Animecon 2012 – THIS IS SPARTA!!

 Hello!

First of all, this Animecon 'commercial' video has been stuck in my head for months and, after having seen it for the first time a bit before Chibicon in Oulu, it sure subconsciously dug it's way into my brain and did what it was supposed to do.. namely making me want to go to Animecon. Yeah, now the con trip to Animecon has been done and I'm back scratching my ass at home. So yeah, here is my summary of the con in Kuopio ~

On Friday around maybe 11:00 something (I dunno, later than we had originally planned at least xD) me, mom and my twin Jäätynyt Enkeli started the car journey from Tornio to Kuopio. It went smooth until around mid-way when it started to rain a lot. Oh well, the rain just made us drive slower but we got to the hotel safely - Rauhalahti spa hotel. We booked the hotel pretty late because originally me and my twin had planned to go together to Kuopio by train, but err, it fucked up because when mom had decided to order the train tickets the super cheap campaign price had disappeared (around 140 € for both of us, two-way ticket) and it would have now cost 280 €. Fuck that robbery price I say.
So yeah, mom figured she could go with us and drive there because it would be cheaper and well, Kuopio luckily isn't that far away. Also mom would get some spa vacation at the hotel while me and Jäätynyt Enkeli derped at the con, a win-win situation. Oh well, when we got our hotel room (112 lol) we dumped our stuff there and soon went to eat dinner buffet at the hotel and after that back into the hotel room and chill and sleep. Oh and they showed the movie 300 on the night..

THIS IS SPARTAAAAAAAAA!!!1!!!11

Saturday

Saturday morning, me and my twin woke up 07:00. Well, I actually woke around 05:00 because mom was snoring like a lumber mill. -.- We quickly dressed in normal clothes and went to eat hotel breakfast. After that we went back to the hotel room and changed into our Saturday cosplays; I cosplayed kimono!Masamune Date for the first time and my twin cosplayed Kratos Aurion from Tales of Symphonia, his signature cosplay. When we were done the clock was just past 09:00 and after having gone to the reception and learned that the busses to the square/centrum leave 08:00, 09:00, 10:00 etc  fuck.. missed it by mere minutes we stood outside the hotel and looked for some people my twin knew. We didn't see them but a random English speaking tourist came up to me in front of the hotel and asked what was going on with the weirdly dressed people. I explained and he seemed interested. Oh, and one thing, it felt like many hotel visitors stared at me, mostly because I had an eyepatch. xD
   When the clock was close to 10:00 a wild mom appeared and she was walking towards the car. Seemed like mom had already had breakfast and decided to drive us to the con after all. Sweet. When we were sitting in the car and I was derping with the Kuopio city map a random lady from the car in front of us came up to mom and asked if we were going to Animecon, obviously we were. lol So she said she already knew where it was and that we could just drive after her. Yay!
   Soon we were at the con and I immediately found Jäärä standing with some other people. After a while of standing there I noticed someone with a FBI vest walking towards us - Ri-kun.
The rest of the con day was random walking around with friends, looking at the merchandise, buying Japanese candy and some mangas and having a Sengoku Basara photoshoot. I didn't attend any panels because I'm lazy. derp
   Back at the hotel later we went to eat, again at the hotel's restaurant. This time we were too late for the buffet so we ate pizza instead. I was still in Masamune cosplay (my twin had changed to normal clothes) and when we walked to an eating table we passed by some people eating there and I heard them say something "Masamune", trololo~
Later Ri-kun came visiting at our hotel and we talked and they got to eat the other half of my pizza. xD

Sunday

We woke up 07:30 I think and this time mom ate hotel breakfast at the same time as we did. After we got back to the hotel room it was time to put on Sunday's cosplays. I cosplayed Hajime Saitou from Hakuouki: Shinsengumi Kitan and my twin cosplayed Keisuke Sannan from the same series. I had to help my twin dress in kimono, tie kaku obi and hakama and do the make-up for him too before I could start putting my own cosplay on. -.- Oh well, we were done a bit before 10:00 (con opening time) and we had also packed our luggage because we wouldn't be coming back to the hotel anymore after the con. We took with us some bags and left them at the car and mom drove us again to the con. As soon as we arrived to the con Chizuru (Jäärä) appeared and soon my double Saitou (Ri-kun) did too. We Saitous brofisted each other as promised and went on to find the others of our Hakuouki group. I must say Sunday was the better day of the con for me because I really enjoyed hanging around with all the Hakuouki peeps and the photoshoot was so hilarious and funny. XD I hope I get to see all those (drunk) gay pairing photos, Chizuru more-or-less romantic park bench photos and everything. So much fun!! :'DDD

