Sphynx V1

Background

In March 2025, I met Cyonic, one of the co-leads of Alleycat Asset Acquisitions (AAA), on a Thursday night at our local makerspace. We were both using equipment in the laser room, and eventually inquired about what the other person was working on. What resulted was a conversation about AAA's development work for Neotropolis, a cyberpunk-themed art festival set in the Mojave Desert, where event-goers LARP as fictional characters in a bustling city set on a desert planet 200 years in the future. She offered an open-ended invitation to work on some cool stuff with the team. We exchanged numbers and planned to reconnect once Neotropolis 2225 was over.

I finally started developing for Alleycat in November 2025. Since then, the possibility of attending Neotropolis was always on the table. I originally counted myself out of attending in 2026 for a variety of reasons, the most predominant being compliance with my company's PTO policy. The plan was to help with development for Neotropolis 2226 and set my eyes on going for the first time in 2027. However, as I continued to develop for the project, the FOMO grew stronger. By mid-April, I had essentially designed and implemented a new game for attendees to play during the event, and it would've been a real shame to miss out on seeing it through. In the back of my mind, I was wondering if it was still possible to go.

Then, one weekend, while the team and I were assembling new devices, I was peer-pressured into reconsidering my attendance by all of my peers, simultaneously. They even had my accommodations already figured out for me; I was offered a space in the RV that Zen and Tirefire were staying in, and there was a ticket available for purchase from a friend. All I had to do was say yes to going (or so I thought).

I promised the team that I would at least have a conversation with my manager about PTO availability, and then I would decide on going. Two days later, my PTO was approved, and my flight was purchased.

I shared the news with Cyonic, Dray, and DLight that evening, and they were completely over the moon. Then, they revealed the true extent of the Neotropolis preparation todo list:

• Author an original persona to portray at the event in order to LARP with event-goers
• Pull together custom costuming to portray my original character during the event
• Create at least two impressive costume "build-around" pieces to stand out from the crowd
• Purchase clothing that can accommodate the varied desert weather conditions
• Acquire food and supplies for effective camping
• Watch classic cyberpunk films to source inspiration for a costuming aesthetic (and to understand the pop culture references made by event goers)
• Mentally prepare to be surrounded by 2500-3000 people adorned in cyberpunk gear, wandering through a fictional futuristic city set on a planet in a far away galaxy, working to implement the stories and experiences they have been developing for the last few months/years, for five days and four nights in the Mojave Desert

Here's the catch: I only had two weeks to do it. ALL of it.

That's right. I committed to going to this event only 14 days before it began. I feel like anyone would reasonably crumble under the weight of these expectations. However, I, Carson Duffy, am assembled incorrectly, and I actively seek out these kinds of pressure chambers, as they produce my best work.

I was sure to encounter the stress of throwing myself into a completely new and unfamiliar experience at some point over the next two weeks. As I was driving home from our meeting, however, I couldn't help but feel elated at the opportunity to showcase my art at a festival; a real festival attended by a real community of really creative people. The only problem was that there was still so much art to be made.

Costume Ideation

Persona

Before jumping right into costume design, I wanted to spend a bit of time looking for inspiration and coming up with a vision. Something DLight said during our meeting kept replaying in my mind:

"Costuming for Neotropolis is all about figuring out who you are in this universe."

Who would I be in this universe?

Who am I in my universe?

Historically, I am a very reserved person. I pride myself on my skills and interests, but struggle to showcase them to those around me. I find solace in my own personal company. I spend a lot of time alone in the comfort of my apartment, and when I am around people, I'm usually with only a few trusted individuals.

Recently, though, things have shifted quite a bit. 2026 had been full of opportunities that brought me deeper into the city. I became more often surrounded by tall buildings, bright lights, and people of all kinds. The sensation of doing has never felt more thrilling, and I'm absolutely hooked on the feeling.

I've noticed a pretty sizable uptick in my confidence as a result. It's been refreshing to feel more seen, but still, there's a lot of joy found in being an elusive, 6'5"-tall wallflower. The combating senses of mystique and esotericism seemed like interesting threads to weave into my Neotropolis persona.

