Desucon 2012 cosplay plans!

Hello summer-hungry geeks!

I'm super early with this cosplay lineup post but I have already decided on my appearance at the upcoming Desucon in Lahti, Finland, on 8-10 June. There's still several months to go but, as I'm making an entirely new and somewhat challenging costume for the con, I want to start it already now while I still have plenty of time (and hype!) to get it done without it being yet another last minute project.. I hope. :D

This is what my plans look like~

Friday: Juushirou Ukitake from Bleach

Saturday: Ichito from Asaki, Yumemishi

Sunday: Souji Okita from Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan

I'm bringing my signature captain Ukitake cosplay on the first day and I will be taking the shikai twin swords with me too, woop! It seems our Finnish Bleach group decided on Friday being our group's main day – we're totally assembling once again! Gonna keep this greatness going~

When it comes to my planned Saturday cosplay I gotta say that this will be one of the most obscure cosplay choices I'll ever do and yet I don't care because I adore his design, period. Ichito is the antagonist from a visual novel game called Asaki, Yumemishi that was only ever released in Japan. I stumbled upon this character by chance when browsing online and I was immediately curious about the source. I've tried to read up on what the game is about and done my research but it's been quite limited since there's not a lot of information available in English, aside from a few scattered summary blogs. He might be a cursed undead spirit who's treading on psychopathic grounds but he looks cool and that means I want to cosplay him. Besides, I think his mystic backstory is what makes him rather intriguing because you have to piece together what happened to him through the routes of the other romanceable characters.

And for my third and final cosplay I will splurge headfirst into my latest new anime obsession and that's Hakuouki. Okita is currently one of my favorite shinsengumi members in the series, if not my favorite. I decided to do the sickbed yukata version or whatever it's called – the purple yukata he wears in bed while not doing too great. I don't know if it has an official name, probably not because I can't find anything? But anyways, this is a quick new cosplay to throw together and it should be possible to get both Ichito and this yukata version of Okita completed in time! Oh and yeah, my cosplay friend group is planning a smaller Hakuouki gathering so there's gonna be a lot of fun and derps~

That's all for this time, stay tuned for upcoming progress posts!
Shiro Samurai says bye~

Chibicon 2012 cosplay plans!

Hi everyone!

Chibicon is coming up at the beginning of next month and, after some thought, I have finally settled on my cosplay plans for the con. I don't know much about Chibicon, I've barely heard about it before but I heard an anime convention was coming to Oulu and yeah, that's enough to get my interest. xD

My original plans included bringing my Ichigo Kurosaki cosplay back but I read up on Chibicon's cosplay prop rules and it seems like they have some limits in place and well, my supreme super-sized zanpakutou would probably end up collecting dust all con day in the cloakroom and that would be kinda uncool. Very uncool. My Ichigo cosplay just isn't that impressive without the oversized butcher knife. Chibicon's rules don't like big props and that means Ichigo has to remain sulking in my closet.

So what am I cosplaying instead, then? Something else from Bleach, of course.

I'm gonna go with Byakuya's first appearance version. Anyone who has watched the anime or read the manga might remember that the first time he shows up in the series is when he arrives in the real world together with Renji in tow. What makes this version different from his standard attire is that he isn't wearing his captain's coat and instead appears in just his shinigami garbs. It's a peculiar thing, I'm not sure why the cloak was omitted but regardless this version exists canonically and that means I'm gonna cosplay it!

As much as I would like to do Byakuya's default outfit I just don't have the energy to make another captain's coat right now. I thought that this version would be a nice middle-of-the-road option where I get to do a character I really like in a version that's quick to put together and on top of that it's one that's rarely done. If ever?

I've already made those kenseikan hair pieces or, as I like to call them, "hair bananas" lol. I made them very budget-friendly by bending and stacking two layers of cardstock paper on top of each other and then using thin cardboard for the bottom and I shaped it with staples and secured it with duct tape for stability on the underside. It probably sounds incomprehensible and yeah, this was a bit of a trial and error project where I had to make do with what I had easily and cheaply accessible. During my first test run they were too big and thus troublesome to attach; I had to use strategically placed bobby pins to keep them somewhat in place. I later modified my kenseikan and now they sit a bit better and are easier to attach.. although I could still use a helping hand to fasten them, heh.

I've also made his scarf. It was very easy to do. We had this whole pretty white fabric roll at home and I wrapped several meters around my neck in front of the mirror to check the drape before commiting, lol.

I measured around 2,5 meters of that fabric (yes the whole width, huge scarf is huge) cut it out and sewed it. It feels like I'm having a whole curtain wrapped around my neck. xD I hope this thing doesn't get hot and I also hope I won't need to pin it in place lol. Damn you Byakuya and your über-precious-family-heirloom-crème-de-la-crème scarf...

