! We’ve got some great custom items up for grabs, and it’s for a very important cause!
[EDIT] We will post about the auctions to benefit Haiti tomorrow; sorry for the delay guys but I’ll be sure to post about it here when they’re up!
~Laura
Ikkicon Schedule
Posted by Laura on December 31st, 2009 filed in UncategorizedComment now »
I apologize for this being so last minute! I didn’t have a chance to post before leaving for Austin, so I’m posting this from Ben and Noelle’s house in Austin, Texas.
Outland Armour Events Schedule:
Friday – Steampunk Gadgetry Panel: 2pm – 4pm (Please note this is a last minute time change!)
Drunken Tales with the Outlanders: 11:30 – Midnight
Saturday – Outland Armour Q & A: 11:30am – Noon
Our sales table will be in the Guest Hall all weekend. We’ll have all kinds of shiny things for sale, including jewelry and accessories, goggles, prop guns, and signed prints. Come see us!
~Laura
Konnichiwa Austin! Outlanders Come to Ikkicon
Posted by Meredith on December 24th, 2009 filed in UncategorizedComment now »
Merry Pre-Christmas, everyone! Meredith here, taking some time out of family fun in Florida to share a little article that was published in the Austin Chronicle today, complete with a steamtastic picture featuring the crew of Outland Armour in our Steam Wars costumes. 
I was interviewed last Friday by the gracious and wonderfully British Richard Whittaker. We talked cosplay, Star Wars, comics, and other fine geekery.
Here’s the article for your enjoyment, read and comment to your liking! Also, anyone who lives in Austin and could pick up a few copies for me, I would be forever appreciative of it.
Happy Holidays to all, and for those coming to Ikkicon, I cannot wait to see you next week!
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:931303
And Richard, I better see you in your Jedi outfit!
Workshop Shenanigans
Posted by Laura on December 13th, 2009 filed in UncategorizedComment now »
Hey guys,
Long time no post, I know. But happily I can say that we have all been very busy Outlanders and we have lots of exciting things coming up soon. Let’s see, in my last post we were getting ready for Anime Weekend Atlanta. The con went very well and we send out a huge thank you to Jason Merrill and the staff of AWA for having us back again this year. We had a lot of fun. ^_^ I did upload some of our photos from the con, which can be seen here: AWA Photo Album
During October a good number of us work for Netherworld Haunted House. Most nights I was a zombie in the creepy research lab/prison ward area of the Zombie Rampage haunt:
During the month of November, we played with Nerf guns a lot:
Okay we did a bit more than that, and all those photos were taken in one single evening, but I digress. xP
A good chunk of November was actually spent reinvigorating Mike’s newly acquired school bus, which we will soon be using as a tour bus to take to conventions. The guys spent a lot of long hours in the early winter chill ripping out seats and laying down new layers of insulation, sanding the exterior for paint, etc. I need to go out and take some photos of it, but it’s nighttime so I can’t do it now.
In addition to fixing up the bus, the guys have been working on building our new workshop! Pictures below:
Lindsay, Craig, Danny, and I all moved into our new house in early October (oh yeah that other thing we did in October…), so we’ve been slowly moving all of our tools into the new garage and setting up a proper workshop area. Yay for that!
For the girls, we now have a proper sewing room as well! Double yay! So now we have a nice new serger, TWO dressforms, and two sewing machines to work with. We feel very lucky to finally have a good creative space to work in with nice cutting tables and lots of storage. It’s amazing how much more productive we’ve been as a result. Meredith and I have spent the last week or so drafting patterns for and making cute little bloomers to bring to Ikkicon for our sales table. On that note…
Our next event! Ikkicon – Austin, Texas Jan 1-4 This year they’re doing a steampunk theme so it’s sure to be fun.
In other exciting news, we were just booked as guests for the Steampunk World’s Fair this coming May! We’re doing a few local shows between Ikkicon and STWF, including Momocon here in Atlanta. For more info, check our events page.
Also, we have a Twitter now if you’d like to keep up with us there. It’s a good way for us to post about things remotely while we’re at conventions: Outland Armour on Twitter
I think that’s about all I have to gab about for now. Hopefully we’ll see some of you at Ikkicon!
~Laura