SSL!Hijikata preview

Today I did a very quick Sweet School Life version Hijikata preview just to check that everything looked, well, sort-of-okay.. at least. I couldn't be bothered doing any proper cosplay make-up, except for filling in my eyebrows and some rather sloppy eyeliner and I didn't find some of my stuff at first. So yeah, I'm gonna look something like this next Saturday at Kemin mangapäivä (Kemi's manga day)!

Excuse the mess in the background..
(photo by Hasakitsuki)

Oh, I couldn't be bothered to put on violet contact lenses so I just edited my eye color on this one. Of course I will wear the contacts at the event. Nothing else to say, see you there!

Kemi's manga day 2013 - cosplay plans!

The next anime event I will be going to is Kemi's manga day; it's held on 5th October so there's a little more than one week left. It's an 8 hour event in Kemi duh in Finland.
I decided who to cosplay there already pretty long ago so why keep it a secret well, some people know already any longer?

Toshizo Hijikata (Sweet School Life version) from Hakuouki

Yup, basically I'm being lazy. :'DD I don't feel like donning a cosplay that takes time to put on for such a small event - aka no kimono-time this time. So yeah, SSL!Hijikata to the rescue! Being lazy is not the only reason I do this version over the kimono version though; truth is, I can't even do half my cosplays right now -because my sword broke after Tracon- but I'll do a post about that some other day... Luckily I already have everything for this version, except for the violet tie but I found one at eBay so it should arrive any day now. Gonna do a cosplay preview when it gets here.
As far as I know at least Sairu-chan will cosplay SSL!Chizuru and she said something that there might be a few other SSL Hakuouki cosplayers running around; we might have a cosplay group, yes!

Not so much more to say. My con season for this year is drawing to an end; after Kemi's manga day Chibicon in Oulu might very well be the last convention I will be seen at 2013. But before I start thinking such depressing thoughts I need to remember that Kemi's manga day is still ahead! Forward we go!

Masamune arm guards pt.2

I guess no one remembers how I back in April this year started working on Masamune's arm guards? Feels like so long time ago, heh. But hey, guess what? Today on 22 September I finally finished them! .. or well, sort of.

Needless to say I went to mom's place today and started painting!

This is where I stopped last time and thus started with today

And of course I need dem references:

Reference picture

Now I checked several references of Masamune and noticed that the patterns on his arm guards change on pretty much every picture; sometimes they were these softer "waves" and sometimes more like jagged lighting bolts. I decided to go with the more wavy approach. Oh, and I just free-hand painted all the designs instead of doing exactly like they were on a specific picture.

I used a metallic gold colored paint. When I started painting it didn't look like it would turn out good.. but luckily when the paint dried it went from crappy looking to pretty fabulous. Yes!

Painting in progress ~
You can see here that parts of it has started to dry and turn goldish and shiny

And here's some more painting progress pictures!

To the left is a sort-of-dry guard and on the right an unfinished one

The painting mission didn't take very long and they dried surprisingly quick too. This is what all pieces looked like after I had added the golden "waves" to them:

I let them dry for a while more -just to be on the safe side- and a little bit later I figured I could paint the undersides black so that, eh, if anyone would catch a glimpse of them when I'm wearing this cosplay at least the color would be black. Not so much more to do than grab the black paint can (it's actually paint for walls but who cares, still paint!) and start painting! One, two, three, go!

The piece closer to the paint can has been painted and the one farther away is still its original color - dark blue

I finished painting all undersides black and left them to dry at mom's place; I had to go back home to my own apartment at some point ya know. They will be dry the next time I go there and with that the arm guards should be finished unless something crappy happens. You won't get any try-them-on pictures now because I don't have any (and it's hard to put them on alone, yes, I tried) but you'll get to see them worn whenever I do either a second "this is what I have so far!" post or at the very least when I do the cosplay preview or a test-run photoshoot or something.

Bye ~