BRS Souji Okita preview

Today a few hours ago I decided to do a quick BRS (no, it's still not Black Rock Shooter..) Okita preview because I was.. bored. I didn't bother with any make-up because I'm pretty laggy right now and stuff. Oh, and before I start there's one thing I noticed - inconsistent references!! It doesn't help that there are very few references of Bakumatsu Renka Shinsengumi characters available online in general but that they have to be inconsistent too.. aghjdgjs.

Haori himo.. (aka white ties that crosses at his chest)

No haori himo D<

So what do?
I dunno, I tried both variations but I'm not sure which I like more. I might be leaning towards doing the no haori himo version at Skecon because they kept moving around in derpy ways (off-center and such) and looking uncool when I had them on.. I don't know... probably because of the armor adding extra bulk..

Oh well, here's two photos. Sorry for the mess in the background, crappy lighting and yeah, mirror. I didn't put on any tabi socks or shoes by the way.. I didn't feel like searching for them..

With haori himo..

.. and without.
I swear my hakama are dark blue btw.. they just look black because of the bad lighting. ;_;

I must say the armor isn't the most comfortable to have on, at least not when sitting down. I really hope my swords won't rub against the armor so much during the con day that the red paint comes off though...

Oh, and one thing. I had problems taking the armor off. I had somehow tied the two knots at the back super tight and my twin had to free me and it took.. forever. It wasn't that far away that I would have had to have it on until Saturday because le twin started to get pissed. :DD Lesson learned: ask someone to tie a ribbon knot in the back, don't try tying it yourself. trololo

Well well, not so much more to say than that SKECON STARTS IN 3 DAYS, JAG ÄR SÅ TAGGAD!!

Dokuganryu, you have too many swords - pt.1

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

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

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

Blade traced

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

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

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

One sword shape traced into wood

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

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

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

Hello my friend <3

Sawing in progress..

One sword cut out!

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

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

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

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

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

Blade taking form (rasp use)

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

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

Filed (aka shaped) and roughly sanded blade edges

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

Samurai style torso armor

On 24th June I started working on the torso armor for Bakumatsu Renka Shinsengumi's Souji Okita.

Character reference

I decided to go with polystyrene even though I had a not-that-good experience with it earlier. I think I've learned some things about the material along the bad experience as well as the successful one. A bit wiser from earlier tries I thought polystyrene should be suitable for Okita's torso armor. I decided to do the armor similar to kendo armor, this because the backside and shoulders aren't shown anyway and it has pretty much the same shape.

Kendo armor - do

So I picked up my polystyrene sheet roll and started taking some measures and drawing on it. I drew one of the sides free-hand and used baking paper lol as a pattern to trace on and get the other side identical to the first.

Tracing

I must say cutting polystyrene -at least the width I have- is quite hellish.. especially curves.

Soon finished cutting

After cutting it out I went in front of the mirror and bended it over my body and OH GOD I DON'T EVEN. While the length and width were fine I had completely screwed up the "arm hole"/side curving and the placement of those two rising front.. things-or-whatever-they-are. I wondered why in hell I hadn't checked the fit in front of the mirror before cutting it out..? ._. Needless to say I couldn't use this one so I had to make another. I repeated the procedure with the necessary changes added. When I was done I had this:

Seems much better

I tried this one in front of the mirror and success!

After that I went up to the attic to check for any possible close-enough fabrics for the armor's upper pattern. I didn't found anything very similar but I thought this one snake skin-ish fabric was pretty cool for it. It has a nice sheen too and should look pretty sweet with the red spray paint under it. I didn't work on the armor any more for that day after getting the fabric.

Today (26th June) I continued working on the armor. The first thing I did was cut out a test piece of the fabric and take a scrap piece of polystyrene and well, hot glue the fabric on it to test if it would stick and stay.

Sits like a mountain, success!

Then I went ahead and made a pattern of the armor's upper part, where I wanted the fabric to be.

Pattern cut out

Fabric cut out

Next it was time to sand around the edges of the whole armor to get them nicer. After that was done I drilled holes into the armor for the ties because hey, I need to put it on somehow!

Armor after sanding edges and drilling holes into it

Luckily I happened to have almost a full can of red spray paint over from like... uh, 4 years ago when I did my first cosplay - Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach. I had used red spray paint for his sword chain thingy and now I got to use it again for Okita's armor. So with the spray paint at hand I went outside, put up a working table and used a cardboard piece as cover and sprayed.  Many coats of paint later I had this:

I didn't waste much paint on the upper part because it would be covered anyway..

I let it dry for a few hours just in case and took it inside. While inside I noticed the armor had some sort of spray paint dust on it so I wiped it clean with a wet kitchen paper. After that I started working on attaching the fabric to the armor. The hot glue gun was my friend.

After hot gluing the front

Preparations for gluing the back

A part of the backside hot glued

I must say the backside was a bitch to glue. I burned my fingers more times than I remembered to count and I got hot glue strings everywhere and agjdsj. The backside isn't the prettiest but who cares because it will be against my body and unseen anyway... I let the hot glue dry and then I poked holes into those front things that had been covered in fabric.

le hole

With the hot glue dry I took my metallic golden paint and started painting on top of the glue to get the border thing Okita has on his armor.

Paint paint paint paint...

It took forever because I was being super careful and shit. I noticed the paint was pretty awesome because when you painted it on it seemed this dull super light gold sort-of-pankake-dough color but when it dried it started turning into a real gold color, cool!

When the paint had dried I made the edge border around the armor's upper part with hot glue.

Glue glue glue glue...

... and paint paint paint paint some more.

The paint took some time to dry completely so meanwhile I watched some Digimon Adventure to make the waiting time go by faster. I'm watching the first season for nostalgic reasons, ah. <3 And besides as a kid I never saw all episodes anyway...

When the golden paint finally had dried I just had to put on the ties and call it done!

Tadaah!

It's not 100% accurate but fair enough, neh? ;) You'll get to see it worn and in action soon enough because I will do an Okita preview before Skecon!