So, if I'm a mysterious urbanite in the real world, then it follows that I am a mysterious urbanite in Neotropolis, too. But how does elusiveness translate to a fictional cyberpunk reality?

I thought about how my main contribution to Alleycat was developing the FDN experience, where players must solve a symbol-matching puzzle to "hack" the device and gain access to its secrets. It makes sense that the person behind the hacking experience must also be a cunning hacker themselves…

I quickly typed up this character synopsis and sent it to Cyonic for approval.

In Neotropolis, I see myself as an elusive cyberpunk city slicker with an alluring presence and an ambiguous moral compass. Most people only know me by a moniker or by my esoteric guise, aside from those within my elite cabal of mad scientists, mad tinkerers, and mad creatives. However, I’ve made my presence known among the Neotropolis populace, and the people talk. What they’ve been able to gather about me is that I’m quite clever, that I know my way around a mainframe, and that I always seem to be busy with greater motives. What they don’t know is that I am the “puzzle master” who restricted access to the FDNs, and only those who can prove themselves to be perceptive, sharp-witted, and resourceful enough can bypass the device and reap the rewards.

She had no pointers. It was settled: this was the direction I would go in. Now was the time to figure out who this person was and what they looked like.

Mask

Since I was costuming as a mysterious hacker, I needed to play around with the element of anonymity. I really loved the idea of fashioning a mask, putting it on when I needed to go to an imaginary rendezvous, or complete an imaginary task, or do imaginary crimes; imaginar-ily, of course.

I think I inherently took inspiration from the big bad from Squid Game. He wears this super cool low-poly mask to conceal his identity in different settings, and as a bit of a puzzle master myself, I thought this was a cool aesthetic to lean into.

Since I was going as an Alleycat, I wanted to evoke feline imagery in my costuming too. It's a little on-the-nose, yes, but Alleycat aside, the cat felt like an appropriate symbol to embody for personal reasons. I've been described as someone with a "black cat personality," and at the time of developing this costume, it felt like a particularly essential aspect of my identity.

A quick search on Pinterest for "low-poly cat mask" gave me a lot of undesirable results (too cute, too awkward, not low-poly enough, etc.), but I did stumble across this one:

This model was perfect in all ways except for one: I could only purchase it as a papercraft model. This meant that the model didn't come as a completed mask, but rather, as a set of polygons that were meant to be cut out on paper, folded, and glued together (like origami, but more involved and dishonorable). Obviously, I couldn't bring a papercraft mask to the desert. It's the DESERT. It needed to be durable enough to survive some pretty extreme and unpredictable weather conditions.

My idea was to somehow assemble the papercraft model in Fusion, extrude it, and 3d print it to fit around my head.

I also defined these specifications for an ideal mask:

• I needed to be able to easily put it on and take it off (it was going to be a hot and sunny week)
• I would need to incorporate it as an option, meaning my costume should still work without it (since I wanted to socialize with people, I figured it would be a good idea to go mask-off sometimes)
• I needed a good way to carry the mask on my costume without actually carrying it (I think they call this "astronauting" in the furry community. Thank you furries!)
• I needed to secure it firmly to my head to easily track my head's movements (since no one could see my face, this is the only way I could reliably express emotion)

All concerns about ventilation were deferred for next year due to a significant lack of engineering time.

I also wanted to add some unique details to the mask, too. Much of the cyberpunk aesthetic is inspired by Japanese imagery. I thought it would be cool to incorporate kabuki makeup into the mask. I won't lie to you, this idea came directly from the villain in Big Hero 6 (which, at the time, was admittedly the closest movie in my repertoire of films to the cyberpunk aesthetic. That has since been addressed.)

Some traditional kabuki masks are also fox masks. I figured I could mimic this design for my own purposes.

Jacket

Walking around Neotropolis wearing a low-poly cat mask and nothing else didn't seem like a great idea. I needed other clothes.

Since I was going as a Neotropolis metropolitan, or rather, a Neotropolitan, incorporating techwear into my costume seemed like an obvious choice. Techwear is a very popular streetwear fashion aesthetic within urban and cyberpunk settings. Techwear also is very comfortable to wear; it's typically very lightweight and baggy. Neotropolis 2226 was about to be a very new and very overwhelming experience. The more I could mitigate any costume-based discomfort, the better I'd feel.

