momijizukamori: Animated icon reading 'X: My Fandom makes cookies gay'. Panels are cookies decorated like X characters (X | My fandom...)
I went! I had a good time! Honestly, most of my reason for going was to see friends - we tend not to go to a ton of panels, and this year, that number was 'zero', though we watched the parade and two of the costume contests on the hotel TV (with, uh, a lot of buffering issues. Apparently the Sheraton changed their setup for hotel channels this year and it was causing problems?).

The main Sunday night Masquerade, was, as usual, laughably awful - apparently this year everyone got bored in lockdown and decided it was time to make a quick-change costume, except most of them were not very good. But the MCs were great as usual, and heckling from the privacy of our hotel room withe booze and takeout is always fun.

The only other con event we went to (other than a round through the dealer's room, wherein my only purchase was some tea) was to go to the pop-up arcade they had going. There was a really neat selection of retro arcade games, including a wall of pinball games, which means I have now actually tried pinball! Everything was set on free play, so that was a lot of fun.

Cosplay-wise, we did our big new things Friday and Saturday - TGCF on Friday (with my Hua Cheng temporarily put together with some accessories from other cosplays, lol), and then JoJos on Saturday. Only the Jojos really got recognized, though we did run into a small SVSSS group on Friday and were like 'SAME HAT'. I will get around to editing up the rest of the photos, both cellphone and nice camera, hopefully this weekend, but in the meantime, have a slightly silly hualian selfie

Cosplay plans

Tuesday, 13 July 2021 19:01
momijizukamori: (shitty goth dad)
I've been deliberately not working on the Kobo project to give my brain a break, and I don't want to talk about working on this MediaWiki project because it's just... a lot of settings tweaks, so, cosplay stuff I've been working on!

In-Progress
Matcha Parfait (Sakizou) - Ughhhhh *drags hands down face* I have the supplies to work on this but like, zero motivation. But I spent a lot of money on the supplies, so I want to actually finish it. Current goal is for Teslacon this October but uhhhh the goalpost for this has moved like ten times already.

Risotto Nero - JJBA - What I've spent a good chunk of my time the last two weeks on, and I'd probably call it, idk, half-done? Luckily for me Araki used very similar clothing silhouettes for both big tiddy goths in Part 5, so I just had to dig out the mock-ups I made for Abbacchio and do some minor alterations on the coat. I actually managed to find some 2" black/white stripe jersey knit, AND managed (with some careful hand-basting) to line the stripes up perfectly, which is deeply satisfying.

Risotto Nero - JJBA (Marriott carpet ver) - For those unaware, there is A Thing at Dragon*Con about the old Marriott carpet. Me and my D*C-going friends have kind of lowkey wanted to do something with it for years but didn't have any ideas for costumes it'd work with until.... I realized it would work great with jojos designs (I want to see someone do Jolyne's bodysuit in the carpet pattern ngl). So we are doing Marriott carpet La Squadra, which mostly means I am making an extra pair of pants, and possibly making the letter bells on the hat reconfigurable.

Hua Cheng - TGCF - I have made the possibly-dubious decision to do my own design, rather than closely following existing official art or fan designs. On one hand - I can make him as fancy as he deserves (most of the official art is Insufficiently Fancy, IMO). On the other - I have a track record of getting paralyzed with choice when doing my own designs. So, uh, we'll see? This'll be for Katsucon next year at the earliest, so I'm still in the planning/collecting supplies stage, though I've started a bit of sewing on his outer robes, and finished a pair of dangly silver butterfly earrings the other day.

Possibilities
Old Haixing!Shen Wei - Guardian - Is this a danmei deep cut? Yes. Do I want to do it anyway? Also yes. It's just a real good outfit, okay. I have a whole post in progress of a costume breakdown for this (with bonus Kunlun because his outfit turned out to be easy to analyze).