Here's one of the photos I took during the Hakuouki photoshoot:

Because it's fun to pretend to be drunk and gay XD
(Jozo-dono as Hijikata, Ri-kun as Saitou, Chooichi as Okita and Zkitsune as Harada)

Ighjdgskgsgdksagk, I want to see the photos everyone else took! Gief them nooow! ~~
Needless to say I had a crapload of fun during the Sunday and I hope we will have Hakuouki groups a lot in the future too! <3

Oh well, everything fun ends and mom decided to be a joykiller and call me one hour before the con ended. "I'm there in 10 minutes, get ready to leave ololol". At least it didn't bother me that much this time because a lot of my friends had already left. I figured there wasn't much to do because mom didn't want to drive all night so yeah, tried to enjoy the last minutes of the con (at least my earlier lung derps had eased..) and then it was time to say goodbye to Kuopio, Mira-kun and Ri-kun and step into the car.. in cosplay. Yes. I figured half-way at the con that neither me nor my twin would be able to change back into normal clothes (as we had planned in the morning) because we both were wearing vintage silk kimonos as part of our cosplays and well, idiot me had forgotten my tatoshi (kimono wrapping paper) in the bottom of our luggage that was in mom's car's tailgate. Fail. Oh, and it wouldn't have worked anyway because I cringe of the thought of having to fold a kimono on the (toilet) floor... So yeah, needless to say the 5-7 car trip back home was in cosplay. At least Saitou cosplay is comfortable so I didn't really mind... until we had to stop at an ABC gas station/restaurant to eat and.. well, there was always someone staring at us, even when we sat down eating everytime I would look up I saw a pair of eyes looking at me. lol

Oh, and one last thing.. on the car trip back home we drove by this one small parking/resting place in the road that well... had the same name as my surname LOL. We had to stop and then Saitou (me) ran out and crossed the car road, with a camera in hand, and took some photos of the road sign and went back inside the car. XD Wonder what the people driving past thought when they saw a random kimono weirdo taking photos of a road sign...

Ihan voittajafiilis tuli!!

Smell ya later!

PARTY TIME!! (aka Masamune preview)

My eyepatch stopped smelling glue so today when I woke up I decided to put everything on and take some preview photos before the coming debut at Animecon. I also needed to check that everything worked as I wanted it to. Oh well, enough blabbering, here's photos!

Cosplayer: Valkoinen Samurai (obviously, duh :-DD)
Photographer: Jäätynyt Enkeli

Ignore my Uppcon wrist (ticket) band... I don't want to take it off because this year's Uppcon was the last in history and well, Uppcon 2010 was the first (proper) con I attended and cosplayed at so yeah... ;_;

Bonus pic!

"Fuck these mosquitos..."
(one tried to eat my face and I slapped it. lol)

 And some background info why I did kimono!Masamune:

I needed something very simple because I wanted to cosplay from Basara already this year (cosplay group!) but I have had a lack of time making cosplays since Desucon because I've been away from home for almost a month + Uppcon. So yeah, this means that this cosplay is mostly not made by me. White kimono is commissioned by my friend Hasakitsuki's mom and the inner gi is from Kendoshop. The hakama are my kendo hakama.. yay multi-use! Eyepatch made by me. Sword borrowed from my twin.

I noticed a few things while wearing this cosplay: I will need to reinforce the eyepatch with Jesus tape (duct tape) because even Karlssons klister can't seem to hold the elastic in place at the back without the sides starting to peel off.. oh well, I guess it's because the eyepatch bends a bit when worn.. human faces aren't flat. lol I also need to try to keep my covered eye closed because it's annoying to get my eyelashes almost touching my eye when I blink and also moving the eyepatch around... otherwise it's all fine and dandy.

Awaiting Animecoooooooonnnnnnn ~~~~ <3

Chikage's collar and Kondou's kimono

Some time ago I had randomly found out what that particular pattern Kazama has on his haori's collar is called after having seen it on random Asian stuff (including dish cloths in a Thai food store lol) during my life time - sayagata. I had typed it and searched on Google for fabrics but didn't find anything with the right color for Kazama.. until I saw a thumbnail of an Etsy auction selling a vintage kimono collar. It was labelled as 'moss green', but looked darker gold on the photos, so I took the risk and ordered it. Today I found a small package from France in the mailbox and figured it must be it and well... for once luck was on my side when it came to colors, it do indeed look gold!

