I am thou...

So now that Colossal is over and things are getting back to normal for me, hopefully I'll be a bit a bit more consistent with posting here... we'll see.

So today, I want to show everyone a cosplay of mine that sadly has gotten no love, and sadly will remain that way. I'm referring to one of my most elaborate cosplays to date, so much so that I scrapped it immediately after wearing it because it was too obnoxious to want to wear ever again. I'm referring to one of the most badass looking personas (which is saying something because most of them look awesome), Thanatos.

I decided I wanted to cosplay something form P3 pretty much as soon as I started playing it, and that notion only grew stronger as I progressed through the game and eventually finished it. Since it was one of the greatest games I'd played to date, I decided to be a bit more ambitious than usual with my choice in cosplay.

I absolutely loved the design and since it was more humanoid than a lot of the other personas I figured it was a bit more doable. The real tough part was going to be figuring out how to get 13 coffins to float around me. I decided to try making a harness out of Plexiglas so it would be clear and therefore not really show any of the coffins. The actual coffins were going to have to be lightweight enough to actually suspend using the connector chain with some strong wire, so I went with foam and paper mache.

I made a base for the little saintly figure, I think it was mostly model magic, covered it in aluminum foil, and paper mached over the front of it. Once it was dry, I peeled the paper mache layer off and voila! Hollow saintly figure. The more angular part of the coffins were made from large pieces of  styrofoam that were cut into coffin shapes (it made such a mess I wanted to scream), and then an extra layer of paper mache was put over the whole thing to give it a continuous surface.

Generally speaking, this idea worked, but it would have been better if the large block of foam hadn't been there because it was still too heavy for the harness. I made it work, it just wasn't ideal. I also cut the 13 coffins down to 5, cause I made them a bit too big, and the harness wasn't going to support that many anyhow. The chains were all plastic with some heavy gauge wire in between so it would support the coffins better, but probably just added more weight and made it more uncomfortable.

The rest was fairly simple. I made the strappy harnessfor my head and attached the two mask pieces to it, plus I used a black knit hood to cover my face. That part was a bit too tight too and so I ended up wearing swim goggles underneath so I could actually see. 

Most of the cloth parts were thrifted, besides the weird skirt thing. I had black tights and a black turtleneck as the base with the skirt part wrapping around over top of it, and using the belt to close. I even thrifted the belt and made a new buckle for it.

The last part was the sword, which was primarily wood that I jigsawed into shape and added some craft foam and wire to fill out the shape. The a simple paint job and it looks great!

This is actually one of the better swords I've made. Shame it never goes anywhere with me.

The shoes were also a thrift store find, which let me tell you finding a pair of platform boots with my giant feet is not easy, but I lucked out. I had to sprak them from black to white and paint the gold on by hand, but they ended up looking pretty good.

Then comes the whole costume! I debuted and retired it at Ohayocon a good 4 years ago or something like that (I honestly don't remember when) and had to have my friend who was rooming with me act as a handler. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, I just wish I had some better photos. I also feel like an idiot because I forgot both my gloves and my sword, but no one really seemed to notice.

As you can see we had a pretty decent persona group, and it was before Persona 4 took over and you saw a big influx of those cosplays. And as much fun as it was, I almost immediately wanted to take off my clothes when it was over. The shoes hurt a lot cause they were a bit too small for my feet, I could barely see or hear anything because of all the junk on my head, and walking around will all of those things hanging off of my back was both unconfortable and incredibly inconvenient. God bless my friend Dan for holding doors open and making sure I didn't fall down the stairs.

Besides all that, the actual coffins were such a pain in the ass to store that I ended up throwing them away, the harness too. I have all of his other pieces intact in case I ever want to do anything simpler like make a cape or something that looks like the coffin design... which actually might be kinda cool. Regardless, I'm planning on taking his sword next time I cosplay as Junpei cause he carries giant swords like that all the time anyway, and it'll be a good test to see who notices that it belongs to Thanatos ^_^

Anyway, that's about all for this incarnation of death. Take care, my dearies!

WHO DA MAN?!?

It's that time again, and this time I'd like to introduce all of you to my favorite... ok one of my favorite Magician Arcana goofballs. That's right, it's time for Jinpei Iori!

Junpei was actually my second Persona 3 cosplay, but my first one was incredibly difficult to wear and therefore not worth keeping around, even though it was pretty cool. I am, of course, referring to Thanatos, which I wore a total of once: Ohayocon 20..somethng

What's most frustrating is that I totally forgot to bring his gloves and his sword, so the only time he has and will ever be worn he wasn't even complete *FAIL*

But this did prompt me to do a new Persona 3 cosplay and I knew it would have to be one of the humans because the personas are just too freaking ostentatious to make for easy cosplay and I knew I'd want to wear it more than just once as I'm totally in love with this game.

It came down two three characters: Akihiko, Junpei, and Jin. Jin was a little too obscure, and while I generally enjoyed his character I wasn't overly fond of him. Akihiko is awesome, and I may end up cosplaying him in the future, but Junpei was one of my favorite characters and he's a total goon so naturally I went with him.

The costume itself was relatively easy to put together, he wears a regular button-down shirt, dress pants, and black shoes. The only thing I really had to construct was the school uniform jacket, which I patterned off a jacket I got at the thrift store (thrift stores are wonderful, beautiful places). There was the hat too, but I just had to make the little insignia and attach it to a plain hat, which wasn't all that exciting or strenuous.

Then came my favorite part, of course, the props! The evoker was fun to make, though it was still quite early in my career making props so it took a long time and a lot of trial-and-error. Nevertheless I think it came out quite well.

I also decided I wanted to make a little Hermes to carry around with me cause I really like Hermes's design. Unfortunately it didn't translate all that well into pictures but he is pretty cute.

I debuted Junpei at Colossalcon 2003 and the Dark Hour photoshoot was one of the most ridiculous and fantastic photoshoots I've done. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that the Persona fandom would be so ridiculous but it was definitely an experience to remember. There was another Junpei cosplayer there that fit his personality perfectly and actually helped me out quite a bit when I cosplay him just to remind me to loosen up and be a goofball cause I tend to be a bit too serious when I'm Junpei. Not really sure why. I've definitely gotten that out of my system though :-)

And all of the Dark Hour shoots I've been to since have just gotten more and more ridiculous. I suppose it helps that pretty much everyone comes hammered nowadays, which definitely makes for a hilarious shoot.

One of the coolest things was actually getting some recognition by a group of P3 cosplayers as one of the better Junpeis around . I was invited to do a full Persona 3 group at Youmacon last year and it was awesome. We definitely got more recognition and photos taken because we had a full group. It made me wish I had more opportunity to do big group cosplays like that and just wander around the con getting photos taken. Everyone in the group had spot-on cosplays too so it turned out really well.

Needless to say, I have a lot of fun cosplaying Junpei and I've been really fortunate to have found such awesome cosplayers to chill with. Junpei is definitely staying in an active spot on my cosplay roster for a while yet so you can expect to see more of him to come!

Thanks for checking back folks, and don't forget to send me some questions for my post next week! Later gaters!