Gu Yun - Sha Po Lang - I keep meaning to make a post about why I loved Sha Po Lang, but like a third of it would be dedicated to this awful, beautiful troll of a man. I'm really tempted to do something for Teslacon, because look! It's a steampunk canon I am actually super into! (I like steampunk as a concept but a lot of steampunk media is 'meh'). Kind of tempted to do one of the sweet fan designs for Black Iron Armor because I've wanted to try doing an armor build for a while but have not been in fandoms with fancy armor (which are like... mostly Western RPGs).

Shokudaikiri Mitsutada - Touken Ranbu (kiwame ver) - because CCP is best citadel dad, and the coat for his kiwame version is *chef's kiss*. And my other faves got kind of 'meh' kiwame outfits.

Shizukagata Naginata - Touken Ranbu - I am not quite sure I have the body confidence to do this yet, but god do I love this extremely thotty naginata.
momijizukamori: Rufus Shinra from Final Fantasy 7 - hubric incarnate. (Rufus | hubris)
Me, Friday afternoon: Okay, I want to get all the painting and engineering done on these wings this weekend, so I can do other final touch-ups next week.
Me, Saturday afternoon: Well, if I finish the painting today, I can at least start on the engineering tomorrow?
Me, Sunday afternoon: I can definitely get the painting done this weekend, right?
Me, now, staring at pile of 80% painted wing parts: ...I'm really bad at this time estimation thing, huh.
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)

So I have a shitton of unposted backlog, because I’m good at taking WIP pictures but terrible at actually posting them, and also I’m sitting on stuff from like… Dragon*Con 2016 still. What would people like to see first? Any specific questions/characters/parts? I’ve got West Witch, Ieyasu, Mikazuki, Hoozuki, Clow, and Shiro, as far as new-ish stuff goes. And like, half-written posts on making nice fake swords and working with Thibra. Please, don’t be shy, I need direction, ahahaha

Cosplay Scale Tool

Tuesday, 1 May 2018 05:40
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
Cosplay Scale Tool:

Before I forget to post this yet again, have a thing I made! This is basically an even easier way to scale things on the same principles as my simple scaling tutorial (possibly my most popular piece of original content?) - you don’t have to do any math on your own here, just click and drag points on a picture. I did it mostly because I also hate math and am monumentally bad at judging distances. Should be largely self-explanatory, but please let me know if you encounter any weirdness. I think changes to the baseline measurement aren’t being accurately reflected in some very narrow order of clicks but I haven’t been able to reproduce it…

momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
Because we are now at T minus one month, and I haven't actually written anything about what I'm doing! I decided to try and focus on easier stuff for this year, particularly easier stuff I wouldn't melt into a puddle in. This somehow turned into 'kickass ladies plus Ieyasu' but I'm okay with that.

-Jean Grey/Phoenix (X-Men) - this is mostly a fix-up job on an older costume - turns out metallic spandex is really sensitive and prone to damage. I'm mostly done with the touch-ups, and hopefully I can finish the last little bits (recurling the wig, new sash pin) this weekend

-Yagen Toushirou-inspired bikini (Touken Ranbu) - because Labor Day in Atlanta calls for some poolside action. This one is done.

-Sharak Sanzo (Saiyuki) - I've wanted to cosplay her since she first showed up in the manga, and now that the new anime is airing, it seemed like a good time to finally do it. All the sewing is done, so I'm on to accessories, which are mostly simple aside from the sutra.

-Lup (The Adventure Zone) - soooo I haven't actually started this yet, but, uh, advantages of podcast as a medium? No canon character appearance! I do need to get started on this this weekend, though.

-The Brand (Saga) - Also not started, though this is mostly a bought cosplay, and is also the one most likely to get cut for time. We'll see.

-Ieyasu Tokugawa (Sengoku Basara) - Another touch-up costume. I've got most of the changes and fixes made, but I still need to remake the neck guard, having thrown the previous one together the day before the con.

