Youmacon Follow-Up

Welcome back to the monthly edition of “Mikey Does Exist” XD.

Just got back from Youmacon, and although I was not feeling well for most of it, I still had a ton of fun and am super excited to show off the new cosplays from the weekend!

Jordan came this year so we actually had 4 new costumes in total, 2 for each of us. The first was pair was actually Jordan’s idea to begin with, and I’m so happy we made it happen because it was ridiculous and fun: Calvin and Feilx Fischoeder from Bob’s Burgers!

You can be sure we’ll wear these again because it was so much fun, though to be fair we really didn’t get much recognition. We also sadly never found a Belcher family while we were wearing them. Actually we didn’t see any other Bob’s Burgers cosplays there! Still, this might be my new favorite pair so you can expect to see them again next time Jordan goes con-ing with me. Also, the best part is my good friend decided to join us as Gayle! She even had a cat anus painting!!

If there’s anyone else out there who wants to join us as random Bob’s Burgers side characters, or even as Belchers, let us know cause we’d love to have a big group some day!!

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The second new pair was something that’s been on our list for a long time, as it’s a pair of characters from one of Jordan’s favorite anime series. I’m referring to Kamille Bidan and Quattro Bajeena from Zeta Gundam.

Since Gundam Wing was more popular in the US than the UC timeline series, we really don’t see a ton of MSG or MSZG cosplays. There was one other Char cosplayer, dressed from Mobile Suit Gundam, but I didn’t manage to get a photo of him.

We got a good bit of recognition in these, which kinda surprised me. But as several people said, you never see Zeta cosplayers so people were pretty excited about it. I also had several people ask me “Have you seen Char?” which of course the only acceptable answer is “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I also had a few people shout “Sieg Zeon” my way, which is… kinda ironic but I suppose it’s appropriate. It’s rather akin to when I’m wearing Edgeworth and people just scream “OBJECTION” at me.

I would love to do a shoot with a photographer at some point with these two, I think that would be fun and I feel like Jordan would be excited to have nice photos of them, since Kamille is one of his favorite characters. The Rennaisance Center is definitely a good place to photograph these two, but with it being a con weekend is was pretty crowded so there weren’t a lot of open spots we could use. I’m super happy with how these all turned out though, especially for being cell phone photos.

And of course we got some goofy but appropriate shots since this does actually happen on the show.

Needless to say we had some fun in these cosplays and I’m looking forward to wearing them again some time soon.

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These were the only new cosplays we wore this year, but I did have one other debut of a prop I’d been working on. My friend decided to do Zelgius from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn, so I got to make Alondite! I was super happy to deliver it because I’m really proud of how it came out.

I was even happier when I saw it with the cosplay though, because it was absolutely amazing!!!

This was their first attempt at foam armor and it turned out SO WELL!!!

Also, we had an Ike there for the photoshoot so with his Ragnell and my Gurgurant, we had all of the Tellian divine weapons in attendance!

We did get a photo with all 3 of us, just sadly not on my phone.

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So despite being sick, I still had a great time at Youma! My con schedule is done for the year, so I don’t have any more events coming up until Ohayocon in January, but I do have some commissions this winter, and I’ll be working on something new for myself for Ohayo (though I haven’t figured out what just yet).

So, I’ll leave all of you with the rest of the cosplay photos I got this year and bid you adieu until next time!

Cloud & Reno (FFVII)

Aerith (FFVII)

Spyro Armor

Gilgamesh (Fate/Grand Order)

Someone from League of Legends (I don’t play League but her outfit was so cool!!)

