Oulun Animeseminaari 2013 - Photoshoots and gaming

On 17-18 August, aka last weekend, was Oulun Animeseminaari (Oulu's anime seminar) in Oulu duh and of course I went there even though it's a small event.

Valve, aka the con building

I'll take it from the start hey! So me, Hasakitsuki and Jäätynyt Enkeli took the train from Kemi to Oulu on Friday evening. We were in Kemi like 1,5 hours before the train would leave so we went to Prisma with mom and got some provisions for the trip - Angry Birds candies and Moomin lemonade. Fuck yeah!
When the train finally arrived we took our stuff and went into the train to find the seats we had booked. The train trip only takes one hour so it was over rather quickly; I played Nintendo DS to pass the time. At Oulu we hauled our geeky asses to my aunt Leena's place in city and then we spread our stuff everywhere well, not really and played some New Super Mario Bros. Wii until it was time to sleep. I must say it was hilarious, barely any of us has played this game much if at all and so there was always someone who screwed up and died all the fucking time and it was just so bad that it was good. xD But yeah, because we couldn't pass the first castle in the 2nd world (sand world) after OVER NINETHOUSAAAND!!1 tries we gave up and went to sleep... and yeah, it was late too.

Saturday

Saturday morning came. The weather forecast had promised rain for most of the day so our trio decided to change our cosplay plans so that our Bleach day would be Saturday instead of Sunday because at least I don't want to wear Hakuouki cosplays when there's a super high risk of rain...
Okay, so Bleach day it was and for me it was time to dust off my Ukitake cosplay. I swear when I took my shinigami robes out and all and put them on they smelled exactly the same as they had always done. I felt nostalgic. :') Maybe I'm getting old. lol Luckily Captain TB Ukitake is one of these cosplays that's pretty quick to put on so I didn't take forever changing.
When we all were done we headed out for Oulu city with a map drawn by le aunt. We ended up going through city and I must say the best reaction we got was this middle-aged man who biked past us and when he saw us his face gradually went from neutral to super-smile. It was infectious! xD When we got to Kulttuuritalo Valve we went inside and pretty instantly found Sairu-chan, who cosplayed Retsu Unohana. With Sairu-chan at our side our Bleach group was complete! We checked the con building together and well, there really wasn't anything interesting going on so we decided it's better if we go photoshoot now before it starts raining cats and dogs.

Cosplayer: Valkoinen Samurai (Jushiro Ukitake), Hasakitsuki (Kiyone Kotetsu) & Sairu-chan (Retsu Unohana)
Photographer: Jäätynyt Enkeli

Sure I didn't have my shikai this time but I had... cute guys in blue - Sogyo no Kotowari twin plushies! They are made by LadyoftheSeireitei by the way.

   

But then Ukitake wanted a cyclop stingray and Unohana wanted hyperactive babies so.. ZANPAKUTO SPIRITS SWAP!

Oh, and don't you think that was all becaaaaaause... MAXIMUM DERP STORM APPROACHING FAST! TAKE COVERRRRR!

Fabulous hair part.1 - Antennas

Fabulous hair part.2 - Medusa

Lääkehuurut! :DD (high on pills)

I don't know, I had fun...

... and more fun. xD

Hold your laughter man! It didn't work..

MINAZUKIIIIIIIIII *scrunch scrunch*

IT'S SO SOFFFFFFFT

Unohana-taichou, how do you get this thing off your head?
*Unohana ignore*

After the photoshoot we went to stroll around the city and then when we got back to the con the clouds started to look höhöh-rain-soon-hi so we decided to go back to aunt's place before it started raining for realz. There really wasn't anything interesting going on at the con anyway so we left rather early.. and spent the rest of the day playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword on Nintendo Wii. It's awesome to have a gamer aunt. <3

Sunday

sghjdsahj early mornings.
Nothing to do but to wake up and put on Hakuouki cosplays, which meant Saitou for me. At least the weather forecast had promised better weather for Sunday so I wasn't too worried about wearing vintage kimono.
When we got to Valve again we met Sairu-chan again and hung around for a while. Soon enough it was time for Thaki's Mies & Cosplay panel (man & cosplay) which I had been looking forward to so me, Hasakitsuki and Jäätynyt Enkeli headed for the second floor to attend it.