Think I'm in pretty good shape over all, but we'll see.
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)












My name is Mikazuki Munechika. I’m one of the five great swords of Japan, and well, I’m also said to be the most beautiful.
I was born near the end of the 11th century. I guess you can say I’m an old man. Ha ha ha.

momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
Katsucon is less than a month away! Which means I'm into 'panic' territory, but to a significantly smaller degree than previous years, because I am doing a lot less than in previous years, and am already well on my way working on it. Two and a half new costumes - it was going to be three and a half, but it turned out someone else was already doing Impa for the Ocarina of Time group, so I shelved that for now. The two and half new ones are Katakura Kojuro from Sengoku Basara, Gakuen Basara flavor; Homestuck AU of a cyberpunk AU of Hijikata Toshizo from Peacemaker Kurogane; and remaking some parts of Yamatonokami Yasusada from Touken Ranbu (which is the half - I have a wearable outfit for him already, it's just being made better). And it's been good to play around with a bunch of new techniques without the pressure of having SO MUCH stuff to do.

Kojuro is the simplest of these, because it's mostly pre-bought components. I'm doing some wig styling, too, but the real challenge will be make-up, because I'm still not much past 'generally passable' and I'd like to work on that more. Gotta do lots of practice...

Toshi has had the bulk of major new experimenting - mostly in the robot-arm, which I'm doing out of eva foam and thermoplastics, but I also had to reweft a wig to get the high ponytail, and this is what I was building my own screenprinting frame for. Lots of discussion on the arm to come, though not tonight. (and lest I forget, art is a commission from the fantastic [Bad username or site: roachpatrol @ tumblr.com"])

Yasusada has some foamwork as well - I'm making a new chestplate, because the one I've been using is actually from a different costume, and is both too big and has the wrong details for this one. The other new stuff is actually going old-school - I'm remaking the arm-guards in sheepskin leather with gold leaf for the crests, and I'm experimenting with traditional Japanese stencil-dyeing techniques and indigo dye to remake the haori. Exciting, if slightly messy!

Each one of these things will probably get it's own post, because I can talk forever about this stuff *g* Hopefully with a bunch of photos, though my documenting is far from thorough
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)


A pile of screen printing for Ieyasu - just have the pants overlay and the back of the vest left to go! #cosplay #sengokubasara

momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
X-Factor belt insignia mold! Not actually the only thing I did today, but the only thing I managed to get a picture of. Other things that got worked on:

First layer of resin on Magneto’s helm

Put the collar on Illyana’s dress

Straightened + trimmed Illyana wig

Coat of wood filler on my worbla arm cuff

Got the X-details and cuff zippers onto ‘Star

BOUGHT THINGS ONLINE (lightsaber parts, teflon presser foot to do the topstitching on ‘Star nicely)

Tomorrow is MORE RESIN, the last bit of hand sewing on Illyana, and starting in on Aradia.
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
My new preciousssss, along with proof that it will do what my mom’s sewing machine wouldn’t yesterday. Though to be fair to my mom’s machine, it’s from the 50s and thus potentially old enough to be a senior citizen. This one is a Janome DC2014, and I got to try it out in the shop and basically fall in love with all of it’s fancy little features. Three different buttonhole types. Decorative stitches! FANCY APPLIQUE STITCHES. It even came with a walking foot!

The amount I love it is probably good, because it’s pretty much the top of my price range (though less than the MSRP!). I’m considering it an investment.
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
So I've been posting all my cosplay stuff to tumblr, which has a slightly wider audience for it, but would people be interested in me cross-posting my personal photos/WIP stuff/tutorials? I think I can jimmy IFTT into it.

Cosplay!

