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

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!