Showing posts with label swords. Show all posts
Showing posts with label swords. Show all posts

February 2, 2017

Throwback Thursday: Jushiro Ukitake cosplay from Bleach!

Hello you all!

This will be my last Throwback Thursday post for this time and it's gonna feature my fourth cosplay (fifth, if we count an OC) who, just like Ichigo on my first post, is a Bleach shinigami. The difference is that this time we'll be climbing up the ranks to a captain!

Ever since I found some really old cosplay WIP photos in the deep dark corners of my laptop I've been wanting to do something with them – like, for example, show them to the world because we all started somewhere. Yes, I totally took progress photos before I even started cosplay blogging. 
This means that, once a week, on Thursdays (because it's called Throwback Thursday for a reason), I will invite you all to experience a 'blast of the past' with me featuring old cosplay photos, WIPs and stories ranging from late 2009 to 2011. Fasten your seatbelts, we're gonna be riding the time machine one last time and you'll get to backtrack into my cosplay history and see some never-published-before photos on this here blog!  
Be warned that this, naturally, means a lot of (potential) embarrassment for me and highly varying photo quality for you. ;) I only had a crummy compact camera back then and didn't even notice if a photo was blurry or not...

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Jushiro Ukitake. Bleach.
Ah, good old Ukitake. He's the captain of the 13th Division in Soul Society and, despite having a fatal illness (similar in symptoms to Tuberculosis, although I'm not sure if it was ever officially revealed), he kicks some serious ass. He's a well-liked and highly honorable man who treats even enemies and those weaker than him with respect. Ukitake has a high moral code as well and goes out of his way to protect those he cares for. He's a really kind and likable guy who dislikes unnecessary bloodshed – he's the shinigami cinnamon roll, in other words.
From the first time I saw him in the manga he has been my ultimate favorite character in Bleach. I have a bias towards white-haired/long-haired guys anyway, lol. He will always be a dear character to me and, even though I haven't followed Bleach for years, I can't stop caring about him and wondering what has happened to him since then. Jushiro Ukitake to me is not just any fictional character he is so much more. I know this probably sounds cliché but he is tied to me on a deeper level, because of a really personal experience, which happened almost exactly 6 years ago from today. I know that the story below may sound unbelievable but I want to assure you that it's all 100% true. Read it if you want but I warn you, it's quite long and not really a happy one.

~storytime~

A long time ago, during the year 2011 and when I still lived at my mom's, I had decided that I wanted to start working on my next cosplay. I was aware that on an upcoming weekend the following Monday would be off from school, which meant a 3-day weekend to spend on cosplay making. I had planned to start working on my Ukitake cosplay on said weekend, which was now some few weeks away. This 3-day weekend was in the end of January or beginning of February, I'm sorry I can't remember more exactly.
So I waited and waited and on the Friday, the day before, I suddenly got struck with a headache and felt very slow and tired on the morning. I still went to school, not thinking too much about it.
When school was over I went home to one of my friends, who lived near school back then. While there I started freezing like hell and shivering the whole time. So when I finally got home (I had to wait for mom to finish work and pick me up) I had developed a fever and was declared sick. Oh well, I though at first that it was nothing more than a common cold, but after five days the fever didn't go away (it became worse, if anything!) and so we had to go to the health care center. There they listened to my lungs, took some x-rays and stuff and they soon found out that I had some defects in my lungs, gave me medicine and sent me home. Please note that because I'm scared of hospitals they gave us the option to continue at home.
Some days go by and my condition keeps getting worse, I couldn't hardly do as much as get up from the bed without feeling like I'd collapse or some such. Just simply walking around the house had never been so hard before. So yeah, you can guess that I couldn't work on my cosplay and oh dang, was I disappointed.

The week before the third Kitacon was to be held (Kemi, Finland) which I had been looking forward to since forever I had to leave for the hospital in Kemi because my condition was... alarming. Needless to say I couldn't attend Kitacon and the worst part was that the con was so close to the hospital that I could have thrown a stone from the hospital's parking lot and hit the con building. So yeah, meanwhile my friends were having fun at the convention I was stuck in an isolated hospital room, fearing that I'd die. It was horrible. I could even see the convention from my window. At least my mom went there and bought me stuff like Pocky and a Byakuya Kuchiki plush. #momgoals

At the hospital I got a room far back in the corridor. All the rooms were numbered and I got room number................. 13. Thirteen, just like in Ukitake's Division. When mom said that (yes, I had to ask her because I wasn't allowed to leave the room and, physically, I couldn't anyway) I would have burst out laughing, had I not completely lost my voice and, even if I tried to laugh, it would have immediately turned into cough attacks and I can't even start to describe how painful those were. The closest I can think of is to imagine that a shitlot of needles stabbed your chest for every single cough – and I coughed 24/7. All the time.
The reason why I got a room so far back is because the doctors wanted to isolate me and my mystery disease, as a safety precaution. This meant that except for getting room number 13 I also didn't have to share it with anyone, which was a luxury in misfortune. I remember how hard it was to get up from bed and walk those five steps to the bathroom heck, even when I was just lying in my bed, not lifting a single finger, it still felt like I was endlessly running for my life; I remember even telling my mom that it feels like I'm constantly running a marathon. I don't even want to know what my heart rates might have looked like because they must have been in the skies. There's that one early morning I remember being woken up by a nurse and she, half-jokingly yet in a concerned voice, asked me if I was alive – my blood pressure was way too low and I assume I looked like a ghost...
I also had to use a nasal cannula because I had respiratory problems and couldn't breathe sufficiently on my own. I could easily take it off though and put it back on and I remember how even being a short time without the breathing aid felt like slowly choking. Don't ask me why I messed around with it, it was semi-annoying to wear and would dry out my nose sometimes.

