Twirl 'Round and 'Round – A New World in Which the Doc Dances?

Welcome back to another throwback thursday edition of Mike Does Cosplay. This time around we're taking a look at my favorite crazy genius: Dr. Franken Stein from Soul Eater.

Stein was always a pretty cool character because he definitely fell into the moral grey areas in the show. He's super strong, very knowledgeable, and has a pretty wide range of abilities, but he falls prey to madness which ultimately makes him a danger to his comrades.

Naturally, as with most of my costumes, a big motivator was the prospect of doing a Soul Eater group, as I have friends who wanted to do Medusa and Crona together, and another friend who already had a Spirit. Groups make everything better and Stein worked so well to play off of all the other characters I just had to do it.

His lab coat I made from scratch, and the shirt is actually two different sweaters cut up & sewn together. It seemed appropriate given Stein's desire to dissect. The biggest pain in the butt was all of the thick black stitching, which I did with yearn. Getting a yarn needle through all that material took a lot of muscle!

One of the coolest things about the costume was that I made the bolt so it would actually click when you turned it.

The scythe was super simple too, since I made the version without the giant blade, so it was just a bunch of PVC that I cut, stuck together, and painted black. It was easily disassemble-able too for easy transportation.

And I made a little scalpel out of a popsicle stick and some cereal boxes. I took several photos with my Spirit threatening to dissect him.

All in all I had a lot of fun making & wearing this costume. I don't think I'll be wearing it again any time soon though, unless my con friends decide to do a Soul Eater revival. Besides, there are always plenty of Steins wandering around, so I'd rather do something new and different!

Escape Velocity

Hey everyone, I wanted to pass on some info about a neat event I just found out about.

The Museum of Science Fiction is hosting Escape Velocity May 25-27 at the Gaylord Mariott in National Harbor, MD (where Katsucon is held, for those who are familiar). This year costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis will be judging the costume competition! Don't know who that is? She's a theater and film costume designer who worked on Raiders of the Lost Ark, among other notable movies.
For those interested in participating in the costume contest, entries are due by April 15th, and you can find all the info you need about entering here.

Escape Velocity has a wide variety of activities for adults & kids, no matter where your interests fall. Guest artists and authors, film screenings, games, and of course costumes are all a part of this exciting even so you should all go check it out. For more info about their guests and activities, as well as to purchase tickets, go check out their web site.

Whether you're a cosplayer yourself, or an enthusiast of any other kind, this looks like an awesome event for you!

The Gentle Saint

It's throwback thursday again and this week I wanted to show off yet another of my many Fire Emblem cosplays. While I love this character a great deal, I will admit that a big motivation to cosplay him was the fact that I could use my own hair. Yes, I'm referring to the ginger priest: Rhys.

Rhys, like many of the character in the Tellius series, shows up in both games, so it was a tough decision figuring out which version I wanted to do. While Path of Radiance was the stronger game, I really liked the details in his outfit in Radiant Dawn, so in the end I went with that (it's the same dilemma I had with Haar... at least the Laguz all dress exactly the same in both games).

Besides being able to use my own ginger locks for this cosplay, I also had a friend who wanted to cosplay as Soren so I decided Rhys would make a nice character to do alongside her, as a black and a white mage, essentially. Yes, I know Ike would ahve been better but I had (and still have) no intention of making Ike, desipte how much I love him. I mean, maybe if he got a seasonal costume in Heroes I'd consider it... but that's beside the point. Rhys also marks the first magic user in my FE repertoire, so that was pretty nice too.

The best things was not really needing to do much propwork, as most of the costume is fabric. I did make a tome and a staff, but both were fairly simple. I don't really have any progress photos or anything, because I made this a loooong time ago, but I do have some silly photos from my first Tekko, as well as my more recent wearing of him at Ohayo a few years ago.

There was a Laura, which was super unexpected. So we of course had to take a photo of us beating each other with our staves, because they added that pointless mechanic in RD.

Soren needed some healing after getting looked at by a myrmidon.

At Ohayo, I made friends with this fantastic Mia. Once again it was a miracle that I actually had a coordinating character I didn't come with.

She even swept me off my feet!

And since I made an actual Rexaura tome, I had to cast it at least once. This is probably my favorite photo of this cosplay :-D

And that's that! It's kinda ironic that a cosplay that has relatively simple props became the poster child for my prop listing on Etsy.