Närcon cosplay plans revealed! - Hakama warriors overload

I realized there's less than a week left for Närcon and hey guuuuuys, that means I should get my cosplay plans out in the air, right yo? Yes yo! So here we go!

Thursday

Series: Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan

Character: Toshizo Hijikata

The demon Vice-Commander returns again!
A con is not a con without a Hakuouki day (or well, half-day in Sannan's case) with Sairu-chan and Jäätynyt Enkeli! 8D
I can't wait for this!!

Friday

Series: Bakumatsu Renka Shinsengumi

Character: Souji Okita

I really enjoyed wearing this cosplay at Skecon so I decided Okita deserves to see a bigger convention too - Närcon! I just hope my armor won't die...
Oh oh oh, I will also be part of the "Episka cosplayschacket" (epic cosplay chess) on Friday as Okita so if you are going to watch it (I highly recommend it!) keep an eye out for me! ;D

Saturday

Series: Rurouni Kenshin

Character: Kenshin Himura (Battousai)

On Saturday you can say hello or not to the friendly or not manslayer. :DD
Kenshin is a comfortable cosplay to wear and I guess on Saturday I will be pretty adfgsafg on the morning from already having cosplayed 2 days so I'd rather have a cosplay that's pretty easy to put on and chill to wear. Yup. Now if I could find my tekkou before Närcon..

And in case I ain't a complete "fuck this cosplay shit"-zombie on Sunday morning then my Sunday cosplay will be...

Sunday

Series: Sengoku Basara

Character: Masamune Date (kimono)

Yup, kimono!Masamune gets to see new air from being in the closet since last year's Animecon! *blows away dust carefully*
Super chill cosplay to put on and shouldn't be much of a problem to wear either.. except for the fact that I'll be half-blind yey.

...
......
*drum roll*
HAKAMA. EVERYWHERE.
I KNOW. :DD I will be cursing everytime I have to go to the bathroom...

But I promise I have a reason for having this line-up and that's because all these characters have interchangeable cosplay parts between each other in some way.
For example Masamune's white kimono and blue hakama can be used for BRS Okita as well as Hijikata's hakama can be used for Kenshin and the shinsengumi haori is obviously multi-purpose. Also Hijikata's sword belt works for BRS Okita's, well, sword belt too. xD Not to mention all the characters except Kenshin can use the same shoes and Hijikata's swords are generic enough to work for all these guys!
This means I'll save a lot of luggage space which is always appreciated, especially when I'm going to a far-away con.

I guess that's about it, I hope I will see more Finns at the con so if you are attending Närcon too then write a comment here! :D I will be camping with Jäätynyt Enkeli and Sairu-chan and it would be cool to have a "Finnish corner" or something haha!

Let's go to Närcon guys!

Dokuganryu, you have too many swords - pt.1

On 21st June I started working on Masamune's six "dragon claw" swords while I was at mom's place over the Midsummer.

Masamune Date, "Dokuganryu" (One-eyed Dragon)

The first thing I did was a sword pattern on cardboard paper so that I would get all six swords as identical as possible. To my help I used a decoration katana to trace the curve of the blade.

Blade traced

I drew the tsuka (handle) by free hand and then I marked where the blade starts and tsuka ends with a line across and cut the pattern out.

Cut out sword pattern "they see me rollin' they hatin'" style

My stepdad went outside to find some usable wooden planks for me and he cut and trimmed them to a fitting size with a machine. When I got the first ready plank I took it inside, picked up a pencil and tape and taped my sword pattern on it and traced it to the wood. I made sure to avoid the "branch spots" as much as possible when tracing because those are weak points...
Oh, I added a few millimeters width to both sides of the tsuka on all the swords to make it stand out a little bit more; my paper pattern had blade and tsuka same width.

One sword shape traced into wood

Soon enough he was done fixing the planks (yay thanks!) and I had seven sword-to-be's to, well, turn into swords.

Yes, there's one extra just in case I mess up.. and if I don't I'll save it for a future cosplay instead ~

I traced the sword shape to all the wood planks and then took them outside for sawing.. with a jigsaw.

Hello my friend <3

Sawing in progress..

One sword cut out!

The first two swords took some time to saw out but then I figured how to place the plank and stuff and so the remaining ones went much quicker. Of course when I had the three first ones done I had to try Masamune style sword wielding!

