Tracon, trolls and toddlers

Maybe it’s about time to write something about last weekend, which we successfully spent at Tracon with a party of seven. Seven! We overcame all obstacles and were victorious!

Tracon is an annual convention held traditionally at Tampere. This year’s convention was the seventh of its kind and the third one held at Tampere Hall, conference and concert hall near the center of the city. So alongside shops and grocery stores, accommodation is near. We literally had to take only few steps and we were at the convention area. We liked it, with the troll feet especially. Tracon’s program covers pretty much everything from role-playing games to anime and manga, with huge amount of cosplay from various sources. The quests of honor this year were Sandy Petersen (Cthulhu!) and Yasuhiro Nakura(Moomin!). For us, Tracon 7 was our fifth Tracon on a row, if I remember correctly.

This Tracon was bit different compared to the previous ones. We didn’t cosplay from the same series with Yoki, we had three generations attending to the convention; including me, Yoki, Thalla, his wife and two children and the Mom/Grandmom and I acted as a judge for the costume competition on Saturday. Also, Yoki participated on a demonstration for original costume designs on Sunday, for which I give two thumbs up! I hope that this kind of show will continue as a part of the cosplay program, so that those creative people, who give a form to their imagination by constructing a costume, usually sparing no effort, can have some well earned stage time. I don’t know if alternative or unofficial forms of characters could be integrated to this class somehow. Or would there be too many participants… Pre-selection maybe?

Over all the whole convention was a great experience. Loads of cosplay, great competitions and polite people, which really was nice since we had younglings with us. I have to admit that I was bit worried that a convention might be overwhelming with pram and lively two year old, but I was so wrong! Our two year old was so exited from all the life-sized stuffed toys that she wanted to hug each and every one. So big thank you to all the furries around! I bet you will not be forgotten.

Since I started to thank people, next big thank you goes to Iris, the person charge of the Tracon’s cosplay competitions and competitors and judges and… well, cosplay-everything. Thank you! For a first timer, the judging was a positive and a memorable experience. Also I could not have better mates to judge with. I, Lilian and Kizzy had weirdly enough really similar perspective to cosplay and I hope that we made the judging situation pleasant to the contestants, which was one of our goals. And if anyone wishes feedback from their costumes, just sent me e-mail on our address and I will reply from my personal account.

Part of the gratitude goes to the participants and everyone at the cosplay backstage. The competitions held at Tracon from the costume and show competition to the World Cosplay Summit preliminaries have been praised a lot, but not for nothing. Congratulations for all the ranked cosplayers!

I almost forgot our costumes! On Saturday we were troll siblings from World of Warcraft with Thalla. 

Yoki wore a costume from her original story, portraying Sio Imano both Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday I strolled as Saya Otonashi from Blood+.

On Saturday, the kids were introduced to the world of cosplay in form of cute animal over-alls. I don’t know what kind of presents can be expected from the costume crazy auntie. Sadly, I don’t have a good photo of us all in costumes. We were standing in a rather dark corridor when we had the opportunity for group photos.

I’ll write a post about our troll costumes in more detail later on and spam some photos from the costumes. Also Yoki promised to write about her adventures in the field of costume construction.

Introducing Na’Gath and plans for Tracon vol. 251

It happened that I went blue today and asked Yoki to take some pictures of my latest cosplay. Meet Na’Gath, a carefree shaman based on World of Warcraft female troll. The garments are actual item designs in the game… I might have spiced them up a bit.

Based on the two hours I wore the costume, I say that this cosplay is rather comfortable, possibly because I chose a bodysuit over bodypaint. For the face and neck, which are the parts I had to paint, I used water soluble products from Grimas. I didn’t fix the paint and I could have concentrated more with the make-up, but in all it turned out quite well.

 

It doesn’t show up too well in the pictures, but I’m wearing a pair the blue fake eyelashes I accidentally found while looking for some bling to put on the pointy ears.

It’s possible that my costume will be the only one from the three we’ve been making that will debut at Tracon. It happened that first we had to drop the show competition because of unexpected setbacks and last week more followed. One of our trolls and three other party members might have to skip the occasion, but it’s quite alright. If we won’t make it to Tracon this year as a group, we will book another convention for the trolls next year. Thank goodness, there are so many conventions in Finland nowadays. 

But I and Yoki will be strolling at Tracon in few weeks for sure. Yoki will be portraying her original character design and possibly dig an older outfit from our costume crowded closet. For the first time we will swap costumes, as I have been thinking of wearing Saya Otonashi from Blood+, which Yoki wore at last Desucon. For the other day, my choice of costume is probably Na’Gath. Altough, based on the expession, Kuura seemed not to appreciate the troll in me.

Some troll stuff

Is it August already?! I really need to schedule a blogging day to our cosplay calendar…

 

We’ve been crafting our costumes and they are slowly taking form and starting to resemble more cosplay costumes and less gym wear with all the jersey and body/leggings patterns. I think that now after settling the material and pattern issues and trying every possible technique required at least once, the rest of the construction should go rather smoothly. 

