Wampa Patches - help with repairs and building a set.

Hello everyone WampaDude here, and I am working on raising money for a new Wampa Set for conventions. My goal is to have it ready for Celebration VII. To help raise funds, I have created a series

of personal patches.
I am producing 5 patches to help fundraise repairs and a new set to display the costume at conventions. The concept of the set is to replicate the Wampa cave. I will be mounting my Wampa costume UPSIDE DOWN! Fans can pose next to it with their hands up. When they flip their photo upside down, they are now hanging upside down like Luke in the Wampa Cave!!




The Wampa is also my first 501st/Rebel Legion costume, so after almost 5 years in the Legion, there is a lot of wear and tear on the suit. I would like to resculpt the face to make it more screen accurate to the Special Edition Wampa. The original head is pretty rudimentary, made of foam (which is directly on my face), latex and fur, and found out if i want more longevity in the suit, i need to get more airflow to reduce the risk of heat exhaustion here in Florida. Also the hands are in rough shape and very heavy, I would like to improve on those also by making them lightweight and more realistic. Thanks to our brothers and sisters within the Legion I have learned so much since building this suit. I owe it to them and the fans to put the most screen accurate Wampa available out there. Especially on a big stage like Celebration.

There is a bonus to rebuilding the Arms and heads too. In doing so I will now have molds of each, so if anyone wanted some  screen accurate Wampa Taxidermy (either a severed arm, or head mount) which would look great at a convention or in a personal collection. Once the set is done maybe i can put up an interest thread for those.


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So on to the patches. I have 4 wampa patches that will be available along with a bonus 5th patch. The first 2 Wampa patches I am releasing are as follows. (proofs will be updated as soon as they come  in)


PATCH #1 - Hanging With The Wampa



First, is the Wampa Set patch, a patch that can be seen flipped just like the images of the set.  It is a 4" fully embroidered patch.


PATCH #2 - Wampa Skull and Crossbones



Second is my personal emblem, the Wampa Skull and Crossbones. Being from Tampa Bay, the Pirate culture is big here, from our Football team the Buccaneers, to the annual festivals like Gasparilla and John Levique Pirate Days. So with Star Wars known for having their own pirates and scoundrels, why not create my own personal logo to reflect the two. This is perfect for anyone in Bizzard Force, with a Patch Vest or personal patch collectors. This one will be a 4" wide die cut patch,

PATCH #3 - Wampa Kitty



A mash up with Hello Kitty and the wampa, a design i made previously for bin decals, now available with a patch. This will be a 4"x4" die cut patch.

PATCH #4 - Wampa Workshop



A patch dedicated to the workshop where the wampa is built, in Tampa Bay we have a series of workshops, the Wookiee Workshop that specializes in all things Wookiee, the Sith Workshop who specialize in Darth Maul and Darth Talon, and also the Wampa Workshop, dedicated to perfecting the impossible costume that Lucasfilm struggled with. This is a 3"x4" rectangle patch.

BONUS PATCH - Hail Hydrate



As a bonus patch. Here is the Hail Hydrate emblem that I created this year after an inside joke to those who marched at Disney's Star Wars Weekends. Anyone who has been in armor in the heat knows we need to stay hydrated. And with the popularity with the Marvel movies and Agents of Shield, this mashup needed to be done. This patch is a standard 3.5" circle patch.


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Prices are as follows.


$6.00 US per patch - includes shipping.
$7.00 International per patch - includes shipping

Plus any additional donations are more than welcome, costs most likely will exceed the funds raised via patches (please add a note in paypal)


Paypal - mywampa@gmail.com

Be sure to include your name and address for shipping via PM or Paypal. and please post here so i can keep track of how many of which are ordered.

Email me for any questions.

 

click link above to make direct donations to paypal.


Thank you all and MTFBY

Wampa Sightings: SModimation - SModwars

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a big fan of Kevin Smith and when I found out that they did one of his SModimations based on Hoth and included the Wampa I had to share it.