It works but it's pretty uncomfortable at this early stage... xD

At this point I got called inside for Midsummer dinner so I took a break and good that, my back was hurting. I returned some time later to saw out the remaining three more that I needed. The seventh extra sword I didn't cut out.

Sword gathering!
(all swords are spruce except the one farthest to the left which is black alder)

That was all the progress I did on the first day. I worked on some other cosplay parts the following days but on 26th June I continued a little. I took one of the swords and with a rasp in hand I started filing the blade shape onto it. After the blade shape was okay I took some rougher grit sand paper and sanded the blade edge nicer.

Blade taking form (rasp use)

The sword in the front has been filed and sanded (blade edge only)

That day I didn't feel like fixing the other swords because I was doing Okita's armor at the same time and it had an earlier deadline (read: Skecon 5-7 July) than Masamune, so yeah. But today on 29th June I went ahead and filed and sanded the remaining 5 swords and gosh do my hands hurt now! Yes, I did it all by hand because I'm dumb and want to do it the way I'm used to. :DD There would have been tools (like a mini/hand-size carpenter's plane and a machine-sander-thing, you know, those that look a bit like an iron and I mean that iron you iron clothes with. lol) which would have made it easier but lolnope, I always do things the hard way and now my sore arms thank me for that. But I can't help it that I prefer to have maximum "hand/touch/feel/whatever precision control" when working with wood, if that even makes sense. But at least I got the job done!

Filed (aka shaped) and roughly sanded blade edges

More progress should get done soon enough and feel free to kick me in the butt if I don't so stay tuned!

A plastic hell

Remember how I back in 6th April started working on Masamune's leg armors? Well, I've been slowly working on them over the last few month and now I figured I'll put all the rest of the progress in a single long follow-up post. Here goes!

Way back on 5th April I continued the leg armor work by drawing a pattern for the knee cap part of the armor. I had to make a few versions before I came up with one that seemed right. The early ones had a dent at the middle but I scrapped that idea on the final version.

The final pattern version

 With the pattern at hand I took the polystyrene and cut out two pieces...

... and then came the heat gun treatment to shape the plastic.

After having shaped the knee parts of the armor I took one of the leg pieces and tried the fit against it. I had to go reshape the knee parts a few times to get them to fit as well as possible and without leaving "empty space" where the bent parts of both pieces met.

Testing the fit

Over 5th April and the two following days I was struggling with trying to find some method to glue the pieces together. I tried several different adhesives that we had available at mom's place on scrap pieces but nothing seemed to work and the despair-&-frustration meter was rising fast.

I tried hot glue, construction adhesive (?), pvc glue, epoxy resin and allround glue... and nothing worked. Fuck. :)

I kind of left it at this point for some days in frustration to try and come up with what to try now. On 23rd April I was feeling like going through hell again trying once more. I thought that if I gave the surface a rough treatment with some sand paper maybe it would maybe make a difference at how well the glues would stick. But of course before trying any glues on the actual armor parts. I had to draw some marks where the glue would sit and thus also where to sand.

Edges marked...

... and sanded.

On the same day my stepdad had been cool and bought some kind of glue that claimed it would stick to polystyrene.

Equipped with a glue that gave me hope I decided to tackle the damn plastic again, but this time trying the glue on the actual armor parts and not just scrap pieces as before. So with a helping hand from stepdad we glued the knee caps to the armor pieces at the marked lines and secured them to dry over the night.

You better be stuck together when I return... *glare*

About 24 hours later on the next day (24th April) I returned to check if the glue had done what it claimed it could and low and behold, the pieces didn't separate even after I tried to bend and put some pressure on them!

I could have been happy at this point.. but colored by the reminder of earlier gluing failures and some justified iffyness I decided to be extra-super-duper safe and reinforce the part that attaches the knee cap to the leg armor with some rivets. So on 26th April I marked where to drill the armors.

Holes marked with a pencil. There's 4 holes.

After drilling.

Actually my stepdad did this next part for me, namely inserting the rivets with a hand riveting tool.

Hand riveting tool

First we tried a rivet on scrap pieces just to check that it worked, which it did. Then we put rivets on the actual armor.

Front with rivets (surface paint cracked a bit)

Backside

I quickly realized the backside of the rivets would probably get really uncomfortable because they stick out and well, having them pressing against my legs all day in cosplay can't be a very pleasant experience. Stepdad then showed it was possible to cut off parts of the backside of the rivets if you were careful not to hit that thing in the center. He went ahead and trimmed the rivet backsides before I even knew of it some hours later while I was in my former room (this was while I still lived at mom's place) doing something else; he did it without me knowing. xD

A "trimmed" rivet backside

A few days later, on 29th April, I noticed that the paint didn't stick that well to the polystyrene. It was possible to peel it off with your nails or something semi-sharp.

