Supanova Pop Culture Expo draws heroes and villains They came in their droves, the superheroes, the villains, the well-known and the obscure. Girls dressed as Doctor Who's spaceship the TARDIS mingled with Skywalkers, Hogwarts students and Disney princesses. Jokers and X-Men lined up for autographs alongside zombies, robots, steampunk pirates and Oods. Those who wanted comfort opted for a variety of onesies - a few even chose regular clothes. It's just another ordinary day at Supanova. Organisers of the pop culture expo estimated around 35,000 fans went through the gates at the RNA Showgrounds on Saturday. Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin delighted a capacity crowd in the thousand-seat Cosplay Theatre talking about the inspiration for his A Song of Ice and Fire series. Martin, whose next book is an edited anthology called Dangerous Women (for which he's written a story set in the ASOIAF universe) said he drew on historical figures to create the often brutal and power-hungry characters of his created world. "Isabella, the 'She-Wolf' of France ... she basically got rid of her husband [Edward II] and allegedly had him killed by having a hot poker shoved up his arse," he said. Some of the things in history are just as violent and twisted and bizarre as anything in my books. Martin also revealed that pet turtles he kept as a child were an inspiration. He kept them in a toy castle, and when they died, imagined they'd been the victims of plots and murders, and created back stories for them. "In a way that was the origin of Game of Thrones," he said. So when you see [actors] Lena [Headey], Michelle [Fairley], Mark [Addy] and Jerome Flynn, imagine them acting with big shells on their back. Outside the Cosplay Theatre, one of Martin's creations, Danerys Targaryen, queued patiently in the line for the cosplay competiton. Danerys - aka 24-year-old Peta White - spent nine months constructing her armoured dress, made out of soft acrylic. "I thought it would be too complicated for anyone else to attempt, and I was right," she said. Andrew Rae said the three months he spent building his impressive purple-and-yellow robot from the animated series Neon Genesis Evangelion may cost more than just $500 in materials. I didn't realise I was meant to wear a hazmat suit when sanding fibreglass, so I've got glass embedded in every part of my body. Teenagers Talia Cornwill and Tayla James spent four months creating their handmade gender-bend costumes from video game The Legend of Zelda. "Link is normally a guy, but we decided to make a female Link," said Cornwill. "And I'm a male Zelda," added James. The pair said being able to wear their creations with pride was worth the time invested in making them. "It's so much fun, we get to be another character, and we just get to act however we want without people knowing who we are," Cornwill said.