Well, some few days ago I received the wig I ordered for a future Kenshin cosplay. I bought it because the site had a sale and I just couldn't pass it up.. and I already know pretty dang sure that I will end up wanting to cosplay Kenshin anyway after I've read the manga and/or watched the anime. It's just one of those series I've been highly interested in for years (I'm a samurai/history/kimono/sword geek.. how can I not be interested in Rurouni Kenshin when it's such a praised classic?) and.. I just need to start reading/watching it. I plan to do it soon enough.*looks at the 5 first volumes of the manga in my bookshelf that has been there for over a year now*
Kenshin Himura
The wig looks like this right out of the bag and I must say ME GUSTA MUCHO!! <3
Just looking at this wig makes me so excited to read/watch Rurouni Kenshin haha. I love how I pretty much already happen to have everything I need for a blue kimono version Kenshin cosplay except the reverse blade katana. You all can be pretty sure I will do it next year ~
And now over to Masamune. I've been wondering about one part of the costume for quite some time.. namely the chainmail.
Masamune Date reference
As you can see he has chainmail covering his arms. Well, I surely don't have the time, money, knowledge nor the dedication to make my own chainmail from scratch.. at least not right now. It would take months and be very tedious.. I don't have that much time to put on a single part of the costume which isn't even that noticeable. So I thought about cheaper, less heavy (chainmail weights a ton, no lie. lol) and faster options.. I read around on the internet and found that you could buy a knitted shirt and spraypaint it silver. It would only look believable from a distance though. Seemed like a good idea until I realized it would likely be way too hot to wear during the summer time (main con season) and probably too bulky too. Then I remembered seeing in mom's fabric attic this one fabric that looks like.. silvery netting or something; I don't know what its proper name is. But I thought maybe it could work if I backed it up with some silvergray-ish base. The problem was that mom's version of that fabric had too big "holes" so it wouldn't look right even if I folded/layered it double...
So uhm, today I went to Eurokangas after school. I saw that there was a 20% sale on all fabrics currently and there I found this same type of netting fabric although with smaller "holes", more dense. Bingo! Truth is, I had seen it before but didn't buy it because I wasn't sure back then...
the net fabric in question
I just hope that this idea will work and look as nice in reality as it seems to do in my head. I bought half a meter of it, I hope that's enough... I'm not good at calculating how much fabric I need. xD
That's all for today. I really need to progres further on Masamune the coming days.. I've planned to do a mock-up test of the coat's upper half to see how it sits before cutting the parts out of the real fabric.
I'm about to explode with excitement and fly away on a manly sparkly rainbow of awesome!! The tickets were released today 14:00 Swedish time and I sat refreshing vinter!Närcon's page like an idiot the last 5 minutes so that I would get myself one of those Early Bird tickets for sure! For those not in the know the Early Bird tickets are 100 SEK cheaper than the ordinary ones, aka 250 SEK instead of 350 SEK. Early Birds tickets are limited so you need to be, well, early to guarantee that you will get one.. especially seeing how popular Närcon is and only 1000 tickets were released in total for the convention. I'M SO EXCITED OHMEIGERD the first vinter!Närcon, it will be so much awesome!
This also means that I'm sadly not going to Desucon Frostbite next year because Frostbite is on 16-17 February 2013 and Närcon Vinter is on 22-24 February. Too close to each other so I have to sacrifice one. Oh, and this also means I can't go to Kitacon in Kemi on 23rd February either because it collides with Närcon.
My reasoning for choosing Närcon Vinter over these two other cons are following:
• It's cheaper for me to travel in Sweden than Finland. (except that Kitacon would have been close to me, but it's so small it can't really compete with Närcon and Desucon...)
• Närcon Vinter is one day more than Desucon Frostbite and 2 days longer than Kitacon. The more con time the better; mer för pengarna ~
• I have a free sleeping place if I go to Närcon Vinter, opposed to Frostbite, because Närcon is in Linköping and my oldest sibling lives there. Me gusta.
