North West Fan Fest

Given that it has been far too long since I have done anything with this blog, a quick update.

Working like mad to finish Corvo's jacket from Dishonoured for a friend in time for NWFF this weekend. Working on some other sewing projects at the same time. Far too much sewing.

Been learning some longsword technique as well, pretty cool, pretty cool.

Also bought some Warmachine recently, they are assembled and ready for painting. Looking at getting into Infinity as well.

Yeeeeeeep.

Minicomi 2012

Saturday July 7^th saw my cosplay group and I at Minicomi. Both fortunately and unfortunately we were placed right by centre stage, while we got a lot of people going past our booth it was very loud during announcements.

As far as a cosplay related events go it was great, there were a lot of people walking around dressed. But considering it was supposed to be an artists’ market it was a bit of a flop. The cosplay element was over emphasized and there weren’t a lot of people looking to purchase. Don’t get me wrong, I made more than last year but I still only sold one item and did not cover the cost of the table or travel expenses, and I made less than $2 for every hour I was behind the booth. Still, I suppose it was nice seeing people I know from the cosplay community around.

I myself purchased a pair of welding goggles for a costume and an adorable keychain with a traveller on it from the PS game Journey.

And that is really all I have to say about that.

I will be attending the Summer Festival in Burnaby this July 21st, I'm looking forward to this quite a bit as i really enjoyed it last year.

An extremly belated Sakura-con post

Sakura-con was about a month ago so now seems as good a time as any to start this. I did not get many pictures as I was still tired from my costume making gauntlet and sleeping anywhere but home has always been difficult for me. Never the less I did have quite a bit of fun with my cosplay group.

I briefly met up with Lightningsabre on Friday to grab my Kaito nendoroid while dressed as Kaito from the Duke of Venomania. Somehow I ended up cosplaying something obscure again that other Vocaloid fans don't know about XD I ended up spending most of my time in the dealer's hall for pretty much the rest of the con, since some members of my cosplay group mostly just wanted to sit around. Or walk around, which was very unfortunate for my shoe choice that I wore for most of the con.

Friday night I went for the Persona  photoshoot during the dark hour, I meant to surprise two of my friends with my Akihiko Sanada cosplay but accidentally spoiled it for one of them because I cannot lie. It was interesting wearing binding for the first time too. I did by proper binding so at least it was very comfortable.

Akihiko Sanada

Saturday I went all out on my Homestuck costume. I just finished it on the Thursday that I had to leave and to be honest it is not entirely complete yet, but I am still very proud of it.

Rumminov's  Fancy Dreamer Aradia

And it was most definitely worth hearing people call me amazing. Unfortunately these are the shoes that killed my feet for two days. I ended up changing out of the costume at about 6 so I didn't wear it as long as I expected but at last I was free of the shoes!

The Homestuck photoshoot

I didn't end up sticking around the Homestuck photoshoot for long, but as you can see, it was a bit overwhelming.

Later my cosplay group and I ate out at the Cheesecake Factory and actually got some cheesecake this year.

Sunday I ended up crashing a bit and was pretty darn bored. Ended up going to the AMV room a couple of times which ended up being really rewarding. I was Akihiko again and got to wear some rather comfortable shoes.

And somehow this happened

I ended up purchasing a pair of nekomimi from the dealer's hall that move based on your brain waves. Up til that point i had not bought much else and was in danger of leaving the con after only spending $100. Part of the reason i bought a pair is because I got to try them out first.

I also have a video of them in action, but I would like to get more footage shot before I go around editing it.

That's all I have to report. Here, have some miscellaneous photos!

Harry Potter how did you get that muggle contraband into Hogwarts? D:<

 Gandalf!

Those stilts were awesome.

Wig modifications

For the past couple of days I've been working to turn this wig;

 Into something that looks more like this.

 The problem arose when I forgot that I have an abnormally large head, thus the wig on my head looks much different compared to company photos. I didn't think this would be a problem with Arda because they tend to make wigs for people with larger heads. 

However, luck was on my side and Arda released wefts of hair to be used for wig making. Or, in my case, sewing them into the wig to give it added length.

This is what I have been doing for the past few days, sewing the wefts into my wig. And I'm not done quite yet, I need to add some length to the front of the wig so the bangs can be a bit longer too. I'm starting to run out of weft but I should have enough to finish the job. After this comes the cutting. Which makes me kind of sad because I'm going to cut off quite a bit of the legth I just put on the wig.