That's all for now, bye!
Shiro Samurai out~

Kitacon 2012 – Headhunted into the cosplay competition

Sup!

I was at Kitacon this past Saturday, on 11th February to be precise. It's the world's most northern con at the time of writing and, heheh, it's the only con in Finland that can be considered close to me. Normally I have to travel to the other end of the country for cons so I'm really grateful that there's something I don't have to sit in a train for half the day to attend lol.

Oh shit. I realized I forgot to take photos again. :DDD

Oh well, my friend Jäärä visited me during the weekend with the culmination being going to Kitacon together. As previously Kitacon was again held in the Kulttuurikeskus building. The con was small but comfy and the atmosphere was just right! We just walked around the con and had fun and all that jazz, time flew by quickly. Maybe that's why I forgot to take photos.

At some point when we were just vibing one of the cosplay competition judges saw us and went "hey guys, you two should seriously consider entering the cosplay contest!" or something like that. We were caught offguard because we hadn't gone there with the intention to compete at all and well, I have some serious stage fright lol. We thought about it for some minutes – at first we were unsure but then we signed up anyway. A fun little detail is that they had actually just closed the registration but they made an exception for us!
We competed as a duo by the way, if it was not obvious. I was so nervous, oh my god! Me and Jäärä were the last ones (number 22) to go up on the stage. I probably looked like I was shitting myself pale while waiting in line at the backstage. I'm really not the one to stand on a stage naturally. Once at school I was shaking so bad I couldn't hold my papers in hand during an oral presentation. I have like no memories of what I did on stage but it was one of those classic 'lavajuoksu' types, meaning you walk to the stage front and strike a few poses and then you walk away so the next contestant can enter. I did relax a bit once we entered the stage together and the audience cheered loudly. We actually got second place together, which felt really nice! It felt so fancy to get a medal for cosplaying. :D

Oh I almost forgot! We ended up getting featured on a local newspaper called Pohjolan Sanomat, that was crazy!

Someone took a candid shot of me. Notice the medal!

Fun fact is that I've actually competed twice before and one of the two was at another Kitacon, but that was a one-time-only Kitacon in northern Sweden. :'D It was an even smaller event than Kemi's Kitacon and I competed with my Ichigo Kurosaki cosplay. I ended up winning second place at the time – although I think my solid wood shikai form Zangetsu did a lot of heavy lifting. xD Everybody rained compliments on that massive butter knife lol. If I recall correctly I was asked to compete during that time as well – it's almost as if there's a pattern...

I don't really know what else to say except sorry for not having any photos to show, again. I really need to get better at documenting and going to cons with blogging in mind! I get so carried away in having fun so that while I'm at the event I just forget all about my blog responsibilities, lol!

Thank you for a fun day!
Shiro Samurai out~

Kitacon 2012 cosplay lineup

Hello!

My next anime convention is going to be Kitacon in Kemi, Finland. It's held on 11th February and seeing how I live very close to Kemi it would be rather dumb of me not to attend. :D This is the fourth iteration of Kitacon and I gotta say it's so nice to have events in the north, even if it's just one-day events. Almost everything is in the south and so we poor bastards who live up here with the reindeers and stuff really miss out, haha.

I've been really into Bleach lately and I'm gonna stick to this hype for a while longer, hehe. I've considered cosplaying all canon variations of Ukitake so you can probably guess what my cosplay plans for Kitacon will be...

Yes I'm doing ponytail Ukitake, aka the Turn Back the Pendulum. I guess it's technically a new cosplay because it's a different version of the character but the only difference is basically that he has his hair tied up and the front bangs are a tiny bit longer, maybe. It's a stretch to call it new because the only thing I need to do is the hairtie lmao. Easy cosplay is easy. xD

I've already done a test run with the wig and everything tried on and err, maybe it's just me but I find I look totally awful with the hair tied back?! I can't stand how my face looks in almost every angle, feels like it brings out my worst features and it makes me horribly insecure. Oh well, I should do this version at least once so let's bite the sour apple and go. Love for the character wins.

If everything goes as planned my friend Jäärä will travel up here and do a pair cosplay with me as captain Retsu Unohana to match. She's doing the Turn Back the Pendulum version as well and will have a Minazuki plush prop! It's gonna be a lot of fun, I just know it!

That's all folks, see you!
Shiro Samurai out~

Desucon Frostbite 2012 – Bleach gathering and pizza

Hello!

Desucon Frostbite came and went. It was held in Sibeliustalo on 14-15 January 2012.

