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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

Breaking Down: Cosplay

So I was sent a link to a guy doing a documentary series called Breaking Down. He basically explores subcultures and breaks them down...so to speak. It's the basic set up, guy from the outside going into something he doesn't understand and tries to understand it.

Right now he's doing episodes on Cosplay, and it's pretty interesting so far, even going so far as to dress up and explore AX. I've watched the first two episodes and I like what's going on so far. He seems respectful of the people and has some actual conversations with people rather then antagonize or made silly comments. You see some things that probably many of you have experienced at cons before (like being randomly hugged, by this point I'm rather used to it so you don't realize how odd it might be for someone else on the outside).

You guys should really check him out, for the later episodes I really hope to see more conversations he has with other cosplayers.

Breaking Down
Facebook

Katsucon 2011

Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center, National Harbor, MD
February 18th-20th
Website

Alright so now it's time for the con report! Katsucon was actually my first convention ever, so it's always sort of special for me. First off the hotel is AMAZING. If you've never been to the Gaylord it's a beautiful resort hotel. It's probably one of the nicest places that I've been to for a con. For cosplayers it's a photo dream. There's so many different types of settings someone could take for photos.










Which brings me to the food there. The food within the hotel is amaaaaazing. Really rather pricey, so if you don't spending a bit of extra money then I'd say go for it, because I enjoyed it. But if you want to save a bit of money there's a ton of different cheaper restaurants outside the hotel and they're within walking distance. Which was actually doable this year because the weather was much nicer! Friday was so warm and nice I didn't mind walking around the area, though Saturday had really crazy wind, for the most part the congoers were actually able to spread out and weren't as confined to the hotel as they were last year. Thanks to the odd weather there wasn't some freak snow storm, making it so much easier to drive up.

This year was a bigger focus on cosplay, so I really didn't make any panels. That's sadly sort of the norm for me, I've heard some good things. I have noticed the bigger focus on cosplay in the panels, most of them how to's or beginners guides to cosplay. Probably shows the growing interest with cosplay in the con circuit, maybe it's starting to become bigger then the original focus (stuff like anime and Japanese culture). I can't say I'm too bothered by it, because of my own love for cosplay, but it does tend to change the focus of the con. Two special guests were cosplayers, so it seems the con is aware of how significant cosplay is at a con.



Now I get into the issues. Katsucon has always seemed a bit disorganized at times. Last year the badges didn't come on time for pre-reg so people were there on Thurs had to get some kind of voucher and pick up their badges later. This year there was an hour wait beyond the badge pickup time, due to...something, I never really got a reason why. But what really annoyed me was the fact that the people on Thursday never got a program or full schedule, just a Friday one. Maybe they rectified this later on, you could pick it up somewhere, but wherever it was, I never got one. Thankfully we had a computer to check the schedule for stuff.

Other then this issue I can't say I have much to complain about. The hotel staff was nice, and I really didn't have much interaction with staffers. I can't really comment much on the panels. What I can say was how it was a a semi mess to try and get photos by the gazebo. Everyone wants photos there because of how nice it is.


Probably the best example of it I have here.

But it came down to a first come first serve type thing, and if there wasn't a gathering there you can bet someone was rushing to get a photo there.

I have little to really complain, other then those reasons. Overall I was pretty happy with the con. I hope the Gaylord continues to have Katsucon. Despite the expense it was really well worth it.