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Behind the scenes of the Dragon Queen costume
It's totally fun to browse through the costume gallery or the pictures of the costume contest we took last weekend and marvel at the different costumes that showed up at BlizzCon, but what you don't see in those shots is all of the hard work that went into making each outfit. Sure, there are probably some store-bought purchases in there, but for the most part, each costume was assembled with lots of hard work and care, most of the time by the person actually wearing it.Mariecannabis is the woman wearing this Alexstrasza costume that we saw at the costume contest, and she has posted a gallery over on Flickr showing some of the behind-the-scenes work of making the molds and putting the costume together. The end costume looks great, but the process is all shapes and molds and paint and construction -- fascinating to see how it all comes together. And while this costume is terrific, it does make you wonder about the stories behind some of the even more complex costumes up there.Stay tuned for more -- we'll be seeking out a few of the best costumes we saw at BlizzCon, and we'll show you some more of their stories in the future here on WoW.com. It's fun to see all of those on the show floor, but you sometimes don't realize just how much work and time is actually put into them.%Gallery-70720%%Gallery-70668%
iSuppli estimates the iPhone 3GS costs $179 to make
Did you know that after it is broken down into all of its composite metals and materials and parts, your human body is really only worth about $4.50? Yup, you're cheap in the broadest sense -- all of that oxygen, magnesium, iron, and sodium isn't actually worth all that much in the rare metals market. In fact, according to iSuppli, you're worth way less than the iPhone 3GS -- they looked at the component parts for Apple's new handset, and calculated its raw value at around $178.96. The most expensive components are the 16gb flash memory (ringing in at around $25 per part) and the display (at $19), all the way down to the audio codec board, which Apple reportedly picked up for a cheap $1.15. Of course, there was lots more cheaper stuff (we assume the screws weren't a buck each), but iSuppli didn't actually go that granular. That also doesn't include any of the non-hardware costs: shipping fees, R&D, distribution, marketing, and so on. But it's way more than you're worth, and it's $40 more than the Palm Pre costs to make, too.Lest you start worrying that your spouse will start valuing their iPhone more than your body, however, there is a silver lining. If you break down to the mineral components of the human body, we're cheap, but the actual components of the body are pretty expensive, it turns out. Expensive to the tune of $45 million, if you count up all the money you could pick up from taking out your bone marrow, extracting your DNA, and selling off a lung or two. Just like the iPhone's parts, when assembled, are worth more than iSuppli's $179, you too pick up some value when assembled the right way.[via Engadget]