Gon, Kurapika & Leorio (Hunter X Hunter)

Sakura Kinomoto (Cardcaptor Sakura)

Chefs (Overcooked)

Roland & Evan (Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom)

Amuro Ray (Mobile Suit Gundam)

Hades (Hercules) & Vald (Fate/Apocryha)

Lots o' Commissons

As promised, I’m back with all of the awesome prop work I’ve been doing! Since I’m catching up on posting I’m only going to show off the finished products or we’d both be here forever, but if there’s anything here you want a more detailed look into how it was made, let me know and I’ll do a tutorial (-ish) post about it! Dont’ be shy I’m happy to share I’m just lazy lol

First up is this magnificent sword from Final Fantasy XII, the Treaty Blade. When my friend first requested this I was both excited and terrified because this is one of the most intricate designs of anything I’d ever attempted before. But I had a plan, and I stuck to it and this is how it turned out!

The base of the sword is MDF, mostly for stability, although that made it a little heavier than I would have preferred. The rest is all foam of various thicknesses that’s been layered and/or dremelled to get the detailed layers of the blade. There’s a bit of worbla on the end of the hilt where that flower-ish-shaped piece is, and the gems are all cast resin.

Needless to say this is one of my favorite things I’ve made to date… but then again I feel like I say that all the time lol. But that’s a good thing because it means I’m constantly pushing myself to grow!

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Next up is another pair of blades that I was super excited to work on because it’s from an obscure video game that I absolutely love. I’m referring to the sword and dagger wielded by Kalas in Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and Lost Ocean. The bonus is that I’m eventually going to be cosplaying from it myself when we manage to get our group together, and will likely be making some more stuff for other members. For now, though, we have these.

Like most of my blades, these are primarily MDF, with additional layers of thin plywood on the sword, to add stability without adding much additional weight. Most of the additional layers/details are craft foam, and the extra details on the knife are worbla. Both of them have actual cotton cording wrapped on their handles. It was a pain in the butt to add that detail but it looks really nice.

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Next up on the list is a commission that I kinda got a long while ago, though it was in a slightly different form. Originally it was going to be Genny’s heal staff, from Fire Emblem Echoes. It still ended up being a heal staff, but it’s Elise’s now, from Fire Emblem Fates. Both are cool staffs so I was happy to make either one, and am very happy about how it turned out. And yes, it lights up!

The miracle here is that I managed to find a cardboard tube that was the perfect size and sturdiness to slide a small flashlight into the end of, which is how I made it light like that. I’m not great with electronics so I usually try to use existing lights for this sort of thing rather than wiring anything myself. Unfortunately it does limit what I can do but it makes me feel a lot better about the end product that it’s not going to fall apart or catch fire or anything…

As for materials on this one, the main shaft is a wood dowel, with a cardboard tube at the top. There’s EVA foam around the tube, which was then dremeled to get the gold details around the rod on the end. The “wings” that make up the bulk of the interesting detailing are EVA foam with worbla, and a number of other details were also done with sculpted worbla scraps including the little claw bits around the glowing end, and the gold details on the bottom end of the staff. The glowing part itself is a plastic translucent christmas ornament, and I used blue translucent sheets over the light to give it the fain blue color. This was definitely had a lot more varied materials than some of my other projects but I have the most fun using weird stuff in my props ^_^

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My last commission this round is actually two, it’s a pair of staves from NieR that are weilded by Devola and Popola. My friends have had their cosplays done for a while, but more recently asked me to make these for them to complete the look.

The handles are stained wood, because I wanted to keep the wood grain look. I actually considered buying axe handles to use for it because they were the right shape and size but it was more expensive than cutting it out of a wooden board myself. The staff ends are two layers of EVA foam that have been dremeled into shape, and then covered in worbla. It was rather time consuming to get the shaping done with that large of pieces but it looks nice so it was worth it.

Eventually I should have photos to share of all of these props in use, because this batch was all for folks who I see at conventions on a semi-regular basis. I’ll be sure to share when I have them. And that’s all for now! I’m busy working on a few other commissions, including some Halloween Costumes, large swords, and a few new cosplays for Jordan and myself as Youmacon approaches. I’ll do my best to not leave a 4-month gap this time, but you can always follow me on Instagram for more regular updates @mikeydoescosply.

