Showing posts with label Rentarou Satomi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rentarou Satomi. Show all posts

September 8, 2016

Black Bullet Rentarou Satomi cosplay test

Hi there!

A couple weeks ago or so I had a realization – remember my Rentarou Satomi cosplay? Yeah, the one I finished but haven't debuted yet. Yeah, that one. I suddenly remembered that, even though the cosplay is done, I haven't ever actually tried it on. Now that needed to change!

Character reference.
Today I had some free time so I decided to do a quick costest to see what the whole shebang looked like when worn. And by quick I mean quick – I lazied out on all makeup, save for eyeliner and darkening my eyebrows; I honestly just can't be bothered when I don't have a photographer at hand because yeah, it won't show well on crummy self-taken mirror pics anyway...

I know that his eyes are actually blue in the manga but I'm only familiar with the anime and in it his eyes are brown. I thus decided to go with brown eyes and, besides, I think it looks better anyway.
The lenses I'm using in this costest are the I.Fairy Ruby Brown but, sadly, I will have to throw them away soon since they'll expire. It's one of my favorite brown lenses for cosplay purposes. :)

Obligatory cosplay selfie.
I originally had another wig for Rentarou but it was wayyyyyyy too small for my head and so I had to buy another. The previous wig was a bit nicer when it came to the colors but it was basically child-size for me so I couldn't even get it to stay on my head, ugh. ._. So yeah, this new wig I bought from a random Chinese eBay seller and, much to my surprise, it's actually wearable! It's still a bit tight (I can't use the hooks at all) but it shouldn't give me any major headaches. I sometimes quite often wish I had a smaller head because buying from eBay is pretty 50/50 for me if I get a wig that fits me or not...

As I said, I had no photographer available so to get any kind of full body shots I had to use the mirror, which also means that everything's reversed so yeah, it appears like the jacket's stripe is on the wrong side etc – it's not in reality. I apologize for the shitty yellow light, the mirror is placed on the bathroom door and there's only a crappy yellow light there (the window is too far away to really help bring in any natural light).



I'm not happy with the shoes because the blue colors are much more gray-based than the jacket so yeah, they don't match. :/ I'm thinking about repainting the shoes but I'm not sure what would work since the shoes are made of some kind of faux leather; need to research into that...

Regarding the debut of this cosplay I don't have a set con in mind, but I've been considering to get Rentarou debuted before this year is over – I still have a couple cons left to attend that would require a warm cosplay and Rentarou would fit the bill; the jacket is warmer than it looks so this cosplay would be a good choice unless I suddenly get inspiration to do something else, which happens way too often...

That's about all I had to say for this round ~
Are there any other Black Bullet cosplayers out there?

March 14, 2016

Black Bullet Rentarou Satomi's gun

Hello cosplayers!

As some of you might remember I've mentioned cosplaying Rentarou Satomi from Black Bullet for a while ago. The thing is that I actually already have the whole outfit completed and my original plans was to debut him already last summer but yeah, I chose not to debut him back then because I was missing the gun. The gun is such an important part that I didn't feel okay going without it and well, I'm horrible at coming up with poses to do without a prop anyway. xD And besides, the series is not called Black Bullet for no reason – aka going without his trusty weapon felt pretty much the same as going without pants, lol.

Rentarou reference.
Rentarou Satomi uses a Springfield Armory XD as his primary gun and in the series he says that it's just "a normal gun". Well, it might not be completely normal in the series either but I tell you that it's a fucking nightmare to find one for cosplay purposes!! I've spent over half a year, on and off, searching for something suitable and oh lord is it stupidly hard to come by. I've plowed through eBay multiple times with no results, I've checked all airsoft online shops that I know of (within Europe) and I've even checked toy stores for toy guns both online and in real life. 

My original plan was to buy an airsoft replica of a close-enough gun, but the more I thought about it the more I didn't feel like spending 1500 SEK on a prop, for a cosplay that I likely won't use all that much just not worth it. It would have been different if I had been an airsoft player too but sadly I'm not, although I do have an interest in trying it at least. Oh and for those curious the guns I were eyeing for Rentarou were either this one or this; I know that they are not 100% accurate but they were the closest I could find. (note: Swedish store. Those were the only Springfield Armory guns they carried)

