Amira, Karluk and second set of photos from Desucon Frostbite

Desucon is sneakily approaching, but we still have something to share from the latest Desucon Frostbite! On Sunday we were able to set up a small, spontaneous photoshoot with Jesmo, talented cosplayer and fellow Otoyomegatari enthusiastic. I love the natural and lifelike expressions and situations she was able to catch with her camera!

Photographer: Jesmo
Cosplayers: Casualty Cosplay/ Yoki as Karluk, Hiron as Amira

Eleventh Doctress photoshoot 2/2

The Doctor is fun, curious and kind.

A traveller...

... only with all of space and time.

Photographs: Karan
Cosplay and model: Hiron/ Casualty Cosplay

Yuma photoshoot and trivial information

Last weekend I squeezed into Yuma’s costume and we headed to a nearby nature trail for a small, autumn photoshoot. Karan, who has taken our photos as FemBots and Lady Doctor was kind enough to act as a photographer and Yoki was the sword wielding, grass bending assistant.

Ideally we would have left to our shoot in the morning, but because I had to work late on Saturday we only had few hours of day time left. And it was rather chilly, but gladly no one cached a cold. The outcome was a lot of interesting facial expression and few gems in the mix.

In the shoot I wore the cape that I made, but didn’t wear at the convention few weeks ago. It was too hot to wear it at the time, which is rather hard to believe now with nights below zero. The cape is basically a circle with drapes on the back. I made it from “brushed” polyester for the weight and flow. I usually try to pick natural fibers over synthetics, but with Yuma I made all the exceptions.

With Yuma I wanted to concentrate on textures, matt versus shine and fit. The bodysuit, which is actually shirt and pants are made from polyester jersey with lycra. I remade the pants three times before I was satisfied with the fit. First version I made out of wetlook spandex, but in the end it looked too much like the fake leather I used in the armor parts.

The second version had a seam on the center both back and front, but because the references didn’t have any seam on the front I remade the pants again. The third version was a success with “hidden” seams. The stay-up socks are fake; I sew folded strips of fabric on the leggings to mimic the look. I didn’t want unnecessary moving parts and separate pieces of clothing in the costume. More so, when I had to attach the armor parts to the “socks”.

I patterned the foot piece directly to the leggings trunks and glued old canvas shoes on with hotglue. Normally hotglue is not ideal with shoe covers, but I tested it and found that it worked with the materials I was using. By the way, Yuma is the first costume I have to use a shoehorn to squeeze in.

During the photoshoot we might have spooked few joggers. One felt sorry, that she interrupted our movie shoot. Yuma is a movie star!

Photographs: Karan
Modeling and costume: Hiron/ Casualty Cosplay

Eleventh Doctress photoshoot 1/2

Summer seems to be the simplest time of the year to organize a photoshoot. People have so much free time on their hands, like we had. And Sunday is the perfect day to pick! There was absolutely no one anywhere when we head out for the shoot!

Our first location for the Doctress was a small rooftop parking lot. The photographer of this shoot was Karan-chan who was with us on our Lady Bot shoot two years ago and Yoki was the fez holding assistant. The rooftop is the first part of the photoshoot. I decided to split the shoot in two, because there were over 300 photos to choose from. 

The Eleventh Doctress was a costume I made last year and wore the first time at Desucon Frostbite, 2013. The costume itself I constructed based on the outfit the 11th introduces himself in. I just can’t get over that look! It's brilliant!

Even if I made the costume some while ago, I still find some things I would like to add or fix, like the red stripes on the cuffs and the golden wristwatch. Actually I have the watch; I just forgot to wear it. But I had the journal and sonic screwdriver to fill the void.

We took a bunch of running photos. With the heat, wool jacket and stockings it wasn’t the most brilliant idea, but each photo turned out great! It was hard to pick only one! Karan laughed that in each frame my arms and legs had changed position, but face was like frozen in time!

Bride-to-be

I’m almost there! Kind of… If I mildly understate the amount of stitches that still need to be stitched and the rehearsals to be rehearsed. But nonetheless, I will at least have something on when it’s time to step on stage at Desucon!

Last Sunday I asked Yoki to company me for a small photoshoot trip to our nearby meadow. I thought that having a trial run for Amir’s underclothes wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I also got the opportunity to test how the wig works in action. It was worth the trouble, because now I know that such a heavy wig needs more sturdy fastenings than just regular hairpins. I ordered wig clips and should receive them early next week. The wig problems should be solved with that.

For the photoshoot I was also able to test the make-up for Amir. I tried to keep the look natural and didn’t wear fake lashes. I probably won’t wear them at the competition either, because I’m worried that they might be bit too much with dark contact lenses. But we’ll see about that… quite soon I’m afraid.

The costume itself or the lower layer of it looks good. I’ll probably add some hooks to the shirt so that I won’t be pulling and twitching it after every time I lift my arms. The wig also needs some attention with the fastenings and a lot of hairspray.

Now I think I will take off to our workshop and try to shorten the list of unfinished costume pieces. I have high hopes that today I might be able to finish the jacket, which is the most laborious part of this costume. But also the prettiest one too!

The credit for the photos and big thanks goes to Yoki, who took some really nice shots and has been a great sport during my costume construction!

Until next time!

New cosplay and photoshoot- Alicia from Moomin

Even if I thought to have a break from costume making after Tracon, I just couldn’t. This year has been our most productive year this far and there seems to be no end to it. The main point for constructing Alicia/Aliisa costume was to make a mash-up revolving around a theme of Zombies at Moominvalley for Halloween. Instead I fell in love with the regular costume so bad that I had to have a photoshoot starring Alicia. The location was our neighboring forest. Yoki acted as the photographer.

 The costume wasn’t complex to build. I borrowed Yoki’s patterns for Snufkin as a base for the shirt and dress. The tights I found from local department store and the shoes are drifted ages ago for unidentified costume purposes. They were so cheap that I had to buy them… Thank you, my inner cosplay hoarder. The pendant is left over Fimo, gessoed and painted pink.

The wig is from a Finnish masquerade store and I used it for Lumiere earlier this year. Its bit thin to be worn loose, but I have solution ready.  Again thanks to my hoarding spirit, I found a pack of straight kanelon fiber from my closet in the exact color of the wig! So if I ever wear Alicia to conventions, I’ll be making wefts for some thickness.