It was a great experience and I had a lot of fun! I was part of a massive Bleach cosplay group on both days and I met a lot of great new people! I'm quite socially awkward and don't have a lot of friends so this was really something great for me. We had a lot of different characters like Hollow Ichigo, regular Ichigo, Grimmjow, Hitsugaya, Izuru, Uryuu, Hanataro, Aizen, Orihime, young Byakuya and I saw others too including Rukia, Ikkaku, Soi Fon, Rangiku, Shuuhei, Renji and Yoruichi. Of course I was Ukitake myself on Saturday and Gin on Sunday. :)

I took a bunch of photos of other cosplayers too but mainly from shows I recognized because I'm not really into the currently popular stuff like Kuroshitsuji, Ao no Exorcist, Hetalia and those. I'm not sharing any photos here though since it didn't cross my mind to even ask permission because yeah, I was so engrossed in the moment and since cosplay blogging is so new to me I didn't even think about taking photos for blog content, oops. I probably should have thought about documenting the con for the future, and in hindsight I wish I had, but at least I can say that there's a lot to improve on. :'D Bad blogger!

The weekend was mildly crazy and there was a lot of derp and bonding going on. I saw a bunch of cool costumes like some viking guys with big shields, Link and Midna from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and someone cosplayed Mulan in her Ping disguise!

Kotipizza mayhem in full force.

If you've been to Desucon before you might know about the Kotipizza case. I was at Desucon this past summer (before I started blogging) and I vividly remember how basically everyone went to get pizza there because it's the closest restaurant by quite a margin, as far as I know. Obviously I'm not a local since I live in northern Finland but I for sure didn't see any restaurant closer than Kotipizza when your starting position is Sibeliustalo lol. It's literally just a few meters away, it's as convenient as it can possibly get. The only thing that makes getting your pizza a hassle is that probably a thousand others thought to do the same. :'D

Hangry Ukitake chomping down a pizza.

Both my cosplays seemed well-received and I got quite some hugs and photos taken of me, even though it seemed, at least for me, that not so many people ran around photographing cosplayers – maybe because the con was crammed with people inside all the time because of the cold weather outside or something? At least I know I don't like taking photos and having 94389392 people in the background lol, but maybe that's just me.

I don't really have any proper photos of my cosplays to show even though I took a fair amount of them. It's just that I'm self-conscious about how I look (I used to be bullied and called ugly a lot in school) and wasn't happy enough with the photos I had. :/ Does anyone else have that weird experience when you think you look good when you're posing in your costume etc and then when you look at the photos you look nothing like you envisioned? It's hard to deal with sometimes. 

This sums up the con. :'D (not drawn by me)

During the later hours of Saturday there was a night party (aka iltabileet) and I attended it together with AuriRaitsu and Frozen Angel. We had planned already before the con to dress up as original formal wear versions of our corresponding Bleach cosplays, meaning that I did Ukitake in a white suit and a red shirt, AuriRaitsu did Izuru in a black suit with a nice silk blue brocade vest and Frozen Angel also did Uryuu in a white shirt and black vest with no jacket. We were looking smooth! It was a fun spin on the characters and going to a night party was a new experience for me, albeit different from what I would usually gravitate towards. I think the company made the occasion because I know I would have gone straight to bed if I had no friends luring me over lololol.

My Gin cosplay went over well for its debut (better than I had expected actually), especially because I had AuriRaitsu tagging along with me as my wonderful lieutenant Izuru and we walked around the whole Sunday as a duo! As much fun as I had I feel like I don't have the right aura for this type of character, like Gin has this kind of chilling presence and I was derping around more often than not lmao. It's also really hard to do his facial expression right when he has that constant smug fox-faced grin and squinted eyes plastered on his face at all times. I'm so inexperienced with makeup that I don't know how to make my eyes do that look. I only started learning makeup because of cosplay, haha.

All in all I had a lot of fun despite my still fresh respiratory issues from that traumatic hospital experience last year. Well, at least I pass as a very convincing Ukitake lol, I mean you gotta try to make the best out of it or otherwise experiences like walking up stairs and almost fainting because you can't fucking breathe becomes a lot more morbid. I'm so grateful I had sympathetic people around me who helped me carry my bags and made sure I was okay. ;_; Y'all are gold worth.

Thank you to all the lovely people I met!
Shiro Samurai says bye bye~

Making of Gin Ichimaru's Shinso sword

Hi!

So a few days ago my stepfather told me I could make Gin's handguard (aka tsuba) out of this 9 mm thick plywood we had lying at home. So I did. I drew the design and he was kind enough to cut it out for me since it's quite a difficult design, yay! I went outside to sand it down afterwards and oh my lord, my hands were so sore after that. I remember cursing because of its shape – it was so hard to get inside those stupid.. ugh, what's the English word for it? ._. You probably understand what I mean by looking at the photo, lol.

Test fitting the handguard.

