Please Excuse Me While I Die of I Don’t Even Know What

I went to Denver Fabrics with a cosplayer friend of mine. And on the way back we stopped at the Panera Bread a street down from the hotel that hosts NDK. I was really hungry for some mac’n'cheese and Greek salad at the same time and we wanted to figure out what the heck was going on with her Will of the Abyss from Pandora Hearts  for next spring. Last time she made a cupcake dress, we accidentally matched, and she wanted to know if we were going to match again (these things are important.) I’m doing another Amano Kuja for spring next year to celebrate having earned a degree without tearing a hole in existence from stress, and I didn’t have the ref art on my phone, so I Googled it.

Guess what happens when you Google “Yoshitaka Amano Kuja”? My cosplay, third result down. I don’t know how to react to that. But don’t worry, the Crystal is safe.

Shaking the Post-Con Blues?

Thanks to summer semester, I didn’t really notice this until the beginning of this month. But ever since I came back from A-kon in Dallas I’ve been kind of bummed out about cosplay. I can’t think of anything that happened at A-kon that made me feel this way, either. The turnout at the video game cosplay contest was pretty awesome, I cosplayed not one but three of my favorite characters ever, and the heat didn’t make me pass out in any of them, even Kuja. I got to at least see everyone I knew was going to be there, even if we didn’t get to hang out as much as I wanted. Maybe it was because I didn’t find what I was looking for in the dealer’s room?

What am I doing? San Japan’s in less than a month!

Not even working on a Golden Sun cosplay could really get rid of it (especially now that I’ve given myself a couple of second-degree burns.) I’d revisit Dark Dawn, but let’s be honest, I’m already having way more fun making the cosplay than I did playing that game.

So yesterday I told myself that sometimes things are really exciting. Things that aren’t cosplay, things that make cosplay momentarily not as cool in comparison, things that make you want to take your scheduled cosplay work time and use it to work on them instead. And that’s perfectly okay. I have a project I’m working on that, while not related at all to cosplay, makes me Kuja cosplay-level excited. I should just probably accept that until it’s done, I’m just going to have to cosplay only characters I really, really love instead of just kind of love, if I want to get anything done. Problem: neither Amiti nor vampire twin Subaru are quite there.

I’ll get it figured out. I read all of Tokyo Babylon in one sitting (bad plan if depressing manga gets to you) and Amiti is Alex’s kid (spoiler…sorry?)

I’m halfway there.

On a side note, poly velvet burns really nicely. Should I just tell people I burned myself working on the velvet instead of because I dropped a button’s worth of hot glue on my leg while watching The Da Vinci Code? It just sounds more awesome.

Grell Stop Making Me Cosplay You

I’d been told/warned by my friend Saffron that there had been some concept art of a younger Grell released. Long story short, I flipped out because I could now use my soon-to-be-retired first generation Grell wig instead of throwing it out. But I realized that with my costume construction final and styling Studio IV in Baroque/Restoration era clothing for their salon at the governor’s mansion here in Colorado, I would have enough on my plate getting Kuja, Fai, and Albel ready for Akon.

I freaking love Restoration fashion. It’s my favorite. I almost secretly cried during fittings for the Studio IV salon because of the opportunity to dive into that era. I’ve already decided on that era for the first project in which we get to choose our period for Costume Design 2. I don’t even care. Just kidding; if it’s something like Macbeth I think I’ll reconsider. But that’s reconsider.

So I didn’t even look for baby Grell because I just plain knew I didn’t have time. But the day I get home from Studio IV’s dress rehearsal day, I decide to tool around on the interwebs for awhile before turning right around and driving back to campus to work on my 1850s day dress and go see Cyrano in the Loft.

With a prologue like that, I don’t even need to show the concept art.

Look at that. Kind of Restoration era/more Regency/also another fashion era maybe/hey double-breasted coats and waistcoats are cool! Grell. And for Kuroshitsuji, that’s good enough for me because fashion elements from that time period could totally be assigned to a wider range of later decades (all Madam Reds I cosplay with of course been subjected to the whole ‘Madam Red is totally rocking fashion from 19-freakin’-12′ rant.)

