Showing posts with label Taregard Frir. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taregard Frir. Show all posts

February 1, 2015

Towards the frost! – Desucon Frostbite 2015 cosplay plans!

Hello!

So it happens to be that I've gotten myself a ticket for Desucon Frostbite at least they didn't sell out in three minutes like Yukicon did and the train has been booked as well, wohooo!
Frostbite is held on 13-15 February in Lahti, in the same building as the usual summer Desucon. I haven't attended Frostbite since 2012 aka since the very first one. It will be really interesting to see if it has changed! :D The thing with Frostbite though is that last year, as well as this year, there is an age limit you need to be 18 years old or above to attend, heh. I assume that means that more people will do cosplays that reveal skin and/or are from not-exactly-child-friendly series..

But hey, this post was meant for me to reveal my cosplay plans! Here goes!

Friday

Series: Original
Character: Taregard Frir


Taregard was debuted at Kemi's manga day last year but he really needs a photoshoot *coughnopicscough* so what is better than photoshooting him on Frostbite's Friday? :'D Also a quick 'n easy cosplay to put on which is always appreciated on the first con day, especially considering that Friday is a short day that starts fairly late anyway.

Saturday

Series: Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan
Character: Hajime Saitou

Saitou is the violet-haired guy to the left.
Well, what do I say? Originally I had planned to do an OC for Saturday too but then when it was almost too late to change cosplay plans I got a horrible "oh gawd no, I want to have a totally different design!" dilemma in the middle of the night which ended up with me deciding on recycling an old cosplay instead because duh, Frostbite is way too soon for me to have time to order/make something new...
So yeah, I was thinking that I wanted something with some relation to snow and so the idea to cosplay Saitou in his casual (aka swordless) form feat. snow bunny was born! :'D Yep, instead of doing the usual Saitou cosplay which I tend to do with the shinsengumi haori and the swords I'll do his "chilling at the headquarters" version with a snow bunny prop instead, as seen on his Sekkaroku OVA episode! I'll still bring with me the haori in case it gets cold...

Sunday

Series: Attack on Titan
Character: Levi (suit version)


Yep, it's time to run after titans! or have titans run after me... D:
Levi is one of my favorites from the Attack on Titan world aka Shingeki no Kyojin and so of course I decided to cosplay him! But I really don't have time right now to do his usual soldier uniform so I'll roll with his casual suit version instead!
I will have a cosplay group with Hasakitsuki and Jäätynyt Enkeli because hey, the more the merries! Unless we're talking about titan stomach filling...


I guess that's it for this time. See you!

January 15, 2015

Turn a toy gun into a cosplay prop!

Hiya peeps!

On 8th October I went on a mission, as some might remember. Basically plowing through all four second-hand stores in town, in hopes of finding a toy gun to modify for Taregard Frir.
Luck was on my side and one of the shops had toy guns; luckily they were cheap, in fair condition and there was a bag with two and one with three. The bag with two guns had identical ones and the one with three had three different ones. I bought the bag with three because it had one with the style I wanted.

Gun bag! :D
The following day I took out the one I planned to use (for now) and went to spray paint it. I wanted to have some details in red so I first sprayed a part of the gun red.

Toy gun before modifications..
After getting a dose of metallic red spray paint.
It was fairly windy and around 0 °C so yeah, I was freezing my fingers off. When I deemed that it had dried enough I went back inside my apartment and put it very carefully on the newspapers I had been spraying on. What I didn't think about was that the paint wasn't 100% dry and so of course after a few hours when I moved it the newspaper had stuck to a small part of the gun and glued itself to it. FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUU-
I carefully peeled it off with my nail but of course some of the paint went with it. Blegh. :C So I had to go back out and fix that spot. And yeah, when I came back inside I was wiser than last time...