I was in the hospital for a week and the doctors didn't know what the hell I had gotten. They thought at first that it was H1N1 but the tests were negative. I had to take several different antibiotics (not everything at once though) because this sickness was immune to almost everything – now that was scary. I actually legit cried during the nights because I was too afraid of sleeping, thinking that I might never wake up again – and it wasn't even an irrational fear, it was highly real.
Not to mention that I had 41 C° fever going on and off in waves, which was pure torture. I've read somewhere that 42 C° fever is enough to cause irreversible brain damage and, in the worst case, possible death so yeah, 41 C° is pretty damn horrible in itself and I don't want anyone to experience that. The fever came and went really suddenly and thus, whenever it struck, it made me shake violently and just feel generally miserable; I remember being in so much discomfort I had to press the buttons to get a nurse to come with gel coolers because it was unbearable, those seconds I had to wait felt like the longest in my life. Do you know that feeling when you're in so much pain that your body starts crying unwillingly? That was my everyday whenever the fever hit me...
So, at last, they gave me this one antibiotic and I remember the doctor saying that normally they wouldn't give it to people under 18 years (which I was at the time), unless as a last resort that one actually helped. Sweet Jesus, the relief.
Afterwards I got to know what it was that I had – I was MYPM positive, Mycoplasma Pneumoniae. There's a 10% risk, I read, that when getting this sickness (which starts of as a common cold) it evolves into pneumonia and, because I'm such a sure-fire Donald Duck, I of course got it. ._. MYPM is also known as "walking pneumonia" and I've read that it's actually the least scary kind of pneumonia (my ass!) and that's because it's a mild one and does not generally require hospitalization; you could have walking pneumonia and not even know about it. And then there's me who, on top of it all, got a double-sided case and it was bad enough for me to balance on the brink of death for a week. Fuck my life. :)) I was born with underdeveloped lungs (and anemia) and I've had childhood asthma as well, which could be a reason for why it seems that I'm prone to get shit in my lungs...

I still remember clearly that final day in the hospital, when they had decided that my condition was decent enough to let me back home – two nurses came to assist me in leaving the bed and doing a test-walk in the corridor. They had to support me from both sides and even then I barely managed to walk more than a dozen steps without feeling like everything was blackening rapidly before my eyes. It still feels like it could have been yesterday my body was disobeying me; never has it been so extremely hard to do something as simple as walk and breathe at the same time. It's something we take for granted and when you realize that something so ordinary gets taken away from you it... it feels unreal. It destroys you in a way. It's hard to find words for it.
I had to use a wheelchair to get to the main entrance after the test-walk (they deemed that I couldn't walk on my own, obviously the right choice) and I remember how other patients, of all ages, around the hospital looked silently at me during the way down; I still wonder what they were thinking. All of this has burned into my memory – the helplessness, the fear, the uncertainty, having death breathing on my neck. Ever since then February has never come without me being anxious, scared and just extremely uncomfortable. Some years later during two separate occasions, around the same time of the month, two different family members got into life-threatening situations as well. I'm rightfully traumatized by February...

Because of all this Ukitake nowadays has a really special place in my heart. This cosplay and character means a lot to me – it's a memory to not take life for granted, to stay strong and believe in yourself. I'm glad that I survived, it can't even really be put into words the gratitude that I felt and still, to this day, feel from being spared from death's grip. Just because you are young doesn't mean that you're immortal; I used to think that nothing will happen to me yet but oh lord, so very wrong I was.
I guess it's a human trait to deny one's own mortality...

tl;dr - I got a serious, life-threatening lung sickness one day before I was going to start working on my Ukitake cosplay. I got hospital room number 13. Let that sink in.

~storytime end~

Okay, so with that cleared up it's time to talk about the costume process. ^^
Because I already had a shinigami shihakusho (the black robes and hakama), from my Ichigo Kurosaki cosplay, I already had a big part of my Ukitake cosplay done – I just needed to get a wig, make the captain's haori and make Ukitake's zanpakuto. I tend to call the white overcoat a haori but some people refer to it just simply as captain's coat or cloak or whatever.

I started to work on this cosplay some time after I got home from the hospital, which means in early 2011, possibly around March. Back then I lived at my mom's (same goes for the other TBT cosplays I've posted about) and so I had easy access to a sewing machine etc and also woodwork opportunities
– which meant that making Ukitake's zanpakuto myself was not a problem. But I'll get to the sword making later, first I'll talk about the haori progress. ;) You see, my mom is a former fabric store owner and once she closed her business she ended up with a lot of leftover fabrics and well, this has been extremely useful for me as a cosplayer – free fabrics! :D Yes, this haori didn't cost me a single cent because we had fitting fabrics at home. 

Warning: almost all of the photos below are of poor quality, especially the progress pics. They are almost all taken with my old compact camera and originate from 2011-2012.

