Japan Expo

Two weeks until Japen Expo in Paris! I'm all excited because it's my first foreign Con, I'll meet people of EC and cosplay with dear friends.

For saturday I'll bring Yuuko (Cover vol. 3). This is already finished, I just have to work a little on the shoulder straps as they suck atm.

For sunday or friday I decided to bring Umi in her chizeta dress from Magic Knight Rayearth. This one is new but almost finished. Here are some progress shots:

I do bellydance myself, so I really wanted a bellydance costume for once. And one without harempants. Mangaka tend to think bellydancers wear them, but most actually don't.
Sadly the costume isn't very accurate compared to real bellydance costumes, so I take some freedom in decorating it with sequins. Me loves glitter!


Btw, shooting Tira today. FINALLY.

Eurocosplay prelims at Dokomi

So, to keep you up and going, a small report of the EC prelims at Dokomi. Actually this is not about boasting how cool I am, and I know that EC is not of interest such as WCS. But I think EC as well as ECG is a cool idea, and people don't really know what's going on (at least in Germany - I was like: ok, I'm going to participate. What now?).

The prelims were held on Saturday. In the morning there was a costume/construction judging and it was a little chaotic as the con moved to different location this year. Nobody really knew where the judging was to take place.
At least we were 7 contestants, which was more than last year. I remember there were only two, and some Conhelpers ran around to find more.
However, all others contestants were really nice! The costume quality was on an ok-level as well. Not as big as WCS costumes, but I think this was natural considering how little attention the contest gets.

I wore Tira - Pictures to come when I did a proper shooting.

The stage show with the skits took place in early afternoon, but I didn't have much time in between. Looking for the room in the morning took some time.
Sadly we weren't able to watch each other, but the reactions of the audience reached us behind the stage and told more or less that most of the performances must have been quite entertaining.
I did a hula hoop skit and was very afraid that I'd either break my nose (which I almost did two days before XD) or throw my hoop into the audience by accident. Neither happend, gladly. Still, I'm not satisfied, but well.
I heard that some people asked why I didn't hoop with my ringblade, and that they were disappointed about that.
Intentionally I actually wanted to do this, but:
- The blade is too heavy and there was no chance for me to construct it to be lighter
- It breaks too easy (learned that the hard way when trying to hoop with it) because I wanted it somewhat light
- Hooping with tricks needs a lot of hand action. One has to grip around the hoop often and that's simply not possible with the blades. Only in three places, which is not enough.

Again, there wasn't very much time in between show and the award ceremony - I was of course really happy to get chosen! I love London and I'm excited to see a foreign con. Now it's a hard time to choose the costume for the finals. EC Cosplays are usually really big, and I'm not a great armor-maker. I narrowed my list, but I'll let you know when I finally chose a costume^^

There's another prelim for the second german contestant in the beginning of July. I'm really excited who will be the other part of "Team Germany" (Yes, I consider us a team, even though we're doing solo cosplays).

Still there

Yep, I did NOT forget about this blog. There's still a part of Tira's Ringblade left here, but until this weekend I was really busy (I still am but a big Con is over now). Private life comes first, businesslife second and cosplay has to share the third place with dancing.
There's still tons of photos to work on from a wedding, a bandshoot and a private shooting.

However, Dokomi Convention is over, Tira is finished! I'll post pictures after I did a shooting and I'll continue the ringblade tutorial. At saturday I participated in the Eurocosplay competition and actually won. So I'll be one of the two german cosplayers in the London finals!
I'll post progress of my costume, and thoughts about it here as well. Really can't decide on a costume yet >.<

Tira Ringblade III

It's nearly finished! So it'll be a four-part blog for my Azi Dahaka =)

Next step, I fixed the isolation foam to the hoop. With screws. So simple. I thought that would break, but in fact, it stays on really well.

After that, I smeard the gap between hoop and foam with hot glue. Works well.

Blades are in place now. The whole thing got covered in paper clay (4 packs of flour-like paperclay). Then, it needs a whole lot of sanding, which was extremly annoying on those big areas, and broke a lot on the outer bevels. I'm not completely satisfied here.

After paperclay and sanding, they got covered in gesso so that they are all white.

Now, all blades are spraypainted in silver. They look a little like inverted klingon Bathlets now >.<

Before adding the ornaments, I shaded the blades a little with acrylic paint.

For the copper looking pieces, I decided to cover them in a similar looking fake suede. I thought of places in the sword that would be more comfortable to touch for Tira.
The ornaments are made of craftfoam, and I used the same method as in my Fran Helmet. They were painted golden later - which will be in my next post =)

Tira Ringblade II

Here's the next post of my lovely Ringblade =)

After a cardboard failure, I chose to work with my all-favourite weapon material: isolation foam. It's similar to styrofoam, only smoother. If anyone knows the exact term in english, let me know. In german it's Styrodur or Jackodur.
The material comes in various strengths, I used 2cm in thickness. In the picture is a variant with a smooth surface, but actually I found that the structured one was  easier to work with (see 2nd picture).

Before I affixed this to my hoop, I shaped the blades. My lovely boyfriend thought of something really cool there.
First, I drew a line where the bevel (Term?) was to begin:

Then I put backing paper over it...

Now....let's iron it^^

The foam will melt and can be pressed down. The advantage over cutting the blades ist that there won't be any material loss, and it makes the spikes sturdier.

Please do this outside or in a well ventilated room. It stinks and the fumes are bound to be poisonous >.<

Well, that was the blade-shaping part. Stay tuned for fixing it to the hoop and loads of paperclay.

Tira Ringblade I

I am currently working on a Tira costume (SC II 2nd Player - the golden one). Of course that requires the absolutely wonderful ringblade weapon she uses. I love that weapon.
The decision of which weapon to chose was rather hard, as I have a little handicap on that: I need to be able to detach it into pieces for transportation.
In the end my choice fell on one of the new weapons from SC V - Azi Dahaka.

As many people do, I started out with a hula hoop, that was cut into three parts.

One of the pieces looks different, I'll come to that later.
Of course, they need to be mendable to one. A hula hoop usually is empty inside, so I bought fitting spars (not sure of the term here, round pieces of wood >.<) and hammered them in one side of a piece each. They now can be plugged into each other.

A detail of my "plugs".

Now it's time to make a pattern for the blades. I think the pictures talk for themselves.

I think I'll make the blades a little bigger.
See you next time when I've worked a little further =)

The usual not-very-creative "hello"

I'm now testing Blogger. Before, I used to be on LJ, but somehow they couldn't keep up in developement and style, it's grown really buggy. I'm not saying that I will keep up blogging here, it's just a try-out with blogger.
I'm also not sure what content to post, since blogger, as well as many other plattforms, will take all copyrights right under your nose *sigh.