Many Emblems Gently Flaming

Yes, I'm back to talk to you about more Fire Emblem stuff because... well, why the heck  not? As you probably gathered form my last entry I'm minorly..............ok, majorly obsessed with these games (though not to the point where I've played the old ones released only in japan, I should get on that), and recently I've had the fortune of having several of my prop commissions actually be Fire Emblem weapons. They're all from Awakening too, which is not at all surprising considering that it's the most recent game and certainly the most popular.

Interestingly enough my first prop commission was also a Fire Emblem item, though it was from the Tellius series since Awakening wasn't out yet. I made a lovely little Lehran's Medallion for someone. I went into it thinking "this is going to be easy" and as soon as I looked closer at the reference artwork I quickly realized the error in my thought process. Every time I'd seen it in the game it just looked like a disc with some carvings on it... but not so much.

In order to get the proper shape for the interior of the medallion I needed cereal boxes, paper straws, some modeling clay (which you can't see in the photo) and those wierd teardrop stickers. Then the outside was a masking tape roll that I cut in half... which was a royal pain in my ass.

There was also come craft foam, brads, and a couple of little metal rings that went into creating the final shaping.

The end result turned out really nicely but it was much  more of a beast of a project than I was expecting.

Thankfully for my three recent FE props, I had much more experience under my belt so I could much more easily and quickly come up with a creation strategy for each one. Also, they're all bigger and more fun to play with because they're all weapons. Yay shiny instruments of death!

The first was a Lightning Axe I made for my friend Josh. He was a friend I made specifically because of Fire Emblem cosplay so I suppose it's only appropriate that he's up first. As with many of the larger props I've been making recently, the axe head is a floral foam base with lightweight filler putty coating the outside.

I like using this method for stuff because shaping the foam is pretty easy with a knife, and if you accidentally do something wrong or cut out a chunk you weren't supposed to, you can just glue it back in and smooth it over with the putty. Good as new! It does take a long time to sand the whole thing, but hey, you've gotta do what you've gotta do. It's also nice and lightweight, which is good for props you're carrying around all day and makes shipping a lot more reasonable too :-)

The rest is pretty simple: pvc handle with a cap fixture embedded in the axe head so you can remove the handle for easy storage & transportation. The knobby bits on the handle are made of paper clay, which works well for that sort of detail because it's strong enough to stand on its own and can be sanded when you gloop on too much.

A few hours of painting later and you have one lovely axe.

A note about painting for all you lovely folks out there: Spray on your metallics! It will save you a lot of time. Additionally, when you have multiple overlapping metallics, like I do with this axe, you should always paint a base coat of regular acryllic that's a similar color to your metallic. This will save you a good bit of time and aggravation later, because it'll take fewer top coats of your metallic paint to get it looking good and any spots that you may have missed won't be very noticable.

Anywho, there's Libra's axe! So let's move on to weapon # 2... which is somewhat less of a weapon and somewhat more of a healing tool. It's Brady's staff!

Once again, we started with a foam base, which thankfully they make wreath foam so I already had the base circle! Thank god because it would've not been nearly as properly round. More carving and frosting with putty!

The smaller details are all done with paper clay, as is my standard. Although, since it's all kind of a layered look with the details, they didn't stick very well so I had to glue a lot of them back on when they dried. Alas.

The nice thing with that pole, it's actually a flagpole and therefore it unscrews in the middle!

P.S. That shade of gold is probably my favorite color ever for prop stuff, and it makes me really angry that all of the brands that have this color or something similar have discontinued it. Come on, guys!

Well, now that it's painted, all we have left is the little leathery wrap for the handle and BOOM. Done. This is also where the benefit of having worked at Joann's comes into play because I rotated out the faux leather bias tape that I used for this detail and therefore got to snatch all of it up when it went on clearance! It's the small victories that count :-D

I can't wait to see photos from Acen this weekend with an actual Brady wielding this thing, I'm sure it's going to be awesome.

And to continue with that trend, the last of my trio of weapons (and this one is much more dangerous than the healing staff) was also constructed for Acen this weekend, for the wonderful and talented Mochici Cosplay! This time, I got to make a Brave Sword for Lon'qu, and I'm sure he will wreck some Plegians with it!

This one started with a wood base using a thin craft board. I usually use craft boards for my swords because they're sturdy, fairly lightweight, and the proper thickness for making a sword! Not to mention, I've gotten pretty good with my jigsaw!