Rentarou's gun reference.
After deciding that even though an airsoft replica would have been the most ideal choice it was by far out of what I was willing to pay for a single prop. My next choice was to check for a similar toy gun online and oh lord I won't even tell how many online stores I went through without finding anything even remotely similar; at some point I thought that it would be okay if I could at least find a damn glock but even that was seemingly too much to ask for. I don't know what's up with the miniscule amount of toy guns (you pretty much only find revolvers, cowboy guns and some smaller-than-real-deal pistols or shot guns, if lucky) currently on the market but I guess it has something to do with the heated debates about if it's morally right for children to play with toy guns. I do have my opinions about that but I won't open up my wordy chest about it here because that's not the purpose of this post and yeah, I could easily do a whole blog post about it. xD 
Feel free to skip until the next block of text but yeah, for those really curious I can say that I support kids playing with toy guns and that's mainly because I see nothing wrong with it – kids don't think about death etc the same way adults do. I remember as a kid I'd play war with my best childhood friend during school breaks and we made pretend guns with our fingers and yeah, when we shot each other we just pretended to fall down, counted to 10 and then we could continue playing again. It was never violent or unfair in any way, just fun and a way to up our reaction speeds and imagination. So yeah, even though I played that kind of games as a kid I grew up to be a normal adult who knows what's wrong and right. Playing with toy guns doesn't make you a murderer or whatever and especially not if you otherwise had a good upbringing; I'm sure parenting and environment plays a bigger role than what toys you had when young. That's all for this quickie opinion. :)

Because I couldn't find any toy guns neither online or in physical toy stores I gave up on finding a gun for a while and just put this costume on ice. I even tried to find some damaged second-hand or otherwise non-functional airsoft guns on auction sites that I could use because yeah, I just needed it for looks and not for use; I found some reparation project guns but none had the general shape I was looking for.
I even tried to look for those brightly colored plastic practice guns but yeah, couldn't find those either on eBay in the right models...

Anime screenshot of Rentarou pointing his gun.
I've noticed that Rentarou's gun isn't consistent in the anime either so yeah, at some point I just decided "screw perfect accuracy" and decided on just finding whatever fake gun that I could that was as cheap as possible and that I could modify to fit, if necessary. I thought that most people would probably not even pay as much attention to it than I would – as long as I had a damn gun that would be better than none at all, lol. What you mean I got sick of hours upon hours of fruitless searches? :DD

I also checked online for an actual character prop gun for cosplay purposes but the only store that showed up seemed so fishy and the photos looked stolen anyway so yeah, I wasn't too keen on buying from them. Finding cosplay props for that masked guy from Black Bullet was easy but for some reason finding a gun for Rentarou, who's the goddamn main character, is impossible. What the heck?? ლ( `Д’ ლ)

Okay so, it was pretty clear that a toy gun would be the cheapest and still easiest to find. I had plowed through all local toy shops and even checked the multiple second-hand stores several times (that's where I got lucky for my last gun project!). I was annoyed because I found toy guns that would have been suitable if only they had been in the right scale. All good ones were always smaller than their true size!! (I guess so that it would be even more obvious that they were toys)

Official artwork.
I suddenly remembered that those annual outdoor markets in my town used to have toy sellers that carried a nice variety of toy guns! Luckily this came to my mind just a few weeks before one of the markets came to town and so, of course, I headed there with my bro, Frozen Angel. It was on 10th March and the market stands were all closing so only 3 of them were still open when we arrived – but much to my joy two of the still open ones were indeed the toy sellers! I instantly saw that they had an interesting sortiment of toy guns for rather affordable prices. I stood there for probably close to 10 minutes wondering which pistol I should take and when the Finnish guy, who was the seller, came and asked me what I was looking for I even said that I needed a toy gun to finish my costume. He was a really funny guy who joked around and seemed to really like selling toys; he gave me some recommendations and I walked home with a 6 € cheapo police gun set.


I know it's not super accurate or anything but yeah, fuck that. :) The size was good, it was the most square-ish pistol the seller had and it was the cheapest too. I also noticed that the "secret mission" text was thankfully just a sticker so I could easily peel it off and have an anonymous toy gun, lol. The other ones all had the name of the gun type molded into the plastic itself so yeah, no easy way to get rid of it.
I obviously had no use for the police badge nor the rubber ammunitions (although they were hella nostalgic) so when I noticed that the gun didn't actually even work, aka shoot off the ammos, I wasn't even disappointed lol. I planned to modify it unusable anyway, just to be on the safe side because yeah, you never know with con rules.

The first thing I did once the gun was out of the package was that I peeled off the sticker, no problemas! After that I shortened the pipe; there surely would have been easier and neater ways to do it but I went ghetto savage and just cut it off with a motherfucking ordinary food knife, ou yeah!


It works but it takes some patience. xD I proceeded to sand the rough edges with 120 grit sand paper, it worked just fine and the shortened pipe was quickly nice again.
I want to mention though that please don't be rough when cutting off the pipe; I accidentally was and noticed afterwards that the plastic next to the gun's mouth had cracked at the seams. It might not be that much of a big deal since it's easy to just glue in place but yeah, it might still ruin your prop. The plastic is thin and because it's hollow inside it doesn't have much support so yeah, if you hold it down too roughly when cutting then it will crack, sooner or later.

