Cosplay is a bang, un!

Cosplay frenzy has taken over me once again! And it’s pretty nostalgic frenzy, too! It all started a week ago, when I realized that there was only three weeks until Cosvision and I had two costumes under construction that I might not be able to finish in time. And they would be too “big” to transport by stuffing them into one suitcase. So, I kind of started a new costume… But this character I’ve already cosplayed and I think he was actually one of the reasons why I got hooked to this hobby.

Of course he is Deidara! We made Akatsuki outfits for Sasori and Deidara as our second costumes in 2007. In 2010 I updated the undergarments and we had a small photoshoot. Then we have all the videos we made dressed as the characters on our Youtube account.

After the first costumes back in 2007, I considered making the flashback version of Deidara. The idea got pushed back, probably because it would’ve been solo cosplay as Sasori’s "camouflage form" was not on our to-do list. But now since I’m going to attend Cosvision without Yoki, I remembered young Deidara. A week later, here is what I’ve got!

I wanted to cast new mouths for Deidara's hands and got rather satisfying results considering it was my first time making a partial facecast on myself. I thought that making a mouth in resting position would be easier and faster for a first timer. Also I wouldn't need to make positive cast from the mouth and sculpt a whole different expression for the latex cast given the time I have before the convention. At Cosvision I'm going to wear only one mouth, because I need one fully functioning hand without a lump of latex glued on the palm.

The only things left are to construct the sandals, add some finishing stitches on the clothes and try out the make-up. I also thought about sculpting the first clay sculpture Deidara presents to the Akatsuki who came to claim him aka. the fat spider.

Textile printing for the God of Poverty

Our last textile printing projects date back three years, when we crafted four laborious costumes in a year. The first ones were Luminara and Barriss and the second batch was Ivy and Yoshimitsu and they all required printing designs or uniform patterns. After we finished Ivy and Yoshimitsu it was clear to me that fabric printing was something I would't have on my to do-list for quite some time. Apparently three years was the required recovery time for me and I’m back on my knees with printing pastes, templates and tapes!

I’ve started three individual projects this year for spring and summer conventions. One of them doesn’t (thankfully) include printing, but two of them just crave it. Textile printing was the only possible choice for me when facing the problem of not finding suitable fabrics, since they most likely don’t exist at all. And after a long time, I really enjoyed this particular printing project even if I had some small setbacks.

The checkered skirt fabric is for a costume I started about a month ago. Recently I’ve had more spare time than I normally do and I’ve spent some evenings reading and watching new series. Even marathons have occurred. One of the new acquaintances was Noragami and since I'm quite fond of pleated skirts and whacky side characters, I immediately fell for Ebisu Kofuku.

I’ve been dreaming of purchasing screens and all the fancy stuff to go with, but with this project I just used the easy stencil and a sponge technique. I used both emulsion and paste colours to achieve the wanted look. For example the skirt fabric has two sets of stripes crossing. The magenta ones are emulsion based so that they are “sheer” and the yellow ones are made with cover paste.

First I made calculations based on the references, taped the long horizontal lines with blue masking tape. Blue is the best in this case, because it doesn’t stick too strongly to the fabric or leave tacky glue behind. After the horizontal lines, I printed the vertical ones and let them set properly before moving to the yellow lines. The yellow lines cross the magenta ones from the middle. After the colours had dried I ironed the fabrics to set the print.

The costume itself is actually ready with basic white shirt, pleated skirt and matching tie. I finished the garments probably a week ago. The brown multipurpose/-character shoes and black knee socks I snatched fron my closet. I still need to have another look at the wig. I think I need to style  it some more. I also thought about crafting Kofuku's shinki, Kokki.

I took a quick snapshot of the costume with my phone. Shame that the ruffles aren't visible from that angle...

I didn’t have any particular convention in mind when I started to make the costume. I just got exited about Kofuku and her outfit, which finally filled my easy-fun-and-cool summer costume void. You could argue about pleats being easy and fun after you have unpacked them from your cramped suitcase, but I try to reassure myself that irons and ironing boards can nowadays be found from the cosplay dressing rooms in major conventions.

I’m not going to reveal the other costume projects yet. They are still so all over the place and I want to have something real to show before making a fuzz about them. But I will reveal that I'm going to fullfil a costume dream I've had since I started cosplaying... I'm goint to sew my first kimono!