HANG THE FUCKER TO DRY!! >8D Boahaha!
(excuse my extremely dusty fan.. it collects dust so fast it's not even funny)
On 10th October I had planned to finish spray painting the gun, but... *gritting teeth* THE WEATHER DIDN'T WANT TO COOPERATE!! 8C Yeah, it was super cloudy and snowing/raining all day. All day. Not to mention that it was so moist outside that it wasn't even funny! D: I couldn't go outside spraying because there was no outside area close-by with a roof or anything to protect from the snow and rain and I know from previous experience that spray painting when it snows is horrible because the snow will stick to your newly painted surface while you wait for it to dry and make this kind of "cracked snowflakes" on it and well, it looks fugly and might ruin your work. :C I couldn't spray outside and then run with the gun back inside either because my apartment is so horribly small and has shitty air circulation so yeah, I would probably have gotten poisoned from the paint fumes lingering around for the following month. xD Needless to say no painting was done that day and that also meant that I didn't get my gun prop done in time for Taregard's debut. Meh. Oh well, rather that than potentially risk ruining it as well as endangering my health...

Some days later I went ahead to put masking tape on the areas of the gun that I wanted to keep red the rest was to be painted silver. It took a while to get the tape strips to be just the right width and shape that I needed; it's tedious to cut tape with such precision. xD
By this time it had started going below zero outside quite frequently too, which also meant that I had given up on getting the spray painting done. Yeah, I've had previous experience with spray painting outside in the cold and have the paint ending up looking fugly on the surface of the item because it kinda froze before drying properly. Not amused. >_>

Fast forward to somewhere very soon after Christmas 24th I was at mom's place and had taken the toy gun with me. I had been thinking about finding something to fill the two holes in the gun where the screws were placed; if I didn't fill them in I would constantly have to be aware of what side of the gun I was showing to the camera because the side with the holes just looked shittier. I went to my stepdad and asked him if he happened to have any stuff that could work for this purpose and he told me that he had some brown silicone lying around that would do the trick. I left the gun in his care and a few days later when I went back home the holes were filled with brown wonder and it had dried too!

Gun with the masking tape and silicone-filled holes.
Close-up of the silicone.
The thing with silicone is that seemingly when it dries it sinks in a little and so the surface wasn't completely flat. I don't know if my explanation makes sense so I'll just draw you a crappy Paint picture instead to make sure everyone knows what I'm talking about. xD


So yeah, instead of having the desired B finish I had the A one. This meant that I still needed to put something on top of the silicone so that it would even out I thought that white glue would do the trick.

Glue recently added.
So I basically just put some Erikeeper white glue on top of the silicone and played the waiting game. I had waited a few days between applying the glue to make sure that the silicone was 100% dry. After this was done I waited for the weather to be "warm", aka around 0 °C or above so that I could go out and try my luck at spray painting again.
On 7th January the weather seemed to be kinda okay (I couldn't check temperature anywhere so I had to guess) so I took my gun, the silver spray can, some rope to hang the gun from and went outside. As soon as I got outside and started spraying it seemed to be okay.. until about one half of the gun was painted and the spray can died. 8C Okay, it didn't die because there was still obviously paint left in it but the presser just stopped responding altogether; I kept pressing it down, twisting and turning it and I even took it off to check if anything was wrong but it looked fine! Dafuq man. :S
I ragequited after a while and went back inside; inside I thought that maybe if I took the black spray releaser thingy from my other spray can (a dark red one) and put it on the silver one then maybe it would work. I quickly tried it inside and it seemed to work like a charm and so I hurried back outside again! :'D As soon as I got outside I pressed the sprayer down and OH MY GOD IT WORKED!! 8DD ................. for one second. Fuck. 8C I noticed that the exact same thing happened again, except that this time the presser made this kind of slight air-is-coming-out sounds but no paint came with it. I looked closer in the "mouth hole" of the thing and noticed that the paint was slowly seeping out in its liquid form; I also took off the whole presser thingy and noticed that some more liquid paint had flowed up under it!

