Costume redesign

About two weeks ago, I did up a quick version of Sumire Hakami from Aikatsu for Tsukino Con.

It was photographed by this group, who were running at photo booth.

Though I was happy with the photos, I thought that I could improve the costume. I restructured the skirt and attacted it to a new form-fitting top that zipped up in the back. 

I like how the redesigned dress feels and looks. Just have to add the accessories and the wig, and I'm good to go.

Theatrical Sewing

For the past month, I've been helping out a friend with a little dilemma that she's been having. Her musical theatre class ran into a problem when they couldn't rent costumes for their production. In an effort to make sure that her class had costumes, my friend went out and bought material & patterns. But the people that agreed to do the sewing, ended up dropping out. I got word from my friend's sister that she was desperate for sewers and agreed to take on a few. I doubt that she realized that I'd be doing them all by hand at first, but she knows now and is quite impressed. Anyway here are the costumes for 'Once Upon A Mattress', the king & two princes. To let you know, the buckles on all three are old broaches that I was planning on getting rid of anyway, but they work well in this application.

Blending in @ the Con

When at an Anime convention, a person tends to stand out more in normal everyday clothes then those in costume. The reason for this is because Anime & costume conventions where you are encouraged to be someone else for a time. This weekend, my friend & I took in one at the university of Victoria called Tsukino Con. While there was anime, we didn't watch any. We took in some panels, did some shopping in the dealers hall, watched some anime music videos & took part in an amateur tea ceremony. Here's just some pics from the event.

Artistically packed morning

It is amazing how packed one morning, let alone one day can get. The morning started off with my Toastmaster club meeting, where I was one of the speakers. The meeting went fine, though I did stumble a bit through the edited form of Steve Jobs 2005 commencement address. After the meeting, I met with other members of the planning commity for the club's anniversary party to finalize the details. Then it was off to do some graphic work for both the party and my friend's wedding, before I started my shift at my paid job. After work, I sat down to finish a costume commission and more graphic work before heading to bed.

Happy Halloween

Even though Halloween just ended a little while ago, I wanted show some of my creativity for one of my favourite events of the year. We start off with Mekatt's well wishes.

Views of my decorated front yard at sunset and at night. The set up took about 2 hours and most of the items my family had around the house. For the graves, I piled the fallen tree needles into 8 piles then placed a mixture of statues, wooden crosses and fake tome stones at the head of each pile.

 But my favourite simple decor item was the "Soul Collector". I made this eel-like item by first wrapping newspaper into a wedge-shape. Then I stuck the newspaper into one corner of a plastic shopping bag. Then I taped more shopping bags into a long tail, leaving the handles free and attached it to wedge-like head. Finally I tied some twine to the head and the end of the tail, which allows me to hang it from bushes or trees. This item is really effective in the dark.

Me in my "Steam Era Guy" costume along with my "Morning Mandy" mannequin. "Mandy" is my dressmaker's mannequin fitted with styrofoam head, fabric arms and dressed in different pieces of costumes and fabric. My costume is pretty simple. I just took some of my dressier clothes and combined them together. The jacket was the only that I really altered by trimming the collar and adding lines of a dark brown fabric in certain pattern.

And finally, the community's fireworks display seen from my front yard.

Oto Waitress

This costume was inspired by the outfit Sakura-hime wore during her stay in the town of Oto in the animated series Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. It was also another costume that I completely built from scratch.  First I built the pleated skirt on my dressmaker's mannequin. It took a bit of time to get the pleats going just the way I wanted them, but once they were set, I stitched the top of them down and added a waistband. Next I made the kimono top. This was rather simple, since I had made a few kimonos previously. The only difference with this one is the embroidery and applicae sleeves. That portion took just as long as building the rest of the costume, but well worth it, since no one that I have met has done that level stitchery in the hobby of cosplay. Next, I made the cross-back apron. I made it so the straps go from top of the front panel, cross over the back, slip through loops at the waist, and then tie in the back. Then I added little capped shoulders and lace or ruffles around the outer edges. The final part of the costume was the hat. I took a wide plastic headband and added a point of lace with a triangle of leather on either side the center in order to stiffen it. Then I added pieces of ribbon with bells at either end to each side of the headband and finally loops of the same ribbon over top. It took me about 3 weeks in my spare time to make this costume and I still enjoy bringing it out for different events.