13th Division insignia sewn on.
Above is the first progress photo I have of this project. I had already appliqued on the squad insignia really carefully; I had to measure it to make it the right size and attach it at the center. The details and strokes I paid a lot of attention to and decided to make them as how they appear in the manga, aka more calligraphy styled – I'm still to this day really proud of how it turned out. I've also gotten a lot of compliments on the insignia, haha. The insignia is made out of some ordinary black cotton fabric and it's backed with interfacing fabric, so to not wrinkle once sewn on.
The haori itself is made out of some kind of heavier off-white bridal fabric, possibly a cotton blend. It's extremely pretty, has a very slight shine to it, drapes very nicely (despite its weight) and just overall is a quality fabric that feels luxurious. I thought it would be perfect for a captain's haori because of the high rank.

Lining cut out and "tried on". Bottom details done.
The fabric that I used for the lining is actually not a proper lining fabric – it's a deep red/crimson quality satin, I think. It's not as thin and overall shitty as satin fabric tends to be. Mom had good fabrics. 
All those details on the bottom of the haori are appliqued on in the same way as the division insignia, and of the same fabric. It was extremely tedious because I had to carefully measure the distances so to not screw up a single centimeter. I'm still surprised that I didn't mess it up and it ended up looking really professional. It surely took a lot of time and patience but it was so worth it!

Finished Ukitake haori. Front.
(flash photo)
Finished Ukitake haori. Back.
(flash photo)
The haori was so beautiful when it was still new. ;_; I'm so angry at myself for ruining it at that one convention many years ago, just thinking about it makes me want to punch myself... in the face... with a frying pan. LU BU SMASH!!
The story goes like this: at Finncon-Animecon in 2011, which was held in Turku (Finland), I did a terrible mistake that I regret hard to this day. Me and my brother were sharing a hotel room for the con. On con mornings it was common practice for us to always put on our costumes in the hotel before leaving for the con, so much easier that way. I still do it. The weather was cloudy and gray while we were walking towards the convention, which was maybe half a kilometer away or something, can't remember. Oh well, guess what happened? It started raining, of fuckin' course. :)) And of course did neither of us have an umbrella at hand. So yeah, I ask my bro to go to the nearest shop to buy one and just one; we were cheap and didn't have much money on us. He comes back with one umbrella and we continue walking.
I notice that there's pools of water on the streets and it's raining quite heavily. I also notice that, to my utmost horror, my shoes (zori) are flinging up the shitty water onto the lower half of my coat while I'm walking. But at this point I really can't do anything because we're half-way away from the hotel and the damage has already been done so yeah, I continue walking and thus destroying my cosplay further with every step I take. Just imagine the mental self-hate and regret going on in my head. I'd probably had cried if it wasn't that I was so motherfucking angry at myself for not checking the weather forecast and putting on the cosplay at the con instead...
I remember that when I got to the con and met up with the Bleach cosplay group (my first cosplay group in Finland and from which I got some lasting friends) some of the cosplayers were worried and pointed out how dirty my coat was. I mentally panicked. Luckily the Rukia cosplayer quickly escorted me to the nearest bathroom and helped me clean off the big chunks of dirt; I'm still really thankful for the help because really, I was on the verge of a breakdown. ;_; We managed to get the worst shit off but my cosplay still looked horrible and cry-worthy the lower half of the coat was a muddy grayish brown and filled with stains and just completely soaked. I just wanted to disappear and pretend that it didn't happen. It was horrible, I felt so bad – I had just ruined my nicest cosplay for good and it was only the second time I ever wore it to a con (the debut con was Uppcon 2011). The disappointment was real.
Once I got back to my dad outside Stockholm (we took the Finland ferry to the con and then back; it was during our summer vacation when I visited dad) his wive put the haori in the washing machine. After that it got notably cleaner but there's still some faint stains left, but that's not the main problem
– the problem is that it shrunk unevenly. You see, I never pre-wash my cosplay fabrics (I can't be bothered because most times you never really need to wash a costume because it either can't stand it or it won't be worn often enough) and, well, the white fabric shrunk while the lining fabric did not. This makes it so that the sleeve mouths and the bottom is constantly "rolled up" and it just... looks ugly. It's the main reason why this costume hasn't been worn since 2013, even though it's one of my favorite and signature cosplays and I would have loved to wear it out more – I'm just so terribly ashamed and regretting that I messed it up. I hate myself for it, even to this day...
Psst, many years ago I even made a rage comic about the situation.

This is the best photo I have in regards to showing off the back's
bottom detailing.
Above is one of the only photos of the haori that shows off the back nicely, especially the hem details. It's actually an unintentional/candid shot – I was just about to stand up, after having been lying on the ground for some other photos, when my friend snapped this one.
Nowadays I'm really happy that this photo was taken because it's probably the best one in regards to showing off the bottom details of the haori, before it got fucked up of course.

But now, let's talk about the coolest part of this cosplay and what greatly added to the wow-factor of my costume on the old days of deviantArt
– namely the swords. You see, I wanted to stand out and be mega cool and so I tackled the challenge of making Ukitake's shikai, aka the released form of his zanpakuto Sogyo no Kotowari. A bit of an intimidating project for some, perhaps... but I did it. I guess my thought process was something along the lines of "I've done Ichigo's shikai Zangetsu so this shouldn't be so much harder...", lol.


As per usual I started out by making wooden bases. Cutting out those 'secondary backward blades' was a bitch, to be honest. I had to be really careful not to accidentally break the swords while cutting, because of the thinness. I don't understand how those back-running blades could ever be useful in actual combat but oh well, it looks cool. xD Bleach logic.