Presser taken off just to illustrate, but on this pic I had already
wiped off the liquid build-up. (Hasakitsuki holding it)
I went back inside, wiped off all the paint that had bubbled up from the can and decided to see if the presser would return to normal if I waited a few minutes and then painted indoors. After some minutes of furiously hammering pressing the black button down it suddenly came back from the dead and it even sprayed to boot! Ohmaiglab! What wasn't so wonderful was that the spray ended up on the apartment's bathroom wall, oops. Let's keep that a secret... *innocent whistling*
I went to fetch some old newspapers to protect the shower/bathroom floor and then I could FINALLY paint the rest of the gun. I just did one thick layer (should have done thinner layers but I was too impatient for that shit lol) and hung it from the string to dry in the shower curtain holder thingy. I then exited the apartment to go do some other stuff because I swear my apartment has the most horrible air circulation/ventilation/whatever and the paint fumes were so strong that I felt sick. I opened the air vent to maximum and left for some hours; when I came back the gun was still sticky but it was at least dry enough so that I could spray the areas that I had missed previously. I left it to dry again and went to squat at Jäätynyt Enkeli's place to wait out the paint fumes.

Painted gun hanging to dry in the shower...
A few days later I came back to check up on the gun it had dried completely. I took off the masking tape and crossed my fingers that the silver spray paint hadn't bled in under the tape and on the area that was to remain red. Luckily it had stayed red almost completely and only some minor touch-ups were needed.

Just showing the spots that need some touch-ups...
So since the whole gun was already silver I couldn't be bothered to tape the whole shit so I just took a pencil, the red spray paint, Hasakitsuki's hands and a plastic bottle. So she sprayed very little and veeery close on the bottle and meanwhile I quickly dipped my pencil in the spray liquid while it was still wet and painted the spots red.

To finish it off I borrowed some black hobby paint from Jäätynyt Enkeli and painted some other areas black to make it 20% cooler.

Waiting for black paint to dry.. (it took approx. 40 min)
I painted both sides black and it was really tedious. The paint didn't act like the paints I'm used to it felt thicker and well, much more rubbery. I had to paint very slowly (dip the brush in the paint after each time I painted a dot the size of the brush tip) and use much paint to get a nice result or all the brush strokes would show, even though the surface remained kinda bumpy. It was seemingly some akrylat-latex (that's in Swedish) paint.

I left the gun to dry over the night hung it from the kitchen lamp and on the morning it was all done! Looks much cooler than when it was just all black and it wasn't even hard except annoying with the spray can derps to give it a make-over! :D

LOOK AT MY GUN, MY GUN IS AMAZING ~~
You might have noticed that on the last photos there's still two holes at the red part of the gun I didn't remember them, because I put the tape over long before I thought of filling them up, and so I forgot that they were even there during the whole remake process; a little miss on my side. I plan to cover them up later.

Taregard's gun is finally done, w00p w00p! o/
Shiro Samurai out.

October 13, 2014

Kemin mangapäivä 2014 -– I'm attending panels, ohmaiglab!

Hiya hello!

On 11th October I attended Kemin mangapäivä (lit. Kemi's manga day) and it's a local small event held yearly in Kemi. No shit Sherlock. This year unlike previous years it was held in the Sauvo-talo building, the same place where Kitacon 2014 was held as well. I guess the other location still has some reparation process going on, I dunno. I heard there had been a fire in there...

It says "Kemi's comic day" but there was almost
only anime/manga stuff so, yah...
Okay, so this year Kemin mangapäivä lasted 6 hours from 10:00-16:00 local time. The night before the 11th me and Hasakitsuki stayed up way too late, talking about everything from jellyfishes to Lord of the Rings and shark attack videos on Youtube... -.- We went to sleep at 01:30 something Swedish time (-1 hour difference from Finnish time) and the following morning our alarms rang at 07:30, Swedish time again.
On the morning we just woke up, dressed in our everyday garb, ate breakfast and took our mini-size suitcase in which we had packed our costumes and walked over to Jäätynyt Enkeli's place. 

Wait, suitcase?
- Yeah, suitcase.

