Finally getting around to some updates that I've been meaning to do. Mainly my Doctor Ood page which remained untouched since April 2014. I've been very proud of my Doctor Ooding, and when it was announced that Arthur Darvill was going to be a guest this year, I knew that it was necessary for the Doctor and he to reunite. I remembered how dedicated I was the year before in trying to get to Matt Smith and almost not even having Doctor Ood acknowledged. Well, Mr. Darvill did not disappoint! There was a lovely interaction between Mr. Darvill and the Doctor, even if the Doctor was fairly speechless throughout most of it. 

There was clapping, there was hat tipping, and if Doctor Ood's squeeing was able to be heard, it would have filled the hearts of people everywhere. Doctor's day made!

It was nice to get out into the Ood world once again. My presence often confuse people trying to guess what exactly the Doctor is. My favourite guess this year comes from a little boy on the train who declared quite knowingly that I was a "Ghost Cowboy". Considering my travelling companions at the time, I understand his mistake.

The costume hasn't changed from last year, aside from a new paint job on the umbilical cord. It was very pink in 2014, trying to match the hind brain, but it was, in my opinion, a little too bright. After consulting a few more images I opted to go for the grayer look, which I think worked out a little better. You probably can't see much of a difference in the pictures, but it was a dramatic change in person.

I did find another Ood while I was on parade. We actually had the same face, only Doctor Ood is a free Ood, while the other we encountered was, unfortunately, enslaved. One day I will invest in my Friends of the Ood FOTO buttons, a noble cause if ever there was one. No, I do not have a picture of the other Ood. It is very difficult for the Doctor to operate a camera. Plus, with brain in hand, my hands are often very full. 

Will the Doctor be returning next year? Hard to say. I'm very restricted as an Ood and I have to rely on my companions for just about everything. But I've put too much love into this character to see it come to an end. After all, I'm getting more and more comfortable in my Ood skin. This year it finally stopped smelling like toxic lead paint!

Another month, another Curious Endeavourances hangout. While I wait for my event to start, I thought I'd go ahead and update things. The Curious Endeavouances page is now current, and while I'm not entirely happy with the set up of the main page of my site, I did want to make room for Doctor Ood. There are currently no episodes up yet. After Comic Expo, Matt got excited about the series all over again, and so did I, but since we've been talking about this for about 3 years now and have very little to show for it, Matt came up with an idea that will help keep him motivated: commission. Yes, Matt of @TheMattCave, the one I'm married to, has asked for me to pay for his illustrations. I agreed and negotiated an amount. I'm up for anything as long as this webseries gets off of the ground. 

...No, there isn't a single panel done... or started... and I've sent him 6 episodes. The same six that I wrote way back when we first came up with the idea. I'll keep you posted if anything turns up.

The moment I had been waiting for finally arrived! Doctor Ood costume was ready to go and for two of the four days of Comic Expo I wandered around to see my favourite celebrities and have some spontaneous pictures taken of me... including a request to dance...

The reason for rushing the costume together in the first place was for the unexpected guest star appearance of Matt Smith at this year's expo, and after waiting two and a half hours for him in our pre-paid ticket line-up, having gone in an hour early and still being fairly near the back of the line, we were told that the Doctor would still be delayed and that we'd have to make a decision. Well, Matt and I had pre-paid tickets to the Middle Earth Exposed event and took up the offer to try again the next day. Glad we made that decision because that Spotlight was the highlight of the whole weekend! So many giddy moments of pure joy! I heart me some dwarves seriously badly.

...Anyways, finally got into another Doctor line-up the next day, but poor Mr. Smith had to rocket through autographs like the bullet train, and thus he barely even looked up at his loyal fans as he signed away. Even with the glorious creature before him that is Doctor Ood, he just signed and pushed the photo forward... 

... then he looked up. It was a very quick double-take, but he finally saw me. "Ood Baker. Nice. I like it." Thank you, Doctor. I could go into a sigh-filled digression of how I'm not "Ood Baker" because Doctor Ood carries iconic fragments from other Doctors, including the Tennant overcoat, and Smith's own sonic screwdriver, but I won't be that greedy. Among the crowds of people who "OOOO"'ed at the Ood, there were a few let downs, such as: "Doctor Cthulhu!" and "It's just an Ood in a cowboy hat." 

Considering we haven't released our webseries yet, I think that the Doctor Ood launch went well. Now we just need the actual comic strips and then we can move on to fun things like collector buttons! I am determined to have something that informs the world that I am a "Friend of the Ood" on a quest to "Free the Ood". Which reminds me; I was asked why Doctor Ood has a hind brain instead of a translator. Matthew and I made a very firm decision that Doctor Ood would be a free Ood. We want to proudly state in all of our Doctor Ood endeavours that "No Ood were harmed in the making of this series". Yes, event cartooned characters deserve to be preserved. 

Doctor Ood will probably be back on the shelf until next Expo. Hopefully we'll get some of the series out between now and then. I get the easy part. I just write the words, and with a script, it's very few words. So I will have to join the rest of the patient public while the artist does his thing in those brief few minutes he has within his busy schedule. Luckily, I think we've got all of the time in the world before the BBC decides to launch their own Doctor Ood spin-off, so this world will be ours and waiting for us as long as it needs to. 

... I do have an unnatural love for the Ood, my goodness...

For the past 3 years, my husband and I have been working towards a joint fan project. It all started while waiting in an endless line that refused to move. It was for the comic expo, and we were in it for hours, despite already having tickets and being there before doors were even open, and still missed out on the first events that we had signed up (and paid) for. Yes, still a little bitter about that, but we did get a refund... and then they announced a rescheduling which we didn't qualify for because we had been given the refund...
... so we're standing in this line-up, talking about what the best costume would be, and definitely doing some world crossing as we go. Due to my unnatural love for the Ood, it only made sense that the best Doctor Who would actually be Doctor Ood, and thus a parody tale of random happenstance adventure was born. My husband (@TheMattCave) did some illustrations, and I began putting together a script.

Still a work in progress, but we are determined to bring our beloved Doctor to life. While I wait for more illustrations, I decided to plunge forward into the next step: being Doctor Ood. For the last year I've been collecting pieces, gradually building up the necessary elements to bring this glorious creature to life. Then the Comic Expo announced that noneother than Matt Smith himself would be coming to this year's expo - Doctor Ood creating went into overdrive these past couple of weeks. Some rough work done, some less than perfect painting, but as of yesterday, Doctor Ood will be ready for unveiling at today's expo - and if I survive, maybe even the rest of the weekend... no promises though, I get limited airflow through this thing. 
 
So despite not yet having the webcomic up on display, which was the main reason I originally wasn't in too much of a hurry to get the costume together, the sneak peak of a new delightful character begins today.