I must say the panel was very entertaining and interesting! More of these please! Normally I'm not the one to go to many panels for different reasons (cosplay is hard to sit in or too hot, panel topic doesn't catch my interest etc) but this one sure was awesome, according to me at least! 
After the panel was over we had 30 minutes spare time before the piano concert would start. During that time I photoshooted milli-e's Cai Wenji cosplay because Dynasty Warriors cosplays are <3. After that there was a line forming outside for the piano concert and so I went to stay in that line and soon enough we were sitting down again, this time in the Valve Hall.

Piano guy

He was pretty awesome. He played different game and anime themes like various Super Mario Bros. songs, Tetris theme, Morrowind aka Skyrim theme and the Bratja (Brother) song from FullMetal Alchemist etc. It's a shame that his concert only lasted 30 minutes. I hope he comes back next year and plays longer!
With the piano concert over we headed outside to photoshoot again.

Cosplayer: Valkoinen Samurai (Hajime Saitou) & Hasakitsuki (Chizuru Yukimura)

Photographer: Sairu-chan

Bonus pic!

Sword geek mode activated.

After the photoshoot we decided to start heading back because there was only about 2 hours left until the train would depart. We bid Sairu-chan farewell and walked back to aunt's place. There we packed our stuff, played a little more Skyward Sword and then left for the train station. Of course we got in a hurry and of course I forgot my fucking Moomin lemonade in the fridge even though I had during the whole weekend planned to save it for the trip back and ahjfsgkjfsg, I even drank from it like 5 minutes before departure but I was an idiot and put it back in the fridge thinking it better stay in the cold as long as possible and well.. at the train I was then thirsty as hell the whole time and it was torture. I was so annoyed at myself because the bottle was almost full too because I had been saving it.. ;_; Fuck this shit, always happens to me aghjdfhsajh. Need I tell you that Moomin lemonade is like the best lemonade ever?

Oh well, we got back home to our apartment and me and Hasakitsuki spent the rest of the evening playing Super Mario Sunshine and yes, we were still in cosplay. Problem?

Black pants and belt bought

I went to Prisma today and bought a brown belt and black pants for SSL!Hijikata as well as Kureno Sohma and whatever future cosplays I might do that these could be useful to.

Now I just need to find a white shirt and a purple tie for Sweet School Life version of Hijikata and he will be done. For Kureno I now only need the wig, which I ordered yesterday by the way, so expect me to cosplay him this year.. err, screw that, expect me to cosplay both!

And in case anyone forgot what these two guys look like then here:

SSL Hijikata

Kureno Sohma

I'm going to continue searching second-hand stores for a white shirt for Hijikata and whenever Kureno's wig pops up in the mailbox I'll make a cosplay preview for him, stay tuned!

Dokuganryu, you have too many swords - pt.2

It's been a while since I last worked on Masamune's swords but today I biked to mom's place to make some progress and get free dinner. So since my last progress on the swords I now had to thicken the tsuka/handle before I could start doing the finer sanding work. I went to ask my stepdad if we had any thin wood that would work; I didn't want to make the tsuka much more wider than the sword blade already was because it would be troublesome to hold them Masamune-style otherwise. Luckily he found this super long 4-4,5 cm wide and approx. 4 mm thick plank. Hallelujah!

Super long plank and my pile of swords

I took my things outside -along with a pencil and ruler- and started measuring. I would need two cut-out pieces of the plank, one for each side of the sword's tsuka of course. Which means that in total I needed to measure and saw out 12 pieces.

Measured soon-to-be-tsuka-thickener pieces

And then I was sawing!

And when I had sawed everything..

There's a lot of 'em!

