Ivy and Yoshimitsu at Tracon VI

Here are some photos of our characters that I found from our cameras after Tracon. The photos are either from Saturday or Sunday. Most noticeable difference is my legs; on Sunday I tossed away the shoes I wore at the competition, because they were utterly uncomfortable. Few of my toes are still numb from wearing them. I also wore regular lace tights on Sunday.

What has happened?

My first try for the transmission number three was in winter 2010, which was a long, long time ago. Now, after the dust from the non-stop costume making process had settled, I kicked myself and here is the result.

Now Hiron will have nightmares from Luminara's cloak.

-yoki, out

WCS preliminaries hangover and happiness

"Too hasty!"

What a weekend! Two months of hard work really paid off when we were able to take home second place in World cosplay Summit Finnish preliminaries. Congratulations and all the best to the winning couple, Rimppu and Majo! It was great to compete with you and all the other competitors. The backstage was a nice change to get to a chatting distance from people who I’ve only seen on the internet and admired their drive for cosplay. And huge thanks to the judges! The feedback almost got me in tears (you wouldn’t know about Yoki, would you?) and the critics both from the costumes and the performance was truly valuable.

Not only the past few months but the last year has been a crazy costume journey. I started the year by finishing the Snowtroopers with Yoki, and then we were bound by fabric printing for Luminara and Barriss. I finished the costumes a day before Desucon just to start a new project with Femme Megatron and Starscream for Kawacon. The date for WCS Finnish preliminaries were announced after Desucon, so naturally when were done with the lady bots it was time to start the competition costumes, which were Isabella “Ivy” Valentine and Yoshimitsu from Soul Calibur III. Somewhere between I also took few commissions. Needless to say, the atmosphere right now is pretty exhausted.


I try to spend the rest of the year without any costume project… if I can. I’ve sworn few times that I will not work with costumes for some time, but found myself two weeks after the promise crafting something new. Maybe this time I won’t get the urge, because we’ve got some updating to do here on our blog. There is pile of posts waiting to be written from making of the costumes to the whole competition experience. The drive back home from Tracon VI I tried to figure out what would be the most convenient way to sort the different phases and pieces of the costumes. Would it be better to divide the project according to items or techniques?

Now I’m going to go and eat loads of chocolate. We declined treats before Tracon to keep in shape, so now I have some catching up to do! Later today I might gather together the photos our supporter aka mom took from us. Until then, chocolate!

Costume cross-section: Luminara Unduli

Luminara's costume consist of ten different pieces. From top to bottom; headpiece, cape, brooch, shirt, arm guards, pair of belts with large buckles, waist cloth, skirt and shoes. She is also carrying lightsaber somewhere under her cape.





There is actually a pair of post, where I go through the construction of the headpiece. In short, it's made from mosquito net, modeling paste, small piece of foam and few different fabrics. The trim on the head piece is still not finished, I still need to add two decorative ribbons to it.



The cape ate five and half meters of brown wool, which I printed by hand. I used black pigment and the base emulsion for fabric printing from EMO-tuotanto. It was bit risky to use the colors on wool, because they are meant for on cotton and cotton mixes. The printing process took several weeks, because I had to do a negative print, meaning that I had to cut the pieces separately.





The idea for the pattern came from Yoki. After browsing through Rebel Legion forums I found credible verification for the plan. The whole body of the cape is actually one big piece of fabric. The sleeves form when the fabric is pulled from the hem up to the shoulder. There is narrow yoke on the front with snap and hook fastenings.



The back of the cape is heavily draped. The drapes are sewed to piece of fabric tape on the waist. The hood is only for a show. How would you wear a hood with the huge headpiece anyway? I modeled the hood on my fitting dummy before sewing it on the cape.





The base of the brooch is pulp board. The rest of the body is modeling paste and hand-twisted wire. The brooch is painted with acrylics. The body is black and green mixed together and the wires are copper and gold. I used a tooth pick to paint the wires. The fastening is a safety pin, which is glued to the brooch a with a piece of fabric.





The shirt fabric was originally beige cotton tricot. I machine dyed it with cotton lace I used on the skirt. The pattern of the shirt is pretty basic. The front panel is striped with crooked pin tucks on the wrong side of the fabric. The ribbons are braided from strings of pleather. The high turtle neck has a zipper on the back, so that the garment would be easier to get on and off.