You see, on 10th October it had been raining and snowing all day and the air was moist as hell. We figured that it would be much more clever to put on our costumes and do our makeup at Jäätynyt Enkeli's place, because mom would pick us up from there and drive us to the event. And also, by the time you would have speed-walked to his apartment and gone up all the stairs your makeup would have gone all over the place thanks to sweat, possible rain/snow and the 100% humid weather. Yeah, better do the preparations there...
   When we got to his place I waited until my body got rid of the sweat wave wasn't all exhausted anymore from the fast-paced walk. Hasakitsuki started putting on her red circle lenses meanwhile. 
The clock was nearing 9:00 Swedish time (10:00 Finnish time, which meant the event had started!) when I started changing into Taregard Frir, my Original Character cosplay. I borrowed a gray shirt from Jäätynyt Enkeli because I had none of that color. But I must mention that I had done a slightly risky thing.. no, I don't mean the shirt, it fit me fine.
You see, a few days prior I had opened new contact lenses that I'd use for Taregard but the thing is that I didn't have an opportunity to try them out before the actual event. If you wonder "why not?" it's because one of the days I just didn't have time and the only other day my eyes were lolnope-ing all day. I mean, all day on the 10th it had felt like my eyes had dried out in my sockets or something; it was shit hard to even keep them open, it hurt to watch a screen etc and my eyes would randomly cry when I tried to focus on something. I don't know what was up with that but no way in hell did I want to pop in contacts that day. Dx So yeah, when I now on the day of the event were standing in the bathroom I hoped that my lenses would cooperate and not hurt. I popped in the right one first and it went on like a charm.. but when it was time for the left one it decided to troll. Basically, as soon as I inserted the lens and blinked once it came right off! That never happened to me before. o_o Yeah, I mean to say that it just popped out of my eye with the blink when I opened my eye again. But hey, I tried a second time and the exact same thing happened again. Dafuq? :S The third time I tried the lens finally got a hold off my eye ball and I could actually see/feel it set itself in properly. Felt a bit funny and weird at the same time lol.
With the contacts in I continued with the makeup and putting on the rest of the cosplay. Good thing with cosplaying a character who has almost half his face covered is that I can skip doing half the makeup. :'DD lazy me
   10:00 Swedish time we were done and this was also the time mom had said she'll be here. We took our con bags and headed downstairs, jumped into her car and drove off to Kemi. Around 15+ minutes later we reached the goal and entered Sauvo-talo. Yeah, in other words we had missed a bit more than half an hour of con time. Then again, couldn't have done it another way because mom had work and I'd rather have a free ride than take the bus.

I've arrived, muthafuckas! >8D
(selfie in the cloakroom's mirror)
Inside we put our jackets to hang in the cloakroom and while doing so we bumped into Sairu-chan, who was cosplaying as Naho Saenoki from Corpse Party. We then went to check the merchandise and Artist's Alley, of which both were mixed in the main hall thingy. There were really few sellers and artists, so it didn't take long to check through them all.. and when you were done with that you were left with *drumroll* the bore. Yeah, needless to say 15 minutes in the event I regretted my earlier choice of not taking with me a handheld gaming console for killing time. OTL

Overview of the merchandise and Artist's Alley hall.
The jellyfishes... IT'S A SIIIIIIIIIIGN. D:
One of the two entrances to the merchandise hall.
Oh, and I quickly lost interest in the available merchandise because I noticed that a good majority seemed to be bootleg/counterfeit products, as far as I could tell on a quick glance that is. Eew. :<
   12:00 local time (aka Finnish, I will talk about Finnish time only from now on) it was time for the cosplay competition, but no one in our group were interested in watching it so we headed outside to photoshoot Sairu-chan's cosplay instead she wanted a photoshoot anyway and I was quick to agree on standing behind the camera. After the photoshoot we went back inside and lagged around until the clock started nearing 13:00, which was the time that a panel I wanted to attend would start.