Oh, I also went and biked with Jäätynyt Enkeli all the way to town to pick up two packages from the post office. One of them was the vintage kimono I will use for my coming Isami Kondou cosplay for Närcon in Linköping. Oh, and yes, it's Kondou from Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan. Yes, I will cosplay him because he is such a bro to Okita (codename: Konbro! xD) and deserves some cosplay love. Especially considering what he did to save all the shinsengumi and yeah, I kinda adore his sense of honor and I loved that scene in the anime where he gave his black haori to sick Okita. ;A;

Kimono (in plastic bag) and collar

Collar close-up

Besides, speaking of Närcon.. a cosplay plan list will appear any day here on my blog so stay tuned if you're going there!

Masamune's eyepatch

I've been away from home, as you might have figured already, but now I'm back and thus this blog is brought back to life again with the most recent cosplay updates. So Animecon (Kuopio, Finland) is soon around the corner and the only thing keeping my cosplays from being 100% ready for the con is Masamune's eyepatch. Well, I was bored today so I decided to make it and get it out of the way ~

First of all I needed a reference. I had already saved myself a good screenshot from the anime so I could start working ASAP.

hurr hurr

But before I could start working I needed to climb to our attic where mom currently stores all her leftover fabric and sewing supplies. I remembered yesterday I had asked about black elastic and she had said there should be lots of it in different sizes visible as soon as you get up there. So yeah, I dragged my ass up there and when I was up I noticed a cardboard box lying on the floor. I opened it and was flooded with lots of zippers. Yeah. But because I didn't see anything else that could hold elastic bands in it I dug deeper into the box and then I saw a whole roll of white elastic. "Cool, but not the right color.." I thought. Dug some more and found a black one... and another... and another... and then I probably looked like this:

I went back inside á la herpy derp and could start working. I took with me two rolls because I wasn't sure which width I preferred. I ended up using the wider one.

Mom I love you. <3 lol

Cut off a fitting length

Now I will just show photos of the rest of the progress because I'm lazy ~ 

and my twin wants to play Mario Party 4 with me lol

I made a (fail) test version first to check size...

... and then started making the real one. (craft foam)

Some trimmings later...

Cut out a second layer of the same size (lol Masamune secretly likes Sweden...)

I started painting 'em black... dries so slow...

FUCK YEAH HAIR DRYER!!1

Three coats of paint, black fingers and some glue later I had made myself this:

I did do a quick try-on.. but soon found myself getting high on glue fumes and my eye twitching. So yeah, need to let it dry completely before I go take preview photos trolololo ~

Hijikata night photoshoot + Saitou photoshoot

Hi!

After me and Jäätynyt Enkeli got home from Uppcon on both Saturday and Sunday we decided to do photoshoots in the park/playground outside -close to where my father lives in southern Sweden- before we changed back to normal gear. I won't write so much, I'll post photos instead. 
Oh, and please ignore my red Uppcon arm band ticket thingy.

Saturday 16th June - Toshizo Hijikata • Hakuouki: Shinsengumi Kitan

Saturday 17th June - Hajime Saitou • Hakuouki: Shinsengumi Kitan

- BONUS PIC -

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD ISHIDA, DON'T COME PHOTO CRASHING DAMMIT! XD
(yes, I was serious face-ing half a second before.. and then ololo derptacular)

We will hopefully do another Hijikata photoshoot because I want one in daylight so we don't have to use flash... although night photos are pretty cool.

Bye.

History's last Uppcon (2012) is over

So I attended Uppcon XII, the last Uppcon in history. I had a lot of fun, met some friends and just had general con fun and a blast. I took quite a lot of photos of cosplayers but I didn't attend any panels or anything.. again, I'm lazy and prefer to just walk around and look at all the cosplays, enjoy the atmosphere and occasionally strike a quick conversation with someone.
I cosplayed Gin Ichimaru from Bleach on Friday, Toshizo Hijikata from Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan on Sunday and Hajime Saitou from Hakuouki on Sunday. I was happy to see that some people did recognize me as Hakuouki characters, even though it seemed it isn't as known in Sweden as it is in Finland. Oh, and what made me kinda happy was on Saturday when I was cosplaying Hijikata and wandering around the merchandise tent two Japanese men were standing in front of me, when I was walking towards that scene thingy, away from the buying stands and I noticed them both watching me with a smile and then they said something in Japanese to each other, one of the words being 'shinsengumi'. Then one of them gestured to me like "hey, shinsengumi, come here" and of course I did. They took my picture. :'D And bowed to me, I just smiled although now later I wish I had bowed back. I think they didn't know I cosplayed from Hakuouki, probably they just thought it was cool that I was dressing up as something from their own history. xD Whatever, it really made me warm inside haha ~

The weather was perfect on Friday but Saturday was rainy and Sunday even more so.. but when the con ended the rain stopped... oh, speaking of the con end; I got teary-eyed after the "avslutning" (conclusion, final speech thingy) and I noticed several people crying too.. I saw someone with face paint coming out of the building who you could obviously tell had cried a lot because the make-up had these tear strokes. I didn't really cry at first but then I noticed some of the people who arrange Uppcon were hugging con-goers as some kind of 'thank you for coming and farewell' thing and that made me feel my eyes watering. I hugged some of them.
After the final speech thingy several random people gathered huge hug groups of people and I took part in at least 3.. couldn't resist.