We are backs

I wanted to make a derpy photo entry, because they are just so cheerful and entertaining and I myself love to read them! But while scrolling through our numerous cosplay folders, I realized that we don't have that many photos with odd facial expression. Instead, we have backs. I don't know how it happens, but we usually have backshot of ourselves or each others when ever we are in costumes. Yoki toyed with an idea of an photo post of our numerous back photos and on my spare time I made it happen. So here are the many backs from our cosplay journey!

As you can see from above we have high backs at rooftops. Then we have nature backs like seen below. Nature backs are many in numbers in our photo folders, but I picked these for the swinging action.

We also have nature backs with water and gentle summer breeze. And then we have scroching summer backs with heat and dust.

We have close up backs from nearby photoshoots and far away backs (or chased backs) from location photoshoots.

We have solo and duo backs with straight and aligned camera angles.

 But my favorites are definately the ones with two backs! Sometimes both in costumes and sometimes not.

And as an extra back we have this rare theatrical dragon's back!

We've heard that our regular walking speed could be described as fast, so maybe that's the reason for all the backs...

Amira and Karluk at Desucon Frostbite

Desucon Frostbite was held last weekend at Sibeliustalo, Lahti. It was a three day convention, but as we both had certain obligations towards work and school we only left to Lahti on Friday evening. As I wrote earlier, I crafted a costume for myself from Sandman for Saturday. I also made another costume for the weekend, but it was not for me. It was for Yoki.

On Sunday I dressed as Amira and Yoki draped herself in the multiple layers of Karluk’s outfit. When I look at the photos of us, I’m really happy how the costumes fit together; they have somewhat the same vibe, but are still totally different.

I’m truly grateful to everyone who came to talk to us, complimented the costumes or changed few words about last year’s competition. And the cuteness overload reactions were just priceless!

The photos in this post were taken by Emilia Lahtinen at Frostbite’s photobooth. I’m always so happy to get photographed by her, because it’s certain that I will love the outcome! Thank you yet again!

Photographer: Emilia Lahtinen
Costumes: Hiron/ Casualty Cosplay
Models: Yoki as Karluk, Hiron as Amira

Cosplay Christmas Ball with Wednesday Addams

In mid-December I surprised myself by attending to Cosplay Ball at Helsinki thanks to lovely Shewon who kindly shared her invitation with me! The Cosplay Ball was a sort of a Christmas party organized by local hobbyists, but with costumes and different sorts of ball and historical dances.

Before I talk about my costume of choice I shall raise my glass to the organizers and thank them for the lovely and exiting evening, which hopefully will turn into an annual event! It’s great to see enthusiastic and active people who make things happen and actually turn ideas to functional concepts. Even if the schedule didn’t hold and things changed bit on the way it really didn’t bother anyone. The overall atmosphere was joyful and relaxed.

And all the costumes! The organizers had set a dress code; smart dress, cosplay optional. There were lot of official costumes but also recognizable characters in formal attires. I myself thought about taking Diva with me, but having to travel by train to Helsinki and back set some limitations. I bet the dress would have been in terrible condition if I had stuffed it in my backpack. I ended up crafting a version of a character (in one evening, crazy business). I call the costume as a version, because I didn’t replicate the design directly from the reference material. Instead I used different features of the characters clothing ands appearance to create the look.

The character I chose was Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family. I absolutely love Wednesday by Christina Ricci!

The dress was moderately easy to make. I used matt polyester with teeny bit of elasthane and for once I made a dress without lining it. Instead I used a petticoat to give the hem some volume. I used traits of Wednesday’s signature dress to define the fit and the lengths of hem and sleeves. The details I also picked from the movie dress; button list on the front and white collars. I found old lace collars my mother had used when she was my age and decided to use them as part of the costume.

I wanted to make a prop to go with Wednesday. Marie Antoinette would have been wonderful to have, but with the time I had, I just had to abandon it. The first idea after the doll was a poison bottle. That was a good idea, but when I was raiding third pharmacy trying to find green food color I sort of regretted my decision. Christmas coming, green food color… Duh!

Finally I was able to find one jar with a helpful employee. She noticed that the expiration date had gone months ago, but it was fine by me. I just noted that I was not going to use it on anything edible. I got a weird look, but in the end I bought the product for half of the price.

The bottle itself I snatched from Yoki’s shelf, but in the end I found out that it was actually my prop bottle from the time I still LARPed. The bottle itself wasn’t waterproof thanks to the half crumbled cork. I couldn’t just color water, which was my original idea. Instead I made gelatin, poured it into the bottle and let it set on the refrigerator overnight. The result was really odd looking green wiggly… content.