Under a week left until Desucon Frostbite and I still have to fill in all the cracks where the top layer of the plywood chipped off. The sword I'm using as a base is a shoto sword (a martial arts training sword), an inexpensive red oak one to be more precise; I just figured it's easier to modify something close enough than to make it from scratch because I'm short on time and besides, I knew I would stress with it anyway. xD I made this thing in five days omg.

Handguard fillered up.

A white-ish putty filler thingy was used to fill in the cracks. He's too kind. Stepdad told me to wait until the following day before coating everything in a white base paint, although it seemed like the one I had used before (for other projects) had been used up and yeah, I had to use another one that was slightly glossy... and he said I have to sand it after coating.

Worst paint ever. 8C
Had to let them dry in the sink to not stain everything...

This was one of the most unpleasant paints I've ever had the displeasure of using. Seriously, it's sticky as fuck, it takes forever to dry (and hair dryers doesn't help), it smells like crap and it's also impossible to wash away no matter if you use soap three times and scrub it with a harsh brush. I tried to get it off my own hands and it just smeared further the more I tried to get it off! I've never worked with a paint that made me this frustrated before lol. It stuck to literally everything – every loose hair strand and every surface it touched for less than a second. I even got some on this high leather stool that I've been sitting on and it won't come off no matter what I do. Mom's gonna be mad...

I learned soon after that it was some kind of oil-based paint and yeah, that checks out. It hadn't really crossed my mind that any other paints existed except for water-based ones because that's what I had been exlusively using up to this point. It was a nightmare to work with without the correct equipment and yeah, I lost my cool and was positively raging during the worst moments – stress-induced meltdowns anyone? I had to toss a paint brush I really liked because it got ruined. :c

Thankfully the rest of the progress should be a breeze to do, I just needed to spray paint everything and then do the tsukamaki handle wrapping. Or well, spray painting outside in northern Finland during the worst winter months isn't exactly optimal timing but whatever, you gotta do what you gotta do sometimes.

Well, in theory it was easy. In practice it was not.
So I was outside spray painting Shinso and err.. the cold was a real problem. I needed to do a second coating because the paint dried so slowly it got stuck on the work station I used (I hate when that happens adfsgagf) and these annoying bubbles appeared and made the surface all kinds of ugly. It was like the paint froze before it had time to set? I ended up having to sand the bubbly surface layer down and repaint the whole thing. Yet somehow I managed to salvage the situation. 

Finished Shinso, full view.

All misfortunes considered I'm very happy with how this rush job turned out. In fact I'm very happy, I didn't think it would come together as well as it did in the end. :D I'm not making a sheath for now and who knows if I will at some point but ehh, it's fully usable as-is.
Can't wait to cosplay Gin soon, it's gonna be fun to be part of that upcoming Bleach cosplay group!

Thank you for reading! 
Shiro Samurai out~

Sealed state Sogyo no Kotowari sword finished!

Hello!

I've been making captain Ukitake's zanpakutou in its sealed state for the upcoming Desucon Frostbite anime convention and I finally finished it today! I do have his, agreeably much more impressive, shikai version of his swords made already prior but due to convenience reasons I wanted to make the ordinary version of Sogyo no Kotowari for this con. Traveling with those twin blades by train is a bit cumbersome.

I was so excited (and kinda in a rush) to make this cosplay prop project that it didn't cross my mind to take any progress photos, oops. The base of the sword is a martial arts bokken training sword, made out of wood, that I removed the plastic handguard from and repainted the whole thing to look like the character's sword. All Bleach shinigamis have distinct designs on their zanpakutou handguards so I used a few references to make Ukitake's out of a plywood sheet. The details I made out of craft foam that I then used a diluted water and glue mix on to seal and harden it before I painted over it with gold spray paint. It took several layers to make the craft foam less, well, spongy.

I did the tsukamaki (read: handle wrapping) by following a tutorial I found online. It's quite easy to do, especially if you glue it down as you work your way forward as it keeps the slippery satin ribbon I used from shifting and made the end results look neat and crisp.

Sogyo no Kotowari full sword.

Close-up of the hilt.

Gosh, how bad lighting we have in our house! The only place decent enough for photos is the shower/sauna room during this time of the year. My digital camera (Samsung ST500) ain't the best quality gear for photos either but whatever, better some photos than none at all, am I right? :D

I'm happy with the sword for now. I'll admit though that I cut some corners in my eagerness to just get it done as soon as possible, hehe. I might eventually want to add a sheath for it but we'll see; I'm just not too sure how to go about doing it with my current experience. The handguard, aka the tsuba, feels a tiny bit too big so I'll maybe remake it one day, but for now it'll suffice.

Thanks for stopping by. Sayonara!
Shiro Samurai is out~