During our initial Neo-prep conversation, Cyonic showed me a pleather jacket she decorated with custom decals.

I really liked the idea of designing a jacket of my own; it seemed easy enough to pull off with my limited schedule while granting me enough customizability to satisfy my creative urges. Plus, Cyonic and Dray offered to lend me their Cricut to put this together. I had never used a Cricut before, but it didn't seem too terribly difficult to learn. Plus, I had enough experience with vector graphics to feel comfortable with designing the decals myself.

Purchasing supplies

Now that I had planned my big costume pieces for the event, it was time to acquire the supplies. As I was surfing through Amazon, I had to make a decision about the color scheme of my costume.

Personally, I enjoy dressing in earth tones. They complement my skin tone and hair color, and I really love the hues. Keeping in mind that Neotropolis is set on a desert planet, it seemed wise to dress in something earth-y, incorporating pops of neon color to blend in with the futuristic environment.

I found a bunch of articles of clothing in beige and army green, two of some of my favorite colors to wear. Two color schemes came to mind: beige / neon pink / black, and army green / neon orange / white. As I was weighing the pros and cons of each scheme, I thought it would be useful to have one costume in each color, one as a daytime look and another as a nighttime look. This seemed like a "¿Por qué no los dos?"-type situation.

So, I bought supplies in both color schemes. A huge thank you goes to my friends Katie, Sid, and Kitt for their styling advice and for recommending items to purchase!

Costume Production

Mask

3D Modeling

The mask was easily the most complex piece of the costume to create. I wasn't even sure it was a possible task to begin with. I needed enough time to take a reasonable crack at it, or to come up with a backup plan in case things went awry. Thus, this element of the cosplay had to be done first. The jacket could wait until later.

The papercraft template already came in SVG format, so it was easy to import the shapes into Fusion. I repaired the polygons, removed the glue tabs, and extracted each shape into their own component.

I theorized that I could join these polygons together by establishing constraints and relationships between shared edges. By establishing a joint revolute constraint between two shared edges, and then establishing an edge-to-edge relationship with a different set of shared edges, I can simulate folding the papercraft model in Fusion, and theoretically, build the entire mask.

After running a few tests, I felt confident enough to give it a go. Then, I realized I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

First, I wasn't super comfortable with working with components in Fusion. Much of my frustration came from a lack of understanding of this workflow, combined with a refusal to sit down and watch a tutorial (the "I'll figure it out myself" mentality is strong with this one).

Second, according to mathematics, when three polygons emerge from one vertex in 3d space, there is only one set of dihedral angles (angles between joined planes) that defines the relationship. When four or more polygons emerge from one corner, there is a virtually infinite set of dihedral angles that could define the relationship. Multiply this by the 90 vertices on the mesh, all of which are defined by four or more polygons, and you get a mesh that is near impossible to define with completely rigid dihedral angles and reliable constraints.

^ TLDR: this is a ridiculously complicated model to assemble from scratch.

I made many attempts to assemble the entire model, and most of them resulted in failure. The polygons' constraints were sensitive enough to completely crumble upon the incorporation of another panel. In these cases, the mesh would fold in on itself and be impossible to recover.

Through these attempts, however, I picked up on a few truths that eventually led me to success.

• The mask is symmetric; rather than assembling the entire mask, I could assemble half the mask and then mirror it across the plane of symmetry. This is a much easier feat to accomplish
• The polygons are imperfect; sometimes, the edge-to-edge constraints will not resolve, since Fusion is unable to compute a case to satisfy all constraints. In these cases, I should attempt to join the edges myself by rotating the polygons manually and define a fixed constraint to hold them in place
• The margin of error increases as more polygons are added; I should start from a "point of crucial focus" and work from there, then find ways to hide the errors, which should be located in more-hidden regions (like the back of the mask)

During my last attempt, I decided to start from the point of most direct focus: the nose. Then, I emerged outwards, adding the polygons to form the eyes, the ears, and the muzzle. To my surprise, this worked, and I ended with a mesh that was usable.