Blades painted and tsuba is test inserted.
The blades are painted with silver spray paint for the edges and the black is actually just some kind of indoor paint meant for painting walls, lol. It worked and we had a whole can left over so why not? Getting the silver parts to be crisp and clean was a bit of challenge since I had to really carefully use masking tape to block out all the black parts before spraying. I remember having had to repaint the black along the meeting spots a couple times because the silver paint kept bleeding onto the black anyway.

Finished tsuba.
The tsuba are plywood (not 100% sure) with craft foam details and painted with gold spray paint. All Bleach shinigami have their own distinctive tsuba designs and so it's important to pay attention to the details. I remember having had a hard time finding clear reference images of the patterns back when I made these in 2011, you know, with inconsistent references and the like...

Habaki made out of clay.
I made the habaki, blade collar, out of air-drying clay. It was my first time working with modelling clay and it went well, except that the clay cracked a bit once it had dried (it shrinks). Luckily it's not really noticeable from a distance and so I never originally bothered with covering it up, probably mainly because I didn't know how to.
At this point I also attached the tsuba – they were tight enough as-is so I didn't have to fasten them with anything. Besides, I would thicken the handle anyway so the tsuba would get locked in place.

Habaki painted. Made five silver charms.
Same progress as above, just a different angle.
Ukitake's shikai has those weird metallic-looking silver charms hanging on the rope that connects the two blades. Back then I didn't even know what worbla was and so I made these by layering craft foam, sealing with a water-glue mixture and then spraypainting them silver. I used a cardboard cut-out as a template to get identical ones. It's not the sturdiest build ever and especially not on a windy day – I've had several of them bending/creasing badly at the thin 'neck' and I had to repair them with duct tape during the con. Ah, memories.

Additional pieces added to thicken the handles.
Close-up. Same progress as above.
Both of the handles were thickened by adding a block of wood to each side, which I then filed down and sanded until I got a comfortable, slightly rounded grip. The blocks are kept in place by two screws that I drilled in.

I learned how to do tsukamaki (Japanese handle wrapping) and wrapped the handles by myself, using some deep red satin ribbon. I used a bit of universal glue at specific spots to make sure that the wrapping would last and not come undone – it hasn't gotten loose yet.
I screwed on hooks at the end of each handle and from those I hung some square-shaped, err, things. xD I'm sorry but I really have no idea what those are called but I know they're used when making houses and stepdad happened to have a few in reserve, which I immediately thought would be perfect for Ukitake, lol. I spraypainted them gold (they were white originally), attached each one to its corresponding hook and then I got some wide satin ribbon to make the 'rope'
– it was the best that I had readily available at home. 

Finished shikai form Sogyo no Kotowari.
Close-up view.
Those charms are actually sewn in place with fishing line onto the ribbon, which means that it always looks as if they're defying gravity. :D The stitches are invisible (thanks to the fishing line being transparent) yet super strong and I've never had problems with any of the charms coming lose, even though I've worn this cosplay out on very windy days.

I'm still really happy with the swords and surprised that I even managed to make them for friggin' 6 years ago – I mean, I barely knew how to use makeup back then, lmao. Yes, this was during the time when I thought that the only cosplay makeup one needed was a bit of powder and some really basic black pencil eyeliner, if even that. *cringes*

The good thing with this cosplay is that it's probably my most worn cosplay and thus there's plenty of old photos to be found; I've worn Ukitake to 8 conventions! The debut convention was Uppcon 2011 in Uppsala, Sweden. Sadly Uppcon doesn't exist anymore
– the last one was held in 2012. It was Sweden's biggest convention back then (and also the most expensive) and I still remember that year I wore Ukitake so very clearly it's probably one of my most memorable con experiences. I got so much attention, it was insane! I remember how I couldn't walk from place A to B, no matter the distance, without someone stopping me for either a picture, a hug or to comment on how awesome my cosplay/swords were. Just remembering it all makes me really warm and fuzzy inside. ♥ So much kindness and attention was overwhelming to me; I've never worn such a popular/attention-grabbing costume before or since then, haha. Then again, back then Bleach was still popular and I saw a lot of other Bleach cosplayers. It was surely one of my best convention experiences, even to this day. People were so kind to me, even though I was socially awkward, and I experienced some really memorable encounters.

One of my first Ukitake cosplay photos.
The photo above is one of my very first Ukitake photos, ever. I was trying to recreate a scene on which Ukitake would have collapsed from illness. It was probably the first time I ever tried out the full costume. I even remember how this photo was taken with my laptop, my old Mac. x) I used the inbuilt camera's timer and messed around with it. The quality was shitty but it was better than nothing at all because I rarely had a photographer available back then. This was also during the time when I raped all my photos with bleach filters and auto-blur-the-corner effects... :'DD

Another early photo. I blur-raped everything back then. x)
The wig was bought from Epic Cosplay and that was a good choice because their long wigs are known for not getting tangled as easily as other brands. I eventually had to replace my original wig with an identical new one because lazy me forgot to comb it thoroughly and so a horribly knotted mess slowly built itself onto the lower back of the wig, you know, the neck area where the undermost fibers are that keep touching your costume. I still have the first wig lying around somewhere, I've thought about cutting it short and using it for some other character. The second wig is still in usable condition, thankfully.