Kevin has been animating sections of his podcasts over the past few years and this time it was his Smodcast with him and Scott Mosier discussing some unfortunate pilots including Dak and Porkins.

Check out more of his podcasts over at smodcast.com

Wampa Sighting - Chubbs the Wampug Strikes Back

Chubbs, also known as the Wampug just finished up a photoshoot in the snow, go check out Chubbs' facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Chubbsthepug to see more of the photos. 

Wampa Sighting - Stuffed Crocheted Wampa Doll

Artist Beck "Beckadoodles" Seashols is a cartoonist and also does some great crocheted star wars characters. She posted this latest work over on her Etsy page (click the photo above to check out Etsy page).  

Beck as been a freelance illustrator/artist since 2000 with a style that is very kid friendly mixed with bright colors, bold lines and kittens. She has worked with Lucasfilm, Topps, Breygent, 5finity, Cult-Stuff, Target and rubber stamp companies as well as private collectors of all things cute and cuddly.

http://www.beckadoodles.com/

The Wampa Backpack and "Attack" - By Inksress

"Wally" the Wampa Backpack

Check out this awesome Wampa Backpack made by the Wampa Handler - Genna over at her blog Inkstress.net Since we were not able to bring the Wampa costume to Megacon this year, she decided to represent by wearing this backpack around the con. The backpack used a modified Celebration V exclusive Wampa with removable plush arm. On top of that she added to the backstory by adding some effects make up and showing that she was attacked while handling. You can read on how she made the backpack and how she did the make up over on her blog!

Coming soon from Comic Images - Wampa Headgear

Check out this upcoming Wampa and Ewok headgear coming from Comic Images. The same folks that brought us the Wampa Rug, Backpack Buddies and how can we forget the Wampa exclusive from Celebration V.

http://comicimages.com/


Thanks to @JustinL81 for posting this

Check out this amazing Wampa costume!

Came across this costume today, it is a real shame I don't have any more info but I would love to learn the whole story.

Wampa Sighting - The Wampug!

The Wampug... Yeah I know I am late on posting on this, but for those that haven't seen it, here it is. Kristen from over at http://starwarschick.com/ made this awesome costume for her pug Chubbs.

Time for a little Plastic Surgery for the Wampa

This week I have started the modifications to the Wampa. For the longest time I have been unsatisfied with the bubbly shoulders. This was really noticible in the Adidas photo. So I am working on cutting a football size wedge out of the top of them and much like a tummy tuck, I am taking out excessive foam and fur. I also took out one of the support rings to reduce the size a bit and have a more natural and screen accurate shoulder.

I do plan on replacing the entire structure of the arms eventually, so this little cosmetic change is only a band-aid for now but I think it will be totally worth it! Below is a photo of it just pinned together. You can already start to see the difference below with the shoulder on the left and the shoulder on the right. More pics and updates coming soon when this mod is finished.

2012... this year should be fun

Like last year I started the year with a State of the Wampa address. So this year should be no different. First of all I would like to recap last year as one hell of a year. We started the year launching the new Disney Dream cruise ship. Took the Wampa to two conventions including Megacon and Motor City Comic Con up in Michigan. Then the Wampa was chosen to be part of the Star Wars Adidas Campaign! So to say 2011 was the year of the Wampa is an understatement in my opinion. But it wasn't all the Wampa, 2011 also brought in a pair of Stormtroopers.Genna and I both built ANH Stormtroopers, a Stunt and a Hero build. I got to participate in my first Star Wars Weekends at Disney. I also was able to be part of a Kelby Training video with Doug Sonders with the Stormtrooper and Daisy Duke with the General Lee.