It was then time to extrude this into a printable model. I converted the mesh polygons to surfaces, determined the plane of symmetry, mirrored the model to form the complete mask, and stitched all the faces together (with some additional patching to cover up significant seam gaps). What resulted was a fully complete (although imperfect) mask.

All I needed to do from here was to extrude the surface into a 3d shell. This proved to be much trickier than I would've thought. Because the mesh featured many gaps, it was rather complex. Fusion outright refused to let me use the Thicken tool to create the shell, which is how you're supposed to derive 3d shells from surfaces. This is much easier to do when the surface is fully stitched together.

I attempted to extrude each surface into its own body and combine them all together. This resulted in a really ugly model with lots of surface overhangs. They would surely be noticeable once I printed the model. Plus, the scale model I printed featured some odd seam gaps that I couldn't resolve. I think it had to do with the slicer's inability to understand the complicated model.

The solution to this problem was to use MeshMixer. MeshMixer will do any mesh operation you ask with no promise of doing the operation well. The Offset tool in MeshMixer did what I needed it to. I finally had a thickened shell from the mesh. Even though the thickness wasn't uniform, and even though the offset operation resulted in some pretty odd model deformities, I had a printable mask.

I took some time to design kabuki makeup on the surface of the mask as well. I really liked how this looked.

Printing

The next step was to scale the mask model to fit my face. Luckily, I have a 3d printed Walter White bust that's about 40% the size of my own head (see Boycott AOTW Chain). I figured this would at least get me a decent estimate of the proper size, which I could tweak into the best fit.

I printed some test fits from the base of the mask at various sizes. Once I determined the best fit around the bust, I scaled it up to fit around my head.

To expedite the printing process, I chose to print the full-size masks with a 0.6mm nozzle (in comparison to the standard 0.4mm) and 0.32mm layer height. These settings drastically decreased the print time. For more complex / organic models, a large layer height and nozzle size would result in noticeable compromises to print quality, but since the mask was very low-poly and geometric, I could get away with it.

I printed a version of the mask at the calculated 125% scale, using some spare PLA to salvage as much PETG as possible for the actual costume pieces. It was too big.

I printed another version at 115%, which I thought was too small. I took it to Cyonic's place to show it off, and she pointed out that if I cut off the two triangular tabs in the back, it might fit better around my face. I used their UV knife to trim the tabs, and to my surprise, it fit perfectly.

Cyonic also pointed out that the mask was reminiscent of Sphynx cats, which are known for their large eyes and pointy ears.

As soon as I heard Cyonic's comment, I saw a new direction for my Neotropolis costume. As a nod to the breed, my Neotropolis name would be Sphynx. There was also an opportunity to nod to the Great Sphinx of Giza by incorporating Egyptian / Arabic imagery into my look. This seemed like a more interesting and unique inspiration to pull from in comparison to Japanese imagery, which is a bit more commonplace in techwear. Discovering Arabic's answer to the cyberpunk aesthetic seemed like a thrilling idea to explore. This also meant sacrificing the kabuki concept, since it no longer fit with the creative direction. I liked the mask as is, anyway.

Something about this direction felt particularly coincidental, too. I had recently picked up a magazine on Egyptian typography from a local bookstore. I thought it would make for a perfect coffee table book in my apartment, but as I was flipping through the pages, I couldn't help but feel inspired by the clashing of the bold colors with the ornate calligraphy. I secretly hoped these graphics would inspire a future project; now was my chance.

I noticed that there were some odd deformities in the mask's surface. Because of the lack of uniform thickness (thank you MeshMixer), the print nozzle sometimes had to make multiple passes to print the mask shell in certain layers. These extra passes resulted in sections of the mask that bulge outwards.

Are these technically model imperfections? Sure. At the same time, I think they look super cool. They kind of look like scars. Plus, alleycats are not necessarily known to be the most well-groomed and pampered cats in the world.

Now that I had dialed in the model's scale, it was time to print the masks in PETG, first in beige, then in army green. I used my slicer to cut a hole in the back of the mask such that it can be clipped to a carabiner. Using PETG for this project was a crucial decision; PLA will melt in the sun. I'm not gonna lie, the Beige PETG had me a bit nervous. It really did not like the supports generated by the slicer.