• I've already been to Frostbite this year so I have already "experienced/seen" it in a way while Närcon Vinter will be a whole new experience because this is the first time it's arranged and it's also in a different building that the usual (summer) Närcon + new activities. Hotto Dorinku (warm drink) bar anyone? <3
• Närcon in overall I think is better than Desucon and Kitacon, sorry. Närcon (summer) and Tracon are my two top anime conventions I've been to (if we don't count Uppcon because it doesn't exist anymore..) and of course then of a higher priority to me.
I'm not sure what I will cosplay there yet, but I have some loose ideas, so stay tuned for a cosplay plan revelation later! Oh, and if you didn't figure it out yet Närcon Vinter will be the next con I go to. Sorry, I won't be going to Wapanese Night 3 in Umeå because I'd rather save my money for Närcon Vinter and mom thinks I've been to too many cons this year already + December and Christmas stress...
I drew and cut out the patterns for Masamune's coat today, the upper half of it. Mom has been inspired to sew clothes for herself the last few weeks (she's a former fabric store owner and sewer after all~) and now she had been planning to make some kind of vest-like garment and after she had cut out her patterns I went and looked at it and thought "hey this could maybe work for Masamune if I modify it a bit!" - BOOM, said and done!
Good reference for the coat's upper half
So I first took mom's back piece pattern, went to get the pattern paper roll and pinned it in place. After some thinking and staring at references I figured that it's mostly the shoulder part that will need modifying on the back piece. So I curved the shoulder upwards and then cut it out.
Modifying shoulders
Back piece pattern cut out
Then I took the newly cut out back pattern, pinned it in place and drew out the front pattern with the same shoulders and width and stuff. I just modified the front to have a curved V-shape in the middle.
After I had drawn out the lines and was about to cut out the front piece
Front piece pattern cut out
I will need to use interfacing fabric to get the shoulders to stay up like that as well as the collar.. which I haven't made the pattern for yet. I tried the patterns on and it seems like they will work quite well. I lucked out on the measurements too because that lower half's pattern (aka spiky buttcape) is 100 cm wide from tip to tip and this coat pattern was by default 25 cm wide on the front and the back of course 50 cm because it will be cut from the fabric's fold. Perfect. I didn't even plan to get them to match up like this when I started planning out the lower half's pattern some days ago. xD Voittajafiilis!!
So some month or so ago I ordered a white matte polystyrene sheet from Etra store in town. I went and picked it up today when I finally got the chance to. I can't remember its measures or thickness right now but it's pretty thin, not super thin though. I've never worked with plastic before but I decided to give it a go now.. I hope that after all the research I've done that it will work for making Masamune Date's armor. At least based on what I found it seems like a material with good qualities for armor making.. but we'll see when I start working with it.
The polystyrene is rolled up inside this blue protection thingy.
Just to show how big it is
(yes, I'm wearing kimono just because I can. Yes, mirror photo)
That's it for today. Hopefully I will do some Masamune cosplay progress this weekend.
Decided to start working on my Masamune Date cosplay for real, my big "projektarbete" for school. I already have the wig and eyepatch but now I need to start making the costume itself. Again, this will be the default armor version and currently I plan to do the game version, which is slightly more detailed than the anime counterpart, but I might end up doing some kind of game-anime hybrid version. We'll see. xD
I didn't get so much done today but I managed to draw and cut out the pattern for the lower half of the coat. I did it all by myself after a lot of measuring and planning. It took me pretty much 2 hours.. It looked surprisingly good after I test-wrapped it around my waist. I was pretty sure at one point I would screw it up but luckily it seems like I didn't.
Lower half coat pattern cut out
I'm going to make it in an upper and lower part with a seam that will likely be hidden by the belt. Me and mom figured it might be easier that way and I wouldn't get any side seams on the "buttcape" part. lol buttcape~
Oh, and I used this as a reference:
It's from some kind of reference sheet for the anime.
