Friday, June 22, 2007

The rules also apply to the organisers

That is one of the most important rule of Banapsis. Whatever rule we set upon our participants will also be followed by the organisers.
One of those rules will be that fabric of the costumes must be natural, that means no synthetic fabric. There are a number of reasons for this; one is that synthetic fabric is not really authentic to the look we want to achieve, but the most important reason is that Banapsis will have open fires (aka campfires). Since people will cook at those fires their clothes will come close to the fire. Synthetic fabric will melt and possible burn the flesh under it (I once had it happen to me, so I learned that lesson the hard way).
So now that we have 400m of fabric I checked them out and it seems that there are a few synthetic fabrics amongst them, not that many, but still these fabrics will not be used by us in Banapsis. So now that we removed those fabrics we still have a rather big amount of fabric. The coming weeks will be spend making costume designs and making the costumes themselves.
As said before, we won't open our website unless we have at least one costume of each race/faction.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

400m of fabric is now ours

Yesterday I collected the 400m of the fabric.
Most of the fabric is usable for Banapsis costumes, others will be used for other stuff.
I also had a talk with their PR guy and they sadly won't sponsor us, but we are still allowed to buy extra fabric if we need it. So all in all not a bad deal.

In the meantime we've gotten international feedback. One person already joined the team (a Swede) and another (a German) is on the brink of joining. Both of them were at Dragonbane and therefor know the goal we're trying to reach with Banapsis.
In the summer we will make some videos about Banapsis. Some will show the way of life, others the way we want you to fight, etc.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Affordable fabric

Last week we made a deal with a big international fabric manufacturer. Thanks to them we got all the needed fabric for Banapsis at an excellent low price. Since I'll be contacting them for a possible sponsorship I won't give their name yet. But I hope that soon we'll have them as one of our sponsors. Which in turn will result in us being able to extend the deal also with our participants. That way our participants will be able to get their fabric at a cheap price.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Making it affordable

As a former student, I know how difficult it can be to get the right gear/costume when you are on a budget. Since Banapsis sets high standards on costume and gear the costs will be higher than for a normal (Belgian) larp. Cause for a normal (Belgian) larp black modern shoes are ok, while for Banapsis you must have medieval style shoes.

First of all we are at this moment in the process of contacting shops/manufacturers/... to get stuff as cheap as possible, this goes from fabric, latex swords, mugs/goblets to shoes. Our goal is that for some 100 euro the Banapsis participant on a budget will be able to get all the needed stuff to make his/her costume and gear.
Of course with 100 euro you'll have to make almost everything yourself (including the shoes). But we will provide guidelines on how to make it all yourself.
Furthermore we will make sure that those with a bigger budget will be able to buy stuff at reasonable prices. For example good shoes starting at 50 euros, decent latex sword at 60 euros, ...

That way Banapsis is not a larp for the rich, but a larp for the dedicated roleplayer.

PS: if any of the readers here has any contact for buying stuff, let me know at jeremy at banapsis dot eu