Back from the Dead (But not really)

Hey fam, it’s time for a long-overdue welcome back to my site! I know the pandemic & quarantine have hit a lot of us hard, and I’m thankful that my family and I have stayed safe and healthy through it, and the few folks in our circle that did get it didn’t have any major complications. That said, my motivation to do much of anything cosplay related was definitely at an all-time low, which is part of why it’s been so long since I’ve done much in the way of updating my site here.

But things are looking up! I’ve gotten my first dose of vaccine and while conventions still won’t be happening for a while the spring weather has definitely lifted my spirits! I don’t exactly have any solid cosplay plans for the near future, but I have been working on a number of other projects, and I’ve even had a couple of commissions that I’m looking forward to sharing with all of you in the coming weeks.

For today, however, I mostly wanted to point out a few new things happening around the site and as per usual, direct you all to my instagram where you can see all the stuff I’ve been making during quarantine.

---

First off, for those of you who like cool, weird, whimsical creatures, you should check out my Cryptobiology page!

The page is an ever-expanding field guide to magical creatures from a variety of fandoms, mythology, folklore, and even some from my own imagination. There you’re find photos of these lovely beasties as well as a collection of information about each species. Generally speaking, I will be posting one new creature every 1-2 weeks on Monday, doing a creature feature on my instagram under the hashtag #magicalmenageriemonday.

---

Second, while I don’t have any new cosplays to show you, I did finally update my Prop Gallery to include a bunch of cool items I’ve made over the last couple of years and failed to add to the gallery since, so if you’re just hoping to see a bunch of cool cosplay props like these without me talking at you, go check out the Prop Gallery.

---

Last up is my plan for a series of blog posts on here about my only recent costume, an OC mage of mine whose outfits I’ve been mulling over for a while. Next week will be the first one to show off his new(ish) outfit, and I’d like to do a few supplemental posts about some of the magical objects he has, as well as some other info about the character. I hope you all enjoy learning about him!
And here’s a sneak preview to hold you all over until then ~_^

That’s all you get to see now, you’ll have to wait until next week to see the rest! Until then, stay safe and enjoy the newly-arrived springtime!

Toss a Coin to your Stitcher

Happy 2020 everyone! The new con season started off great this year, with a fun whirlwind of an Ohayocon. I debuted two new cosplays, made a new friend, got to see lots of awesome people and great cosplays! So, enough chitchat, let’s get to some photos!

The first new cosplay I did for Ohayo was a casual one, Alexander from FGO in his outfit from “The Pharoh’s Great Winter Thanksgiving Festival.” It was a simple and comfy outfit, but considering we haven’t even gotten this CE on the global server yet, and he’s a relatively minor character, only one person recognized who I was (granted she also is a friend of mine who saw me working on it so she already knew anyway shrug).

I think my favorite thing here is Bucephalus (his horse) lol. I do hope to eventually do his official outfit and make his sword, I feel like I might be more recognizable with it but who knows. My friends and I are also assembling a crew with the youger and older versions of both Alex/Iskandar and Waver/El Melloi II which should be a fun group to hang out with.

---

The second new cosplay was much more involved (considering I ordered most of Alex so all I had to do was style his wig and cut a pair of pants into shorts), and it’s one who I’ve been wanting to cosplay since I played the game he appears in. I’m talking about Teb from Horizon Zero Dawn!

I immediately fell in love with this precious cinnamon bun, I mean who wouldn’t? Construction on this cosplay was really interesting given a lot of the details involved. The pouch and several sections of his belt are all woven, which I actually hand-wove myself with cotton webbing and strips of real leather for the front section of the belt.

The second fun/weird bit was all of the tubing involved in the costume. There’s red tubing around the openings in his vest, he has bits of tubing around his neck, and there are a bunch of different types of tubes on his belt. I ended up getting a few different types online, and ended up using all of them in different places. The ref tubes on his vest are actually rubber, so they flex more easily (which is helpful for getting the vest on & off), and the more plastic-y tubes, along with some other rubber pieces were used on his belt to give it some nice variety. All in all I like how it came out. I was worried about the machine parts strapped to his shins but even those were relatively easy when I figured out how to do them. They’re just sections of EVA foam with plasti-dip on it that I then painted. I did have to be careful though, cause they clicked then I walked if I didn’t have a wide enough gait. It felt kinda like I was walking like a cowboy but at least I didn’t destroy them!

Once again, I wasn’t much recognized, and sadly I never found an Aloy while I was in him (but of course I found one immediately after I changed out of him), but I still loved wearing him, he’s actually pretty comfortable (besides the weird walking), and he makes me happy, even if almost no one knew who I was. I also got a couple of nice photos thanks to my wonderful friend Andrew.

---

Aside from that, the con was a lot of fun, and like I mentioned before, I made an awesome new friend who was cosplaying Oliver from Ni No Kuni on Sunday! I recognized them and their partner as the Bastion cosplayers I ran into at Matsuri last year and we slowly spiraled down the rabbit hole as we discovered how many overlapping fandoms we have.

Here’s Jynx’s awesome Oliver cosplay! We’ve also been discussing a Pyre group together for next year and I’m super stoked about it!!

---

There were lots of other great cosplay I saw so here’s a selection from the weekend!

I hope all of your years are starting off well! I have a few commissions I’ll be working on over the next couple of weeks so you can follow my instagram for regular updates. See you next time!

Hang Onto Your Shorts!

Hey everyone, not too much to report post-Youmacon as my commission load is rather light at the moment, but I did want to show off what I have been working on! I was commissioned for several Chrono Trigger items, all of which I’m super stoked to be doing!

First up is Lucca Ashtear’s helmet and blaster!

For the helmet, I used a baseball cap to pattern the cap bit on top, and used craft/EVA foam for the gold parts. The thicker sections are made from the EVA foam floor tiles. The studs all over it are round pearl embellishments from the scrapbooking section (which I got super cheap when Pat Catan’s was closing, bonus!!) I used wire for the antenna and the microphone, using worbla to reinforce several parts of the microphone. The big round gem/orb thing on the side is half of a clear plastic ornament; pro-tip, if you’re using one of these paint the inside! It make it so the paint literally can’t be damaged, and you get a nice, smooth, shiny outside surface! With all of that, I used Plasti-Dip to seal everything (except the gem, I attached that after the fact) and painted it!

The gun was made in layers to get all of the details. The center layer is MDF (I believe .25”), then there’s a layer of hard board on either side, then layers of EVA and craft foam to flesh out the rest of the contouring. The barrel is a slice of cardboard tube and the round bubble-like piece is a resin gem I cast a while back that I happen to have two of. They were the right size and shape so they fit the bill!

As you can see a good bit of dremeling went into she shaping, since most of the sections of the gun are rounded.

And at last you can see the two finished pieces together!

---

I still have two more pieces to complete, but they are both jewelry so they will be smaller and somewhat simpler, but hopefully no less awesome!! As always, you can follow my instagram @mikeydoescosplay to get updates as they happen! I have a vending even coming up in a couple of weeks so you probably won’t see too much new cosplay stuff until after that’s over.