A godsend for cosplayers haha ~
I know it's the anime version but it's much easier to find good references from the anime..
As I said I will aim on doing the game version when it comes to those finer details and colors and stuff. I will probably use the base references from what is easily available (aka anime references) and then, when working, compare the game and anime versions with each other and then modify accordingly so that my costume looks more like the game variant when finished.
I hope that now when I started working on this cosplay that I will keep the fire burning until it's finished because I have just about half a year of time left to finish it, document the progress and show my project supervisor what I've done. I should have started this earlier but I'm a procrastinator and had some other issues and I know that this is quite the challenge so I can't sit still and do nothing with the time I have left. Neither can I take on any other cosplay project (unless it's super-mega-easy or some wafuku cosplay..) alongside this now until I've progressed a lot further.
I attended Skecon in Skellefteå last weekend, 2-4 November. It was a small convention (they had 200 tickets) held for the first time and I must say it was very successfully arranged. Despite being small it was a very enjoyable con experience and I'm certainly looking forward for the next time it is held.
I'm sorry I didn't write this earlier, I've been a bit lazy and I've also been waiting to see if I could find some photos of one thing during the convention..
Oh well, now on to the con summary.
Okay so me, my twin Jäätynyt Enkeli and Sairu-chan started our trip to Skellefteå on Friday morning. We woke up 07:00 Swedish time and put on our traveling clothes, took all our suitcases and shit with us and mom drove us to Haparanda town where she dropped us at the bus station while herself heading for work. We three sat and waited inside for the bus, which came 08:30. It was a Norrlandskusten bus, it's a nice dark blue double-decker. I think the trip took around 4,5 hours.
My new friend Sebastiangot on the same bus further down but I wasn't sure it was him until we were in Skellefteå bus station and I saw him wearing the Hajime Saitou (from Hakuouki) wig and had two swords wrapped in fabric. xD We all four then found our way to the Skecon building, aka the Efyran.
We got our con bands and soon decided it would be better if we went to the sleeping accommodation place (which was on a class room floor of the nearby school) to dump our luggage and shit. Everyone of us four changed into cosplays there. I cosplayed Falkner, Sairu-chan cosplayed Erika and Jäätynyt Enkeli cosplayed Silver, all from Pokémon. Sebastian cosplayed a hakama version of Saitou from Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan.
We walked back to the con building and walked around a bit. Soon our "original trio" -aka me, my twin and Sairu-chan- found a nice blue painted wall so we decided to take turns and have a photoshoot of our Pokémon cosplays.
We mostly just chilled around and hung together and derped the whole Friday. The con atmosphere was relaxed, cozy and friendly and everyone seemed to have a good time. My favorite chilling place at the con was, without question, the bean bag chairs!! <3
"Life's tough being a Pokémon trainer" lol
I tried to take some self-photos just for fun but the (red) lighting was rather bad...
At one point we three went on a building exploration. We wound up in the Shimbukan dojo's "backside", aka changing-room-private-shower-and-sauna place where I noticed this sign someone had.. edited..
"såskopp" xD
It reads in Swedish:
"Please!
No shoes in the changing rooms.
It's easier to clean that way."
But someone added "-skopp" to the last word which changed its meaning to:
"It's easier to clean sauce cup"
I found it funny. Even though I think it was made before the convention.
Oh well, we went back to the more main-ish part of the convention and derped some more. Walked around and stuff.. and of course I drank some coke.
COCA(INE) COLA :'DD
When we three started to get tired we headed back to the sleeping place. Sebastian stayed behind at Skecon and came to sleep later. Our trio went back seemingly rather early because we were the only ones in the class room we had picked. Well, good for us because I think I was on some sugar high thanks to the coke drinking combined with con excitement so that when we pulled out our sleeping bags.. well.. as soon as I got into my green sleeping bag...
METAPOD RAMPAGE!!
I don't even
My sleeping bag was named Metapod because.. duh, it's green. Sairu-chan's was Pinkpod (obviously it was pink) and Jäätynyt Enkeli's was Emo Kakuna because it was a mix of black and neon-ish orange.
