I've been trying to work little-by-little each night on this cosplay. I do best when I work off of lists, so for my own sanity, I'm going to do what I did for Sinon and keep a colored list of updates as I get this done. Of course, I have to do THREE of them, starting with mine. Things in red haven't been started, things in purple have been started, and things in green are done.
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I spent all day finishing up feathers and gluing them onto my pauldron. I also painted some gems and finished my belt buckle. I tried my hand at making fake fire... the first attempt didn't go so well, however, but I think what I put on my pauldron should work. I cut, formed, and glued each individual feather onto the shoulder piece. The top part seemed a bit bare to me, so I decided to make it look like it were on fire using hot glue. After my failed first attempt placing the hot glue directly onto the foam, I decided to string the hot glue on wax paper and peel it off before gluing it onto the foam. I made five series of hot glue "flames" and attached them to the bare portion of the pauldron with more hot glue, filling in the empty sections with pieces I had cut off from the longer portions.
I'm hoping to get it plastidipped tonight and then I'll paint it during this week. Still on the agenda:
So what have I been up to tonight???
After making a couple of feathers - and by a couple, I mean like six or seven - I started trying to systematically attach them to the basic shoulder piece that I created. It took me a couple of tries to get it correct, but I think that it's starting to look alright? Again, I've never done anything like this before and I'm afraid it will come off looking cheap or 'hokey'. Below are pictures of my first attempt at attaching the feathers. After posting these shots online and getting some feedback - namely, that the feathers then drooped over the edge looked out-of-place and odd - I decided to pull those edges up a bit. I think that really helped to create the feathered illusion. So this is where I am right now. This is where my heat gun died. I'm thinking this shoulder piece will belong to Moltres because the feathers are a bit more flowy - like fire. I figure Zapdos' feathers would be more jagged (if I can figure out how to do that) and I haven't even really thought about the possibilities for Articuno.
Sigh. Anyway, just a quick update for you! Stay tuned for more!! I started off today with what I thought was the easiest part of the cosplays - the belt buckles. We decided to use the Mystic, Instinct, and Valor symbols from Pokémon Go so that it's more obvious what Pokémon we represent.
I started with Zapdos (Instinct) because it looked like the easiest to me. It's angular with all straight edges. I started by printing out the symbol, then used scissors to cut out the large basic shape - a sort-of triangle. I traced this onto 0.8 cm (5/16 in) EVA foam. I then cut it out with a box cutter. With my rotary tool, I beveled the edges before using my heat gun to smooth the edges out.
I may go ahead and do Articuno tonight, as well, and if I'm feeling ambitious, Moltres. If I can do that, then tomorrow I can get them painted and then BOOM, they're done! I'll be sure to try and update everything as I work! Stay tuned! I started my newest project today with plenty of time to finish. This project is for Katsucon, which is in February. Now - I do have to make three cosplays before then (one for me and two for friends) to make this concept work, but I think I've left myself enough time to get them done. Fingers crossed.So what is this concept? Well.. it has to do with Pokémon and Star Wars. A mashup, actually. I've had this concept brewing in my head for awhile, but it required having more people involved and it never came together... until NOW. Yay! So we are planning on doing gijinka-Jedi-versions of the legendary birds - Moltres, Zapdos, and Articuno - as well as turning some mandalorians into Pokémon hunters. There may also be some Team Rocket sith and a Mewtwo in there, somewhere. I'll be trying to record most of my work log on this one. I always say I'm going to, and then never do.. so I'm gonna try my best with this one. In fact, once I post this, I'll write up and post the first work log! I'm so stinking excited!!I've been asked this question a lot... and I've asked this question a lot. I'm actually really curious what everyone else's cosplay pet peeves are. I decided to toss out a short list of things that get under my skin in regards to cosplay below. 1. Beautiful cosplay, no makeup. - It seriously irks me when I see someone with an awesome cosplay and then they turn around and they've done NOTHING with their face. It's my number one pet peeve for a reason. Why would you go through the effort of creating a cosplay and then on the day where you are to finally wear it and show it off, you don't do everything you can to make your character look it's very best? I'm not a makeup guru by any means, but there are youtube tutorials for a reason! 2. Unstyled wigs. - I had to learn how to style wigs and I'm still not that great, but I try my best. I spend many an hour searching youtube for tutorials on how to style them. Unstyled wigs give me the heebie-jeebies. Buying a wig that looks like your character's hair/style/color is only half the battle. You can't expect to take the wig right out of the bag, plop it on your head, and think that it's going to look the best that it can. Invest in some hairspray and a blowdryer; spend some time shaping it and making it look it's best. 3. 