This far there have been few setbacks from re-doing the clothing plans to having to raid department stores for certain blue stockings. And I’ve actually trashed few costume pieces with which I wasn’t happy with, but that and all the other hindrances have been worth it.

I love those toes!

Yoki’s visiting our third party member, who I will call Thalla from now on to simplify things. They will fit the costume for Thalla and wrap up our performance plans. I thought that this weekend would be a convenient moment to write something and show what we’ve been doing for the past month. Here are some pieces from here and there.

Show me your teeth, mon!

I continued on the path of prosthetics and happened to solve our teeth problem sooner than I expected. Again I learned that talking to someone about your construction problems might actually help you, offer you ideas or even solutions. I casually started pondering to our mom that I had no clue how to make the teeth to our trolls, so that they would be reasonably priced, fairly safe and durable. I don’t actually remember what she said to me, but it lead to creative frenzy, which gave birth to a set of teeth with teeny-tiny, pretty tusks.

I’m currently making set for Yoki and trying to take photos so that I can make a construction post about them. From my set I can only show you the final result.

Materials used: modeling clay, latex and drop of acrylic paint.

 Smile!

Loose facial features

Our troll project is slowly making progress. Next to the wigs, I have sketched out the outfits for all three of us and some I have already started sewing. The weapons are on Yoki’s drawing table and the performance has also been somewhat decided. The prosthetics were the only big costume section I had left aside. I kind of avoided it a bit too, since it was something I wasn’t familiar with. But yesterday I grabbed the bull from its horns… or troll from its tusks! However you like to put it.

I started from taking a cast from our third party member’s nose and sculpting the master molds for our ears. I’m going to make the nose by casting latex on a negative mold and the ears by brushing or dipping the positive molds on latex. Or that is at least what I have planned. I’m not sure which method is the best, since this is my first time working with latex.

Today I finished the positive sculpt for the nose and made the first “casting” test for the ears. The male tusks I'm going to solve with ready-made product, but the female teeth issue is still wide open. I'm still looking for a right solution with them.

I want to thank my good costumer friend Batsy for providing us with the latex! You can be sure that I will shortly have a pile of questions prepared.

Wig making from scratch

Since midsummer celebration provided few extra days off work, I decided to start one of the bigger projects concerning our troll costumes. That is one more wig in crazy color scheme and wild styling. I styled two previous wigs from ones I've bought to make sure we have enough of them in case of urgent need… not like I’m a hoarder or anything. But this third one I decided to build from scratch, since it’s something that I haven’t ever done before. And I happened to find really cheap jumbo fiber, which might have affected the decision.

I started from the cap. I bought lining that is used on sportswear, pretty similar to fabric in hockey shirts. I used a wig head as a model when deciding where to make seams, keeping in mind that the Styrofoam head is smaller than normal human head. 

The basic shape contains three pieces, sides and the top. Forehead piece is double as well as the small pieces on the back of the neck, the temples and piece on forehead marking the hairline.

Then I started sewing wefts. Whole lot of them, from the three packages of fiber I had purchased. I used iron-on interfacing as the “root”. In my experience the weft is rather solid after ironing and doesn’t suffer from hair loss as much as tulle weft would. I even brushed the wefts quite heavily and only few strands came off from each.

The jumbo fiber is creped since it’s usually used in braids or dreadlocks, which actually works with my intentions. But still I wanted the top layer of the fiber to be smoother. I’ve scorched some wigs in the past, so I was extra careful when choosing the straightening method. I decided to give the iron a go, because I’m inpatient person when it comes to costume making. Waiting the wig to dry would have been a torture for me, if I had used the method of pouring hot water on the wig. 

I sprayed the weft with the iron and gave it few presses of steam to pre-heat it, not letting the iron’s bottom plate to touch the fibers. Then I placed the weft between layers of pattern paper; two layers under and two on top. Holding the weft from the root I pressed down the iron and at the same time pulled the weft under it. The trick is to keep the weft moving. If you only press the iron on the weft it will most likely start to melt. Been there, done that.

Then I repeated as many times as needed, spraying the wefts with water if they seemed too dry. And the iron was quite hot, between two and three dots.

I sew the wefts on the cap by hand. It seemed the easiest solution and didn’t mess the fibers too much. To prevent creating a tangled mess, I sprayed the wig with balsamspray from Gliss. It works with the synthetic hair almost as well as real hair. I highly recommend spraying the wig either outside or covering the floor under your working area. The spray makes the floor quite slippery and adds to the risk of cosplay casualties.

After I had sewn all the wefts, both straightened and untreated ones, I took a blow dryer, sprayed the wig again with the balsam and went through the fibers with a wig brush. This relaxed the creped fibers a bit and made the wig look bit more tamed.

Then I tried with some braiding techniques. I think I found the right one to use, but before I actually manage to fit the wig on the person who will wear it, I will keep the regular braids on it. I will report in when I have finished the green goblin. 

Making a wig from scratch isn’t actually that hard if you have styled wigs before and don’t bother sewing a whole lot of wefts. I might even give wig making a go in the future with straight fibers. The most crucial part might be making the cap, especially if you are making it to someone else. Thank goodness the head sizes don’t vary that much. I say and cross my fingers.