Schedule for the room with the most panels. Two of them were interesting for me.
I headed for the "Miksi pukeudumme Cosplay-asuihin?" panel together with Jäätynyt Enkeli, while Hasakitsuki and Sairu-chan went to do something else. The panel's name translates to "Why do we dress up in cosplay costumes?".

Panel start.


Short summary.
The panel was pretty okay and there was a lot of information, I'll give creds for that. It wasn't quite what I was expecting though and occasionally a bit, err, "puuduttava" (numbing?) with the heavy-ish facts as well as some repetition. I would have wished for more expressive talking that's what makes panels fun and less tedious to sit through because the whole 45 min panel was mostly in the same tone of voice. Also, maybe it's just me but it felt like most of the time the panelist was looking at her screen (reading notes?) and there wasn't much eye contact or interaction with the audience, except for the same two or so persons in the front left seats; they seemed to be friends. I'm sorry but I really don't mean to be all negative because it wasn't bad I did have some laughs and so, it's just that I was expecting something more light-hearted and entertaining. D: Maybe I'm biased because all previous panels I've been to have been very funny, expressive and entertaining. But yeah, occasionally it felt like sitting in school listening to a lecture. :'<

After this panel it was... time for another panel. This time a panel about cosplay photoshoots. I was the only one of my company to attend this one. I must admit though that it was a bit blergh to go sit through two panels in succession, haha. But I really had nothing else to do and both panels had interesting enough topics, so why not? :)

"Cosplay photoshoot Through the eyes of the photographer and the photographed"









Short summary.
This one was pretty cool; I learned a fair amount of stuff that I maybe wouldn't even have thought about first-hand when going for a more seriously planned photoshoot! I'm happy I attended it. :) The only issue I had with this panel was that it was damn hard for me at least to hear what the guy (aka the one who talked about the photographer's part) was saying. Yes, there were two panelists. Mostly because he spoke in a very silent/low voice, spoke fast and he was kind of jabbing words together quickly (talk without having noticeable breaks between the words, kind of) so it was hard to make out what he said without focusing greatly.. and focusing was hard in the panel room because the door was kept open and people were noisy outside, much to my chagrin. I don't know, maybe it's just his normal way of talking, but honestly, I probably missed 80% of what he said because I couldn't hear and/or make out the separate words in the sentences. ;_; What bothered me was that he had a microphone but pretty much at all times held it so far from his mouth that it was practically useless. *mini tableflip* I was so close to tell him to speak louder or keep the mic closer but I really didn't want to be the "USE THE MIC! :C" Annoying Audience Person™ twice in a row, hahah. :-D Too awkward. OTL Yeah, in the previous panel I told the panelist to please use the mic because it was hard to hear without. 
But yeah, I'm happy that this panel had at least these kind of short "one sentence summaries" of what they were talking about, so I could just read the text on screen and learn from that. :') Points for that, saved me some inner frustration. xD Then again, maybe my hearing was screwed because I had pointy ears and a part of the latex front flap thingy blocks my "ear hole" slightly. I dunno. *shrugs*

There was this one Artist's Alley seller who had
cute amigurumi dolls for sale!
So cool! *w*
(too bad I'm really broke so I couldn't buy anything :C)
When I came back out from the panel room I quickly located my company sitting at one of the tables at the beginning of the merchandise hall thingy. We agreed that everyone wanted something to chew on so we went out in town and raided a nearby Lidl! 8D Yes, the same one I always buy provisions from when I'm at Kemi's train station heading southwards to a con. Me and Hasakitsuki bought some tasty breads and cinnamon buns. I must say that people stared at us. I overheard a young boy asking his mom something and the mom said "there's an event in town". :'D Also when we had paid for our stuff we passed by this one grandma next to one of the game/coin machines and she just stood still there and stared at us. I feared her eyes would pop out of her sockets or something, that's how much she stared. xD I noticed too that she was shaking (her hand was outstretched a bit), I hope we didn't scare her. :S I mean, I had obviously pink eyes and pointy ears and Hasakitsuki had tears of blood on her face and red eyes. Hopefully we shouldn't have looked like Satan's followers lol...
   When we came back to the event there was maybe 30 minutes remaining. Just before we went inside we passed by this one guy who was trying to photograph himself next to a wall. He called us over, asking if either me or Sairu-chan could take a pic of him with his camera. I agreed and it was quickly over. Back inside I went into the bathroom and bumped into him when I was done. I told him that if he wanted more photos I could offer a quick photoshoot I had nothing else to do anyway, except for eating the stuff we had bought. So yeah, I went out to shoot him quickly and then back inside to rejoin my friends. We spent the last 15 minutes eating our Lidl foods and then stepdad had come to pick us up; the clock had struck 16:00 and Kemin mangapäivä was over.