One of my first Ukitake selfies. 2011.
The photo above is one of my earlier tries at taking cosplay selfies. Do notice how I have zero eye makeup on! Back then I refused to wear any kind of eye makeup for Ukitake, mainly because "it made me look less like the character". I'm pretty sure that on this photo I've only darkened my eyebrows and, at most, I might have some powder on. I remember how I once, back then, tried doing him with black pencil eyeliner (I had nothing else) and it looked horrible and so I never did it again, lol. xD
I also want to mention that I've had a lot of people telling me how I'm their headcanon Ukitake or just generally the one with the best suited face for him that they've come across – it's really flattering, even to this day and, especially, because Ukitake is such a precious character to me. ;_; I've never been happy with my face (save for my eyes), to be honest, and so I never expected such comments, popularity nor that I'd really fit any character. It's still a weird thought to me, even though I can kinda see why people say it... weirdly enough. I'm sorry, I'm just rambling.

Early 2012.
The photo above is from my first tries at using fake blood. I was home alone one day, bored and decided to cosplay; randomly putting on cosplay at home when I was alone/bored was a really normal thing to do back then. Nowadays I can't be bothered unless I actually have a photoshoot planned or such, lol.
Oh well, for some reason I often depicted Ukitake in a suffering state when I cosplayed him. I wonder why. It was easier and it came naturally, especially after all those, back then recent, experiences...
Speaking of which, at some of the cons where I cosplayed Ukitake (especially during 2011) I did end up with randomly occurring chest pains and breathing difficulties, which made for some unintentional in-character moments. I'm pretty sure that if anyone (except those who knew, of course) noticed it they probably just thought that I was acting or faking it just to be true to the character but... I was really not, sadly. ^^" I mean, I'm not suddenly freezing in place (because of sudden pain) or walking up stairs reaaaaaaaally slooooooooowly just for the hell of it. :D
I remember that one time at Desucon 2012, me and some other Bleach cosplayers were heading for a nearby Chinese restaurant to eat. Everyone walked there in a group but, because I had so much trouble with a slowly ascending uphill, I ended up way behind everyone else suffering on my own. It took its toll, I was really out of breath (for a normal healthy person they'd not be affected at all) but luckily Ri-kun, who cosplayed Izuru Kira, noticed and helped me by carrying my bags and just being close so I could lean on them if needed. ;_;
I have a lot more similar con stories but yeah, it'd be a bit depressing to go through them. ^^"

Old home photoshoot. 2011.
If we go back to my Uppcon 2011 experiences I want to tell you all about one of my most memorable and cutest con experiences!
I was wearing my Ukitake cosplay and it was around evening time. I was walking somewhere upstairs when I noticed a really young boy who stopped right in his tracks and looked at me. I'm really bad at guessing age but I'd say that he was maybe around the 7-10 year range. But whatever, this little boy was looking at me and not saying a word. Once I met his gaze he walked up to me with his arms spread out, still without a sound, and gave me a long, big hug. Then he turned, walked away and disappeared into the masses.
I continued my con day like normal, although I couldn't forget about this boy. I kept being stopped by people everywhere (I even noticed how some would take candid photos once I had passed them) and then, some time later, I ran into the same boy again. I recognized him directly and smiled gently again. He came up to me and hugged me again, without warning and without a word uttered from his lips. I didn't mind though, something about his presence felt really warm and innocent and I happily let him hug me as long as he wanted. He walked away again once he had hugged me, I didn't follow him or ask anything – just smiled.
It was now night and I was sitting alone in the video game hall, casually watching how some kids in front of me were playing games. I was mostly just there to enjoy the atmosphere and to rest my legs, I didn't play anything myself. At one point one of the boys playing in front of me just suddenly puts away his controller mid-game, stands up from the chair and walks straight up to me. I realize that it's the same boy (if I recall right he had changed into a Bleach t-shirt) and this time he gives me an extra-long, super warm hug. I was thinking that maybe it's because he'd have to go sleep soon (it was quite late) and so I decided to give him a lollipop that I had in my bag and... and... the face he made when he noticed it! I swear, it was the cutest, most innocent smile I've ever seen and I think my heart melted then and there. ;O; It's really hard to describe but imagine that kind of expression that a young child does when they're really happy that genuine, heart-warming smile that is so pure and full of magic. That simple joy.
He happily accepted the candy, hugged me even tighter and, if I recall right, he actually spoke for the first time and told me, in a shy and silent voice, how Ukitake was his favorite character. I swear the cuteness level was over ninethousand. I just can't.
I have a really vague memory that he might have been wearing a pink t-shirt and that he had a cap when I first saw him not sure because it was so long ago. ^^" I have a really faint memory of his facial features but even those have gotten blurry with time. I sorta regret that I never asked for his name or anything, I still wonder who he was...

Oh and yes, I forgot to mention! One thing that I almost always did when I cosplayed Ukitake was that I handed out candies at the con. Mainly lollipops. I remember how at Uppcon 2011 I had my whole shoulder bag filled with lollipops – I had probably a hundred in there and everyone who saw it were floored. It was hilarious!