Friday, 27 December 2013 23:54
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
costume(s) you'd make if neither money nor issues of materials/technique were an obstacle? - [personal profile] akatonbo


Over ten days late, is anyone surprised I ever get anything done? I sure am. In my defense, [personal profile] akatonbo already knows the answer because it came up on the 30 days of cosplay meme I've been doing over on tumblr. The answer is... well, less grand than a lot of cosplayers, I think. Some of which is my willingness to tackle new things head-on, and some of it is... just not finding fancy designs/armor that really appeal to me? Clow Reed from Cardcaptor Sakura was my first cosplay, and ever since, I've wanted to redo it to do the outfit justice. I'm actually finally hitting a point where my skills are mostly there - I need to get better at embroidery, and I need to do research on 17th and 18th century Chinese garment construction, but the rest of the obstacles are monetary.

I also still sort of want to do one of the World of Warcraft Mage tier armor sets, but I can never decide which.
momijizukamori: Isamu Nitta from Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. The text reads 'solitude' (Isamu | solitude)
So, Cos & Effect is kind of a tiny con here in Vancouver (where we now have three summer cons because of... a lot of stupidity). It's technically a costuming/alternative fashion con rather than an anime con, and I feel like this year they really set out to prove that - three guests of honor who are well known cosplayers (one of whom does costuming as a business), and the costuming designer for the last three Stargate series; amazing prizes for the costume contest; and a ton of costuming panels of all levels. I went to ten different panels over the last three days and enjoyed all of them, where I'm usually lucky to find one or two that look even vaguely appealing at a con.

One of the themes that seemed to resonate through a lot of the panels (and that I've also seen in some of the costuming community here on tumblr) is the idea of cosplaying for you. That it should be about you feeling comfortable (okay, except maybe the deliberate sacrifices we sometimes make in suffering for our art *g*), and good about yourself, and happy in your costume - not about arbitrary standards of comparison, or tearing each other down.

And for myself, I ended up thinking a lot about the idea of mastery and growing in skill as a costumer. I've been doing this for... at least ten years now, which is a really goddamn long time, and I've definitely learned a lot over that time, but I'm not at the level I'd like to be at, or the level I think I could be at. It's a problem with seeing the details as I progress, or in patience, maybe, and it crops up other places too - my writing and coding in particular stand out as things that suffer from it. Writing doesn't get finished, or doesn't get explored as thoroughly as an idea deserves. Code either has bugs someone else has to catch, or I get frustrated and give up.

They had a Costuming Guest Q&A panel, so I took the opportunity to ask, basically, 'what general advice would you give for moving from intermediate level cosplay to mastery?' And I felt like the answers were good, and all very true:

-practice, practice, practice
-have patience
-give yourself enough time
-...but set some deadlines, because they force you to innovate
-accept that sometimes you're going to have to start over

Definitely things for me to think about as I start in planning for Teslacon and next year. My particular mix of brain chemistry is probably playing in to some of these problems, too, but that's a different dimension to work on

Life

Saturday, 21 July 2012 14:16
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
I keep telling myself I should post more, but I have all these think-y thoughts that I'm having trouble coalescing into actual post form. And there's not much point in talking about real life because as anyone who follows my plurk knows it's like 60% 'I HATE MY JOB ARGH I NEED A NEW JOB LIFE SUCKS' which... well, it could be worse, but it could be a lot better too. But this job is $14/hr and has extended insurance so until something in my field actually calls me for an interview, I'm stuck with the frustrating job.

In between that, I have mostly been RPing and sewing. Current projects have been my steampunk outfits, which are coming along fairly well, and assorted bits and pieces of cosplay things. I did get my nice big order of four shades of purple dye for Tieria the other day, so drafting something out based on that may be my next project. I'm also kind of knitting again, though this means mostly picking at the Sock That Never Ends. I want to love sock knitting so much but it hasn't been working. Progress pics mostly get put on my plurk for the whole INSTANT GRATIFICATION thing but now that we have image hosting I may post here, too.