Just showing the crack.
Next up I figured that I'd need to open the whole thing to get rid of that protruding launcher thing in the back I really didn't want it there because it was ugly and inaccurate as fuck. But much to my annoyment I realized that the only screw driver I had was way too big to even fit into the tiny holes so yeah, off we go to visit mom and stepdad and borrow some of his tools. It's so convenient because he pretty much has all the tools I'll ever need for my cosplay prop projects, lololol.
I got to borrow a set of mini-size screw drivers and on the same go I picked up the hot glue gun too. When I got home I screwed up all the tiny little screws and opened up the whole shebang.

Opened toy gun. All parts still intact.
It's... very empty inside. Then again, that's pretty much what I expected.
I first took out the pipe part and then I noticed that I had to break the launcher's triangular tip to get off the trigger from the rod; it took some violence and a knife but I managed to get it off. I removed the spring and the transparent rubbery presser thingy (not visible above) next which, by the way, had some yucky grease on it. Some of the same grease was on the rod too. I guess that's what you should expect when it's a really cheap China-produced toy...

The parts, which are mentioned above, removed.
Even after removing the triangular tip the rod still protruded from the back of the gun so yeah, I just decided to scrap it all together. Luckily the trigger didn't need the rod to stay in place; there was a hole for it where it was locked in place once both halves of the gun were on. I noticed that, once the rod was gone, the trigger lost all its tension and just rattled around when I shaked the gun (when re-assembled). I thought that I could just as well set it in place so I took the hot glue gun and filled the hole with glue and pressed the trigger's matching hole into the hole on the gun's body and waited for it to dry. So many holes. The trigger stuck nicely and now it won't move anymore, which is for the better because no silly rattling sounds anymore and now even the con security guys will be able to try it, if they are suspicious, and notice that you can't even press down the trigger, hah!

Rod completely removed and the trigger glued in place.
Next up I painted the pipe black. I thought it would be easier to paint it before I screwed the whole thing closed again. I used some black gloss spray paint that works on many kinds of surfaces.

Painted pipe. I used the rod as a holder, yay usefulness!
After the pipe had dried I put it back in place and then I re-assembled and closed the gun. After that I took my hot glue gun and filled in the screw holes they bothered me. With the holes filled I just painted the whole thing with the same black glossy spray paint and left it to dry. Once it was dry I finished it off on the next day with a coating of gloss varnish. I left it to dry one last time.

I hung it to dry in the shower by some rope.
Finished modified toy gun. (ignore my hand, it looks retarded)
Now my gun is done! It's not all that accurate (wrong model and all) but oh well, it's not the end of the world; as long as I have a damn prop it's fine and hey, it was cheap! :'D I could of course have built on top of it to change the shape but honestly, I'm lazy and don't want to waste my worbla on this lol. I'd rather save it for some cosplays I'm more likely to wear a lot and for a long time. *coughmonsterhunterarmorscough* 

But yeah, maybe one day I'll improve it into a more accurate one, if I ever happen to come by an inexpensive Springfield Armory airsoft gun, that is. One can always dream...

Thanks for reading! See you!

July 1, 2015

Skecon 2015 – Cosplay plans revealed!

Hello everyone, how's it rollin'? ;)

As some of you might know, Skecon is soon around the corner and I am heading there as per usual! I'm a Skecon-lover since 2012, aka when the very first one was held. ♡
In case someone here is now like "Skecon?" then yeah, it's a small but constantly growing little anime convention held this year during 3-5 July in Skellefteå, Sweden. What puts Skecon apart from other similar events in the north is that the people behind it are ambitious like no one's business and they also have the passion to get unique/refreshing entertainment to the con itself – basically saying that Skecon does things other cons don't, and by that I mean good things. For example, last year they were the first con to hold a Vocaloid concert in all of Sweden and veeery likely the rest of northern Europe as well! The Vocaloid concert will be held this year too, by the way. *hint hint* 
Yep yep, Skecon isn't one of my favorite conventions for no reason. ;) It's just such a comfy con with a wonderful location, a lot to do (gaming room etc) and it's just awesome overall – certainly one of the cons that I'd hate to miss out on, period.

But hey, I think that's enough pre-hyping so let's get to the cosplay plans now!
At first I had a different line-up in mind but then I thought that I felt more like cosplaying these characters instead; I just hope that the weather won't be horrible because I wouldn't be smiling about either rain or a case of oh-holy-shit-I'm-being-grilled-alive. -.-

But now, cosplays!