I don’t have time for this, Grell. I know we just made up, but seriously. You need to stop attempting to seduce me with your historical costumey ways. Because it’s working.

My Journey into the Mountains to Become a Kung Fu Master

Is why I haven’t been blogging for a very, very long time.

Just kidding. I’m no better at martial arts (and possibly worse) than I was when I took my impromptu vacation from blogging. What did happen was that I fully committed to making costuming my life. Yes, I’m crazy, thank you for asking. But you guys already knew that.

I’d already been working as a shop assistant in my university’s costume shop since late August, and I took costume design 1 in the previous fall. And I had gotten most of my design work on my theater’s touring production of Cyrano de Bergerac out of the way. But then I signed up to work as a dresser on a whim (dun dun dun) for the mainstage production of Rent.

Part one: I almost died. Whoever came up with the idea of three-year batteries for Mitsubishi Eclipses probably had a good reason, but is also now responsible for almost killing me. But I wouldn’t have been driving at 70+ mph on I-25 in Denver on a Saturday night with a zombie battery if I didn’t feel pressured to force myself to like being a photojournalist.

Note: this is what you get when you Google image search 'zombie battery'.

Part two: During the run of Rent, I never thought I could have the two realizations ‘I want to die’ and ‘I could do this for the rest of my life and be happy and feel successful’ at the same time. To be fair, the second thought was about costuming in general, not specifically about being a dresser. Though I did really enjoy the opportunity to work more directly with actors and see exactly how costuming works once the curtain opens. It turned out my experience with cosplay helped me out in ways I couldn’t even guess backstage.

What I’ve also realized is that it’s harder, not easier, to balance cosplay with theatrical costuming. At least with journalism, cosplay was a great creative outlet to escape from that coursework. So I guess that means I kind of like costuming if I still feel strongly about continuing on with both. I’m still getting my B.S. from the officially discontinued School of Journalism and Mass Communication here at CU, but I’m knocking out all but one journalism course over the summer so I can dedicate my time to experience I will need to become a successful costume designer during my last undergrad year.

Right now I’ve just finished a design project that I wanted to include in my portfolio (which the curious can view here: http://www.wix.com/charlotteballar8/charlotteyballard#!), I’m knee-deep in patterning and constructing an 1850s day dress for my costume construction final project, and I’m working on styling the Studio IV class into French and English Baroque/Restoration era fashion for their salon at the governor’s mansion here in Colorado! And, of course, getting some new costumes finished for Akon in June.

I think that my perspective on cosplay will be a little strange now that I’m experiencing costuming from two completely different angles, but I think that’s just going to make my experience with both even better. Now to go wolf down dinner and cut out some flatlining.

greyrondo

Ikkicon V Cosplay Contest Winners Vid

Wanted to get this out earlier, but the thing about cosplay is that it’s one thing to talk about it… and another thing entirely to have a video showing the amazing work done by these cosplayers.

Visit frijebai’s YouTube channel, he’s an awesome guy!

~greyrondo

Microbes and Lace

This semester, we watched Moyashimon in anime club. We picked it for our comedy series and since we played it after Mushi-shi, we called it our ‘microbe power hour’. Apart from me thinking that the Oryzae microbe is the cutest thing since Hello Kitty, it was always refreshing to watch a comedic take on university after a stressful week in one.

And then we got to the last couple of episodes. Everything came together, the series’ episodic insanity made sense thematically, and… spoilers ahead!

This is Kei on the left. That's AU Edward Elric on the right. Just kidding.

Kei’s my favorite character because he had that grounded personality and comparatively subtle humor that made Moyashimon‘s over the top situations believable without detracting from them. But then he totally bailed a few episodes in, leaving me a sad Kei fan and wishing just as much as Sawaki that Kei would pick up his phone and let Sawaki (and me!) know if he’s alive. He’d already pretty much made the ‘I need more casual cosplays!’ list on the second episode.

Remember Kei from the last pic? This is also Kei.