Also for 2011 our Squad with the 501st grew and met some really great new friends that are begging to help work on the Wampa. We established Wampa Workshops with Brian, Tim, Genna and Mark and it feels good to have some extra help and opinions when it comes to the suit. Along with the Wampa Workshops comes the Sith Lord Workshops. Tim finished up his Darth Maul in the last few weeks, and now I am finally working on Palpatine. As for the 2012 plans for the Wampa, don't expect retirement anytime soon. I will be taking it out for the opening Weekend for Phantom Menace in 3D, but it will be back to the workshop after that. With all that travel in 2011 comes wear and tear and 2012 will bring much needed repair & improvement time. So this year, I am skipping Megacon to ensure a fully working Wampa at Star Wars Celebration VI, which is returning to Orlando Florida August 23-26. I plan on bringing the Wampa out again, have it on display some of the days, and wear it on Saturday. I will be repairing the arms and making them more articulated, as well as possibly a new head sculpt! So, there is a short set of plans for 2012... and I leave you with one more little hint on a costume. Expect a big surprise with this costume at C6!

Lego Star Wars - Wampa!

The Wampa visits Lucasfilm... sorta

Well, some call it Mecca (according to an AP article) though I would argue that an invite to Skywalker Ranch would be Mecca.. so this is the Medina for Star Wars fans? So on with the story, enough silly muslim comparisons... thanks AP. So while Genna and I were in San Francisco we got the chance to visit Lucasfilm Ltd. in San Francisco. Some of the props on loan for the Wampa Adidas photo shoot were on loan from Lucasfilm and we got to tag along when returning them.

Unfortunately we just missed our contact and we didn't make it further than the lobby, this was still really cool. We got to see the famous Yoda bronze statue which has a twin over at the ranch and inside the lobby is a pair of familiar characters, Boba Fett and Darth Vader, along with shelves of statues and awards won by Lucasfilm over the years. Believe me, once you have been there you want to head back. It was an unfair tease but we did make it closer than many people have done, so I am happy with that.

For the rest of our trip we got to wander around Downtown San Francisco. It is an amazing city, and there is so much to do. I have been to SanFran once before 23 years ago. As a kid it was fun, but I really wanted to re-experience things as an adult. I am amazed on how much we squeezed into a 3 day trip. We found a full size Starkiller in a GameStop and we had to snag a pic. We rode just about every type of public transportation which is lacking back in Florida. If they had a system like this in Tampa Bay, I would use it all the time. Street Cars, Cable Cars, The Bart, Muni Metro, any visitor can get anywhere they want using these. Here in Tampa there is such a whiny attitude between sports teams because of the Bay in between, public transportation like this would squash that argument, but that is a story for another blog...

Oh and food, there is some amazing food around town. For some odd reason we like to hit up Mall food courts when traveling, maybe it's the variety and fimiliar food. While wandering the streets outside our hotel was San Francisco Centre, a 9-floor mall, which had an AMAZING food court. With the Asian and health concious community in San Francisco, there were so many options. We settled on a Thai place that gave us so much food we couldn't finish.

Yep, we did play the tourist and ride the cable car to Fisherman's Wharf. I was after one thing, nope not the seafood that the Wharf is famous for, I wanted In-N-Out. On the east coast this is what we hear about all the time the Double-Double Animal Style. Freaking delicious.

In closing... Lucasfilm or not, I want to go back to San Francisco as soon as I can.

Adidas Star Wars Fall/Winter 2011 collection featuring the WAMPA!

The Wampa is featured in the latest promotions for the Adidas Star Wars Fall/Winter collection. We were invited to San Francisco to take part in the 2 day photo shoot that also included a Vader, Hoth Han and a Hoth Luke (seen in the background). When the idea was pitched to Lucasfilm to have a wampa in the photos they originally responded, well there isn't any realistic wampas out there anymore, then the folks at Juice Design presented them my wampa. Lucasfilm loved it and approved the shoot. There is no higher honor for a costumer which many think is an impossible costume to pull off than that right there. Also included in the photo shoot is my handler Genna's Hoth Luke costume and lightsaber. 