Friday


Series: Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan
Character: Hajime Saitou

It's time to step back into the Hakuouki wagon again!
You thought my interest had maybe calmed down a bit by now? Lolnope! :'DD neverrr
Saitou is nice to cosplay and I really want to have a new photoshoot too; Skecon has wonderful photo-friendly areas outside so I'm thinking that this should be the perfect opportunity to get some good updated shots of this costume!

Saturday


Series: Iza, Shutsujin! Koi Ikusa
Character: Kojirou Sasaki

Another cosplay debut!
I've actually wanted to cosplay this guy for a few years now and finally I'm getting around to it! I just hope that the wig won't betray me because I have yet to style it... x)
Otherwise I'm really not expecting anyone to recognize who I'm cosplaying lol. If someone does I'm gonna be so surprised that I'll eat pickles for the rest of the month...

Sunday


Series: Rentarou Satomi
Character: Black Bullet (anime version)

New cosplay!
I've already mentioned at the beginning of the year that I was planning on cosplaying this fellow and now it's happening! I likely won't have the gun this time around though because well, money issues. :< I'll add it later. I really don't have 1000+ SEK to spend on a prop right now. *coughairsoftreplicacough*
The reason I'm doing the anime version is because in the anime he has brown eyes (manga has blue) and so far I've only watched the anime, so it feels more "right" to do the anime version for now, heheh.

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And that's my plans for Skecon 2015! I want to mention though that I might change on which day I wear what cosplay if the weather is really hot, rainy or such.
I hope to meet many familiar faces at the con and I'm sure that it will be a blast! I'm also hoping that the bouncy castle will return because seriously, dangnabbit! 
I'm just really excited because Skecon is something so wonderful – I get hyped just thinking about it!

That's all!
Stay alert though, I might do some kind of cosplay test-run post just before the con!

January 22, 2015

A peek on possible 2015 cosplays!

*waves and smiles*

I know that it's maybe a bit late now but I thought that it could maybe be a fun thing to show some of the characters that I've planned to cosplay this year! :D I don't have very many plans right now because money problems and lack of space problems :C but at least I have some characters in mind that I at least want to try to make for this year! How much bet that by the end of the year I haven't done half of these?

But without any further chitchat, let's get to the guys in line!

3
2
1
GO!

Series: Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan
Character: Chikage Kazama (game version)
 I've been wanting to cosplay this demon for a few years now. He's cool in the anime (although his motives for wanting Chizuru in the anime are.. err, simple unique.. *cough* xD) but most of all I freakin' love his design red, white and black and red eyes to top it off! I maybe have a slight love-hate relationship to Kazama though and that's because he hurt Okita in the Ikedaya affair.. </3 But I just can't help drooling after his design and hey, it's fun to be a bad guy every once in a while too!

Series: Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan
Character: Heisuke Toudou (western outfit, game version)
I admit that Heisuke is not one of my main favorites in Hakuouki but I can't help liking him anyway he's fun and always cheerful and positive!
I like his western outfit in all its simplicity at least compared to the other guys and I kinda want to cosplay all the main shinsengumi guys anyway so here goes for the shota too! x) Also I want to make that pink-gayflower-buttcape-decoration... thing. Thing.

Series: Attack on Titan
Character: Eren Yeager (kimono version)
HNNNG, this version!! ;A; I don't know for sure where it is from.. some online game?? But if I can find the money, dedication and time to make this cosplay this year then, oh lordy lord, I will! Just look at it!! *O*

Series: Black Bullet
Character: Rentarou Satomi
I watched this anime at the end of last year and I found myself enjoying the show surprisingly much! I liked the setting, the mood and the idea of it. Too bad that some things were left unexplained, but I'm crossing my fingers for a second season because it felt like there was a lot more to the story.
I liked the main character, Rentarou, and I really want to do a pair cosplay from Black Bullet with Hasakitsuki this year!

Series: Rurouni Kenshin
Character: Kenshin Himura
Ah, Rurouni Kenshin. <3 Hopefully now that I got the wefts needed to fix my wig I'll get to make the rest of the costume and take this peaceful swordsman out for a con day or two! I really can't wait to get to cosplay the most recognizable version of Kenshin!

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Well, that's actually most of them. There's of course the obvious Team Aqua Grunt who will get his debut this year because duh, the costume is already done! :-DD Then there is also Masamune Date from Sengoku Basara whom I bloody hell should finish it has been such an eternity project, oops.
Except for those two there is also at least one gijinka cosplay that I have kinda promised to do because cosplay group but I want to keep it as a secret a little bit longer, mufufu... ~

Did any of those characters/series awake tingling feelings in you?
Anyone that you especially want to see done?
Tell me! <3

I think that's all I have to say for this round, sayonara ~~