The central details on the blade could have easily been done in wood, but cutting out all of the small spaces with a jigsaw was going to be rather difficult, and if I screwed up, it would have been rather difficult to fix. So instead, I decided to use foamcore board (my new favorite prop-making material) as it's a lot easier to cut, and is a lot cheaper to remake things if I mess something up!

After the foamcore part of the blade was glued in, the last bit of construction was using paper clay to build up the hilt of the sword... which of course I'm a dummy and didn't take a picture of that step. So let's just skip ahead to the part where we paint! Remember that important rule: Paint your metallics first!

The last step, much like with the staff, is to add the wrap to the hilt. A little bit of drying time with the glue and it's all ready to go!

And of course, being the good little crafter and FE fan, I naturally had to test out my newly forged sword so it's PLAY TIME!

Needless to say, I am super pleased with how all of these things turned out and I can't wait to see some photos of them with their proper costumes. Perhaps I can manage to post some of those soon.

Thanks again for tuning in, my loves!

Humans are greedy, therefore they are human

Welcome back my darlings! Sorry I've not been updating my blog more than once a week, I always have grand aspirations and then I never manage to find time to make other posts. But I promise to make an effort!

Anywho, I thought I'd take a moment today to talk to you about what may be my favorite anime, and the resulting costumes that came from it. Now you've actually seen these costumes before, but most of you probably have no idea what they are because it's not a very well-known anime. What I'm referring to is Kiddy Grade, which if you've every talked to me about anime, I almost always recommend it for purely selfish reasons, because I want other people to be able to talk to about it!

My discovery of Kiddy Grade was actually quite a while ago. When I was in high school I discovered that our local library had a small anime & manga section and I decided to check it out. Their selection was kinda wierd, and definitely incomplete, which was a little annoying because they'd only have small portions of series/seasons and it didn't always start at the beginning. Nevertheless I ended up watching a good variety of random things and really enjoyed a lot of it. Kiddy Grade was among these various tidbits of anime and it was one of my favorites that I had watched despite not being able to see it in its entirety. The cast of fun characters, the mix of comedy, drama, and action and the premise itself all caught my attention. The only thing that was a little over the top was the hypersexuality toward the beginning. There are 20 or so panty shots in the first episode, which does nothing for me as a gay guy, but if you can get past that then it really is worth a watch. It wasn't until much later that I would actually find the full series on DVD and managed to watch it in full. Admittedly I was impressed; the show, which appears at first to just be a space action series involving agents of the Galactic Organization of Trade and Tariffs with superhero powers turned into a very riveting political drama (still involving GOTT agents with superhero powers).
So, if you're looking for a new anime to check out, I recommend this one. And after you watch it you should come talk to me about it cause that would be delightful!

And that brings us to some Kiddy Grade cosplay!

This is the photo that most of you have probably seen as it's one of my favorites and I've had it set as the header photo on my main page since the creation of mikeydoescosplay.com. This is Armbrust (or Amrblast in the English dub) and Pfeilspitze, also known as Mercredi. This particular shot is actually one of my favorite scenes involving these two that actually takes place in the show.

The fact that this photos exist brings me so much joy because I never thought I'd have someone to cosplay with because no one is aware of this series. Also, I'd never cosplay from this series alone because all of the characters are explicitly partnered (and I don't mean that in any sort of shipping way, I mean they all have partners and it's a significant thing in the show). The only characters I could reasonably do solo would be Chevalier d'Autrice... who is hella obscure even for me, or Chief Eclipse. Now the Chief I would totally do but I can't imagine anyone would ever recognize me, not that I would have a serious problem with that. And she is kind of a bamf, so that may eventually happen, I mean just look at her.

But I digress. The reason this cosplay ultimately came about is because I found myself a partner in my dear friend and wonderful cosplay buddy, Rion. I introduced him to the show quite some time ago by letting him borrow my copy after a convention. To my great delight he loved it and we started scheming what pair the two of us could cosplay together. We shared a mutual love of Armbrust so it didn't take long to come to that conclusion. And thus a lovely new pair of cosplays was born. And I'm super greatful cause he even wore a dress for it, which doesn't happen very often XD

We debuted the costumes at Tekko in Pittsburgh which was the perfect place for it because the roof of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center looks like it could be a spaceport. Not a single person recognized the two of us, although a delightful young man dressed as 21 from Venture Brothers asked "Is Adam in there?" Which it took me about 5 minutes of staring at him with a confused look on my face to figure out that it was an Evangelion reference and he thought I was Ryoji Kaji. Which was actually a pretty reasonable thought though my case was way too big for that. Anyway, it didn't matter because we were cosplaying for each other and got some fantastic photos in the city. We also had lots of entertainment with me trying to pronounce Pfeilspitze's name and thus was born Pfgermanname.