The wig I had was bit thin to split on two braids, but I managed to pull off the hair style somehow. I was just happy that I even got a somewhat suitable, long, black wig! Everything happened in such short notice, that I really didn’t have time to buy anything new for the costume, except the fabric.

Contact lenses I also happened to have from previous projects and shoes I got from my mom. They were her dancing shoes, but thanks to our lovely dog who decided to sharpen her teeth on the pair years ago, I was able to snatch them for costuming purposes.

Altogether, I really enjoyed the ball! The atmosphere was great, my costume turned out fine, I even got recognized and I didn't miss my train home. The only shame was that I had to leave early, just before the disco started. Dancing and meeting other cosplayers out of con environment was a good mix indeed. All the people who I chatted with; you made my evening! Here I insert smiley faces and rows of hearts, even if that might be little out of character!

Photographs: Kyuu Eturautti
Cosplay and model: Hiron/ Casualty Cosplay

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

The year is 2014. The place: Cosplay workshop, naturally

When year 2013 was almost over I thought of writing an overview of our cosplay year, but then the busy schedule at work with normal Christmas hassle got in the way. For me 2013 was precious with Eurocosplay qualifiers and finals, but I also had quite productive year altogether.

I made four new costumes, finished and debuted two that I had started the year before, competed solo for the second time in my life and enjoyed the hobby more than ever. Yoki crafted two costumes based on her original designs, competed in an original creation class and was picked for Hall cosplay competition, had to make some sacrifices to cosplay goddesses in the form of hair and varied one of her previous costume designs for two different events.

Year 2014 seems to start with a nice buzz. The first convention is closing in and for us that is Desucon Frostbite at Lahti. We are attending only on Saturday and Sunday and will bring two costumes each.

I have been making a costume from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and will hopefully finish that for Saturday. Yoki is still pondering which costume to choose.

On Sunday I was thinking of wearing Amira with one new, major addition… You can’t imagine how happy I am about this… I’m going to have Karluk portrayed by Yoki!

Amira is a character who can support herself just fine, but Karluk being her counterpart and companion I thought it would be ideal to have him around. I carefully introduced the idea to Yoki, saying that I would make the costume myself and she wouldn’t need to worry about that at all. Other that wearing three layers of clothing... and contact lenses, which she just simply hates… But she agreed and I’ve been making Karluk’s attire from the back cover of the second manga issue for few weeks now.

I’ve enjoyed the sewing process a lot! Making Karluk’s costume really brings back memories from Amira, because the materials and some of the techniques I use are pretty much the same. With Karluk I’m making less by hand, but will embroider details on the under shirts and the hat. I’m trying to keep the embroidery styles different, since Amira and Karluk are from different regions. The designs on Amira’s clothes are more or less formed from lines. For Karluk I’m using organic designs and shapes filled with color.

With Karluk I’m also using my freedom as a costume maker to alter and to interpret the costume design. There aren’t many colored illustrations of Karluk and I think the cover art I’m using is the most reliable one there is. I’m combining the clothing details from the chapters and also historical aspects to create the set.

The biggest issue was finding green wool(ish) fabric for the outer robe, chapan. It felt like no one has middle blue or green wool this winter. Gladly one old corner store with its ancient fabric collections saved us! The stripes I sewed from blue and red wool with white yarn details. It took me about three evenings to make the jacket, which was surprising since I thought the decorations would take forever. I think the projects last year really had a positive impact on my sewing technique!

The under garments were the first to complete. I made trousers and an undershirt from linen with embroidered collar. Then I made the long tunic with pin-tuck panels on the edges and on the cuffs. The tunic I made from fine wool mix with nice, silky finish.

The hat is also on its way. I’ve actually made one hat already, which was part of my performance at London Comic Con. Sadly, it wasn’t the style needed so I ended up making a new one. Which is great, because I really do love hats!

Right now I struggle with finding a suitable wig for Karluk. If I can’t find one soon, I’m probably going to dye one from my collections. But next to that and the boots I have under construction, the costume looks quite good!

Death and Karluk are the first new costumes of the year. I have few ideas for upcoming projects and hopefully will debut them both this summer. For the fall we have a pair cosplay coming up from Yoki’s Varjella. I also would like to finish a project I’ve been dragging with me for almost three years now…

Finally, I would like to wish you, my fellow hobbyists a great and productive year 2014!