After being gone for half the anime, Kei reappears… looking very nice in full gothic lolita dress. This wouldn’t be a problem for me, except that I loved this series enough already and the ending of the anime was pretty much about going off and finding exactly what it is you want to do, even if people have other plans in mind for you. And as far as going off and finding exactly what I want to do, this is a pretty important semester for me.

Naturally, I had an immediate, instinctive ‘MUST COSPLAY!’ reaction. So basically, I can’t get my mind to accept cosplaying a female character no matter how much I love her, but Kei here brings out that part of me that always wanted to be a gothic lolita.

~greyrondo

Images from animesuki.com, are-are.net, concretebadger.net

Wigs vs. Real Hair

Not cosplay: I’ve gotten a haircut. Cosplay: a friend of mine who knows me very well asked me Friday over lunch if I had gotten it cut for the sake of cosplay.

Which got me thinking about using a wig versus using your real hair for cosplay, especially in the context of your first cosplay thanks to the First Cosplay Saga.

I’m biased towards the ‘always use a wig, all the time’ for my personal cosplay, for two reasons.

1) None of my characters ever go anywhere near my natural hair so some terrible, permanent things in the way of bleach and dye and extensions would have to happen.

2) I spent the first two years of my cosplay life in Houston, Texas, where the humidity teams up with your hair specifically to make your life resemble a circle of Hell. So even if my hair looked just like the character’s in the hotel room, it would be gone as soon as I stepped outside (or even into a different climate controlled environment). I used half of my real hair once, and this is what happened:

Check out those bangs on my right side. What are they even doing? I have no idea.

Wigs are flexible, but they are not one size fits all. And a majority of the time, proper wig adjustments don’t happen during your first cosplay between one thing and another. The first time you wear a wig for cosplay, chances are decent you haven’t worn a wig for an eight to ten hour stretch before. This, combined with the fact that typical anime hairstyles will do things like block half your normal vision or your peripheral vision, will give you a headache the first couple of times. And I can’t stress enough that your first cosplay is supposed to be fun, not irritating.

But you can’t get over the fact that, with proper maintenance, you have total control what your ‘hair’ looks like and you usually only have to do it once. And depending on the cosplay, having the right hair is even more important for character recognition than the clothes themselves.

Did I get my hair cut for cosplay, like my friend had guessed? No. But later that day, I snuck into anime club just in time for Durarara! after attending another event. Afterwards, a girl told me she was two seconds away from shouting out “Izaya-kun!’

Needless to say, the fear that I’ll look like that weirdo is enough to make sure that I never skip the mascara in the morning. But if I can get that while wearing makeup, a peacoat, and skinny jeans, I’m not going to bother with my wig at Ikkicon. So here’s my official position. If you have the exact hair you need and you know it’s not going to try anything funny, go for it. But put a wig on your to-buy list for when you grow out of your hairstyle, but not your favorite character.

~greyrondo

Planning is Important

Now let me reiterated this:  planning is very, very, important.

I spend a good three to four months without a sewing machine every six months, and then, I leave myself with only four weeks to complete a full costume in.  When working in such a small time frame (and that really is, comparing to the complexity and level of work that I am pushing for with my current costumes), I have to plan every moment out and try to maximize the time I do have.

As a business student, I’m good with scheduling time and working through errors, but the amount of preparation you can do is key.  I make sure to finalize a design months in advance.  I, then, go through the fabric I have and figure out what fabric I need to purchase.  The new few months are spent looking for the perfect fabric combinations.

Typically, I begin to plan any props or the costume itself after that.  I make patterns from discarded newspapers (I use the Wall Street Journal) for anything I don’t already have a pattern for.  Also, I take to making replicas of my props, like Midori’s blade Dragonblossom, from cardboard and poster board to decide what needs to be worked on.

I do all of this so that when I do have time with a sewing machine, it’ll be a much smoother and quicker process to finish the costumes I want to make.

 

<3 amara

Happy Golden Sun 3 Day!