Aaaaaand, let's just not talk about that wig. We all know it has issues.

The costume itself was actually pretty nice to wear. I made the suit jacket myself as the prospect of finding a double-breasted suit in the color I needed proved too much to accomplish. Unfortunately I did something wierd with the sleeves and they ended up fitting kinda awkwardly but it wasn't all that noticeable unless I was lifting my arms up (hence why it's not happening in any of these photos). Having that case was also awesome because the front actually lifts up the way it does in the show and there was a little shelf inside I could store things on. It was quite useful for keeping my wallet, any nerd swag I picked up, and some cookies for when we needed a snack. Unfortunately I don't have a photo with it open after it was finished, but here's what it looked like in progress.

Of course our lovely photoshoot had plenty of goofy pictures too, so why not share them as well?

That last one is actually based on official artwork they used on the transition animation before and after the commercial breaks.

And there you have it. Unfortunately, as much as I love Armbrust, it is unlikely that he'll be worn again for quite some time as my occasions to see my dear Pfeilspitze are becoming infrequent and we have lots of other cosplay pairs we're trying to do. But that just means you lovely people should all go watch Kiddy Grade and we can plan some more awesome cosplay pairs together!

Father of Ike's Children...

Welcome back to another edition of Throwback Thursday here at Mikey Does Cosplay. This week we're jumping pretty far back to one of my earliest costumes that you'd really consider cosplay, but it's one that started a long chain of costumes that stretches even into the future. What am I talking about? I'm talking about my first Fire Emblem cosplay, plucky little thief who grew up: Sothe.

Sothe here was the beginning of an epic saga of cosplay, which if you stick around long enough you may get to hear about in full. This saga now includes 8 finished costumes spanning 4 of the games, with one in progress and another planned for next year. I think I have a problem. But at least it's a good problem.

But before we get into Sothe, let's talk about Fire Emblem. I love this series so freaking much. I started with "Blazing Sword" (which for those of you who don't know much about the older games it's the one with Eliwood, Hector & Lyn as the trio of Lords) back when Game Boy Advance was still a thing and was very excited to actually get to play a game from the series that Marth and Roy came from (I played a lot of smash brothers in my adolescence). This strategy JRPG did not disappoint. There were fun and quirky characters, a great story, some interesting mythical background, a great deal of heartbreak, plenty of wierd strategy choices to make (or not make and just give all the exp. to 4 characters and let them stampede over the enemy), and an all-around fun game. I loved that there were permanent consequences to being a bad strategist, in that characters could permanently die if you weren't careful... I spent a lot of time swearing loudly and punching pillows the RNG decided to screw me (REALLY YOU HAD A 99% HIT CHANCE, GUY, HOW DID YOU MISS AND GET COUNTERATTACKED WITH A CRIT, HE'S WIELDING AN EFFING AXE FFFFFFFMMMMMMMMLLLLLLLL). I also spent a lot of time exp. farming at the Port of Badon... and subsequently restarting the mission 12 times when important people died in the arena. So many feels. So much wasting of time. But I loved it.

Then along came Sacred Stones... which I'm pretty sure is the second game I played, or at least that would make sense... and we get this world map thing and it totally threw me off. On the one hand, I could level up my characters a bunch in side-questy things and create the ultimate warrior way earlier in the story missions than I should have, and way earlier than necessary. But on the other hand I really liked that exp was a limiting factor in Blazing Sword. You had a finite amount available in the game so it made choosing your army's units a lot more meaningful. Of course you still farm the crap out of experience whenever you have the opportunity, again, Port of Badon, but it was still more risky to do so and took more strategery. Anywho, the game was alright, there were branching class trees which was kinda cool, and the characters were fairly compelling, but I was less impressed with the story.

And then there was Path of Radiance, and it was good. I'm sorry, that sounded a lot more exciting in my head, I meant it was HELLA FREAKING AWESOME. There was none of this world map bullshit, we have a linear storyline with a finite amount of experience again, Mikey is pleased. There were no branching class trees, Mikey is still pleased. Supports were meaningful and gave you feels, pleased. The Lord is a bamf who is easily abusable, quite pleased. The characters are wonderfully multifaceted and actually experience change through the happenings in the story. Also, there are Laguz, which despite my rarely using them in battle, were also fantastic. This is where Sothe comes in, but the costume of his I'm actually wearing is his incarnation from Radiant Dawn... which I suppose we should address.

