January 30, 2012

Weekend's cosplay photos

Hiya!

During last weekend I tried to ease my depression by taking some cosplay photos... it actually works; I won't be telling any details about said depression but yeah, I think I got some pretty okay photos of my Jushiro Ukitake and Soujun Kuchiki costumes... both from the series Bleach. I will post a few photos here for now.


Jushiro Ukitake


Weird angles wuhuuu! No but really, normally my face ends up looking ridiculous in more extreme angles but this one was kinda cool. Besides it shows off my tsukamaki (read: handle wrapping) really well. I should have taken more outside photos but the sun set so fast it became too dark... *shrugs*

 

Jushiro Ukitake, Captain of the 13th Division... aka Captain Tuberculosis by fans of the series/him. OTL Yeah, he occasionally coughs up blood... end of story. ;_; Love him anyway, he is so gentle and the kindest captain of them all.


Soujun Kuchiki

Soujun Kuchiki, late Lieutenant of Division 6.
The Kuchikis are one of the four great noble families in Soul Society and even though he smiled more than his son Byakuya Kuchiki, at least according to that only official reference (yes, he is so obscure I wonder if I'm the first person outside Japan to cosplay him...) picture there is of him: ref.
Oh well, about this photo, he is a Kuchiki after all... and we all know that a Kuchiki needs to do the I'm-better-than-you face at least once.. hey, they are nobles after all! xD

That's it for now. Bye.

January 24, 2012

Kenseikan

Yeah, said to myself I would finish them before this weekend earlier and today I got the thumb out from my ass and made them. It didn't take so long actually and was pretty easy to make. Here's some in progress photos (excuse me for bad lighting..) and short descriptions.

 

First I just took these hard paper (poster board?) whatever and cut out pieces that seemed an okay size. I cut out two similar so I could layer them over one another for strenght. I also marked the middle...



Then I just bent the middle to get that V-shape. After that I glued them on top of each other and proceeded to repeat the steps and make one kenseikan more...


When I had both kenseikan pieces cut out and glued together I just used duct tape in the inside to get the two separate pieces to be one whole...


Then I glued some scrap pieces to the ends to create some dimension.
And when I was done I went and took some WIP photos of one of my coming cosplays because now it's done. Yes, done. The kenseikan was pretty much the only thing I needed for it. XD Mhmm lazy budget cosplaying, I had everything else already.


derp
I'm herpderpin' around. lol I need white pins to hold kenseikan in place, black ones are too visible I think... and no, IT'S NOT BYAKUYA. It's Byakuya's dad, Soujun. Aww yeah, obscure character from a popular show. <3 There's only like... one official artwork of him and it's only showing his face from the front, heheh the rest is up to my imagination, woo. I will debut this cosplay during the summer first so yeah, I finished early. Although I need to test character make-up...

Bye bye!

January 23, 2012

Next con I'm planning to go to...

... is Kitacon 4 in Kemi, 11th February 2012. Finland, duh.

...
Oh, and hi! xD

But seriously, why wouldn't I attend Kitacon when it's close to me? Omg, close, read that? It's almost I can't believe it. Close. I live like... maybe 25 km away from it and well, it's the world's most northern con so EFF YEAH FINALLY SOMETHING CLOSE TO ME. :'DD Wuhuu! Okey, it kinda sucks to live in the north sometimes, ahaha.. I have to travel to the other end of Finland to attend cons and some people believe we don't have internet access here and ride reindeers to school... waitwhat?

Cosplay plans you ask? Well, if my friend Jäärä manages to get up here it will be so much AWESOME, so much awesome I can't sit still just thinking about it. I'm planning to not be a durp this time and actually do Turn Back the Pendulum Jushiro Ukitake from Bleach, aka ponytail!Ukitake... and I will bring my shikai... because I can, no problems transporting them this time. Car rides yesssss! Oops, I'm too hyper I see.. and well, Jäärä would be my Turn Back the Pendulum Unohana feat. Minazuki! And yes, TBtP versions to match, no time-fucks. :)

See ya!