The arm guards and the front cloth are made with same materials and techniques. The figures are craft foam painted with acrylics and glued on brown leather. The details are made with different tools, like hair pins and a seam ripper. The arm guards fasten with Velcro, which is actually movie accurate solution. The cloth fasten with Velcro to the belt higher on the waist.





The belts are made from brown pleather. They both have black awning fabric as lining to make them sturdy. The belts fasten from the back with to poppers. The buckles are made from pulp board and paper. They are painted with acrylics in gold and copper and weathered with watercolors. I like to use watercolors instead of acrylics, because they stick too fast and don't spread well even when rubbed.





The skirt has two layers. Ribbed, black cotton forms the first one with cotton lace that I had dyed earlier. Black cotton acts as lining underneath to give support to the first layer, which would be too limp alone and not hold the required A-line form. I had my old petticoat with two hoops the first time I wore the costume.





The boots are brown leather with warm tone, even if the color looks grey on the photo. There is three copper colored buckles on the side and moderate wedges. And they were found unexpectedly from a second hand shop for seven or eight euros. Good bargain.





The lighsaber is made from a pulp board tube stolen from aluminum foil container, soft foam, glue, putty, screws, plaster buttons and black tape. The body was painted with silver and chrome sprays and the golden details with acrylics. I like the result a lot and the fact that is was virtually a free prop. All the materials used was found from our cosplay workshop.



Writing this made me realize that there is still some work to do with this costume like dyeing the cape darker and making the decorations on the headpiece, but I think I'll manage to finish everything before the next wear, which will be at Tampere Kuplii next spring.

Panic? No panic... yet

Big promises were made in the beginning of this month. Hiron stated that we would make blog entries while working with the costumes for Tracon VI.



Surprise, surprise - no blog entries, but huge amount of following: searching reference pictures, pattern making, material shopping, sewing, ripping seams, drawing stencils, printing and dyeing fabric.

My "balls"

Not so soft stuff: sawing insulation material, doing negative and positive molds, sanding, putting, casting plaster, sculpting, craft foam crafting, vacuum forming.



Weirder stuff: sitting in a recording hut, voice acting, recording, fighting with audacity, embroidering.

The "hut"

Random stuff: painting, spray painting, gluing, using huge amount of tape and paper, sleeping, cursing, brain farting, nagging, death glaring, goofing, holding patents for drying components.



Casualty material: sticking oneself and others with pins, burning thyself with hot glue, cutting yourself with an utility knife, luckily just a little, breathing different types of dusts and fumes, following rainbows and flying pink elephants.





Back to work,

-yoki

We've got something!

Last month was crazy, plain crazy. While Yoki travelled across Finland first taking care of her duty as an aunt and then tracking Saimaa ringed seals, I was married to my work for two weeks and then on holiday the other half of July. And somewhere between we worked on our costumes for Tracon VI!

Four weeks and this is the outcome? Pair of sandals!

The progress we have made is satisfactory. There is still lot to do, especially with the performance, but I could carefully state that we are half way there. Clothes are nearly done. Currently we are working on props and armors. Because of the workload the update speed will not increase much, but at some point I’ll make costume cross-sections from Luminara and Barriss and I also have some silliness from Megatron and Starscream shoot waiting on my photo folder.

Barriss' belt buckle

As a padawan, Barriss Offee doesn't have many accessories, only the detailed belt buckle. Our version was made mostly from materials we already had, except the gold acrylic paint and embroidery thread had to be bought.

The main materials were thick poster board and craft foam. It's good to remember while drawing on craft foam that every line you press on its surface will be seen. So, note to self: draw on the backside.

After successfully drawing the shapes it was time to cut them off. A scalpel or a thin utility knife works well while scissors are too clumsy, except while cutting bigger shapes like in Luminara's leather cloth and gauntlets. I also trimmed some foam from the boarders of the patterns so that the pieces would fit in nicely.

Note: this wasn't the frame I used in the finished buckle.

An old hair pin proved to be an excellent choice for scraping, poking and dragging different textures to the foam. The Karelian pasties texture on the inner edge of the 'heart' was made by first pressing down then dragging the pin down.