So why a wampa in the campaign? Well there is a new Wampa shoe coming out! Here is the official description of the wampa shoes:

CAMPUS 80S WAMPA
Inspired the snow beast from the planet Hoth that almost made Luke Skywalker into a meal. The adidas Campus 80s Wampa dresses up these retro shoes with wampa fur uppers made from horsehair, contrast red stitching, a wampa tongue badge, and a laser cut wampa logo.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/07/dress-like-darth-and-han-with-adidas-star-wars-collection/?pid=2150&pageid=69886

I will continue tomorrow with a post about our trip and visiting Lucasfilm! 

Another great Wampa Cake!

The folks over at TheForce.net had this cake submitted to them for their Yummy Star Wars pics. This cake was for Adam's 11th birthday. I got to say Adam has great taste in Star Wars Characters! Read more about it and check out more pics on the link above.

State of the Wampa Address....

It has been a while since I updated the site but I needed to step back for a while. The 6 months that the costume has been around, it has gone through some great times and some rough times. Just like any large costumes there will be some damage control going on and boy has there been some.

In October I took it out to some costume contests to help recover some of the cost of the suit. I did walk away with $600 but also came away with lipstick stains on his arm and butt! I learned not to take it out with drunk chicks!

In December we participated in the Pinellas Park Holiday Parade. To be safe, I opted to stand in the back of a pick up truck without the stilts on. Little did I know it would lead to big black streaks across the fur from the Rhino Lining. It has been a long process to get this out, and I don't know if I will ever get it ALL out, but it is looking better. Thanks to suggestions I have been using dish soap and a bottle brush. It has taken off some of the yellow and brown paint, so I will probably need to repaint it once I am done.

(cleaning the arm, before and after)

So, on to plans for 2011. Our big trip with the Wampa will be to Motor City Con, where we have been invited up by Great Lakes Garrison to the Detroit Metro area to participate in their annual convention. We get to reunite with one of our favorite troopers HYPER! 

I will be making my first appearance at MEGACON in Orlando in March and might even be able to convince the wife to let me go to DragonCon in Atlanta.

As for the suit and trooping, I have always considered on keeping the Wampa as a specialty costume for big events, but in order to do that I would need a secondary costume. Within the next week I will be placing my order for TK (Stormtrooer) armor and should have some armor for events like Walks, Hospitals, Star Wars Weekends and other troops that I can't do in the Wampa and by the end of the year I should have my Palpatine in my collection of costumes to use!

Introducing The Jolly Wampa - The Official WampaDude Logo

For a while I felt that I needed a brand for myself and this roller coaster ride that has been my experience with the Wampa and the 501st. I have seen many individuals withing the group marketing their alias with patches and shirts and since the Wampa seems to become a popular costume, I felt  the need to come up with a symbol that represented myself and the costume. In the past years my logos revolved around the simple pirate jolly roger design. The TampaBayDrunks logo consisted of a skull and cross beers and for some reason this never clicked until the pirate event we attended for the launch of the Disney Dream.

So here is the design, a Wampa skull and cross bones dubbed the Jolly Wampa. I pondered changing out the bones with lightsabers, blasters or something a little more Star Wars but when it came down to it, I settled with the bones when one of the scenes has him gnawing on a big bloody leg bone of the Tauntaun.

I have had a few people already say they would buy anything I put this logo on, and here are some lofty ideas including a shirt, a patch and for some reason I like the idea of it as a biker vest logo. I plan on trying to submit them to the daily t-shirt sites first like TeeFury and RiptApparel and may consider doing a run of the patches for conventions and on the boards. 

A new trick up the Wampa's sleve - The Arm Amputation!

Coming soon for Halloween I am working on a new feature for the Wampa costume for when I am in costume contests.... The Arm Amputation! As a veteran of high stakes costume contests I know that it takes both size and surprise to win over a crowd to win. The beast won over $3500 in contest money and to help fun future 501st costumes I want to take the Wampa out to a few.

