Fall 2025 - ICT Comic Con (8/29-8/31) and Ren Fair (9/26-9/28)

Welcome to a new season of Comic Cons and Renaissance Fairs!

For those not familiar, this is our 5th year of being a part of the ICT ComicCon and GPRF. We’ve made a bit of a name for ourselves by helping out other groups that get in a pinch setting up or running things, but we’re also growing our presence at these events. We’re not just the guys with a spare wrench, we’re getting known for bringing new and exciting features to the events.

There are a few things we’re planning to do before the events if you would like to help outside of the events.

Comic Con

  • We’re known for a cosplay repair station, so we want to up our game with a changing room. We’re looking at bringing one of the smaller pop up tents to the event with some walls, but we need to come up with a Handicap accessible doorway as well as a way to accommodate people with tall cosplays.
  • We’re looking for some exciting new things to display at the booth, our old box ‘o’ stuff is getting a bit worn out and not exactly reflecting of what people are making today. If you would like to lend something for us to use at the event, please let LaDeana or myself know
  • We’re also making more use out of the castle, which means we will definitely be in need of help setting that up (it may end up behind their giant animatronic dragon)

Renn Fair

  • Looking for help refreshing the ballista (new bow string, windings, and a good cleaning)
  • The front and back panel of the tent need some TLC
  • The problem with powerful seige weapons, is that the targets take a pretty hard pounding. The targets are showing their age and we need to glue them back together and find a way to make them more robust.
  • There is some talk about building a 2nd seige weapon… if we can get a group together for the ballista, we might want to consider building a watcha after we (specifically me) got hit by a canon during the last game. Michael A is up for guiding this group if there are others interested.
  • Another improvement we’re looking at is turning the towers into Arabian inspired wind catchers (medieval air conditioning). James and I are looking at trying to crank out a concept over the weekend, and if that is successful, we might take it further into something that looks more period correct.

Vending
If you are interested in vending at our booth during the Renn Fair, guess what? You can! But let us know first so that we can coordinate with the event organizer so that we can help you advertise as well as make sure there aren’t 4 other vendors already selling the same thing.

Want to help?
If you are interested, let us know, send an email, talk to us in person, or even reply to this post.

If you’re wanting to help out, we’re always looking for more help with setup and tear down for both events, especially with the renaissance fair. We do ask people to let us know before showing up if you’re going to help with an event, even if your on the fence. This it to help make sure we have supplies (like water, sunscreen, and gloves) for everyone as well as be able to point people towards the right places at the right times for the events.

ICT Comic Con
Volunteers 1 2 3 4 5
Setup Aug 29th Rustin A James L LaDeana Aaron G.
Aug 30th (9:30-6pm) Rustin A James L LaDeana Aaron G.
Aug 31st (9:30am-5pm+ tear down) Rustin A James L LaDeana Aaron G.
Great Plain Renaissance Festival
Volunteers 1 2 3 4 5 6
Setup Sept 27th (10am - 6pm) Rustin A. Gretchen K Matthew C. Aaron G. Michael A. LaDeana D.
Sept 28th (9:30am - 6pm) Rustin A. Gretchen K Matthew C. Aaron G. Michael A. LaDeana D.
Sept 29th (9:30am - 6pm + tear down) Rustin A. Gretchen K Matthew C. Aaron G. Michael A. LaDeana D.
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I’m still working with the comic con team to figure out what all they want us to bring out for this weekend. They would like to feature the ballista for the seige warfare contest in renn faire, but they also like the idea of bringing in the castle for ‘crowd control’. My plan was to bring one or the other but the plan may be to bring both now…

So, we may be in need of some help Friday morning for setup. Stay tuned as we get more information.

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I will have to leave the Comic Con early maybe 4:15ish to make an appointment on the west side.

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Some updates for the comic con:

  1. They really want the castle there
    • we’ll need to have the castle there and ready to setup early on friday (so probably have to pack thursday night)
  2. We don’t have to worry about bringing the ballista
  3. They will setup a changing room for the cosplay repair for us. We’ll just have to come up with chairs, clothes racks, and signs
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Reminder: Comic Con load up is tonight 6:30-8:30pm

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Realizing i never posted after the comic con.

The cosplay repair saw some action especially with the hotglue gun and heavy use super glue. (Someone may have asked us to glue them into their gloves and belt)

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Yeah… back to back…

Ren fair repair:

  • still need to glue lose panel back together

Completed:

  • bolts repaired and painted
  • all targets repaired and glued back together
  • rip in tent front panel repaired with rv canvas tape

Still to do:

  • Paint 1st turret top (having paint night saturday)
  • Print 2nd turret top for ‘paint a rock’
  • Build sticker picker upper roller
  • Build decorations/display cabinet for inside of tent

Biggest help needed:

  • we need volunteers for setup and tear down
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Unsure about being able to set up on Friday.

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What is the target made of? Is a giant gong a period-appropriate target?

well, the targets are a wooden board with a hole in them, vaguely similar to modern corn hole targets, and painted in the colors of the warring teams. In this case, Panton Cool Grey 7 and Panton Cool Grey 11 for MakeICT, and then sunrise red and sunburst yellow for the opposing team originally meant for the land of Blinginstine. To help the audience and field marshal keep score, the targets were elevated to a 45 degree angle.

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With all the events going on this week, we may end up loading up on Wednesday night to make life easier. It may be later in the day when we start loading up.

The plan for setup day is looking to be the usual. Meetup at the makerspace at 11am, and be ready to head to Sedgwick County Park by noon. I’ll bring along some water, Gatorade, and gloves, but please remember to bring and use sunscreen as well as a hat and closed toe shoes.

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If anyone wants to join us for Ren Faire, please do! We could really use the help in setting up and taking down the castle. Benefits for you? Help out at our Ren faire booth and have an excellent home base to enjoy the ren faire from for free. Help small children learn how to make things (We are gluing together tiny thrones this time!)

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There’s also some fun getting pulled into different acts, hanging out with the birds of prey, handling heavy weapons, and getting to scratch that itch of ‘could you really kick some medieval-aged butt with a seige weapon?’

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Heads up, we’ll meetup at the makerspace at 11am tomorrow (Friday) to finish loading up and hopefully make it down to the park by noon.

We may be a bit short handed setting up tomorrow, but for those that have reached out to me about scheduling conflicts, thank you for the heads up, and we will definitely appreciate the help during teardown on Sunday at 6pm.

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