Toss a Coin to your Stitcher

Happy 2020 everyone! The new con season started off great this year, with a fun whirlwind of an Ohayocon. I debuted two new cosplays, made a new friend, got to see lots of awesome people and great cosplays! So, enough chitchat, let’s get to some photos!

The first new cosplay I did for Ohayo was a casual one, Alexander from FGO in his outfit from “The Pharoh’s Great Winter Thanksgiving Festival.” It was a simple and comfy outfit, but considering we haven’t even gotten this CE on the global server yet, and he’s a relatively minor character, only one person recognized who I was (granted she also is a friend of mine who saw me working on it so she already knew anyway shrug).

I think my favorite thing here is Bucephalus (his horse) lol. I do hope to eventually do his official outfit and make his sword, I feel like I might be more recognizable with it but who knows. My friends and I are also assembling a crew with the youger and older versions of both Alex/Iskandar and Waver/El Melloi II which should be a fun group to hang out with.

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The second new cosplay was much more involved (considering I ordered most of Alex so all I had to do was style his wig and cut a pair of pants into shorts), and it’s one who I’ve been wanting to cosplay since I played the game he appears in. I’m talking about Teb from Horizon Zero Dawn!

I immediately fell in love with this precious cinnamon bun, I mean who wouldn’t? Construction on this cosplay was really interesting given a lot of the details involved. The pouch and several sections of his belt are all woven, which I actually hand-wove myself with cotton webbing and strips of real leather for the front section of the belt.

The second fun/weird bit was all of the tubing involved in the costume. There’s red tubing around the openings in his vest, he has bits of tubing around his neck, and there are a bunch of different types of tubes on his belt. I ended up getting a few different types online, and ended up using all of them in different places. The ref tubes on his vest are actually rubber, so they flex more easily (which is helpful for getting the vest on & off), and the more plastic-y tubes, along with some other rubber pieces were used on his belt to give it some nice variety. All in all I like how it came out. I was worried about the machine parts strapped to his shins but even those were relatively easy when I figured out how to do them. They’re just sections of EVA foam with plasti-dip on it that I then painted. I did have to be careful though, cause they clicked then I walked if I didn’t have a wide enough gait. It felt kinda like I was walking like a cowboy but at least I didn’t destroy them!

Once again, I wasn’t much recognized, and sadly I never found an Aloy while I was in him (but of course I found one immediately after I changed out of him), but I still loved wearing him, he’s actually pretty comfortable (besides the weird walking), and he makes me happy, even if almost no one knew who I was. I also got a couple of nice photos thanks to my wonderful friend Andrew.

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Aside from that, the con was a lot of fun, and like I mentioned before, I made an awesome new friend who was cosplaying Oliver from Ni No Kuni on Sunday! I recognized them and their partner as the Bastion cosplayers I ran into at Matsuri last year and we slowly spiraled down the rabbit hole as we discovered how many overlapping fandoms we have.

Here’s Jynx’s awesome Oliver cosplay! We’ve also been discussing a Pyre group together for next year and I’m super stoked about it!!

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There were lots of other great cosplay I saw so here’s a selection from the weekend!

I hope all of your years are starting off well! I have a few commissions I’ll be working on over the next couple of weeks so you can follow my instagram for regular updates. See you next time!

Youmacon Follow-Up

Welcome back to the monthly edition of “Mikey Does Exist” XD.

Just got back from Youmacon, and although I was not feeling well for most of it, I still had a ton of fun and am super excited to show off the new cosplays from the weekend!

Jordan came this year so we actually had 4 new costumes in total, 2 for each of us. The first was pair was actually Jordan’s idea to begin with, and I’m so happy we made it happen because it was ridiculous and fun: Calvin and Feilx Fischoeder from Bob’s Burgers!

You can be sure we’ll wear these again because it was so much fun, though to be fair we really didn’t get much recognition. We also sadly never found a Belcher family while we were wearing them. Actually we didn’t see any other Bob’s Burgers cosplays there! Still, this might be my new favorite pair so you can expect to see them again next time Jordan goes con-ing with me. Also, the best part is my good friend decided to join us as Gayle! She even had a cat anus painting!!

If there’s anyone else out there who wants to join us as random Bob’s Burgers side characters, or even as Belchers, let us know cause we’d love to have a big group some day!!

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The second new pair was something that’s been on our list for a long time, as it’s a pair of characters from one of Jordan’s favorite anime series. I’m referring to Kamille Bidan and Quattro Bajeena from Zeta Gundam.

Since Gundam Wing was more popular in the US than the UC timeline series, we really don’t see a ton of MSG or MSZG cosplays. There was one other Char cosplayer, dressed from Mobile Suit Gundam, but I didn’t manage to get a photo of him.

We got a good bit of recognition in these, which kinda surprised me. But as several people said, you never see Zeta cosplayers so people were pretty excited about it. I also had several people ask me “Have you seen Char?” which of course the only acceptable answer is “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I also had a few people shout “Sieg Zeon” my way, which is… kinda ironic but I suppose it’s appropriate. It’s rather akin to when I’m wearing Edgeworth and people just scream “OBJECTION” at me.

I would love to do a shoot with a photographer at some point with these two, I think that would be fun and I feel like Jordan would be excited to have nice photos of them, since Kamille is one of his favorite characters. The Rennaisance Center is definitely a good place to photograph these two, but with it being a con weekend is was pretty crowded so there weren’t a lot of open spots we could use. I’m super happy with how these all turned out though, especially for being cell phone photos.

