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!

Colossalcon 2015

Hey everyone! Wow, this weekend was a whirlwind that I am still recovering from but I had a blast! As is my usual M.O. at conventions these days I really went to hang out with the awesome con-going friends I've made and of course to cosplay! And I did a whole lot of both of those things this weekend. Actually, that's pretty much all I did as I didn't go to any panels, get any autographs, or even visit the actual dealer's room this year (I did make some choice purchases in the artist alley though).

For those of you I met this weekend, it was a pleasure and I hope to be seeing more of you in the future! For those friends I only see at conventions, I love all of you dearly and I wish I could extend the weekend so I had more time to spend with all of you wonderful folks. But you guys didn't just come here to listen to me get all sappy and emotional about my lovely con friends, you can for the photos!

We'll start with my con lineup. I actually got there thursday this year so I had a whole extra evening of cosplay that I don't often get at cons, and as one of my roommates was borrowing my Godot mask, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to dress as my dear Ace Investigator/Prosecutor Extraordinaire, Edgeworth.

Have you ever seen such a sexy group of attorneys?

I did get asked for a few photos but I don't really have any of myself since I already have a pretty solid portfolio with this cosplay, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity to fanboy over a Steel Samurai, who unbeknownst to me was actually friends with these guys.

The brightest part of the evening was the fact that there was actually an Ace Attorney panel (ok so I lied, I guess I did go to one panel) that evening and I got to voice Winston Payne as we collectively made our way through the first case in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Needless to say, I couldn't speak by the end of the case from shrilly objecting so many times, but it was hella fun!

Friday was a lovely time because I got to hang out all day as Tenzin with a Korra and Kya. My airbender outfit definitely gets more photo requests than any of my other cosplays to date so it's always fun to wear, but it does take some motivation to wear cause it means lopping off all of my hair ahead of time. We actually had trouble doing anything for most of the day cause we got asked for pictures so much we couldn't really move. And there were some other wonderful LoK/ATLA cosplayers that we saw (many of whom were sad that we wouldn't be at the Avatar photoshoot on Saturday). Unfortunately I don't have too many pictures of us, but here are a few.

This was our core group, with the lovely WOLF Cosplay as Korra and my friend Danielle as Kya. This photo was taken by another con-goer, whose album you can find here. This is actually one of the only times I've been able to find photos of my costumes in people's albums who I don't already know.

This one is actually the only Tenzin shot I got on my phone, cause I wasn't very good at making sure I got photos, but this Wan and Raava were amazing! We also met a fabulous Desna and Eska pair who hung out with us for a while. I'm hoping I can find some photos of them because they were amazing!

Saturday was my big new cosplay debut with the adorably timid Yarne! I had so much fun cosplaying as him I can't wait until I get to wear it again. The pleather armor was surprisingly comfortable and despite the one legging falling down every few minutes, it was easy to wear and quite cool with the extra buts of skin exposed. I made sure to get plenty of photos of bunny boy so enjoy!

Posing was easy with Yarne because all I had to do was look scared (and simultaneously adorable) and I was perfectly in character!

Taguel Transformation! I decided we needed to try this pose before the Fire Emblem photoshoot so I could make sure I could do it without falling over. It took a couple of tries but I was successful! 

And the best thing, there was another Yarne! He was also adorable, awesome, and friendly so I look forward to seeing him at future cons!

I did change into Kariya saturday evening after wanting to put on real pants again (who does that?) and I finally have a photo of him with my actual wings, thanks to Danielle! I also had an awesome time hangin out with some con friends I don't spend nearly enough time with though, so it was all good (love you guys!)

And that was my weekend, but there were so many other awesome cosplayers around I feel like I should share some of their photos too!

I always love seeing Persona cosplayers, and this Adachi/Mugatsu duo was awesome!

These three were probably my favorite group at the convention. They were on point and I discovered later that I actually knew that Cloud!

Jordan and I have been making our way through Ruron Kenshin, so it was great to see this Sonosuke cosplayer!

I may not have finished this game yet but I am already obsessed with the design and the characters so seeing a Red with her Transistor was spectacular. And it even lights up!!

I don't even know who this character is, just that they're from Mass Effect. But what I do know is that this cosplayer is A-F***ING-MAZING! 'Nuff said.