I don't really have much to say about the event itself because, well, Kemin mangapäivä is Kemin mangapäivä. ._. There's nothing to do unless you have good company and/or attend panels. Also it felt like it was fairly.. empty? Didn't feel like there was a lot of attendants. Then again I'm sure many left earlier because of sheer boredom. But it's still nice to have these kind of small local events to brighten up "normal life" a moment.

That's it, ciao!


...
...
......
Oh hell to the no! ~
I have a bonus pic, bitches! >8D

But first, a short background story:
A little bit before the first panel started our group was hungry and so we sat down in the cloakroom to eat our provisions, which we had taken with us from home. I'm pretty sure we all were pretty damn hungry like titans, or at least me and Hasakitsuki, because the last thing we had eaten was breakfast at 08:40 Finnish time and now the clock was a bit before 13:00.

So, are you ready...?

3
2
1
RUN!!

FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD...
Ei helvetti, that crazy face.
No comment... xD I'm outta here!
Shiro Samurai out.

October 9, 2014

Kemin mangapäivä 2014 – Hurry up man! Cosplay plans!

 Yo peeps!

As some of us polar bears might or might not know Kemin mangapäivä, aka Kemi's manga day, is just around the corner and by corner I mean 11th October. Yeah, it's very soon. We don't have to hibernate just yet. höhö :-DD
Said event is a small local one for me duration 6 hours this year and I attend it mostly to meet friends and have some geeky remoistening for the oh-so-dry late autumn's early winter's lack of anime events. I mean, I'm totally not the type to say 'no' to some quality time with my trusty pals in a free-entrance event that *le gasp* isn't even far away! ;) Whooooouu..

Okay so, mumbo jumbos aside, what will I cosplay there?
*suspense*
 ...
......
Umm, let's take it from the beginning, shall we?

So, I've fairly recently bought a wig (from another cosplayer) to use for my soon-to-be-revealed Kemin mangapäivä cosplay. Gotta love cheap second-hand wigs!

But first, I had to cut it...

It's thick, fo sho!
Yeah, look at that hair curtain. OTL Too much hair in the front; I don't see shit. My wonderful hair-baby needed to be trimmed down. I took out my scissors on 3rd October and trimmed it into a better shape.

Starting point wig before cutting.
So yeah, I cut and shortened the bangs to look more flattering and also thinned them down slightly. Easy peasy. I've noticed though that my scissors don't cut as well anymore; maybe should start consider replacing them.. then again, they were dirt cheap so I wasn't expecting quality either.

With the wig fixed I headed for town on 8th October. My mission was to find a toy gun at a second-hand store for cheap and then modify it. I ended up finding one but it's still unfinished COSSI EI OLE VIELÄKÄÄN VALMIS so I'll just do a post about it afterwards. Hang on, hang on!
What I did do today though was a quick test to get an idea of what my cosplay will look like when worn. Yeah, finally it's time!

Supah editing skillz! selfie
Some small details are missing on the picture: pointy ears, pink contact lenses and the gun. I just won't have time for a proper preview, so this will have to do for now. Yeah, so the character I will cosplay at Kemin mangapäivä is an Original Character named Taregard Frir. I won't bore you with a character description now and I'm too tired for that but I might write one later when I do a photoshoot post. Hopefully.

But there we go for this time, see ya!