And of course we got some goofy but appropriate shots since this does actually happen on the show.

Needless to say we had some fun in these cosplays and I’m looking forward to wearing them again some time soon.

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These were the only new cosplays we wore this year, but I did have one other debut of a prop I’d been working on. My friend decided to do Zelgius from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn, so I got to make Alondite! I was super happy to deliver it because I’m really proud of how it came out.

I was even happier when I saw it with the cosplay though, because it was absolutely amazing!!!

This was their first attempt at foam armor and it turned out SO WELL!!!

Also, we had an Ike there for the photoshoot so with his Ragnell and my Gurgurant, we had all of the Tellian divine weapons in attendance!

We did get a photo with all 3 of us, just sadly not on my phone.

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So despite being sick, I still had a great time at Youma! My con schedule is done for the year, so I don’t have any more events coming up until Ohayocon in January, but I do have some commissions this winter, and I’ll be working on something new for myself for Ohayo (though I haven’t figured out what just yet).

So, I’ll leave all of you with the rest of the cosplay photos I got this year and bid you adieu until next time!

Cloud & Reno (FFVII)

Aerith (FFVII)

Spyro Armor

Gilgamesh (Fate/Grand Order)

Someone from League of Legends (I don’t play League but her outfit was so cool!!)

Gon, Kurapika & Leorio (Hunter X Hunter)

Sakura Kinomoto (Cardcaptor Sakura)

Chefs (Overcooked)

Roland & Evan (Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom)

Amuro Ray (Mobile Suit Gundam)

Hades (Hercules) & Vald (Fate/Apocryha)

4 Months Worth of Ketchup

So you all know the drill, I’m bad at writing up blog posts to you go months without an update on here. I hope those of you interested in my projects all follow me on Instagram at this point (@mikeydoescosplay) cause that seems to be the only place I’m actually consistent…

But I’m here now and I want to share what I’ve been doing with all of you… for the past 4 months lol

First off, I’ve been to Matsuricon since last I checked in, which was awesome! I had 2 (and 1/2) new cosplays, which it’s been a very long time since I’ve done more than 1 new thing at a con, but I had the time and motivation so I made it happen!

First up is Shigure Rangetsu from Tales of Berseria! I promised my friend Trickssi I’d cosplay this for/with her… at least a few years ago at this point so I finally made it happen! I’m pretty happy with how everything turned out, the costume itself was super obnoxious to put together between the silly pleated & paneled pants with the V-crothch that the Tales of series love so much (which consequently means they don’t stay up without the belt part cause that’ not how pants work in real life) , the weird sandal things, and the wig with its random braided rat tail and giant swoopy lock in the front. Despite having a bunch of weird bits it’s actually pretty comfortable, and of course my giant Morgrim more than makes up for all the agrivation. I did discover I have no easy way of carrying anything while I’m wearing it, so my plan for next time is to build a pocket into Morgrim to stash my stuff.

I don’t have a ton of photos in this as of yet, I’d like to do an actual photoshoot with Trickssi at some point with her as Rokurou, so you can expect some… eventually. But in the meantime here’s a couple.

Here’s the group from the Tales of gathering, which is the only one I’ve seen thus far. Thanks bridgey_cos for posting it!

And of course the only photo that matters.

Second up is the other totally new cosplay I did for Matsuri, and I did primarily for my con fam because we all share a deep love for NieR Gestalt/Replicant. While this wasn’t the cosplay I was initially planning on, I’m super pumped about it cause I don’t do a whole lot of designing and I got to play with it a bit since it’s a genderbend. I wasn’t sure I liked it as I was making it, but when all of the pieces came together I fell in love.

I absolutely adore Kaine and so cosplaying her was amazing. It’s actually pretty comfy too, besides the shoes (I changed into boots after we got these shots), and the leg wrappings do tend to fall down but otherwise it’s actually pretty nice to wear. And of course as Kaine I get to run around doing stupid shit lilke this…

And the best part was having my good friend Salem there as our precious cinnamon bun, Emil.

We even found another Kaine there (not that I have any photos of us, oops)! I’m really looking forward to having the whole Wolf Pack doing NieR cosplays together <3

Last up is a not-entirely-new-but-mostly-revamped cosplay. It’s one that I made a long while ago and very much wanted to update and redesign a bit. I’m referring to Nanaki/Red XIII from FF7. With the new hype over the fact that we have an actual release date for the remake (I’ll believe it when I’m actively playing it), I figured now was the time!

This is the only full-body photo I have from Matsuri, with this amazing Aerith cosplayer, but I do have some shots so you can see all of the details. First, here’s the old look:

Great big thanks to my dear Rion for this photo.

The hoodie, shorts, and wrist-warmers are the same, though I re-dyed the shorts because I’ve worn them enough at this point that the orange was fading. The shoes are new, but I didn’t do any work there lol. The biggest differnce is the hat with the spikes, which does a better job for hearkening to Nanaki’s design, and fits the overall punk aesthetic I was going for. The tail being a belt is another new detail, different from the actual stuffed tail I had before. Lastly we have the feathers and earring, the earring mirroring his beaded locks of hair that hang to either side of his face. I wanted it to be asymmetrical, which is why the feathers are together on the one side, and there’s only one earring. I thought that would fit better with the overall aesthetic than making those details symmetrical like his original design.

That’s all the new stuff I’ve done for myself lately but I have had a number of commissions I’ve been working on recently. If you’re on instagram you’ve seen them come together, but I’ll put together another new blog post (I promise it won’t be 4 month this time…) with all of that stuff.