Another Uppcon 2011 memory is from when I was in the merchandise tent. I was just walking around casually when a Japanese holder of a nearby shop excitedly shouted out at me "Ukitake-taichoooouuu!" and, upon hearing the call, I stopped and went closer. She was really excited to see me and started saying something in Japanese to me; sadly I didn't understand much at all back then but I remember how she beamed lots of "sugoooiiiiiiii", haha. I knew they were compliments at least, it was easy to figure out from her body language. After a while I held out my swords to her (she seemed like she wanted to check them out) and she looked surprised, grabbed them and wanted her shop friends to come look at her while she did some poses – it was so cute, omg. So we all stood there, all happy and excited. I even have a photo of her holding my swords somewhere, haha.
Before I left I gave her a lollipop and, again, she was super happy and signaled with her hands a "wait a moment" sign. She soon came back and gave me a Japanese lollipop in exchange it was so sweet and cute of her! After that, every time I walked by her shop, she would smile and wave at me in an adorable way.
A bit later I noticed that my digital camera was nowhere to be found in my bag. I panicked and tried to backtrack in my memories. I realized that one of the last times when I had used my camera was at her shop. I went back to her, tried to explain what was going on and she actually went out of her way to help me find it. ;_; She worried for me and told me to go ask at the information desk and, luckily, whoever had found my camera had been a kind soul; they had dropped it at the info desk and thus I got it back – with all my photos still there and no damage done.
Some people are amazing.


Taken at Desucon, Finland. 2012.
The photo above is one of the more recent photos I have of this cosplay and yes, I'm still without any eye makeup, lololol. :D On this one you can also see the haori after the shrinking accident and how the sleeves are rolling themselves in a fugly way; it bothers me to no end and I'll try to do something about it whenever I get around to repairing this costume. The swords need repairing as well, one of the square holder things broke at Närcon 2011 when a Matsumoto cosplayer accidentally struck it with her hand the swords need a new paint job as well and, possibly, some partial remaking. I also want to add the tsuba designs on the other side because I originally didn't do that and, afterwards, it started bothering me, of course.
I can't wait until I get to take Ukitake out again and see what he'll look like in my current standards! I really want to have a proper photoshoot of this cosplay as well those swords deserve to be showcased properly, goddammit.

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So yeah, Jushiro Ukitake is a cosplay that holds a lot of memories to me, both wonderful and painful ones. It's the costume that pawed the way for me  it made me go from basically a nobody to being known as the Ukitake cosplayer. :'D I don't think I'll ever be able to completely stop cosplaying this white-haired captain so expect him to be a long-lasting one in my cosplay repertoire.
I'm probably forgetting to mention a lot of things about this costume but I feel like this post is getting way too long already so... yolo!

Current status of this cosplay: In need of repairs/update.

Thank you for reading this final post in the TBT series (for now)!

January 19, 2017

Throwback Thursday: Byakuya cosplay from InuYasha!

Hello everybody!

Last Thursday I started a new Throwback Thursday themed blog series on which I'll go through some of my early cosplays. In case you missed the first post I wrote about my Ichigo Kurosaki (Bleach) cosplay I mentioned there that, even though I started making Ichigo first, he actually wasn't the first cosplay that I was seen wearing at a convention – and that cosplay, my debut one, is what today's post will be all about!

Ever since I found some really old cosplay WIP photos in the deep dark corners of my laptop I've been wanting to do something with them – like, for example, show them to the world because we all started somewhere. Yes, I totally took progress photos before I even started cosplay blogging. 
This means that, once a week, on Thursdays (because it's called Throwback Thursday for a reason), I will invite you all to experience a 'blast of the past' with me featuring old cosplay photos, WIPs and stories ranging from late 2009 to 2011. Fasten your seatbelts, we're gonna be riding the time machine and you'll get to backtrack into my cosplay history and see some never-published-before photos on this here blog!  
Be warned that this, naturally, means a lot of (potential) embarrassment for me and highly varying photo quality for you. ;) I only had a crummy compact camera back then and didn't even notice if a photo was blurry or not...

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Byakuya. InuYasha.
Byakuya, I did him before it was cool. Or well, it was never really cool to cosplay him (he's a rare character to see done) but what I mean is that I did him way before the Final Act anime came out and when he had only recently shown up in the Finnish release of the InuYasha manga. This means that when I originally did this cosplay, back in mid 2010, I had really limited references to go by and only one or two colored images (manga cover/back), if even that. This means that back then I didn't really know what his lower legs and shoes looked like and thus it's a bit inaccurate; I couldn't even find another Byakuya cosplayer to check how they had done things, lol.

I had started working on Ichigo when I suddenly, around midway, decided on a spur of the moment that I wanted to do an InuYasha cosplay for the upcoming Uppcon in Sweden. Back then Uppcon was Sweden's biggest convention, sadly it doesn't exist anymore – the last one was held in 2012, R.I.P. ;_; But yeah, I'm not sure why exactly I suddenly wanted to start another cosplay project while I had an unfinished one still in the works; the only possible reasoning that I can think of is that the tenth Uppcon (2010) was to be my first big convention (I had only been to Kemi's manga days and possibly one Kitacon before) and I might have wanted to cosplay from my first manga, as if to honor it. Now, InuYasha wasn't technically the first manga that I ever read but it was the first one that I got into and the first one that I started collecting. I own every single volume in Finnish. InuYasha will thus always have a soft spot in my heart.