With all tsuka thickener pieces sawed out I went to search for glue. I didn't find the one I had originally planned to use so I had to roll with Pattex glue. Not like I mind because this glue is strong and can be used on pretty much anything.
With the glue in hand I went outside, got some of these pressure clamps and started gluing the pieces onto the tsuka. I put glue on both sides.

Two swords glued and with pressure clamps applied

It took some time to glue and fasten all the pieces but eventually I got it done.

Miekkojen liimausmaa! : DD (The gluing land of swords)

By now the clouds started to look grayish so to be on the safe side I moved all swords into the old storage house to dry. The glue needs to dry 24 hours for it to reach maximum hold so yeah, I can't progress further on these swords for now. Just going to wait and return to work on them some other day, hopefully soon!

Bye!

Oulun animeseminaari next! + cosplay plans

My next con will be Oulun Animeseminaari (Oulu's anime seminar) that's held at, well, Oulu, on 17-18 August. It's a small 2-day free entrance anime event here in the north. I visited it for the first time last year and decided it was cool enough for a revisit! Oh, and today I actually ordered the train tickets and I've been wondering so much what to cosplay there but now I'm sort-of-sure what my cosplay line-up is so here we gooooo ~

Saturday

Series: Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan

Character: Hajime Saitou

Yep yep, Hakuouki roll carrying on. But I really want to do a pair cosplay with Hasakitsuki and because she doesn't have many of her cosplays available right now, except Chizuru (and another one that you will find out soon enough) so yeah. Not like I mind, Saitou is awesome and probably one of my favorite cosplays to wear so far and besides, he's like, the least toast-y of the Hakuouki cosplays I have. xD

Sunday

Series: Bleach

Character: Jushiro Ukitake

Yes, Bleach cosplays long time no see!

I've been having a Bleach cosplay break because I pretty much only cosplayed from Bleach the whole 2011 and half of 2012 so, yeah. xD But now with no shinigamis done in 2013 I started to miss cosplaying from this series (even though I'm shitfar behind in the manga and haven't been reading it for.. almost a year now?) and especially Ukitake, who is my favorite character in Bleach. 

I won't be taking with me shikai Sogyo no Kotowari though; I still need to repair it so I will just take normal sealed zanpakuto with me.. and something else that's a secret for now, hohoho. Ah, I forgot to mention this is also a pair cosplay with Hasakitsuki, she will cosplay Kiyone Kotetsu my personal fangirl xD wiee ~

Shinsengumi banner and pride!

 Greetings!

For a pretty long time now I've wanted to add something extra to my Hakuouki cosplays, namely a shinsengumi nobori - a banner or flag or whatever you want to call it. They had at least two different ones in Hakuouki that were shown in the openings (at least first and second season) and in some anime scenes. I had been smart and screencaped a scene in Reimeiroku long time ago with both banners visible for future reference. Aaw yeah!

So my plan was to make the big red one. Back in 25th June I started the project and I ran around mom's house pretty much all-day working on the banner like a madman. I must have been crazy because basically all bodyparts that could have hurt physically did so the whole day and still I kept working on it.. my feet hurt so much it was tiresome to stand, back hurt so I couldn't sit unless I leaned against something, hands hurt, arms hurt etc.

Oh well, what I did first was drawing those kanji on pattern paper and cutting them out.

This worked as my second reference

The two dots are placed inaccurately, I just put them somewhere

Remember the broomstick I bought earlier? Well, it would be used as a flag pole for this project. I already had a 2 meter long one which I got from grandpa's house and the one I bought earlier was 1,5 meter long. I placed them in an approximate position and used them as a sort of frame to figure out how much fabric I would need; I just cut out a fitting piece. The red fabric I got from the attic by the way.

Fabric cut out and broomsticks used as size reference

I had a perfectly sized scrap piece of white fabric left over from earlier cosplays that I used to make the "white mountain stripes". The length of the white fabric piece was just enough to cover the front and back of the red fabric (I want the design on both sides) and this was without me measuring them to fit in advance. Awesome.

"White mountain stripes" ready to be cut out

After cutting them out I went to sew them on. I first sewed a straight stitch along the bottom.