That pin must be over ten years old.

Then it was time for the paintjob, and acrylics never fail you, unless you put too thick layer of it and cover all the textures you made earlier. Note to self: don't take too much paint. Gold, copper, brown, dark grey and their mixtures were used.

The surround was made from four strands of embroidery thread. They were "twisted" twice [due the lack of better term] and clued to place then painted with gold. Finally the parts were clued to the poster board base and weathered with black paint.

This one hasn't been weathered yet, but can you see were the ends of the thread are?

-yoki out

Luminara's headgear- The crest

The crest for Luminara’s hat was bit of a challenge. I first tried making it out from cushion board the same way as I did the dome. It didn’t work too well. The shape was really hard to achieve and it would have needed supporting structures to hold the shape, especially after applying the clay. Also it would have been heavy because of clay coating and I wanted to keep the thing as light as possible.

Then I tried paper, thinking that paper mache would work as some hats I’ve seen were made from it. But I lost my temper with floppy paper pieces and trashed them. I was close to giving in to chicken wire, which was the last possible choice because it’s heavy, bumpy and my least favourite material to date. Then it hit me; mosquito net! The net can be sewn, it’s pretty sturdy but light. First time I used mosquito net on Mayuri’s hat. I wonder why I didn’t think of it sooner.


I started shaping the thing by making a tube from foam and mosquito net. Then I took pieces of net and shaped them around the tube on a wig head. I’m sorry I can’t describe the process any more detailed, because it was mostly done by staring at references and cutting and shaping free-handed. I think there are four layers of net on the thickest parts of the crest. It’s enough, because against presumptions the wool isn't heavy at all.

I made the trumpets one at the time and then copied the shapes and cut the other side. This way I got identical shapes. I sew the pieces together and after modelling the crest on the dome I covered the parts I thought to be fragile with gauze and glue. To fide unwanted bumps, I finally covered the crest with fleece.


After the glue had dried I took out my scaled pattern for the textile part. I cut the wool and started to stretch it on the crest. Different to the dome, no water was needed. The wool I used was woven, so there was enough stretch to the shapes. I only had cut one slit on the base of the crest. I hand-stitched the wool in place and glued the sides inside the trumpets. The draped part I stitch around the tube to cover the inner structures. Finally I put the hat on and checked that the hem part was the same length all around.


After I had trimmed the hem I started with the ornament ribbon. The ribbon is not the final one. I didn't find suitable material for the outer edges, so I only did the middle part of the decoration ready. It’s likely that I will spend some time with embroydery in the near future.

The base of the ribbon is satin bias and the black is regular satin ribbon. When you sew together two materials that tend to act differently, I recommend you use steady base while sewing. I sewed the ribbons with a piece of paper underneath to avoid uneven stretching. After you’re done sewing you can rip the paper out. You can wash the ribbon to get the tiny pieces of paper off the stitches.

I sewed the ribbon on the hem by hand. I showed the result for Yoki who was really exited, but still pondered the size of the crest. I told her that with the costume it looks just fine. Note to self: Try on the costume with accessories before blazing assumptions as truths. The hem was too long, so I had to rip the ribbon and sew it back again. But now I’m happy with the headgear, even if it’s not properly finished.

Cropped from a photo by Santtu Pajukanta. Note, that everything in my head, including my mouth is crooked.

Megatron, Starscream and mini shorts

All photos are taken by Karan.

Finally, a report from Tampere Kuplii and our first competition

We have been cosplaying as a pair for five years now and just recently we participated in a competition at Tampere Kuplii comic festivals. The cosplay competition was our main focus, so my report will mostly circle around that. There were two lectures we would've liked to see, but the other clashed with competitors photography session and the competition itself and the other was on the next day when we had to claim our car and leave. So we just hung around, which actually was really fun. We got to meet other cosplayers, talk about costuming and share thoughts. We actually met two other Star Wars cosplayers by chance! Both of them where members of 501st and the Rebel Legion.

Photo by Mikko Lintula. Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 Finland.

