Fire Emblem!Con (aka Tekko 2018)

Just got back from Pittrsburgh and I had a fantastic weekend at Tekko!

We all know at this point how obsessed i am with Fire Emblem, so when I saw an instagram post by CarletteCosplay that they were doing FE7 stuff at Tekko, I immediately hopped on that train.  Little did I know at that point that I also knew almost everyone else in the group. It was several weeks later (and two days before leaving for the con) that I was still trying to figure out what all to take with me, and discussing prospects with Marjolycookie and finally decided to just make this Tekko Fire Emblem!Con.

Friday was Innes, because I am so pleased with how this cosplay turned out that I just want to wear it all the time. And his underneath bits are comfortable enough to travel in. I was super lucky too, because I arrived in just enough time to get a great parking spot in the close cheap lot just before it filled up. Also it was 60* out so I could just put my costume on in the parking lot, without having to wiggle into things in my car.

The friend I was staying with in Pittsburgh was actually staffing the con, so I even got a free badge, which was awesome. And I immediately saw Big O Cosplayers as soon as I got out of the badge line.

After fangirling at them for a bit, I finally made it up to the con, and found a bunch of friends. I was pretty impressed that there were some people who actually recognized Innes. There were definitely a few people who asked for photos who were like "I don't know who this is but it's pretty awesome," which frankly is one of the best compliments as a cosplayer because you know it's sincere. They're not asking for a photo because they appreciate the character so much as they appreciate the cosplay itself.

There was a second, smaller convention going on concurrently in the other part of the convention center, and it was actually a yarn/fiber arts/craft show.... which was perfect to go along with Tekko. The knitters/crafters were definitely entertained by all of the costumes, and a bunch of the con-goers went over to check out all of the yarn and other cool stuff at the crafting expo. My friend and I went over and checked it out, and I got lots of compliments and questions from the folks running the different booths. I also discovered a needle felting booth called GoingGnome which had awesome stuff, including a Smaug and the entire crew of Dwarves (plus Gandalf & Bilbo) from The Hobbit. They were doing needle felting classes where you could make a gnome. Unfortunately they didn't have any openings left for Friday, so I signed up for Saturday instead.

After hanging out at the con for a while, my friend and I decided to head home and order some dinner from an asian noodle place (which was soooooo good) and watch Thor: Ragnarok... which of course we fell asleep halfway through.

Saturday morning I decided it was far too appropriate not to go back to the yarn festival as anyone other than Yarne, so I suited up in my fur loincloth and we headed back downtown.

My friend staffing had to be there at 8.... and literally no one who did not work at the convention center was around. So I hung out and played Heroes for a bit while people started slowly trickling in. Allison was the first to find me, dressed at Kylo, and we hung out and chatted for a while. Another Kylo cosplayer wandered past and recognized me, telling me his girlfriend loved the character and was cosplaying Grima!Robin. So they came back by later and we got this gem together.

I was also amazed to meet an Athena cosplayer, PhantasmagoriaCosplay, while I was hanging out there.

There was an FE photoshoot at noon, so I went to that. It wasn't huge but it was still fun. It was about 90% Awakening, and 80% of that was all Robin (and a Morgan who pretended to be Robin for a couple photos).

After the shoot it was time to change for our FE7 meetup. We had all 3 lords, plus Florina, Ninian, Nils, Guy (obviously), and eventually we even had a Rath! And because we're all ridiculous we had 5 disguises to play with too. If you're unfamiliar.... this actually happens in the game:

I'm stupidly excited to see photos from this. We all froze our asses off (Except Hector and his stupid sweater and armor and stuff), but it was totally worth it.

When it got to be evening again, we went back and ate at a little restaurant that;s close to my friend's house... that I can't remember the name of, but it was delicious and food coma-inducing. Nevertheless we went back and actually managed to finish Thor before passing out for the night.

Sunday was Ranulf, since he's comfy and pretty easy, besides all of the stupid wrappy bits that all of the Laguz (except Naesala because he's too fabulous for that) seem to have. I spent 20 minutes wandering around the outside of the Westin trying to figure out how to get to the Starbucks, but eventually managed to get some breakfast/coffee. When I got back to the convention center I was immediately recognized/photographed, which was pretty cool. And then at last all my friend arrived in their rainbow of FE4 outfits.

I've never played this game, so I don't know any of the characters besides Sigurd and Dierdre in the middle (thank you Heroes), but this still made me so happy. And what was even more miraculous was that while we were all standing around, a Lyon materialized out of the Aether.

Well, I couldn't well pass up the chance to get photos with him since I had Innes in the car, so I went and changed.

It was pretty great, because anyone who had already seen me that morning immediately went "wtf?" when they saw I had changed costumes, because who the hell does multiple cosplays on a Sunday. Clearly only this guy, and only when hypermotivated lol.

Well, that was Tekko, and it'll be a while before I have any more con stuff, which is probably a good thing because I have a bunch of commissions that I need to be working on. But I will definitely share photos from out FE7 shoot once we start getting them back.

Don't eat me!