And then I sewed the white parts on with longer-than-usual stitches close to the edges to secure them in place.

And after that I sewed a narrow zizgzag on top to keep them from fraying. Also this made it look cleaner and nicer.

I then prepared to do the same for the kanji but first I had to take some yellow fabric, trace the parts onto it and cut them out. It was very tedious I must say... but I managed. With the kanji pieces cut out I tried positioning them on the fabric to figure out where I wanted them to be.

Looks promising ~

I kept working on sewing on the kanji over the next coming days and well, it proved to be a pain in the ass. I first decided to sew some straight stitches here and there to keep parts of it in place so that the kanji wouldn't move around too much from its desired position when I started zigzaging around them. Well, the whole "let's secure it with straight stitches" plan turned out to be very tedious and I got fed up with it pretty quick. I wondered why I seemingly more often than not want to do things the hard and/or most ambitious way? *coughappliquécough* I could just have fabric glued the thing on and call it done but my perfectionist side thought fabric glue would make a mess, "bleed" on top of the fabric that is being glued and besides it stinks and would make the kanji stiff and well.. a stiff flag is not sure if gusta. So yeah, no fabric glue for me.
I also tried handsewing the kanji on at one point but quickly decided it was just as annoying as machine sewing. I let it be for a few days and on 28th June I felt like trying to work on it again.

Straight helping/securing stitches to keep it in place

Edges zigzaged and trimmed

Several hours later I had this and man did it feel friggin' good!

...

Only problem - the joy was short-lived.

There was another kanji waiting to be appliquéd to the other side of the flag; the cut-out appliqué pieces in the small heap next to the sewing machine probably morphed into Cosplay Satan of Thousand Slow Deaths at this point and burned holes in me, one stitch at a time. After all, I had been a good boy and planned to have the design on both sides of the flag because that would be cooler and OH GOD WHY DO I INFLICT THIS TORTURE ON MYSELF??

After forever had passed I was done with the other side of the flag. I'm pleased with it though so it wasn't a complete hell.

Don't mind the wrinkles, this was taken before I ironed it..

Now the only thing left was to fix those holding loop things so that I can mount the flag on the pole. I first thought to make them out of the same red fabric as the flag itself but figured it would be less work to just use bias tape. Only problem was that it seemed mom's "fabric storage" didn't have any red bias tape, only shiny red ribbons in different widths and I'd rather not have shiny flag loops.. just no. 

...

......

Okay, so June went and July did too without me touching the flag. I didn't have time (and July was filled with anime conventions) but at some point I went to check some fabric stores in town but they didn't have any red ribbon that I thought would work; it was either too narrow, too wide, not the right shade of red or it was shiny. I decided "fuck red ribbons, I'll go with white" and then remembered mom had the 3 cm wide natural white ribbon that I had used for Masamune's coat trims. Yes!

On 7th August I checked the white ribbon against the flag and decided it was the way to go! But firrrrrrrrst I had to sew the flag closed because I realized my earlier plan to first attach the flag loops and then sew the flag closed wouldn't work because, well, the loops would be in the way. Duh.

Sewing flag closed

With the flag sewn closed I started measuring how long I wanted the ribbon loops to be and then I measured the spacing, aka how much distance I wanted between each flag loop. With that done I started cutting out the loops in the right lengths and pinning them in place.

One flag loop pinned in place

After I had cut out all the loops and pinned them in place I just had left to sew them on. This was quite a challenge because I just had to hope that the loop's other side (the side being against the sewing machine) would be of the same length and that I would sew both sides on at the same try. I had some weird luck because I managed to get pretty much all loops -except two or three- on with no problems, woot!

-------

About the pole I didn't have to do that much. I started working on it back on 25th June too.
I took a rasp (a coarse file for woodworking) and marked on the longer pole where I wanted the notch to be for the crossbar and then I just.. well, made a notch.

Notch after sanding (it cracked a little..)

I went to get the jigsaw to saw the shorter 1,5 meter pole in half - it would be the crossbar. Of course I sanded the sawed ends afterwards.