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is out! I don’t have a Nintendo DS. I was waiting for GS:DD to come out before I got one, and then the release caught me by surprise, so I won’t be playing until that changes. So far I’ve heard that it’s pretty dialogue-heavy, which doesn’t bother me at all. Since my love for Golden Sun has been around even longer than Kingdom Hearts and I played GS before I had even touched Final Fantasy, I feel that if I can’t play the game, the least I could do is cosplay.

I got a lot of work for classes done over Thanksgiving so I could come home and get ‘Arcanus’ finished for Ikkicon. Though I’m back to work now, I did have a pretty successful day yesterday. I finished his cloak, skirt/pants (they remind me of the riding pants ladies would wear in the 1800s), and got through about half of his tunic.

It all went really quickly because apparently I was in the mood to tell fabric what to do, so everything except for the tunic spent most of its time as  a rectangle of fabric that I gathered/pleated/steamed into submission.

So, everything drapes nicely on a person but looks a bit off when I drape it onto the floor to take photos. Just one more reason to get a dress form (but mostly I want one so I can be super-neurotic and set all of my sleeves by hand. Seriously, it’s really fun.)

Looks like a full skirt, but they’re pants, I swear. Basically just four yards of fabric shoved onto an elastic waistband and hemmed because I wanted them to go up to my natural waist, but his tunic hits at mid-thigh. This is not the time of year when I enjoy making extra work for myself.

Also a bunch of rectangles. The dark blue has a touch enough of indigo to distinguish it from the navy of the pants, since my interpretation of the official art tells me they’re supposed to be two very subtly different tones. The cloak took much longer than the pants, due to the fusible interfacing on the lining and topstitching to make sure the lining didn’t bag out awkwardly from the cloak. Trim is absolutely stolen from Kuja, since when I bought that trim I had the total yardage of trim in my head, and didn’t take into account that I might want to use a couple of different trims on Final Fantasy’s peacock. To get the cloak to turn from a rectangle into something that would sit–and stay–on my shoulders, there’s a series of huge knife pleats underneath the hood. The hood was originally constructed to be functional like my Fai cloak, but I decided that I didn’t want to give myself the option of screwing up Alex’s wig with a hood. So I installed gathering lines on either end and flipped it so that the French seam holding the two halves together wasn’t showing.

My next chance to work on him is on Friday. I don’t think he’ll take longer than one more dedicated work day, so we’ll see what happens! I broke out the frock coat pattern to get a base sleeve for his tunic, so maybe Fai’s coat will see some progress fairly soon.

~greyrondo

First Cosplay Saga, Chapter 2

On Wednesday night, we met at IHOP because that late at night, there aren’t any options in suburbia.  The server now thinks I’m this guy’s life coach because he saw me scribbling down the 2011 Texas convention schedule and asked what we were doing.

So I presented him with a couple of options. We started talking about what convention he should shoot for, and then we got onto the conversation of bought/commissioned cosplay. I told him that it was an option he could definitely consider for his first cosplay so that he could figure out if the convention and character side of cosplay was for him without considering construction quite yet. This is an important consideration since the cosplay he chose is fairly ornate and I was afraid of him burning out on his first one.

But we talked about how cool it is to know how to do stuff and make things, and so we ultimately decided that he would be commissioning the weapons only and he would shoot for San Japan, which gives him seven months. And if he needs more, then there’s Afest and Oni-Con before the end of the year.

So I gave him homework before our next meeting during Christmas:

1. Learn to sew. That sounds really rough, but he doesn’t have to worry about anything insane for this cosplay. I knew he’d be fine when he told me he wanted to learn how to install zippers.
2. Get a commercial pattern that best fits the fabric part of the cosplay and do a mock-up in cotton muslin. This will help with #1 and it’ll also give him a base from which to learn how to do alterations for cosplay.
3. Read through THIS craft foam cosplay tutorial. If he feels particularly ambitious, get started on posterboard patterns for all the armor.

Of course, he’s not just going off and doing this on his own. I recommended additional published resources and I’ll be busy with Ikkicon stuff, but not too busy to translate commercial pattern gibberish into plain English!

~greyrondo