I'm not even sure if I had any specific reasons for wanting to do Byakuya of all possible characters. The only ones I can think of is that he intrigued me (and he was a new character) and had a pretty design I guess I wanted to be a little hipster as well. I remember that originally I wanted to start with Sesshoumaru and, well, I can only say one thing to my old self – THANK THE HEAVENS THAT I DIDN'T. Sesshoumaru is a really precious character to me and his outfit is quite complicated and, well, I wouId have ruined my husbando had I done him back then. I'm so fucking relieved that I decided on saving him for a later time, heck, even today I feel like I'm still not skilled enough to do him justice... :'D But yeah, Byakuya's not the easiest cosplay to pick either, especially as a cosplay beginner, but thankfully I already knew how to sew and make swords out of wood; I've always been creative with my hands and Byakuya's costume required me to think to figure out some of the problems that it presented once I started working on it. 

I don't remember of I started sewing or making the sword first. I remember that back when I made the sword it hadn't been revealed in the manga yet that, in actuality, Byakuya's sword doesn't even have a blade until he uses it. I couldn't have known this back then and thus I made the sword with an ordinary blade... and not even a katana-style one but more of a western one. Not like it matters anyway because when I cosplayed him I never drew the sword, mostly because it hadn't been revealed yet what it looked like and thus I kept it sheathed at all times, for the sake of accuracy. Good thing I did. xD

Old photo of the finished sword.
Close-up of the handle.
It's made completely out of wood, all self-made. That golden paint that I used on the tsuba sucked elephant dong and I remember that even back then I hated it because it looked fugly and, no matter what one did, it didn't apply neatly. Sadly it was the only gold paint that I found in all the local shops back then and so I had no other choice... >_> 

A recent photo showing the sword in its sheath, all props attached.
I made a gourd for him. The dents are damage it took during Uppcon.
The sheath is made of some kind of thicker fabric, the kind that is water-resistant, has an obvious texture and is synthetic. It's not the best but it's easy to do and it fills its function. Luckily with Byakuya the floppiness, if I took the sword out, wasn't a problem because I didn't have to unsheathe it at the con. I used a violet textile cord to carry the sword over my shoulders.
The brown gourd I made by taking two styrofoam balls, carving out the bottom of one with a knife and then gluing them together. I used some red bias tape as decoration and to hide the attachment spot (and to fasten it to the sheath). The little 'mouth' of the gourd is actually a cork from a wine bottle. x) Recycling for the win!

Regarding the sword I feel a need to mention that it broke into three pieces after Uppcon, thanks to Arlanda airport's (Stockholm) carelessness. I flew to Uppcon with my brother and mom (I was underage and Uppcon was really big) from Kallax aiport, in Luleå, and there they were kind enough to have the aircraft workers personally taking it into the aircraft, to assure that it wouldn't break during transit. Please note that my sword was only stored in a sword-carrying bag and thus would likely have broken if, for example, a heavy suitcase was placed on top of it. Kallax special luggage service was amazing, I can't complain because they went out of their way to make sure that my prop would get to Stockholm intact. The same I can't say about Arlanda, they told me it would be fine at the special luggage counter and then just proceeded to flung it into the same space as all the other passengers (heavy) stuff. I think I might even have paid extra for special treatment. I even saw from the window, later on in the terminal, when they shoved all kinds of luggage into the plane, including trolleys and bigass sport bags... and then I saw my puny sword bag and got a clump in the throat. Back at Kallax when I went to claim my prop from the conveyor-belt I could see already from a distance that it was broken. It was disheartening and frustrating at the same time. I went to complain and the woman I talked to gave me a number and told me to call it and ask for a compensation for a broken hand-made item. I tried calling it later and never got anywhere and yeah, I'm still kinda annoyed by it all because they gave me a number that wasn't even up to date...

I sadly, once again, don't have any progress photos – only pics of the finished product. All of these costume detail photos ahead are recent. For Byakuya I didn't originally take any outfit photos (just like with Ichigo), save for those first two sword photos and the one farther down that shows the fake flower that I got for him.

Byakuya's kimono and haori. Front view.
Back view.
Just like with Ichigo I made Byakuya during the time when I either didn't know everything about accurate kimono construction or, alternatively, didn't think (nor care) that seam placement was that important. *smacks former self* :) Luckily because the haori is so dark in color one doesn't immediately notice that it has shoulder seams –and the yellow applique covers a part of it– and the haori itself, in turn, always covers the light blue kimono's shoulder seams. Phew. Otherwise I might just have been pulling my hairs right now.

I hand-painted the flames with fabric paint.
I'm sorry that the whole outfit (and especially the sleeves) are so wrinkly – this cosplay has been untouched and in storage ever since 2010. I quickly took it out to take these photos before the sun went down. Hello kaamos my old friend ~

Side-ish view of the haori.
As I mentioned above those yellow parts are appliqued on. I originally cut them out as complete wobbly oval-ish shapes with those 'inner lines' but, as I started sewing them on, they started to misalign/shift themselves because of the big size of the applique and the large area that I was sewing them on to. Of course this only started happening once I had already partly sewn on the yellow details and the only thing to do, to keep the original intended placement, was to cut the design into pieces at specific areas, align/replace them and sew them on – this created seams around the design.

Close-up photo of the seams of the yellow design, aka
where I had to cut it to get it to align properly.
Sewing on the yellow shapes to the haori was by far the most tedious and hardest part of the whole costume. It took a really long time and a fair share of patience and carefulness.
On the back of the haori I made a slit, lined it with bias tape for a neat finish and I also added that little ribbon at the top, which sometimes was visible on Byakuya in the manga. A cute little detail.