I took plenty more pictures, but I can't easily put everything up here, so I posted the rest in my Colossalcon 2015 album on my facebook page so go take a look. If I did take a photo of you, then obviously you're awesome and so was your cosplay! So feel free to add me, send me a message, tag yourself, or whatever else!

To all of you lovely folks out there, thanks for stopping in and keep on being awesome! <3

We were once much more powerful

So it's Thursday again and I feel like there's been enough Fire Emblem stuff thrown at you guys to back off of that for a while (since I could keep going for a very long time on that track), so this week I wanted to introduce you all to a costume that's just recently become relevant again (kinda). It's a game that I played religiously after it was released, all because it was just so darn pretty. I'm talking about Bungie's most recent endeavor, Destiny. I'm really not much of a FPS type gamer, mostly because I'm generally just pretty bad at shooting things and therefore don't have much fun playing them... of course the exception is playing Goldeneye on N64 with my dear friends because even though I die a lot it's hilarious. But this game was so aesthetically entrancing I couldn't help but try it, and was consequently hooked. They released the second expansion, House of Wolves, just last week so after an extended absence from the world of Destiny, I'm back at it with renewed fervor. And that is particularly because this new expansion is centered around the awoken in the Reef, and I have wanted to be the Queen's champion since they had the queen's emissary in the tower shortly after the game was released as a special event. I  mean, let's be real, she's a bamf for taking control of a fallen house and the awoken are pretty baller in general.

So anyway, that is where the renewed relevancy of this costume comes in, but only sorta, since we don't really see him too often any more now that these new expansions have come out. I'm speaking of the Speaker.

I wanted to do a Destiny cosplay pretty early on in my playing of the game, beacuase as stated earlier, the game is so darn pretty, and as such the character designs are too. The trouble is, I'm not that talented at doing armor, and since everyone is fighting out in space that's a big part of what any of the player characters are wearing. So the trick was to find something doable, but that still looked cool and was still recognizable. Thus I settled on the Speaker.

I started with the helmet/mask/his face as that was the only really tricky bit to my eye because I'm familiar enough with patterning and sewing that I figured I could make any of the cloth parts without too much trouble.

Thankfully, most of his helmet is actually relatively flat planes, so I decided the easiest way to construct it would be to make it out of foamcore board (this might have actually been the project that started my love for foamcore) for all of the flatter pieces, then I could use craft foam for the rounded part since you can heat it up to curve it out. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the progress on this one, but I totally made it too wide the first time and had to slice it down the middle and make it thinner (which you can see in the photo if you look close). In any case, here's how it turned out.

The black sections on either side of the central panel are openings where I put some black knit material so I could actually see out of the mask, just not very well. If something was directly in front of me I'd have to turn my head to see it, but at least I could actually see!

So now that the mask was done, the hard part's over, right? I mean he just has a black hood and white robes, how hard could it be? Well I soon found out just how wrong I was... As I mentioned in my last post about Yarne, and how he has some lovely concept art that shows him from all his different sides and includes all of his details.... the same did not exist to the speaker so I had to go straight to the source. I went in-game with my Warlock and sat on the floor next to the Speaker and wandered around him, standing still long enough for him to turn back around so I could see the back and the sides of his robes. Thankfully he's an NPC who always shows up in the same place and is easily observable. This is the result of my research:

You can actually see the back of my warlock in this one...

There were a lot more layers and a lot of extra details in those robes than I was prepared for. But me, being the devilishly detailed person I am, wanted to make sure I included as much of it as possible.

One of the most brain-wracking parts of figuring out his robes was deciding what materials to use for them. His outer robes have a nice texture so I wanted to do my best to find something that mimicked that. I initially had intentions of actually quilting it together, but I realized that would be way more time-consuming than practical, and wouldn't really give me the texture I wanted unless the quilting lines were tight together (adding to the insanely long process that quilting the fabric together would be). So instead, I found a nicely textured linen and used that. It actually worked out quite well because most of his robes are not a pure white, with the exception of the panel that hangs down from his waist. That made it simple to use a white satin for the panel and the almost-white linen for the rest.

Patterning out the robes wasn't all that difficult, once I sketched out how many layers were needed and how they all sat together. Building up from the bottom, there's (1) the lowest robe which covers his feet (I decided to simplify things and turn that into a skirt to eliminate excess layers up top), (2) the panel that hangs in front of his legs (I made this a separate piece that pins onto the bottom robe/skirt), (3) the robe which covers his torso and angles down in the back, (4) the belt, (5) the half-robe which angles across his torso from his left shoulder down to his right him, and (6) the hood. I'm not including his little pauldron things cause those aren't made of cloth.