After the Metapod rampage I got exhausted and went to lie down on my place, on top of a fitness mattress. lol I can't say it was really comfortable.. at all. But it worked.. somehow. After we had finished talking about our cracky ideas like for example what Hijikata would hatch into if he slept overnight in a Metapod... rasetsu anyone? XD
By the way this was the first time ever during any con when I slept at the sleeping accomodation place instead of at a hotel or at some friend's/relative's place. In Sweden and Finland anime cons pretty much always organize this budget option for congoers to sleep at some random school's floor or something like that.
Oh, and on the roof close to me there was a paper airplace which had gotten stuck.
Saturday morning came. Me, Jäätynyt Enkeli and Sairu-chan put on normal clothes, took our Hakuouki cosplays with us and walked to the con. We didn't wake up Sebastian because he was sleeping so peacefully. At the con we changed into cosplay because the toilets at the school was too small/narrow to allow for putting on hakama and stuff. I didn't bother to do any hardcore cosplay make-up because the con feeling was not the oh-mai-gawd-look-at-that-cosplayer kind and well, I was lazy.
Most of Sunday me and Sairu-chan just chilled in the bean bag chairs and occasionally wandered around. Actually, soon after we all had changed into Hakuouki cosplays I asked Chizuru -aka Sairu-chan- if she could braid my wig because Hijikata's hair is looooong and I wasn't very keen on having to make sure it doesn't tangle the whole day. She agreed ~
Braiding, braiding..
My expression.. xD
During 14:00 I went to the Shimbukan dojo (it's in the same building) to attend the "try-on" budo/martial arts. Me, having already practiced kendo for a few years (but for the time being I'm on a pause ever since I got a bad lung sickness last year's February..) went there anyway. I already knew all stuff they showed us and then we got to do the fourth kendo kata, the one with Hasso-no-kamae and Waki-gamae. I was feeling like a boss when I already knew all the movements. XD We also got to do a harai men on a person who was wearing kendo armor. After the quick kendo try-on we switched to kyudo. Just so you know, I've been wanting to try kyudo a long time but there are veeeery few clubs in Sweden and Finland so I've never gotten the chance. Needless to say when it was kyudo time I was all rhghjreghjfdshagjd and about to explode!! <3 Everyone who wanted to try got to fire three arrows with a beginner bow at some kind of white foam-ish target.. I have no clue what it was really. Of course one of the budo guys (it seemed like some of them practiced several different martial arts) gave everyone some guidelines how to stand, how to hold the bow etc. But seriously.. DAT FEELING when you fire an arrow for the first time with like a 2 m long bow-of-awesome.. it was so agjhfdgsha oh my god. <3<3<3 Sain ihan jumalattomat kicksit siitä. xD eiku One of the coolest things I've ever done ahaha. I did hit the target on my second try.
I'm really sad I don't have any photos of my time in the dojo because I was there some hours and it was so damn awesome listening to Magnus-sensei's stories from their kendo club's Japan trips (some things which happened them in Japan were hilarious. I laughed so hard I almost cried many times XD) and his "ninja's didn't really exist" speech was very interesting, not to mention he also showed some jodo techniques and some moves with a naginata and stuff. It was so damn cool. We also got to hold this huge shinai and look closer on a sharp iaito katana. Me gusta mucho!!
After I had been there listening and laughing with the sensei, the budo guys and some other congoers my company came and was like "Hijikata-san we will go eating soon" and so I had to take my leave, haha. I'm sorry, they probably waited for me all this time. :$
Oh well, all four of us made our way to the nearby Max - a Swedish hamburger restaurant. We sat in the same table and next to us was a kid family... the kids stared at us so damn much oh my god. But now for some shinsengumi hamburger time feat. Hijikata! 8D
DERP WARNING!
Hijikata eating fries!
I just had to put these photos together into a hamburger "comic" XD
Yah...
