Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Plushies: Ike and Bearbee

It's been a while since I posted some plushies. I'm mostly busy with school/thesis and started working on Claudia (that tunic will be the death of me I swear), but sometime after Katsucon and before Zenkaikon I got these done.


Bearbee is from Kyo Kara Moah, and was a present for a friend. He's not terribly big, maybe 5-6inches tops. I didn't have any yellow fleece so I ended up using a really basic cotton, but it looks fine really. Finally some detail shots after the quick photo I posted last time.


Ike is from South Park and was a commission. This is technically the first version, because I changed a few details per clients request after this. But I was pleased with the results and this is when I took all the nice photos.


Also finished Fastener from Panty & Stocking for a friend. I still need to take nice photos of him, I've just been really lazy about it. I'll get to it soon and post them later. For now he'll sit on my desk and watch me sew.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Zenkaikon 2011 & Photos



Vally Forge Convention Center, King of Prussia, PA
March 18-20th
Website

Zenkaikon is a newer con, that's still slowly sort of growing. It seems to be one of those cons that do seem to get better with every year. They learn from their previous mistakes. I've attended for three years so far, and I've seen a lot of improvements from year to year.

First off the space. The space has been improved SO much. Last year they weren't in the Scanticon but the area next to it, the hotel area. It was so awfully cramped. There was no place to really stand around and hang out, or get photos if you needed to. But this year they got several floors of the Scanitcon center and it was a huge sigh of relief. There was several floors to walk around in, a nice big area for people to hang around in on the bottom floor, while all the panals were held at the top floor. There was a second floor between but I guess they weren't able to get that for the con, since it was blocked off the whole time. But it was a HUGE improvement over last year. There was a small place selling food (rather expensive food, but they did give you a lot of it, between $6-8) but it was convenient. I seriously can't tell you how happy I was about the space, because of how bad it was last year.

This con I'm never really focused on my own cosplay quite so much, I'll wear a costume but I don't care for the meetup quite so much so I got the chance to see a few panels. Now I can't really judge all of them, only the ones I went to. Also I was only there on Saturday so I can't speak for anything else that happened, only for what happened on Saturday. And it was a 50/50 experience. The first panel we went to was something on Lovecraft and it was...pretty terrible to be honest. The idea behind the panel and the information that could have been presented would have been great. An information panel on Lovecraft and his universe. What it ended up being was a slightly unorganized, book pimping panel. The author there seemed to know what he was talking about, but he spent the entire time talking about himself as an author and talking about all of his books (within ten mins of the panel he had all of his books on him and he pulled them out to show everyone). If you're running a panel, I don't have a problem with your pimping your merchandise. I have a problem with you doing it throughout the whole presentation. If you're going to do it, do it after the panel. As your ending it, make a mention of it and where they can buy it. It's annoying and rather eye rolling to watch you do it throughout the whole panel.

The panel I did really liked was the Square to Bioware panel, the one on American and Japanese RPGs. It started with a quick sort of information part, but included a huge audience participation and discussion. It partly plays into my interests, since I like discussion, but I think the guys did a good job putting it together and kept on topic, but still allowed people to talk and share their opinions. They were overall really enjoyable. The guys who ran it were g33kWatch so check out their website.

The last event I got to see was the masquerade. And this was a pretty vast improvement from last year. Last year was in a really small room, and there was only a few people really interested in it. This year they had a whole stage set up and two large screens. The way the seating was set up was around the stage, but for whatever reason the two large screens set up along the sides weren't playing the masquerade, they were just showing the logo. So the people who were sitting along the sides were pretty much missing out on about everything. Maybe the cameras weren’t working? But if you have an area set up that large then they really, really needed to get the screens working. But they seemed to be taking a step towards making the masquerade more legitimate with the stage and giving more people the chance to actually see it. Zenkaikon is the con that tends to give out a lot of awards, but with a con as small as it is, it’s not really surprising.