The skirt part was easy enough to make, and I put elastic in the waistband to hold it up. The panel was a bit trickier because of all the detail on it. The repeating crosswork pattern was embroidered on my sewing machine with a tan-ish colored thread so it was a bit more subtle. The only trouble was that the satin would sometimes catch and so the satin-y quality was a little messed up in the end. Ultimately it turned out pretty well though, and worked the way I wanted it to. The raised edge around the design was done by sewing around a rope to give it the depth it needed. In retrospect I should have hand-sewed that part on so it would have looked better when it was done.

The next layer was the part that included the sleeves... so naturally it was a bit of a pain cause that's just how sleeves are. I used a slightly darker thread this time for the detailed stitches on the arms, and actually appliqued on fleece for the little uber-triforce designs on the sides. The white patches on the ends were also the bright white satin I used for the front panel. I went for simplicity on the closures, and just used white velcro to keep the robe shut. It was actually a good move too, because I could add small patches in a few places to keep the robe sitting in the proper place while I was wearing it.

 The next part was the belt. It's really just a tan strip of fabric with white craft foam pieces hot-glued to it. My intention was to use white vinyl for the details but when I tried to sew them on they stretched oddly and got all warped so I just threw out my first attempt. I think if I were to try that again I'd have to get a walking foot for my machine to keep that from happening. Regardless, the craft foam worked just fine. Also, I didn't actually include any kind of clasps, velcro, or anything for the belt, it's just held on with safety pins. That's mostly so if my girth fluctuates at all it can still accommodate that and because it sits a little strangely on my hips so it's easiest if I can just pin it where it needs to go.

Then we have the top robe. This one was pretty simple because there wasn't much to it in terms of patterning. I used a thin satin ribbon for the cross pattern on the front (which was a big enough pain in my ass that I didn't bother adding it to the back) and black bias tape for the dark outline. My favorite part is that the way it attaches on my left shoulder is with a suspender clip since I just happened to have one in my sewing desk :-)

The only thing left is the hood, which it's just a hood so it's not that exciting. The only bit that was kinda annoying was adding the part that draped over my shoulders but it wasn't that big of a deal. 

Put it all together and you almost get the speaker! There's just a few other details I haven't taled about yet. The first is his little Destiny emblem on his hood, which I made into a pin so I could use it to keep the hood part closed and could easily remove it.

We also have his little... nodes of some sort on the front of his robes. Those were constructed using compressed paperboard for the flat base, cardboard straws with polymer clay on either end for the little antenna-parts. I glued some felt on the back of each one so I could sew them to the robes.

The other thing are his shoulder pauldrons, which I used grey craft foam and an old vinyl placemat to put together. They attach to the robe parts with velcro as well. Here's how the whole thing looks all put together!

Oops, apparently I took my gloves off for this one

My plan was originally to debut this one at Ohayocon last year, but I sadly became violently ill that weekend and never made it down. So instead I wore it for a little while at Cleveland Concoction this past spring. It was pretty awesome because the fan table my groups was stationed at was on  a second story walkway that looked down on main lobby below so we got some awesome photos and I got to stand looming over everyone down below.

Behold my great kingdom! Of bellhop carts...

The best part was since I had the mask people assumed I couldn't see them and I totally caught a guy snap a picture of me on his phone and text it to someone. It should be noted that this was at the airport hotel in Cleveland  so there were lots of people around who weren't there for the convention. 

We also decided that the Speaker needed a vacation, and so took some photos by the pool. The results were glorious!

For as much work as went into this costume, he's gotten very little con time, so my intention is to take him to a few more before he goes into my regular rotation. He may go with me to Youmacon in Detroit and I'm definitely taking him to Ohayocon next year, assuming I don't come down with the plague again next year. Thankfully that'll give me enough time to add some side panels to the skirt/bottom robe so I can walk a little easier next time. I may also do some detail painting on his mask and pauldrons to highlight the shapes like I've been doing with a lot of my props recently. We'll see how far I get with that, but you can definitely expect more photos coming in a few months (it's too darn hot to wear him again before fall gets here).

Well, that's all folks, thanks for stopping in! <3