Enough of hamburgers.
We went back to the con and waited for the food coma to pass by in the bean bag chairs. That was when I heard an interesting sound coming closer.. it sounded like... geta... and then I saw a dude walk by with tengu geta (one-tooth geta) and I went
MOTHER OF GUSTA
I want tengu geta so much!! *grabby hands*
At some point we went to the room where you could draw, make pins and perler beads and stuff. Sairu-chan had to draw Buttman there after I had been insisting "I AM BUTTMAN" the whole con time. It was too much fun!
My idol. <3 err maybe not xD
And in case you have no clue what we are talking about:
(Finnish only!)
Later during the evening maybe 30 minutes or something before the cosplay competition was about to start I noticed Sairu-chan was shaking. She said she was freezing so I gave her my shinsengumi haori. We started walking slowly towards the second floor where the cosplay competition was to be held and while sitting on a couch up there a man came and asked if we were going to compete. I said that we weren't and then he said something about that we couldn't be there because the competitors were practicing how to walk on the scene and stuff. I think I asked if we could sit there because Chizuru wasn't feeling good and he then asked if we wanted to go to the con's health care. The "con nurse" came and led us up the stairs to his little health care room. He asked some questions and gave Sairu-chan a warm blanket-ish thing and told her to take it easy and drink water because she had some temporary fever. When the cosplay competition started it got noisy so we migrated over to the first floor's café where it was calmer. Me and Jäätynyt Enkeli -aka Sannan- tried our best to keep her company and comfort her.
Luckily her fever seemed to go away (or at least her forehead wasn't hot anymore) after a while and she said she felt much better; the shaking had gone away. It was a relief. Now we did miss the actual cosplay competition but I don't really mind.. my friend's well-being is more important. <3
After Chizuru had recovered it was my turn to derp. I started feeling my breathing was fucking up slightly and I just generally felt a bit.. dizzy. HIJIKATA YOU CAN'T BE OKITA NOOOOOOOOO I dealt with it (after all I'm used to breathing screw ups ever since that bad sickness..) and when it got late we went to the place with blue wall were we had photoshooted our Pokémon cosplays yesterday. But this time we went to sit on that wooden bench which was half-way hidden behind a wooden screen.. thing. lol you see I get language block right now. OTL We ate some candy we had bought at Ica yesterday and took some last photos. I can't say we got anything sensible but oh well, here's some derp photos!
Empty coke bottle storage.. it was my RATTLE dammit!
I was tired.. and le wig is a mess
"Fuck this shit, it's hot here" *takes off haori*
Chilling together
And then the obligatory self-photo...
Soon after these photos we three changed back to normal gear and went to sleep. We had decided to not go to the con on Sunday because it ended early anyway and if we took the bus home on the morning we would be back home before it got dark. So on Sunday we woke up, packed our belongings and left while everyone else in the class room were sleeping. We headed to the Skellefteå bus station.
I saw this Skecon poster on the bus station's bulletin board thingy <3
We sat and waited for the bus to arrive. We were early so we had to wait one hour or so because the bus came 10:30 if I don't remember wrong.
I'm wearing my Saitou wig because of a really bad hair day. I noticed some people gave me dem looks. Oh, and the bus driver said to me after Sairu-chan had gone into the bus (she was wearing her Ciel wig) "oh, you also have such cool colored hair. Why have you colored it like that? :D" and I was all:
Because it was a wig and he thought it was my real hair..
I was so tired when we got on the bus so I slept most of the journey back. But. We had to change bus for some unknown reason (even though this bus wasn't supposed to change as far as I know) at Luleå bus station. The bus driver said that when we arrive there the change bus would already be there but when we got there the other bus wasn't there. He then said it would arrive behind the bus we had been in. So we stood and waited... in like 15 minutes or something and it was cold and we all were freezing. Our feelings:
Oh well. We got home and the trip was successful. I hope there will be more Skecon events in the future.
...
.......
.........