January 17, 2012

Desucon Frostbite 2012 over

Yeah, Frostbite is over.

It was a great experience and I'm pleased with the con. I was part of the Bleach cosplay group as I mentioned earlier and they all were wonderful people, thank you for the time!
I won't really write another long summary about the weekend here because I've already written one over at my deviantArt and besides I'm tired, so just follow this link link plz :'D if you want to read about how my mildly crazy con weekend went.
Both my cosplays seemed well-received and I got quite some hugs and photos taken of me, even though it seemed, at least for me, that not so many people ran around photographing cosplayers... maybe because the con was crammed with people inside all the time because of the cold weather outside or something. At least I don't like taking photos and having 94389392 people in the background... but maybe that's just me...

But yeah, little about my cosplays: I was a durp and forgot to tie my wig back as Ukitake into a low ponytail as I was supposed to do... eeh, so I was just the standard version of him instead of the Turn Back the Pendulum version which I was supposed to be.
My Gin cosplay went over well for its debut (better than I had expected actually), especially because I had Ri-kun with me as my wonderful Izuru-fukutaicho and we walked around the whole Sunday as a duo.

I took some photos of other cosplayers too but didn't get so many, maybe because there wasn't really all that many cosplays that gave me a wow-factor seeing I'm not really into the currently popular stuff like Kuroshitsuji, Ao no Exorcist, Hetalia and those. But of course I did take photos of those cosplays I liked and found at a proper time... don't really want to bother people when they are eating or busy, ahah.

I have some Frostbite cosplay photos, so if anyone remembers that an Jushiro Ukitake cosplayer on Saturday, or a Gin Ichimaru on Sunday took a photo of you then comment and I will send it to you!

Thank you for a great con and bye bye ~

January 12, 2012

It's finished!

OH MY GOD I MADE IT!!!!

It's 23:35 here and I just finished wrapping tsukamaki for my Shinso sword.. yeah, I'm going to cosplay Gin Ichimaru on Sunday at Desucon Frostbite. I'm so happy, what a relief! This day has been so crazy, so full of stress; I had to iron my cosplays, pack all stuff (yay for checklists!) and finish Shinso. Finally I'm done and can breathe out... I will have swords for both captains, FUCK YEAH! 8D

Here's some pics of the finished fucker:



 Now I'm off to sleep, need to wake up early so I don't miss the morning train to Lahti. Now that would suck. xD

Goodnight and see you at Desucon Frostbite~

January 11, 2012

I'M STRESSED!! + Shinso progress

 Hi guys!

First of all.. that earlier "fuck you paint" incident ......................... it was oil paint. "OTL Stupid me didn't read the description on the can like I normally do, I somehow took for granted it was normal water-based paint... it didn't even cross my mind that oil paint even existed. No wonder it was sticky as fuck, took probably over 24 hours to dry completely and water didn't wash it off. I got scolded when mom and Ari found out... I felt like a big huge dumb idiot asshole. Great.
Oh well... you make mistakes to learn... or whatever...

Okay, so Desucon Frostbite is soon here. I used to hope it would come already but now I'm so stressed it's not even funny. Tomorrow is the last day I have to finish Shinso, iron my cosplays and pack all my stuff... and what ticks me off is that over half of the day will be wasted sitting in school not really doing a crap. Today I didn't do a shit at school, I went there and went back to sleep for like 3 hours, then I had an introduction lesson which like.. lasted for 5 minutes and then 2 hours free time before the next lesson, that I didn't do anything on either and err, the last lesson I didn't really have, argh.. I could have been home working on my sword instead. Okay, I'm going offtopic... but yeah, it's tempting to skip school tomorrow and focus on getting my cosplay stuff done. I'm not sure if I can manage to finish Shinso in time.
The painting process has been such a pain in the ass. First that whole oil paint fuck-up thing and not even the spray paint wants to work as I'd like it to.. stupid cold weather, stupid dark time of the year, stupid snow covering my usual "working place" outside. Makes everything problematic.
So I've been outside spray painting Shinso and err... I will need to do a second coating because the paint dried so slowly it got stuck on the surface I used (fgdshhfdjsajd, I hate when that happens!) and these annoying.. err, "bubbles" appeared and made the surface broken and mildly ugly. I probably need to sand them down and repaint the whole thing. Oh, and there's tsukamaki left to do... I'M SOOOO STRESSED. ARGHGHGHG.