Another big change was the dealer’s room and artist alley. With the growing interest in the con I suppose they were able to get more dealers interested in selling. The dealer’s room was pretty big, with varied types of booths. The artist ally was mixed in there, which wasn’t unusual. But what was strange was that they had a different hallway for ore of the artist ally. There was an artist alley B section with like maybe 5-6 artists there. I have no idea why they did that. The B section was upstairs and far away from the main dealers room/artist alley. We found it by accident, maybe they ran out of room in the main area, but with how big it was, they probably could have easily fit them in.

I think that’s about all I can say for the con. I’m happy to see the con starting to grow and improve. I think there’s still little stuff they can improve on, but I’m glad to see them better and better with each year. I’ll be curious to see what they’re like next year.

Unlike most posts, I tend to make two separate ones for photos and con reports. But I really didn’t take that much photos, so I’m tacking them on at the end of this post. Enjoy!

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Quick Update!

Hey there, I just wanted to do a quick post to let you guys know I opened up a new link on my sidebar called Resources. Basically its a list of links and tutorial related to cosplay. I'll try and keep it up to date as much as I can with anything new I can find. If you guys have any links or tutorials you want to send to be part of the list then let me know!

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Sewing Blogs & Resources

I decided to stop fussing around with the layout of my blog, and a custom made banner. For now I shouldn't have to mess with my layout, lets see how long I'll keep to that.

So one of the biggest parts of cosplaying is sewing. Whether you make it yourself or not, somebody does. I tend to look around the internet and blog circut to see if I can find anything new that might help with any projects I'm working on. I want to link to the different blogs and resources that I have that might be useful for cosplay.

As a heads up, all photos are taken from the sites themselves. Support them by checking them out!

Sewing

Ikat Bag
Most of her things are done for her kids, but she goes step by step on how she puts everything together, which is really useful for people just starting out or just having a hard time figuring out patterns. And the photos she posts of her projects are really nice, giving full detail shots. Plus she posts patterns. I think one of the most useful parts is that she posted a guide on drafting patterns. Which is all beyond me, for everything I've done I've just modified commercial patterns. But the guide is really helpful and I'll have to put it to future use.


Origami Mommy
Another mom who sews for her kids. BUT this one does more crafts as well as sewing projects. There's a lot of interesting little projects that might help with any sort of cosplay, or any little detail or prop you need to do.

Plushy

Metroid Hat
I've probably referenced this site every time I needed a quick guide or reference for a plushy that I've made. They have a ton of really cute plushes, but more the that, they sell clothes, hats and different nerd wear. But I'd check out the tutorials for the plushies, because I love having the extra accessory with my cosplay.









Cosplay


Funkyhorror
Not a whole lot of tutorials, but there's a few there are are pretty nice. The long hair tutorial is helpful and the cheep hoop skit thing is nice, for anyone who wants to make a hoop skirt.

God Save the Queen Fashions
They're a cosplay commissioner, but not only do they offer high quality costumes, she has a good number of tutorials listed that are SUPER helpful. I've used her bow tutorial countless times. I really can't recommend her site enough.

That's all I'll post for now. I think I'm going to try and form a big link list of different resources and post it as a side bar. If you have any to suggest feel free to do so, or email me. For now though enjoy!

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Finished Cosplays

So I never really got the chance to post all the finished versions of my cosplays for Katsucon. If you saw the Katsucon post I did, you could see the goofy photos I had with my Clover costume. But we finally got the photoshoot photos and I wanted to show off some of the finished stuff I did.

Clover (999)
Cosplayed with Haybusa72, Leesers, Solstice_Wind, Tenel Ka, Draelight, and Bearpigman.
Photos taken by Elemental.
I'm only posting a few of my favorites, there's a ton of them here that you should check out and enjoy.











Merryweather (Godchild)
Cosplayed with my friend lovefromwcu as Cain.






Causal Miku (Vocaloid)
Cospayed with Haybusa72.




That's about it for my finished. Gotta start working on my new costumes for Otakon!