-Warning. Rant ahead-
Except that I got offended by some few people during the con who would misgender me and when -I or my friends- corrected them they would insist on correctingme.
I'm the one who knows myself the best. No one else has
the right to define who and what I am, except myself. It's not my
damn fault that I currently have some physical shortcomings, so please understand or at the very least accept that not everyone and everything is what it might look like at first glance. If I correct you don't insist on correcting me, that's rude. You might think it's not a big deal but it's my identity in question and that is indeed a very big deal to me; I want to have a right to be who I am and not be treated wrong all the damn time. I've had to deal with it 19 years so you can guess how fed up with that shit I am by now. I just want to be seen as the person I am.. is that too much to ask?
Of course I understand if someone who doesn't know me messes up when they first meet me -but- after I correct them and they don't do those mistakes again it's fine. But. If they still insist on calling me wrong things after that then they piss me off with their ignorance, very much. It's painful; I'm sick of being mistaken for something I am not and have never ever been. I'm a guy. Thank you. /end rant
Today when I woke up I decided to do a quick Falkner cosplay try-on with everything I had finished, aka everything except the shoes. I didn't really get any good photos but here's one which isn't too dorky, wonderful wig eye censor:
Oh, and I also tried to do something vaguely resembling Falkner's Gym Leader battle pose.. thing.. you know when you battle a trainer on the newer Pokémon games their game sprite will do something. I'm so good at explaining. lol
Falkner battle sprites
Me being a dork. xD
(and now I noticed le twin gave me wrong pose directions. lol)
Much later on the evening/night I decided to brainstorm ideas to make Falkner's shoes. First I focused on his red ball things he has around his ankles. Mom had bought some.. err.. I think they're called paper mache balls in English ("vaddkulor" in Swedish and "massapallot" in Finnish) when she got home.
Paper mache balls
I decided to start painting them red. I used fabric paint.. it worked without problems. I just held the ball with my fingers and painted around it.. after a while I noticed my fingers were red and messy so I took the closest sharp-and-thin object I could get my hands on: mini scissors. I just shoved the scissors into the hole in the middle of the paper mache ball and voilá, no red fingers anymore and a good way to keep the ball from rolling around on the newspapers while drying.
When the balls dried I tried to come up with what shoes to use for Falkner. I didn't find the black ones I originally had planned to use.. but then I noticed mom's black crocs. "Maybe if I could cover up the holes they would suffice." I thought and with mom's help we tried using some black fabric for shoe covers. It failed, I couldn't wrap my head around how to get it to look neat. Plan B was mom's idea: black pantyhose. Mom basically took the shoe and shoved it inside one of the pantyhose legs. She then gave it to me and told me to cut off the excess length and seal it. All I could think was
Then mom found some black socks.. and stretched them over the crocs... and now it actually didn't look half bad. Well, they looked better than my Plan B (C?) at least which involved just not giving a crap and using my black slightly shiny-ish fuzzy ("soft hairy"? I don't know xD) slippers as-is....... yeah. I decided to go with the sock version.
After the paper mache balls had dried I took the paintbrush I had used while painting and used the other end of it to make the hole in the ball bigger and so that it went through the whole ball and not just half-way like default. After that I took some black elastic (maybe 1 cm wide), zigzaged the ends and put it through the hole it was rather annoying and time consuming and then just sewed the ends together. Now I had these:
Jingle bells, jingle bells,
Jingle all the way-- err, no.
Then I just took another strip of elastic and glued it to the back of the ball and BOOM le Fazer Falkner shoes were done! The shoes are not the best ever but they work me thinks.
With this my Falkner cosplay is now ready for debut at Skecon. Now if only I could be ready myself.. I have still left to pack everything and solve what I will sleep on during the con.. sleeping bag or what...? I have no idea, I can't take anything bulky like a normal mattress. First time ever during a con when I will sleep cheap floor lodging style (aka on the floor of a school most commonly) instead of a hotel or at some family member's/friend's place.. We'll see how this goes... interesting...