I am glad fo the learning experince, I've decided that instead of trying to make my own wig with wefts I'm going to buy wefts to modif the wigs instead, because the amount of wefts I would need to make a wig would cost just as much, if not more. However, I feel like this will all be worth it when I have the end result on my head.

Went out today with some cosplay friends and and took a bunch of picture of our cosplays. While I now have better pictures of my Rei Ayanami, it will soon be graced by a new wig that will be a closer match to Rei's hair colour.

Also now I've made a massive coplay list for myself to work through.

So last weekend I went to Aki-con. Sadly, I am late and behind on my blogging, but you really must forgive me. And it’s not like I’ve had much time, I’ve been catching up on my sleep and working. Unfortunately as I write this I am undoing all that good work. Oh well.

The first day I woke up at 5AM to be ready to go for 6AM. Not too bad, but I hate mornings to begin with. My cosplay buddies and I got the border with ease, firstly because no one was there, and secondly, because we had a border guard whole was knowledgeable of cosplay. It was pretty awesome.

We arrived at the Hilton at about 8:30 and tried to check into our room early. No such luck. I then proceeded to make a small but manageable mess of the hotel bathroom while I painted my arms and face grey. I ended up forgetting an important element of my costume (Fake lashes) that I was not able to put on until getting the hotel room at 3-ish, and that really ended up completing the costume. I have also discovered that I look good in crazy false eyelashes. Who knew?

I feel I must say I was very pleased with the end result. It was also really nice to meet other Homestuck fans for the first time. Next was the shock at how I was about 4 years older than everyone else there. This explained the mystery as to why Homestuckers are so noisy. I never liked high school kids much even when I was a high school kid. The whole getting louder and louder until someone shouts to stop gets old fast when you are surrounded with no way out for hours on end.

The nicest thing about the costume was that I received a large amount of praise for a job well done. Before Aki-con I have never gotten so much positive feedback. It was a good feeling that may have gone to my head more than a bit. I bought a squid plushie from the dealer’s room that went with my costume and was relative to the fandom.

The second day involved me dressing up as Riku from Kingdom Hearts. While I had a very good wig, I had forgotten about how it is too small for my head, so my day involved a lot of wig removal and replacing to allow the blood flow to my brain. I was very unsure about this costume because I don’t like to cosplay men (I like looking pretty) and I have never played any of the games. And do not plan to. Though I must say I did enjoy being a dapper gentleman with glowing horns and a top hat.

The only frustrating thing about day 2 was that there were more Homestuck cosplayers and I could not be one of them. However, the day was made (and perhaps even the entire con) because I found a manga novel in the dealers room, for $5, that I had been looking for, for about 3-4 years. Everywhere else that I’ve looked has had it for upwards of $100. Silly internets.

By day 3 I was pretty much done and tired of the con. Luckily I wasn’t alone as one of my con buddies also felt the same way, so we ended up hanging out in the library together a lot. Due to a strange misfortune the karaoke/rock bad stage just so happened to be not far from the open doors. It was highly distracting. I picked up an internally lit up materia for half off, which I am very glad I did not buy on the first or second day.

Blind Mag!

Now, on day 2 (or I should say night), the same con buddy and I decided we wanted real food and not instant noodles. So we drove through Bellevue. Nothing. We drove south towards Seattle. Still nothing. We drive through Seattle, get lost, and decided to settle for the next Subway we see after the first 4 and despair at the alarming lack of McDonalds. Luckily for us the guy serving us was nice enough to look up the route back to the highway so we could get back to Bellevue. Were we missed? Not at all.

On the way home the next day there were an abundance of McDonalds. All we had to do was drive north. But it was fun.

And I would say, all in all it was a very good weekend. Especially when coming home to a brand new and shiny Netflix subscription.

Pre-Aki-con

I'm starting to get geared for Aki-con now, and, as usual, comes the feeling of impending doom. While most of it is just modifying, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. First off, I'm working on a costume I promised to do for a cosplay 9Gumi, Seet Police) and accidentally put off for 2 months. I'm also working on Blind Mag(Repo! The Genetic Opera), Halloweentown Riku and Aradia (Homestuck) for Aki-con. In addition, I'm also working on getting GaZ done in time for Halloween.

Oh, the things I do to myself.