Design/dev-wise, I have totally managed to fall off my learn-to-code bandwagon. I think I'm having a problem where I'm sort of at an intermediate stage where a lot of the simple exercises that learn-to-code books/sites present bore me because they're too easy, but I'm still not ready to dive in DW's codebase because huge and very mature (or, as [staff profile] denise put it, 'our code base is old enough to have an account under COPA'). And I can't come up with a good intermediate project to do, which is what I need to learn.

I also haven't really had the creative energy for design - I think it's all being eaten by sewing right now. I did however dump some content into my cosplay site in hopes of motivating myself to finish it up, and I drafted up a layout design after about four hours of frustration:
cut for size, etc )
I'm not totally sold on the drop shadow effects - I'm not sure if they're too much or not. All the text will be actual text on the site, not graphics - I just wanted to add nav to the mock-up to see how it looked. The header image may also make a reappearance as a Heads Up theme :)

Observation

Tuesday, 22 May 2012 18:30
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
I started documenting my cosplay stuff on Tumblr because of the ease of posting short posts and mixed media posts (text and pictures, for example). And then I started actually writing about costumes and costume-making and it basically turns into GIANT ESSAYS and then I think I am maybe missing the point of Tumblr.

(do I have a thousand-word draft of working with plastics saved to finish off at some point? Yes I do.)
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
This was born out of a Skype conversation with [livejournal.com profile] nique a few weeks ago (by way of the Dewey decimal system, incidentally). Basically - being a design nerd, I ended up going off on a long rant about how basically every cosplay community site (ie, places you can join rather than an individual or group's personal cosplay page) has the worst interface ever (or absurd arbitrary rules for joining, for the few I haven't tried), and are terrible at actually sharing information about costumes and process, which is ostensibly what they are about. And she replied that in the cosplay community nobody cares about process, so why would they bother? Which, honestly, is completely true, and kind of depressing.

longwinded rambling within )

Unfortunately, getting a community site off the ground is a lot of work, both in coding and in attracting enough users to make it a viable community. My smaller goal is to maybe code an easily deployable content management system (like the blogging software for your webserver. Hopefully someone other than me actually knows about those these days....) that would make adding costumes easy. You wouldn't be able to interlink things the way you could on a community website, but you could do everything else, and have skinning functions, too.

Of course, first I gotta learn Perl *g*
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
So I made a cosplay tumblr so I can stop spamming the shit out of Plurk and my blog with WIP photos and ramblings and tutorial links. Is there any interest in me setting up a syndicated feed account for it on DW, for non-tumblr users?

State of the Me

Saturday, 21 January 2012 00:04
momijizukamori: Green icon with white text - 'I do believe in phosphorylation! I do!' with a string of DNA basepairs on the bottom (Default)
Things I have been doing lately:

1) RP - which I plurk about all the time and nobody here cares about *g* Or if you do, well, ask. Three DW games, two tabletop, and looking at apping into two more DW games right now.

2) Dev type things - mostly on styles because apparently people complaining on anoncomm and plurk about DW having ugly base layouts is enough to gallivant me into action. I have one new layout submitted, and, uh, another three in various states of work. One header-image-friendly, one request from [personal profile] rising (I haven't forgotten, I swear!), and one port of a Smooth Sailing custom theme. And Tropospherical bugs. I have also become a conveyor of information between plurk and IRC apparently.

3) Trying to regain control of life - which you would think would be easier sans job, but somehow isn't. I am, however, slowly working cleaning into my routine, and I've been doing the job search dance again. Still not eating well and I think Effexor is giving me insomnia, though. So kind of a mixed bag.

4) Cosplay - what the rest of this entry will be about! Mostly because I have been working hard and have lots of picspam and thoughts and lists to share. Blame [livejournal.com profile] nique - I think we enable each other on this. To wit - Juubei is on track for getting done next week sometime, I have Gin's ridiculous shirt more or less finished, and I put in a big shiny order of dye supplies tonight.

Mostly Getbackers with a small side of Gintama )

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