Shinso in progress...
Smell ya later!

January 9, 2012

FUCK YOU PAINT!!

Uh, hi guys..

ARGH I DELETED THIS SHIT ACCIDENTALLY SO NOW I HAVE TO WRITE IT ALL OVER AGAIN, FGGSGDHAGDAGFDAG!!!!!

Dear white paint,
Fuck you, fuck you big time.
- Sincerely, extremely pissed off cosplayer.


Okay... deep breaths... deep breaths...
So, remember that white base paint I mentioned earlier? Yeah, I've never used it before and I didn't know what it was like and OH MY *beep* GOD I HATE IT WITH A PASSION NOW. Seriously, it's sticky as fuck, it takes forever to dry (and hair dryers doesn't help), smells like crap and is impossible to wash away no matter if you use soap three times and scrub it with a harsh brush. I tried to get it off my own hands... and it just smears the more I try to get it off! And it killed my good paintbrush, I had to throw it away because the paint wouldn't come off and I got pissed off because the more I tried to clean it the more it bled over on my hands and made them look like I'm a friggin' Moomin troll, agrhsgdfhs!!!  I've never worked with a paint that made me this frustrated before. Okay, so this paint sticks like a bitch to everything, every fucking loose hair strand and every fucking surface it even touches for less than a second. I even got some on this high leather stool that I've been sitting on and it won't come off no matter what I do, yeah, mom will kill me...

I want to scream and piss on that paint or something, I hate it so much there's not enough words and I'm never ever touching it ever again. NEVER. 8C

Oh, and this is what the base for Gin's sword and tsuba look like at the moment... yes, I had to put them in the washbowl to dry...

I hate you paint. :C
Smell ya later!

January 8, 2012

Gin tsuba progress II

Hello hello.

Yay more progress! Ari fixed the cracks for me, he filled them in with this white-ish putty filler thingy. He's too kind. ;_;
Tomorrow he said I can coat it with white base paint, although it seemed the one I used before has been used up so I have to use another one that is slightly shiny... and he said I have to sand it after coating. Oh well, after that I will coat it in gold spray paint and then I can focus on finishing the rest of the sword.

Shinso's tsuba fixed
It certainly looks better now, hahah. I'm happy it could be fixed so easily.

Bye bye ~~

Gin tsuba progress

 Hi!

So some few days ago Ari, my stepfather, told me I could make Gin's tsuba out of this 9 mm thick "vaneri" (plywood?) we had lying at home. So I did. I drew the design and he was kind enough to cut it out for me, yay! So after he cut it out for me I went outside to sand it down, oh my god my hands were so sore after that. I remember cursing Gin's tsuba because of it's weird-ish shape, it was so hard to get "inside" those stupid... hnnng, what's the English word for it? OTL Nevermind, you probably understand if you know what it looks like...

It's under a week left to Desucon Frostbite and I still have to fill in all the cracks or whatever you call those parts where the top "part" of the wood peeled off. And then I need to paint the tsuba gold and then I need to paint the whole shoto that I bought as a base for it and do tsukamaki... yes, I'm lazy... but I just figured it's better to modify something close enough than to make it from scratch because the blade itself is normally formed (but short) and besides I somehow knew I would get to stress with it anyway. XD

Here's a photo of what it looks like at the moment:


Yeah, it looks crappy right now. All those lighter parts are those I need to fill in and there's more on the other side. The shoto is just a cheap red oak one. Yes, that's my old Pokémon bedsheets btw. :'D

Argh I hope I will have time to finish this sucker, my school starts on the 10th January too and I need to leave for the con 13th January, eheheh...

Bye!