100% in-character cosplayers. - I am all for embodying your character as you cosplay.. in video or pictures. When you go to a con and you are in-character the entire time you are at the convention, it gets intrusive. For example, you cannot cosplay Deadpool just because you feel like walking around a convention acting like an asshole the entire day and expect it to be brushed off because you are in a Deadpool cosplay. You can't cosplay a pervert character and think it's appropriate to act like that character at a convention. Pose in-character for pictures. Act in-character for videos or masquerades... but give it a break. 4. Cosplay elitists. - People that reprimand others because they do not look 100% like the character they are cosplaying are the worst. Cosplay is costume PLAY. It's fun. Yes - you have people who have made a career out of it, but even those people don't pick cosplays solely because they look like the character. Cosplay is for everyone. If you want to take it seriously and it's something that means a lot to you, as it does to me, don't look down on those people who use cosplay as a hobby. So what are your cosplay pet peeves?I always considered myself to be fairly prepared for the convention scene once I started taking cosplaying seriously, but it wasn't until Colossalcon that I really adopted the title of 'con-mom, and this past Otakon really cemented it'. What did I do to deserve this? WELL... if not for the fact that I basically bring my ENTIRE craft room with me to cons, you know - glue sticks, glue gun, safety pins, straightener, hairspray, makeup, baby powder, superglue, needle, thread, velcro... and the list goes on - then perhaps it's the fact that I am constantly taking care of everyone else.
At Otakon, I was the last person ready to leave - and people ended up waiting on me - because I was busy getting everyone else ready. I am by no means complaining about this - it's in my nature to help others and I really don't mind - but I was styling wigs and fixing makeup and putting on lashes and painting nails and adjusting armor and yada-yada-yada for hours while I was trying to piece together my cosplay in the meantime! I even con-crunch WHEN I FINISHED MY COSPLAY A WEEK BEFORE THE CON. Tell me how that works. Ha. Every night of Otakon, I was up late helping everyone finish cosplays - we were making props and styling wigs and painting. My first con where I was NOT con-crunching my cosplay... I was still freakin' con crunching. So, yeah.. I'm a con-mom. I'm 100% con-mom and I wouldn't have it any other way. As far as the Walter E. Washington Convention Center goes, I thought it was a fairly nice venue inside. There seemed to be a lot of space because for the amount of people there, you could still move around; granted, you didn't have a lot of space, but there was some - enough. It had a strange layout - a lot of up-and-down on escalators, but that's fine.. unless you're in awkward armor. The location of the convention center was not in the least my favorite. It was smack-dab-center in D.C. and so, unless you wanted to walk, there wasn't much as far as photoshoot locations - aside from the small copse of trees and yard across the road. Parking was awful.. and traffic was worse. At least the commute from where I was staying wasn't a horrible ride to the parking garage. We had to park about half a mile from the venue and had to walk, which is fine - I don't mind walking - but it was either super hot or pouring out. We used Parking Panda to reserve a parking spot, and thank goodness we did because finding a spot to park was a nightmare. Most of the people who were working the convention - volunteers or convention workers, I don't know who was who - were pretty rude. I mean, I can understand it to some degree - you are one person trying to organize 20,000-30,000 people to ensure everyone's safety and what not, but sheesh - smile a bit. The cosplay was amazing, of course! I've come to the conclusion, though, that of the maybe 50 people that ask for a picture, maybe three will post them on some sort of attainable social media.. which is annoying. I suppose part of it is my fault because I always forget to give out my business cards. I can't comment on panels or anything because I never end up getting to go, but the dealers' room and artist alley were massive! They were almost overwhelming with how absolutely massive they were and I had a hard time focusing and finding a starting point. There was such an array of things in both rooms to pick from, and I especially liked the free Crunchyroll bags.
Overall, I had fun at Otakon and look forward to next year. I will definitely try to get a hotel close enough to walk to and from the con and I will only room with people that I know and want to hang with, because it's hard to coordinate a bunch of people traveling together when that's all you do. I leave for Otakon in four days, and I'm proud to say that Sinon is 90% done. All that's really left to do is attach everything and costest her, though I did forget a small armor piece, but that will literally take me an hour to do, so I'm not too worried about it. I'm meeting with my friend, Katastrophic Kosplay, to do a shoot on Tuesday of Sinon in a really awesome state park in Harrisburg, so I'm really pumped about that. She shot my Rogue pictures, which turned out awesome. So here it is, my last Sinon update, complete with pictures! Things in red haven't been started, things in purple have been started, and things in green are done. There's some progress happening, though I worked today for hours and I didn't get anywhere.
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AuthorMaiacat Cosplay Archives
July 2018
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