Lucky for me, the 3d print turned out fine.

Final touches and fit

The final piece of the mask was the eye mesh. I did not want people to be able to see my eyes through the mask because A) it sort of takes away from the anonymity, and B) it comes across a little... well... gimp-like, which wasn't really the aesthetic I was going for.

Luckily, there's a really great material to solve this problem: buckram mesh. Buckram is a plastic mesh with very fine holes, which are difficult to spot from afar, but still very easy to see through. Fursuit designers use this material in the eyes of the fursuit's headpiece to prevent people from seeing the costume wearer's eyes through the mask. This project seemed like a great application of this material. Once again, thank you furries!

I went back to my model in Fusion and drew some polygons in the eye holes with the 3d sketch tool. I then exported these triangles, imported them into a new file, joined them by their shared edges, and added tabs. I then cut these shapes out of the black buckram mesh with the Cricut and folded in the tabs with a ruler. Once I hot glued them into the mask's eye holes, the mask was complete.

I could not resist trying on everything I purchased to get an idea of how this would look. I bought a full-length mirror from Lowe's to see the costume from head-to-toe.

I know it's hard to tell by my stoic facial expression, but I was FEELING 👏 IT 👏. I wish I could relive the moment of seeing myself in the mirror for the first time. My mind was blown a little bit. There's no greater feeling than seeing a creative vision come to life, and seeing the costume's potential only fueled my motivation to finish the project.

Soon enough, the army green mask had finished printing. If you've printed with PETG before, you know how difficult it can be to remove a print from the build plate. Unfortunately, I was not careful enough to remove the mask in one piece. The back of the mask broke off. Since I did not have enough time or material to print another, I had to make it work. I did my best to repair the mask with super glue, bandaged the cracks with popsicle sticks for extra support, and hoped for the best.

Unfortunately, this print ruined my build plate. I guess they're double-sided for a reason.

I cut the eye mesh for the green mask out of the white mesh and glued it into the mask. Both masks were finally complete.

The Jacket

Inspiration

My plan for the jacket was to design a bunch of decals in my graphics editor, cut them out of heat transfer vinyl, and apply them to each jacket.

I surfed through images of techwear jackets on Pinterest to gain an understanding of the design language I was working with.

Here's what I discovered:

• Techwear features a lot of text, most of which emphasizes the article of clothing as a purchasable product
• Techwear often incorporates very bright colors and stark graphics
• The graphical real-estate on techwear tends to be unique and unexpected; you'll often see graphics placed on unconventional features of the clothing, including hoods, sleeves, pockets, etc.

I also reflected on symbols and imagery that felt particularly important to this project. Since I was representing AAA at Neotropolis, I wanted my costuming to represent AAA too, to some extent. I acquired some assets from Alleycat Asset Acquisitions's branding guide, and I took some shapes from the PDN's acrylic panels. I also took a ton of inspiration from the song "Hacker" by Death Grips. It's a very chaotic musical experience, featuring brash snare drums, glitchy vocal samples, and lyrics that describe complete nonsense. Obviously, the song's title felt relevant to the persona I was portraying, but it also felt like the very thing I was about to experience was just as ridiculous as the song's lyrics. (I can almost hear MC Ride screaming "BOUNTY-HUNTING IN A CYBERPUNK REALITY" in an alternate verse to this song.) It's one of my favorite tracks ever, and it was such a gift to pay homage to it through my costuming and re-experience it in a new light. You can find more detailed thoughts on this song on my Substack.

Assets and Graphics

As mentioned above, much of the techwear design aesthetic consists of text. It was really important to select a great set of cyberpunk-y fonts to use for this jacket, for both English text AND Arabic text. I settled on:

• KAIFAMA / KAIFAMA Extended - cyber-looking Arabic font, would be great for larger text and graphics
• KO Rubbama / KO Rubbama Extended - bold, but still very traditional-looking Arabic font; I wanted to emphasize the beautiful calligraphy of Arabic in some aspects of the look
• Qoronfull - very digital Arabic font, good for smaller details
• Tronix - very bold, graphical, computer-y font; great for singular characters
• Cyberway Riders - I felt like this text was the most evocative of my costume's aesthetic; it made sense to type my name in this one (it's also reminiscent of Cyberpunk 2077)
• JetBrains Mono - I needed a font for longer, more descriptive bits of text throughout the look, and this is one of my favorite monospace fonts

Now that I had my inspiration and my assets, it was time to start designing. I tinkered around with a bunch of different ideas, but eventually settled on the following:

These are the lines of text that read from right to left on the jacket sleeves. They roughly translate to "I'M IN YOUR AREA / I KNOW THE FIRST THREE NUMBERS", which is one of the mantras in the chorus of "Hacker".