4 Months Worth of Ketchup

So you all know the drill, I’m bad at writing up blog posts to you go months without an update on here. I hope those of you interested in my projects all follow me on Instagram at this point (@mikeydoescosplay) cause that seems to be the only place I’m actually consistent…

But I’m here now and I want to share what I’ve been doing with all of you… for the past 4 months lol

First off, I’ve been to Matsuricon since last I checked in, which was awesome! I had 2 (and 1/2) new cosplays, which it’s been a very long time since I’ve done more than 1 new thing at a con, but I had the time and motivation so I made it happen!

First up is Shigure Rangetsu from Tales of Berseria! I promised my friend Trickssi I’d cosplay this for/with her… at least a few years ago at this point so I finally made it happen! I’m pretty happy with how everything turned out, the costume itself was super obnoxious to put together between the silly pleated & paneled pants with the V-crothch that the Tales of series love so much (which consequently means they don’t stay up without the belt part cause that’ not how pants work in real life) , the weird sandal things, and the wig with its random braided rat tail and giant swoopy lock in the front. Despite having a bunch of weird bits it’s actually pretty comfortable, and of course my giant Morgrim more than makes up for all the agrivation. I did discover I have no easy way of carrying anything while I’m wearing it, so my plan for next time is to build a pocket into Morgrim to stash my stuff.

I don’t have a ton of photos in this as of yet, I’d like to do an actual photoshoot with Trickssi at some point with her as Rokurou, so you can expect some… eventually. But in the meantime here’s a couple.

Here’s the group from the Tales of gathering, which is the only one I’ve seen thus far. Thanks bridgey_cos for posting it!

And of course the only photo that matters.

Second up is the other totally new cosplay I did for Matsuri, and I did primarily for my con fam because we all share a deep love for NieR Gestalt/Replicant. While this wasn’t the cosplay I was initially planning on, I’m super pumped about it cause I don’t do a whole lot of designing and I got to play with it a bit since it’s a genderbend. I wasn’t sure I liked it as I was making it, but when all of the pieces came together I fell in love.

I absolutely adore Kaine and so cosplaying her was amazing. It’s actually pretty comfy too, besides the shoes (I changed into boots after we got these shots), and the leg wrappings do tend to fall down but otherwise it’s actually pretty nice to wear. And of course as Kaine I get to run around doing stupid shit lilke this…

And the best part was having my good friend Salem there as our precious cinnamon bun, Emil.

We even found another Kaine there (not that I have any photos of us, oops)! I’m really looking forward to having the whole Wolf Pack doing NieR cosplays together <3

Last up is a not-entirely-new-but-mostly-revamped cosplay. It’s one that I made a long while ago and very much wanted to update and redesign a bit. I’m referring to Nanaki/Red XIII from FF7. With the new hype over the fact that we have an actual release date for the remake (I’ll believe it when I’m actively playing it), I figured now was the time!

This is the only full-body photo I have from Matsuri, with this amazing Aerith cosplayer, but I do have some shots so you can see all of the details. First, here’s the old look:

Great big thanks to my dear Rion for this photo.

The hoodie, shorts, and wrist-warmers are the same, though I re-dyed the shorts because I’ve worn them enough at this point that the orange was fading. The shoes are new, but I didn’t do any work there lol. The biggest differnce is the hat with the spikes, which does a better job for hearkening to Nanaki’s design, and fits the overall punk aesthetic I was going for. The tail being a belt is another new detail, different from the actual stuffed tail I had before. Lastly we have the feathers and earring, the earring mirroring his beaded locks of hair that hang to either side of his face. I wanted it to be asymmetrical, which is why the feathers are together on the one side, and there’s only one earring. I thought that would fit better with the overall aesthetic than making those details symmetrical like his original design.

That’s all the new stuff I’ve done for myself lately but I have had a number of commissions I’ve been working on recently. If you’re on instagram you’ve seen them come together, but I’ll put together another new blog post (I promise it won’t be 4 month this time…) with all of that stuff.