Well, with all of the Fire Emblem stuff I've been doing lately, I thought it'd be a great time to show off my newest costume in my repertoire! It's not quite finished and it hasn't been debuted yet, but I have lots of progress pics and it'll be done soon!

I'm a bit sad to say that it's an Awakening costume. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Awakening, but it's not my favorite of the series. I do love that it brought so many new fans to this wonderful series. I also like a lot of the new features, including the ability to play on casual or classic mode. I think that was a big help for people new to the series. Also, infinite supports is a beautiful thing, and it totally made sense to change the way support bonuses worked as a result. If everyone has crazy bonuses for everyone nearby that'd be a bit cray. I'm a bit torn about the pair-up system. I like the fact that it makes more sense than the rescue system (Katie Tiedrich makes fun of it best), and it's aweseome that you can get extra attacks and knock people out of the way. The only trouble is, I only ever end up using half my team and as such my healers are waaaaaaay underleveled. Thankfully there's all of the side missions and such that let me catch up on experience, though you all already know how I feel about the non-linear ones but that's beside the point. Which brings me to the last bit: reclassing. That bit is the one thing that drives me nuts. I will admit, it's nice to be able to reclass my favorite characters so I can diversify my army and still use the units I want, but I also like that most characters are so closely tied and associated with their class and as such it feels kinda wrong to change them on a personal level. And things don't make sense quite often when you change certain classes. Like anything involving Cherche/Gerome in which they are no longer riding a wyvern and they're still constantly talking about Minerva. That's just silly.

But I've digressed for long enough, because I really don't have any serious problems with the game, and I'd actually like to continue playing my more recent playthrough with my female avatar so I can marry Yarne and have bunny babies!

Which is a great segway to my new cosplay, it's that very bunny baby o' mine: Yarne!

First off, Naga bless the Fire Emblem team for having such wonderful concept art that has all of his bits and pieces easily visible and detailed such that I can figure everything out! This is the hardest job for a cosplay with a lot of detail because finding good artwork or sctreenshots from different angles is a pain and playing through the whole freaking game to get little glimpses and try to either photograph them or sketch them is a painful undertaking.

So, on to planning! I spent a lot of time considering what I wanted to make Yarne's armor out of, as he's a more agile character so it didn't really make a ton of sense to have it be legit armor, like plate mail or anything, and as such I didn't want to use methods to duplicate that when it's not the idea I was going for anyway. Usually for heavy armor I'd be using craft foam, but for Yarne it seemed more like a leather armor-type deal so I decided to go with vinyl (cause finding or dying leather that shade of blue was going to be a royal pain in my ass). Thankfully I found some navy blue vinyl at Joann's (and had a nice coupon to use on it) and bought a few yards to play with. Drafting the patterns for all of the little individual pieces in Yarne's chest armor was interesting, because they all overlap in rather odd ways. I ended up having to do several sketches to conceptualize everything properly, but ultimately I got all of the pieces drafted out.

As you probably noticed, some of the pattern pieces look like they're made from old shirt... cause they are. I took a shirt I bought at the thrift store and put it on my dressform, then drew out the pattern for a couple of the main pieces so I could get the sizing and placement right . The rest I made on dust paper, which is my usual go-to for drafting my patterns.

Once all of the pattern pieces were done, I sketchedthem out on the back of my vinyl and cut everything out. I was a bit concerned with how the back of the vinyl would feel against my skin so I also got midnight blue flannel to line the back of each piece. I stitched around the outside, flipped the pieces, then ran a topstitch all the way around each shape to keep them flat (since you can't really iron vinyl flat).

That was the simple part. Now comes all of the beautiful detailing on the armor, which in retrospect I should have done on the vinyl pieces before I attached the flannel to the back so I could machine applique them on... but I didn't. Instead I took the silver satin and fused interfacing onto the back, sketched out the pattern, ran a tight zig-zag stitch along the outside of each shape, then cut them out. I used clear nail polish around the edge of each one to keep the satin from fraying and then hand-stitched each piece to the vinyl. This was the most time-consuming thing I think I've ever done. And also incredibly dull, and painful on my fingers cause sewing through vinyl is not easy. But alas, the things we do for cosplay. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the detail pieces before they were attached, so here's a picture of all of the pieces put together!

The little shoulder rings actually have compressed paperboard in them (cereal boxes ftw!) to keep them nice and rigid. That pretty much just  leaves his furry bits, which were all retty simple to put together and everything attaches to itself with velcro so it's nice and simple.

Sorry for the blurry photo, I'm not a very good photographer

And that's Yarne! I do have a few small things left to do for him, mainly styling his wig (which I am not looking forward to) and making the little pouches he wears on his butt. I love characters that have pouches cause then i actually have someplace to carry things!

I'll be wearing him for the first time at Colossalcon, which is in just under two weeks! I'm super excited about it and I can't wait to go! I'll be sure to have photos up after I'm back of our dear bunny in his natural habitat XD

Thanks for tuning in, folks, and I hope everyone is enjoying their Memorial Day!