This is the emblem I created for the back center, directly inspired by Cyonic's jacket. The Arabic around the ring roughly translates to "WHEN YOU COME OUT, YOUR SHIT IS GONE", which is another mantra in the chorus of "Hacker". I also took some time to design a vaporwave sun behind the Alleycat logo, because of course. The text 7c29b5e is the hash of my first commit to the Alleycat codebase, which is my first recorded contribution to this project.

I played around with the fonts a little and selected these two for my name. The English text obviously reads "Sphynx", referring to my Neo name and the cat breed. The Arabic text, however, translates to "sphinx", referring to the Great Sphinx of Giza. I really liked the idea of alternating the two translations.

On the back of the jacket, on the shoulders, I placed the Arabic and English translations on top of each other. This was inspired by a poster I found in the magazine.

I thought overlaying English and Arabic was a brilliant idea.

This is the "product description" that I placed on one of the chest patches on the jacket. The number "1311" comes from the lyric "SHREDDED 13 TIMES OUT OF 11" from "Hacker". "Beige Slicker Jacket" is the fake product name I came up with for this piece. The Arabic underneath the product description is an Egyptian proverb that reads "A bird in the hand is worth ten on the tree". I found it in the magazine and wanted to incorporate it into my look. I really appreciated the wisdom.

Note that these graphics are slightly different for the green jacket:

I used the word "olive" instead of "army green" because it sounds much cooler, even if it's technically incorrect.

Am I oversharing? I feel like I'm oversharing... Anyways...

Since I wasn't planning on wearing the mask 24/7, I wanted to incorporate it into the jacket's graphics. I took a screenshot of the mask mesh in Fusion and traced over it in Inkscape, resulting in these super cool logos.

These are the graphics I borrowed from the PDN acrylic panel designs.

Layouts

I took all of these ideas and developed the following jacket layouts:

To make use of the jacket's creative real-estate, I planned to place the lyrical text on the sleeves, the alternating "Sphynx" titles on the fabric strip covering the zipper, and the repeating AAA logo on a strap that reached around the left side of the jacket, underneath the arm.

Implementation

I don't really have much to say about the implementation process of this piece of the costume. It was rather repetitive. The process of cutting the graphics on the Cricut, weeding the decals (removing the scrap material from the transfer sheet), and heat-transferring them onto the jacket was at first monotonous and repetitive, but it quickly became therapeutic once I got in my groove.

I will say, this process turned my apartment into a complete disaster.

I did have to cut two of my ideas as I was putting this together.

This is a carb. I originally planned to put this on the front of the jacket, but I felt like it would have only added to the clutter.

I also really wanted to include a set of acknowledgements on the back, but it was impossible to weed effectively due to the amount of text, so I chose to scrap it.

After a few days, I finally had my jackets completed.

Peer review

Once I had my costume pieces pulled together, I consulted my friends Sid and Kitt to provide feedback on my look. Both of them have a great eye for fashion and costuming.

I was really touched by how impressed they were with what I pulled together, especially the design of the jacket. I had poured so much effort into this costume at this point; it was so refreshing to hear someone else's enthusiasm about what I had done.

Once I tried everything on, they provided some essential pieces of feedback:

• Dressing monochrome looks better than mixing and matching the pieces between beige and green
• Don't wear the pashmina, it doesn't go well with the costume. Instead, pull the gator around the back of your head and put the mask over it (this kind of made me look like Buzz Lightyear when I wasn't wearing the mask)
• Purchase a motorcycle leg bag to clip the mask to (we realized the pants didn't have any belt loops)
• Purchase some fingerless gloves
• To tie the top and bottom of the look together, I should take the alternating text in the center of the jacket and apply it to one of the pant legs
• Techwear is very strappy; to add to the strappiness of my look, purchase some suspender straps and let them dangle down the legs
• You should reconsider adding ventilation

Final touches

I took most of the feedback provided by my friends and applied it to my look.