Oh crap...

Again I thought that if I sanded the surface the paint would stick on better. I used some sanding paper with a very high number, super fine grit.

Preparations - sanding papers, armors and a chunk of finnfoam to wrap sanding paper around

Front leg armors front sanded

Back leg armors front sanded

I left them in this sorry state for some time because I moved away from mom's place into my own apartment and thus couldn't work on my Masamune cosplay as often as before. But on 12th May I returned to work a few hours!

Because of the earlier sanding there was dust of the spray spread over the armor surfaces and so, to clean it, I had to use white spirit.

I just used some tissue paper, put some white spirit on it and wiped the surfaces clean of dust. After that I let them dry for around 2 hours outside and then returned to recoat the fronts of all the armor pieces.

Newly sprayed coat of paint on top front sides

I left them to dry over the night because I had to leave for my apartment. It took me until 8th June before I got another chance to work on these again and when I returned mom had told me some things that sounded weird and bad. "The color is flaking everywhere." I had heard and I wasn't sure what she meant until I got there and saw the armor pieces. The fronts which I had treated and recoated earlier were as fine as ever but the backsides -which I had left completely untreated after sanding the surfaces- had pooed black flakes basically everywhere and even the slightest touch let lose a dark cloud of them!

Maximum flaking. Fuck. :)

I tried softly rubbing my finger against the flaking surface and...

... almost all of the (sanded) spray coat fell right off!

And on all the untreated back sides to boot!

Nothing to do but to let lose a few curse words mentally and give the back the same white spirit and recoat treatment I had given the front sides quite long ago.

On 24th June I decided to try them on and crossed my fingers but somehow I had a feeling it wouldn't go well. Guess if I was right? :DD
Before starting I cut out lengths of white cotton ribbon and sat down on the floor and started tying the armors on one of my legs. I started with the backside armor and at first everything seemed alright but when I started with the front armor I noticed things started screwing up. First of the armors wouldn't stay where intended and they would constantly turn to either the right or left and, secondly, the lower ties would slide down if I moved and sometimes if I didn't -.- and thus the armor would "pop out". I guess it slides down because the surface is kinda... plasticy/slippery (there's no grip) and because feet get narrower closer to the ankle. Frustrating to say the least.

Testing. Notice backside armor has "popped out" from the lower tie..

I also noticed that the backside armor had flaked some paint off in strips at the high tension bending point, the middle.

The front armor didn't flake though. I'm pretty annoyed because this means I likely have to come up with something else for the armor and I'm running short on time. I can probably still use the front piece but I would have to replace the backside armors with something with a rougher/uneven/non-slippery surface so that they won't slide around and shit. I guess I will try mutilating a roll mat...

Samurai armor

Yesterday I started making Masamune's samurai style upper arm armor. Of course before starting I looked at a lot of my Masamune references and two of them were these:

Okay, inconsistent references anyone? I looked at most of my references and the color of Masamune's lacing changed from white to brown and I think I saw blue somewhere and in the anime there is none at all. Also the amount of lacing rows and armor plates seemed inconsistent too the more different pictures I looked at... oh come on!

There's just three rows of armor plates on this figure..

So instead of trying to figure out the "real way" Masamune's upper arm armor was supposed to be I decided to take some artistic liberties and just do some free designing inspired by actual samurai armor. Yeah, you could say I thought "to hell with 100% character accuracy" and saved myself more headache from ever-changing references by doing my own take on the armor. Oh, but before that I googled "samurai armor" and got inspired. I payed attention to the different ways the lacing was done.

Samurai armor
(photo found on Google)

When I felt I had an idea on what I was soon to be working on I decided to let it roll!
First thing I did was to make a mini size armor out of paper and draw a lot of dots on it; the dots would be the holes for the lacing.

Paper armor test pattern

I didn't count or plan how many holes I needed in advance. I just marked the holes while I went on and added or changed the spacing if I noticed something didn't look right. When I felt I had something that might work I cut out the paper pattern, cut it in half, took a sewing needle and thread and started to improvice "lacing it" to check if I had enough holes.