We arrived to Tampere on Friday and checked in to our hotel. It was close to the convention centre, just few hundred meters away. We warned the clerks that we are not moving in, even if we would soon carry few cardboard boxes inside. We also mentioned that we would attend to the comic festivals and thus look bit different next day. I think it's polite to inform the staff if you are going to stroll in the hotel in costumes. Actually the hotel was really costume friendly, minus the leaking steam iron which peed on my shirt. The child quests were thriller every time they saw us and Yoki even got her picture taken with bride-to-be.

As expected, we still had some things to do before Saturday. Tired from four hours drive, stomach full of Chinese I glued the last details on our packs lying on the bed as Yoki went through next days plan. We also "rehearsed" our short skit on the hotel room without costumes or props. The " ", because it was more like a walk through than an actual rehearsal. Most of the time we just argued where we would enter the stage. Too tired and exited we trusted to the saying that bad dress rehearsal (without the dresses) would guarantee that the show itself would go well.

The next morning we got the costumes on including light make-up and assembling in hour and a half. While it was our first wear with the full costume, it was also the first test run for the backpacks. We had finished the fastenings on Thursday evening. They worked, but for next wear they need little tweaking. Then we were off to the photographing. The second take gave a sneak peak from our performance to other competitors. As usual, we went with humor.

Photo by Jussi Sorjonen. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial 1.0 Finland.

Slight excitement was in the air as we waited for the competition to start. We had a chance to check the stage before hand. We also informed the host that we would not speak, because we didn’t have voice amps. We did speak while at the convention, but wanted to keep the illusion of radio audio while at stage. Then we waited. First the audience was let in, and then there were some problems with the mikes. After everything worked the host went through the competition format. The competition was in two phases. After all the competitors had been on the stage the judges would choose ten finalists to be part of an open voting on local newspaper. The competition itself was catwalk typed, but it was allowable to do a short skit.

About our skit… The part we had planned went really well and I think the audience also got the idea behind it. But the second half of our stage time was probably more entertaining in all it’s unluckyness. Like I said before, our backpack fastenings worked great. I can’t say same about our armor fastenings. It just happened that the gluing on Yoki’s crotch piece failed at the crucial moment!

Note the threateningly tilted crotch piece on the left. Photo by AG.

For a moment I froze totally thinking how we could possibly save the situation. Gladly Yoki saved the day! She glanced down, pulled her hands to cover herself and finally pulled the flag she was carrying in front of her. The audience laughed, I was able to breathe again and Yoki earned applauses. The host also stumbled in her words and finally just drove us off from the stage. We have some video footage from the event. Yoki will probably include it on her next transmission.

The rest of the competition went in a blur. I remember I tried to fix the crotch fastening while in the audience. After everybody had had their moment in the flashlights big group shot was taken. While the judges deliberated who would be the ten finalists the audience enjoyed trailers from upcoming movies. Conveniently the competition was held in a movie theater.

Photo by Santtu Pajukanta. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial 1.0 Finland.

When the results were announced our costumes were called first. I remember I took the flag and tumbled down to stage and Yoki somehow managed to follow me trying to keep her armor together. We both were so exited and confused that we didn’t hear what the judges said about our costumes.

And then after group shot of the finalists, it was over. While we were leaving the area one of the judges stopped us and asked was it part of the show that the crotch piece fell. We laughed and told that is was just an accident. Thank goodness for helmets! I bet that there wouldn’t be any doubt about it being an accident if the audience had seen my expression the moment I saw the armor piece lying on the floor!

The winner of the competition was group of three from movie Despicable Me. We landed the third place after Black Rock Shooter. Thank you if you voted for us! And big thanks also to those who stopped us and gave positive comments about our costumes! Now the pain feels worth it.

Photo by Jussi Sorjonen.Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial 1.0 Finland.

Next wear for Snowtroopers will be at Desucon Frostbite 14-15.1.2012.

Foretaste of Decepticon femme humanforms

We made a record today! For the first time in our cosplay history we had a official photoshoot prior to wearing the costumes at convention. We headed out to the heat this afternoon with our ladyfied Decepticons and had the most pleasant shoot to date. Not because of the weather, we nearly fried, but thanks to Karan who worked as our photographer. Thank you a thousand times and few more to go with the rest! The photos turned out better than I ever expected! Also our location was most suitable for the shoot. Thanks to Yoki for that one!

I will make a full photoshoot post after the weekend, but here is one for a sneak peek. Enjoy!

Photo taken by Karan.