I tried adding ventilation to a spare mask by drilling small holes in the jowls, but I didn't really like how it looked. I decided to risk it and leave the masks as is. Should they get stuffy, I could always take them off.

The night before leaving, my friend Maitri wanted to paint my nails. We decided on a deep plum color. It was my first time having my nails painted, and I really liked how they looked.

As I sat in their apartment, we talked about how brutal the past two weeks had been, but how creatively fulfilled it left me. I really enjoy these kinds of projects where I get to delve into new territory. It was so crazy to me that two weeks prior, none of this costume existed, not in name nor in concept. Going from brainstorming all the way through to production in 14 days, on top of work, on top of other life responsibilities, was quite a feat. I couldn't believe I had done it, and I was so excited to share it with everyone, but I was also so nervous. Still, I had no idea what to expect. Any number of things could go wrong during this experience; all I could do was brace myself and hope for the best.

I got home that evening, packed my things, and went to bed. As I fell asleep, some of the words Cyonic had spoken came back to me:

"I have a feeling this is going to completely change your life."

I really hoped she was right.

Neotropolis 2226 + Reflections

Long story short, the event did in fact change my life. If you're looking for a detailed synopsis of what went down during Neotropolis 2226, I encourage you to read my portfolio entry on Symbol Match. In that article, I discuss in great detail the unexpectedly strenuous process of bringing my development work to life.

As far as project Sphynx went, though, I couldn't be more thrilled with the reception to my costume. I received so many compliments from Neo-goers about what I brought, some of which came from reputable fashion designers who sold original clothing at the event (which was deeply honoring). Many people told me they loved my costume and wanted to take pictures. Some people were surprised to learn that this was my first time going to the event. Some people asked if they could boop me.

I was touched by how many people told me later in the event that they had seen me around and wanted to come say hello. I was shocked to hear some people calling my name as I walked past them. I think I accidentally developed a character that became part of the Alleycat canon (and if you read the Symbol Match post, you'll understand why).

I felt exactly how I wanted to feel while wearing this costume around Neotropolis. Well... almost. Ventilation did prove to be an issue. I didn't suffocate by any means, but the mask did in fact get pretty stuffy. This was a key improvement for next year's look. I also want to incorporate LEDs into my costume, as I felt a little jealous of everyone's light-up props. The mask mesh also needs a lot of improvements. Surely there are ways to make it better...

There was a professional photographer at Neotropolis who offered to take some pictures of my look. They're some of my favorite photos ever taken of me.

These photos were also taken during the event:

A huge thank you goes out to the countless photographers at Neo who were taking pictures and sharing them with the community. The above photos were taken by Donut and Raymon.

All in all, this was a completely unexpected experience. This opportunity felt like it was bestowed upon me by the universe. It's mind-blowing to think that all of this emerged from a decision to go to the makerspace on a random Thursday night, and I am endlessly grateful for this gift. It has rocked my world.

Soon after returning from the event, I posted the following acknowledgements on my Instagram page.

Developing with the Alleycat team has been a thrilling venture. I’m convinced that these are some of the most talented people in the universe. Seeing them work is awe-inspiring, and working alongside them is a deep honor. I’d like to extend an extra-special thank you to Elli and Andrea for inviting me into this mesmerizing world they’ve created and trusting me to help shape its future. I’d also like to thank Chris, Sean, Zach, Kenton, Corey, and Ariella for being the most welcoming faction-mates in the galaxy. Your kindness and generosity have made Kepler feel like home. I’d say I struck promethium, but the promethium struck me instead!

An additional thank you goes out to Sid, Kitt, Katie, Raghav, Ana, Maitri, Justin, and Aleem for their ideas, enthusiasm, and encouragement. It is your kinship that gives me the confidence to do crazy shit like this to begin with, and I am lucky to have you all in my life. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU I LOVE YOUUU!!

Continued development of this look can be found here.