Pole sawed in half

On 26th June I started the painting mission. Not so much to say about it. The black paint is actually for house inside walls and shit but I've used it for wooden cosplay props before and never had a problem. Paint as paint, neh?

Preparations complete

Painting started! (this is the now 75 cm crossbar)

I asked Jäätynyt Enkeli to come outside and help a bit and to be a drying-pole-holder while I painted the taller main flag pole. When the painting was done we waved the poles around like hooligans until they were dry. :DD I then took the poles to the back entrance of the house and put them to dry a little bit more, just in case. I had to do some touch-ups because of some mishaps too.

That table was an awesome pole drying surface
the gaps in it were just right to keep the pole from rolling away.

-------

Okay, so with that the pole was done and the flag too!
With both done only the "how to assemble this" part remained. I had planned to keep the flag as travel-friendly as possible and that meant I didn't want to hot glue the crossbar in place with the flag on or else I couldn't disassemble it for easy traveling/storage.
I checked around and found a roll of black elastic ribbon that I figured could work in keeping the crossbar in place, booyah! So I just cut out a fitting piece of it, zigzaged the ends and tied it around the crossbar and boom, say hello to my sisäkumi shinsengumi flag!

FINALLYYYYYYYY

I don't know if it's very noticeable but the crossbar isn't straight because there's just a length of elastic holding it in place at a certain point (that isn't in balance either).. and the pole I made the crossbar out of is actually a bit thicker/heavier than the pole I used for the main flag pole itself. I'm not sure if it's even possible to get it super straight without hot gluing or securing it in place foreverrrr but I don't mind; I'd rather the flag be easy to take apart so I don't go around hitting random people in the train with it or something else hazardous. xD

Yeah, that's that. I'll totally be taking this banner with me to future cons whenever I'm donned in a shinsengumi outfit and feel like bringing it along!

Second-hand stores, I love you so

Yesterday I went to a second-hand store in town that I visit every now and then mostly with cosplay in mind hurr and I found a black suit jacket there that actually fit me! That doesn't happen very often. So of course -considering it only cost 4,40 €- it came back home with me. I'm pretty damn sure sooner or later I will stumble into some cosplays that will need one anyway so why not grab it now when it was there in front of my face?

(sorry for cellphone camera photo in bathroom lights..)

But uhm, originally I went to the second-hand store with Hakuouki's "Sweet School Life" version of Hijikata in mind because obviously, if luck would have it, it would be one hell of a lot cheaper to just thrift all the clothes needed for it. I want to cosplay this version because it's stylish (Hijikata always is xD) and would be a nice change whenever I just can't be bothered to put on kimono or anything else that takes a fair amount of time.

SSL Hijikata

So when I got home yesterday from the second-hand shopping I checked my references and noticed that OH GOD THE OTHER JACKET I WAS LOOKING AT WOULD BE PRETTY MUCH PERFECT FOR HIJIKATA AGHFGDHSAFH!!!11 *brain explode* Yeah. So today when I woke up which was, well, late I super-speeded back to the same second-hand store in hopes that the jacket would still be there and aaw yeeah it was! You know, I did try it on yesterday and it actually fit me too (clothing gods must like me this week.. lol) and the only reason I didn't buy it back then was that I was like "but I won't need two different ones yet" and I'm a liiiiittle bit too mursu for that jacket because lowest button is slightly hard to close, but it's not a problem cuz Hijikata wears his jacket open anyway...

Oh, and did I mention this only cost 4,40 € too?
(sorry for cellphone camera photo in bathroom lights again..)

While I was walking around the second-hand store I also noticed these shoes and after a quick fitting test they got approved by me! I was surprised they would be just the right size actually and didn't seem uncomfortable either the short time I had them on.

I love 2 € shoes xD

These should be okay to wear for SSL Hijikata as well as Kureno Sohma and likely many others with rather basic shoes.

I feel pretty good about these finds, most times I'm not so lucky when I go second-hand shopping but sometimes miracles happen I guess. :DD