The issue is, unlike the beast which was an original character with spikes and mean looking, the Wampa is a specific character. Not everyone knows the reference so to them it is just a big abominable snowman. So to win over those people you need to wow them. So adding a theatrical effect like being able to chop off it's arm. To really sell over the crowd I added an additional surprise... Squirting Blood! Well it's just water but when your not expecting it (just think those 4D movies at theme parks) it really gets your attention. That is the goal, make the suit interactive with the crowd.



I needed to develop a quick release so i could keep the arm on until I needed to drop it. I did this by using a rope and pulley. The arm joint is held together with eye bolts and a heavy duty clip. I added the pulley to the clip and tied off rope to the other eye bolt. Inside the grip of the arm is a snap hook zip tied to the PVC. When I want to remove the rope I just squeeze the snap hook and I can either drop the arm or hold it until I am ready.

The red muscle is my old technique of paper towels, batting and latex around a long sleeve red t-shirt. I had an old modified bug sprayer which we used to dispense shots of alcohol at events and I used this inside a big chunk of meat that has the sprayer tip coming out the end of the bone, The trigger is hidden inside so all I have to do is squeeze it. I left the back end unmodified (look hard enough and you will see the cuff of the sleeve still on it) so if needed I can detach the hose and clean out the system. The jug can clip on to the framework inside the body of the suit and the hose leads down to the meaty bone. When I drop the arm, which my handler will be playing along with a lightsaber and holding onto the hand so it isn't a hard fall, my arm should slip out exposing the meat and I will ham it up turn to the crowd and give them the big surprise!

(Read More)

501st Troop Report - The R2-D2 Droid Phone Release Party

We were recently asked to help with the Verizon R2-D2 droid phone release party. They went all out with spotlights, free pizza, free Chick-fil-A and they even brought out the cow. There was a light turnout but this was another great time to bond with the new family that is the 501st. This was also the first troop testing out the new shoulders on the wampa. They felt great and the posability with the fans was really improved. The night ended with one of our very own 501st members winning a new R2-D2 droid phone!

Next troop: Star Wars Grand Florida Alliance at Emerald City

Ever wonder what a Wampa skeleton looks like?

Check out ILM's halloween party invitation with the skeletons of many of our Star Wars favorites.

My Wampas: The Galactic Heroes Wampa

Well once you have a full size Wampa living in the garage, you tend to collect others, so here is the first of a series of posts about My Wampas. This was actually my first Wampa. I had a bunch of Star Wars figures as a kid but never had a Wampa .



Since I have 2 small boys the current line of regular sized figures tend to be a little complicated, then again I let them play with my old Kenners. Luckily for me Star Wars has the Galactic Heroes line where they can't lose the guns and they are stubby and easy for little hands. Last year I actually found the Battle of Hoth play set at Kohl's on discount and could not pass it up. I was still in the planning stages with the Wampa suit, but I was thinking ahead knowing that my kids would want to play with one of their own. As for the Wampa itself, I was surprised to see the red staining on the chest and he is quite yellow proving that Wampas like to roll around in their own filth. But paint jobs aside the play factor is great. He has a big bone in one hand which the kids like to beat the rebels with and a "swatting" hinge in the other hand.


Wampa vs. AT-AT... my money is on the Wampa!


Included in the set are all the Hoth favorites including a Luke with a TaunTaun which my little one loves to battle with the Wampa. This month we added AT-AT to my Hoth figure collection for my son's 2yr birthday. It came with a AT-AT driver and a snow speederbike. Included with the other set was a General Veers who fits right in. Another fun feature is a string that feeds through the center of the belly where you can have pilot Luke rise up and drop his bombs. Fortunately for me they were giving away these away free at CV so I have hours and hours of role playing time ahead for my kids!