My "lacing" test with a sewing needle and thread

I decided three armor plates were enough and four rows of lacing. By the way, my mini paper armor had just two rows, I cut it in half.
   When I thought about it I figured I wouldn't want the threads to start at the showing side of the armor so I made extra holes on the top plate so that the lace would start/end on the inside instead.

Now it's better ~

After experimenting with the mini paper armor test for a while I felt confident enough to start making the real deal. I used polystyrene sheets for the armor and measured and cut out two pieces. I also marked on the inside some faint pencil lines where each plate would start and end.

Cut out armor pieces

With the pieces cut out I went outside to shape them with a heat gun. I wanted a nice bend in the middle, but not a very sharp one. The heat forming succeeded very well.

Shaped armor pieces ~

The reason why I decided to shape the armor while it was still a single piece, instead of cutting it into the three plates and heat forming them individually, was to make sure all three soon-to-be plates would have the same curve to them and fit on top of each other, with a slight overlap, when assembled later.

Next thing I did was that I cut the big piece into three parts along the marked cutting lines on the inside. After cutting the big piece I now had three separate plates and, well, I drew a lot of dots on them. I used my former mini paper armor as a reference for the hole placement.

My three armor plates filled with hole markings..

... and now to make them into, well, holes.

Hello drill ~

I took a scrap piece of polystyrene and drilled two holes in it just to check if it worked. It worked like a charm, no cracks or problems whatsoever and easy to drill through! Yay!

Drill test

I took the scrap piece with me and went inside to find some suitable ribbon or cord for lacing. I didn't find any cords so I set for ribbon instead. I took what we had at home and the best I could find was this 5 mm white glossy ribbon. I tried threading it through the holes to check if the hole was big enough for the ribbon to run through freely but still not too big and well..

.. it was pretty much perfect!

Okay, so I was ready to drill holes. But before I did that I wanted to sand the edges a bit because they were a bit rough from the cutting. Sanding worked pretty okay on polystyrene.

After smoothing the edges a bit

And now.. well.. time to drill! Of course I did the drilling (and sanding) outside.

First armor piece drilled

A lot of drilling and frozen fingers later I had armor plates full of holes. No joke.

So many.. holes...!

That was all the progress I did yesterday. Today when I woke up I went to continue with the armors and well, next up was to paint them. I used the same black semi gloss spray paint as before.. I've used up more than half the bottle already, oops. I gave the showing side a coating first and let them dry for some time on my makeshift working table outside in the "car garage".

Newly sprayed with the first coating

Some time later I returned to paint the inside of the armors after the outside had dried.

Inside sprayed with paint

When the inside was dry I turned all the plate pieces over and noticed that while the showing side had been drying the spray paint had slowly flowed from the sides towards the middle bend. Also some of the paint had gathered at the very sides and left these small build-ups.

Gravity, I hate you sometimes.

This demonstrates the "flowing paint problem" (lighter parts, not full coverage)
and the "spray paint build-up".

Oh well, a second coating easily fixed the first problem.. but the spray paint build-up was still visible underneath because well.. there is more paint there, duh. Oh well, I didn't feel like trying to sand it down or anything and it doesn't bother me so much anyway so whatever.
While the second paint coating was drying I decided to move my makeshift table, with the armors, out in the sunshine so that the paint would dry quicker. It seemed like a great idea... until a random strong gust of wind appeared and blew all my armor pieces into the snow. My face was like:

Yeeeeeah...

Luckily most pieces had already dried enough not to have the snow get stuck everywhere but well, one of the plates got these "snow was here" bubble prints on the surface and it bothered me.. so I sprayed over them.

Oh well, after all plates were dry I took them inside and begun lacing them together with the ribbon. I burned the ends of the ribbon each time I cut it so that it wouldn't unravel. Oh, and about the lacing, I didn't use any "historically accurate" or whatever way to lace it, I just improvised and used some real samurai armor pictures as inspiration/guiding.

Burning ribbon ends

Two rows of lacing done

The lacing process was pretty tedious and took me a few hours. I was very careful with making sure that the ribbon didn't twist itself at any point during the lacing; I wanted it to lay neat and straight. Every time there was any error I undid parts of the lacing until everything was right and the ends I just tied together in the back.

This is what my armor looked like when done:

Finished Masamune samurai armor pieces ~

I must say I'm really happy with how these turned out! I know they are not exact replicas of the ones Masamune wears (and you know that too if you read what I wrote at the beginning of the post) but I like them like this, 20% cooler ~