Sad group hugging

Also someone went around with a video camera and asked random people close to her about the feelings after the final Uppcon had ended.. she asked me and I said something that I tried not to cry because I didn't want my make-up to run (had planned a photoshoot after the con), I should have added that I would most likely be crying later because I'm like that.. at first I'm just stunned and emotionless and then a few minutes later it hits me like BAM it is over. Now just let's see if I can find that video on Youtube..

I also hugged this one guy who was cosplaying some more casual version (I think it might have been canon) of Kenpachi from Bleach because he was the one who was crying the most and it really made my heart break to see him so sad.. because I've known him since my first (or was it second?) Uppcon and if I have to associate one person with Uppcon it's him. He is just amazing, such a fire soul and he's the 'pepp' (con hype) incarnated. :'( He was crying so much and everyone kept hugging and coming up to him. I wasn't cosplaying Bleach when I hugged him so I asked if he remembered me (I was Saitou) and mentioned that I was Ukitake last year and he said that of course he did and praised my swords, then I said he was the one person I remember the most from my overall Uppcon experience and that made him break up in tears.. again. ;_; Awww.

And I was crying a bit after that and people started to hug each other and a person came very close to me, gave me a tiny bit of chocolate something and a hug. Thank you. ;A;
Also one of the Uppcon staff (I think?) was walking outside with a cardboard box that contained cute hats that he was giving for free, I got a black and white one with ears and a cute skull on, yay.

Oh well, despite the weather being semi-crap and the very very sad ending Uppcon XII was amazing.. but I can't help but ask myself why it had to come to an end already.. Uppcon X was my first con and first con I cosplayed to.. Uppcon opened my eyes for going to conventions, cosplaying and gave me lots of new friends.. so I just want to say THANK YOU UPPCON FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART. <3

Fixed the last details for my shinsengumi outfits

 Hi guys!

I've been packing most of the day and I hope I don't forget anything now. I wonder where I've put my hair tie for Saitou... I've done some cosplay progress too: I added the long ties for the shinsengumi haori today and made the headband.

It's ready ~ <3

I just cut two 2 meter pieces of some random white cord that we had lying at home and tied them to the loops inside the haori, then I test tied it to see about how far down the ties fell on my back.

reference for haori himo length (and headband too..)

Turned out 2 meters was waaaay too long so I cut around 50 cm or something off each end and kept tying them together until I got them to look about right.

Next (and last) thing to do was the shinsengumi headband.
I had yesterday bought two strips of around 12 cm of thin bed sheet-ish flowy fabric (whole fabric width) and I started from that. First thing to do was sew one of the ends together so I got one long piece. Then I zigzaged around the whole thing and next up was to iron it. After ironing it in the middle I put it on my head to see how long it was. Too long. Again. So I cut 40 cm off both ends.

After I had cut off excess length. lol why do I look so angry?...

Then I folded and ironed the sides...

... and sewed it closed ~

And when that was done I went and grabbed my bag of craft foam. Yes, I'm cheap. XD I took the brown sheet because, well, brown is better than yellow or green or something. lol
I cut out a 21 cm long (whole width of the sheet) and a 5 cm wide piece and proceeded to mix together some glue and water in a glass bottle. I needed to seal the craft foam because craft foam is kinda like a sponge and it sucks up paint like a monster otherwise. Or something.

Craft foam sealing preparations

I coated it around 4 layers and then I got lazy and picked up the silver spray paint and went outside. Several coats of paint later I let the piece dry and then I used some Karlssons klister (it glues everything pretty much) and glued it to the headband. I tried to sew it on at first but it derped so I resorted to using glue. I let it dry again and tried it on ~

Finished headband

Closer shot of it

When it's not on my head trolol

I'm not 100% sure what color it's actually supposed to be because the pictures I looked at showed different colors... ._. Oh well, I made mine silver and if I later find out it's the wrong color I can always make a new one, not much trouble. Now I did some quick version because, as you all know, I'm leaving tomorrow. I will use the haori and headband for both Saitou and Hijikata and also other future shinsengumi members I will cosplay. That means now both my Saitou and Hijikata cosplays are finished and con ready, YAY! ~

Bye bye!