Radiant Dawn... this game gave me migranes. They killed the support system, you have to juggle 3 armies at once, one of whom is the Greil Mercs and they have no money, like, ever. Micaiah is the central lord character and I just don't like her. They have third tier classes which I'm torn about because on the one hand that really seems unnecessary but on the other hand Titania becomes useful not that she's not just a Jagen character (early pre-promoted unit who bulldozes everything at the beginning and later becomes obsolete). The story was kinda interesting. Meh.

So this leads to the question of why I chose to do the outfit from the game I didn't like as much.  Well, in Path of Radinace he's really still just a kid. I'm sure I could pull him off just fine but I'd be taller than anyone else cosplaying with me so it'd be a little out of place. And then there's Sothe from Radiant Dawn:

Yeah, someone hit the puberty jackpot and it was this kid right here. Ok sure, I choose my fire emblem characters by their attractiveness (hell, it's not hard to tell based on the rest of my FE cosplay collection). I'm sure you do it too so let's just move on.

The other thing about Radiant Dawn is that it was a lovely bonding game between one of my best friends and I. I introduced her to Fire Emblem (and she, in turn, introduced me to Ace Attorney... I think we owe a great deal to Katie Teidrich for some of our favorite gaming experiences)

This costume started out as a Halloween costume while I was in college... cause anyone else on campus other than my one friend who shares my love of Fire Emblem was actually going to recognize me.. right. But who cares, I was a devilishly handsome thief and that's all anyone needed to know. Unfortunately my hair situation didn't turn out so well but we can overlook that as it was remedied by the next time I wore him.

Some of my hair is almost green enough to match the pine tree I'm standing in front of...
You can also tell this is an early Mikey cosplay because look at that blank white shoulder...

For an early cosplay, this actually turned out really well. One of my favorite things about Fire Emblem characters is that their designs always include a lot of little details. As a beginner this was really enticing but also really frustrating to get everything in there effectively. What was probably my proudest thing was finding the tiny little gold doll buckles to use on the small knife sheaths. They're so cute and little but they're an awesome detail.

There were definitely some issues with the costume, besides just my lack of wig. The large main knife turned out pretty well but the two little ones were pretty much plastic knives I found at the thrift store whose blades I tore off and tried to duct-tape to the ends of popsicle sticks. Tried, being the operative word as they pretty much just fell apart instantly when you touched them. It also took a long time to get the belt-strap...things on the boots  to actually stay where they belonged. And of course there's also the hair.

But fortunately it would be several years before I'd wear Sothe again because by that point I'd been bitten so hard by the cosplay that I had Tibarn finished by the time my first convention came around and I didn't have the ability to take more than one costume with me (Also, it was Ohayocon and wearing a sleeveless, midriff-bearing costume in January seems like a bad idea, too bad I forgot about that and took Volug a few years later). And I made new costumes for all of my subsequent conventions without stopping to take a breath. It was much later (at a Tekkoshocon), that Sothe made a reappearance, and I fixed the majority of his issues. I made new small knives out of wood and got an actually wig, which I cut and styled myself. This was the first real success I had preparing my own wig!

I was very excited to have found other Fire Emblem cosplayers (there was also a Soren whose photo I can no longer find), and am actually now friends with this Ranulf, though it wasn't until the following year that I started stalking him on Tumblr and we actually made friends. It was after that when we realized we'd met the year prior dressed as these two.

After Tekko, it was a while before Sothe went out again, but fortunately my wonderful fiance (though he was still just boyfriend-class at the time) did a photoshoot with me out in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. It was great fun wandering around in the woods dressed as a video game character and stopping every so often to pose for a photo. I first did this with my Ranulf cosplay, which you'll get to see the results from eventually, and would later do a longer hike with fewer pictures with Tibarn, both in different parts of the park.

The results of the shoot came out beautifully, and as you can see a bit in that last photo, the mosquitoes loved my extra bare skin in this outfit. Sothe will definitely remain in my repertoire for a long time yet cause he's comfortable and fun, which is not always the case with Fire Emblem characters.

Well folks, that about all for today. Hope you enjoyed seeing my Fire Emblem roots and I'll see you back next time!

The photographer and his subject for the day. Isn't he just adorable <3