Showing the back slit and the little ribbon.
(this is a flash photo, hence the color difference)
The kimono and the haori are made of cotton fabric, the yellow parts are perhaps a cotton blend (I'm not sure) and same thing for the wannabe-hakama pants.
Speaking of which, I'm still not sure what the fudge I was thinking when I made these pants. :'D I mean, I did know what hakama looked like (I was practicing kendo for fuck's sake!) but still I decided to not make these in a proper way and instead made them.... hakama inspired. *dun dun duuuun* Just let me cringe for a moment. No but really, I decided to completely skip the side openings and the koshiita. I could have made a more proper tattsuke hakama but no, I didn't. I'm still not sure if it was just pure laziness, a weird expectation that real hakama would be sooooo hard to make or a case of "the sides will never show because of the long haori so I can't be bothered to go the extra mile". I was horrible. :)) So yeah, while these atrocious pants have five pleats in the front and two in the back, just like regular hakama, that's pretty much the only thing they have in common. The ties on these start from the sides and the legs have elastics in them. The sides are sewn close like on regular pants.


My horrible wannabe-hakama. :DD
This is mighty embarrassing to show...
Fun fact is that I think that the Hakama Gods™ saw what I was doing and took revenge on this blasphemy of a creation. You see, during one of the two cons that I wore Byakuya to, can't remember which one, one of the sides on which the ties were attached literally ripped. And no, I don't mean that the seam gave in, I mean that the actual fabric tore next to the seam – most likely because of too much strain. Ouch.
So yeah, the sin punishes itself it seems and, if anything, then that was the ultimate way of showing my older self that if you need to make hakama, make them right or your fake-ass pants will tear.
I can attest that ever since this failure I've never even considered lazying out if I had to sew a hakama. You learn from your mistakes and yada yada.
One iconic thing with Byakuya is that he's almost always holding a flower whenever he appears. A flower that, to my untrained eye, looks like a peony. I could be horribly wrong likely am but whatever the case I found a really suitable fake/plastic flower from a Finnish store called Tiimari back in the days. Tiimari has since then disappeared, which is a shame because it was a good mixed craft/hobby store for cosplayers... although it was expensive at times.

An old photo showing the prop flower.
I have no idea where this flower currently is. What I do know is that I've sold my original Byakuya wig though. It was a black Ivy from the old Cosworx, aka cosplay.com's own wig store. The thing is that the wig was good quality and all but I was a stupid sack of cucumbers who didn't know that you can't just simply by a long wig and expect to be able to pull it up into a high ponytail just like you do with real hair. :) Needless to say that at the con I only managed to keep the wig in a loose low ponytail and I was too scared and clueless to even cut the bangs into the right length.
So yeah, the costume itself might have been impressive but the wig and my face really made it crash and burn. Heck, this was during the times when I strictly refused to wear any kind of makeup, except for powder. *vomits profusely* The truth is that I didn't even know how to use makeup and, even though I could pull the man card, it's not really an excuse because even guys do use makeup for cosplay – everyone is recommended to use makeup for cosplay because it really does one hell of a difference.
You know what makes it even worse? I didn't even know that filling in your eyebrows was a thing and well, just imagine a black wig and my naturally light-colored eyebrows... :) Add to that a makeup-less face and... just no. Fucking no.

I managed to find some old photos of me wearing Byakuya at Uppcon 2010. This was the 10th Uppcon and it was held in Uppsala, Sweden, in a big building called Uppsala Konsert & Kongress. I have really fond memories of the con itself (we had an InuYasha cosplay group!) but I'm so goshdarn ashamed of how bad I was at doing facial expressions for photos and yeah, I just had to censor my face on these two images below as well. Even if I had some really basic posing knowledge I had no idea how to position myself and, especially, not what to do with my face. Half the time I was either staring into the camera or staring away from it in such a way that it looked like I had spaced out into the moon or something. A third variant was an unintended(?) killer glare. It was really that bad. Killer glare was almost like my neutral face for years, no wonder people were afraid to approach me.

Taken outside Uppcon's entrance. I cropped
out my brother.
I used to be proud of that photo above and now, whenever I see the uncensored version, I feel a violent urge to slam my face into a wall. :DD During the 7 years that I've been cosplaying I have, after all, improved quite much and it's really noticeable when I find this kind of old shit and compare them to the new stuff that I do. It's maybe not an astounding lot of improvement in terms of sewing but, even more so, in posing and using makeup.

Only back view photo that I have. Notice
the low ponytail and the props.
I'm not sure how noticeable it is on these two oldie pics but I actually bought high-quality pointy ears for this cosplay. I find it amusing how, back then, I could pay a lot of attention to some small details while I chose to ignore others – especially if I didn't consider them important enough for whatever reason.

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So there you go, my debut cosplay. I'm still happy with it in general (except for a few things, lol) and I would definitely rewear it once I have remade the hakama, bought a new wig and fixed some other stuff. I want to have an updated photoshoot with this cosplay because I obviously don't have any presentable photos of it currently, thanks to it being of an embarrassing 2010 model and thus before I realized the importance of makeup. >.< Byakuya will definitely be seen at a future convention!

Current status of this cosplay: In need of repairs/update and a new wig.

Stay tuned for next Thursday's episode!