Yami Yugi

 This wasn't a hard costume to make. Most of it consisted of a few finds at Value Village that needed some modifications. I did have to make the wig, choker and the Millennium puzzle.
For the puzzle, I first craved a piece of building foam into the basic shape. Then I looked at several screenshots of the Yu-Gi-Oh! series in order to find all the details of the puzzle. Those details, I simply pressed in, using the end of a pencil. The 'Eye of Horus', I created by drawing it out with hot glue. Then I dug out a hole from the top of the puzzle in order to counter-sink a large ring, that was connected to a large chain. I hot glued the ring in place, then covered the connection with masking tape. Once the puzzle was assembled, I covered it with a few coats of gold paint.
The wig was just as tricky. I first sewed a cap and placed it on a styrofoam head. Then I took 5 chopsticks to create the structure for the spikes. Then I took strips of newspaper and glued them in place to fill out the form. Then I painted the form black, and hot glued black and red pieces of wool. For the yellow bangs, I hot glued yellow pieces of wool on a smooth piece of metal. This allowed me to form the wool into the shape that I wanted and easily detach the wool from the metal cleanly. Then it was just simply hot glue them in place.
For conventions, I also add on my duel disk toy and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards to complete the look. After not wearing this costume for a few years, I decided to bring it out for a one day event and I was swamped with people asking for pictures with the character. Always great to have a well known character costume once in a while.

Yami no Game

This Photoshop project was inspired by episode 163 of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series. Some years back, my friend and I tried to recreate the duel of that episode, while at an anime convention, since she was dressed as Yugi and I was dressed as Yami. On their own, the pictures from that day were not that great, but add in drawings of the monsters, masking and special effects, I was able to finally create the kind of image that both my friend and I wanted. This project took about 6 images and about 6 hours to complete.

Chiblossom, the Rose Elf

Chiblossom has been one of my more fanciful characters to design and actually construct. I first started by constructing the base dress, by making the skirt selection out of two shades of pink bed sheets attached to a halter top made out swim suit lining. Over the base dress, I sewed on a layer of pink organza that parted in the center and a fluffy pink scarf; both at the bust line. Then I made a detachable decoration for the center of the bust out of a Christmas snowflake and 3 pieces of red cord. At the other end of each cord, I attached a fake rose. I took couple more fluffy pink scarves and made a couple of bracelets and a choker necklace. Each of these got a fake rose and some red cord. The red cord of each bracelet was long enough to clip onto the elf ears; that I made out of craft foam and attached to a metal headband. I chose a white wig to top off costume, since it went with the gradation that was happening with the whole costume, and really made the red cord stand out as the accent colour and vertical lines that I wanted. For the chilly night festival I also wore a white shawl.  In the end, the actual costume turned out differently from my initial sketch. But I don't mind, it's still a nice costume to have. 

 

Kaito Kid costume.

 Well, the end of the week for illusions has with this week's costume, the illustrate gentleman thief, Kaito Kid. There was certainly more to do with this costume, though I did try to search for all the pieces at various thift shops. In the end I did have to make a few parts from scratch. Those parts were the jacket, the cape, monocle and of course, the top hat. None of the parts were easy to make, but the top hat took the most effort to figure out. I couldn't even find clues on construction of top hat via the internet. So, it took some trial and error before I had a hat that fit and was just the right look. But thanks to that, I was able to create the tutorial on the trick hat. The other piece that took a bit of time to construct was the monocle. I constructed it, by taking a large key ring as the base, then changed out the chain for a longer one. At the other end of the chain, I crafted the lucky charm by craving and painting a piece of plexiglass. Then I cut out a nose bridge out of craft foam, hot glued it to the key ring and wrapped the nose bridge and key ring with tape. Part way with the taping, I attached a thick nylon thread that would wrap around my head and hold the monocle in place. The thread would be hidden under the wig, allowing no one to really know how the monocle stayed in place.  Since it's first construction, I have only made minor changes to the costume. I've remade the jacket, adjusting its length to a bit longer, made the cape detachable and shorten the length of the chain on the monocle.  In the second year of portraying Kaito Kid, I've seen more fans of Detective Conan come up to me and express their thanks for being one of the few cosplayers to portray any character from the series. The thanks are nice to receive, but I just love portraying this mischievous character.

Boy's School Uniform

The costume was inspired by boy's school uniform, most commonly seen Japanese comics and anime. It was one of the easiest costumes that I have made, since the only thing that I had to really make was the jacket. I took a black polar fleece jacket and opened the seams of it collar. Measuring the length of the collar, I cut a piece of white polar fleece about an inch wide and the length of the collar. I folded the white polar fleece length-wise and inserted it into the collar, leaving about 1/4 of an inch exposed. Then I re-sewed the seam. I did the same for each of the cuffs. Finally, I sewed on some golden buttons down the front of the jacket and one on each cuff. With the jacket done, all I had to do was pair it up with some black dress pants, black men's shoes and a short dark wig, and I'm ready for class in Japan.