FROSTI TIME

So, Desucon Frostbite 2014...

We saw some amazing and fabulous cosplays, it’s always really inspiring to visit these conventions and speak with people on how they made their costumes and props! Especially the cosplay competitions are always so amazing to see. Congratulations to all cosplayers who participated to NCC and HallCosplay!

Overall, the convention was so great, it wasn't overly crowed like usually and we found the new changes, like the age limit, great. The level of cosplay was a bit higher than usual, but that is to be expected for a cosplayers who have had more years to polish their skills.

We also told you that there was supposed to be three of us dressing up as these hybrid creatures. Only Dalin made it somehow. Ennah managed to get half of the materials for the goat/lamb costume and our friend S didn’t have time to finish her dragon costume on time. We are trying again for summer Desucon. We are still bit unsure which cosplays we are going to make for Desu. We were thinking about making something from Hozuki no Reitetsu or Moomins. Dalins little brother wants a Kuroko Tetsuya cosplay from Kuroko no Basket.

We met a cool Team Flare cosplayer at Frosti and discussed about the chances to have a Pokemon X and Y groupcosplay for Desucon. Everything is still open, but at least Ennah is pretty hyped about that. 

Many of you are probably interested in Dalins wolf costume;  She had to make some quick compromises regarding the corset, gloves and rest and the accessories. Corset was supposed to be completely different and made out of black leather with straps. Gloves were sewn on Friday evening with Ennahs and S’s help and tail was strapped and sewn on Saturday morning. There were also supposed to be more accessories on the wrists. She ran out of time, but it came out quite good.

Sadly the Saturday didn't go painfree, as Dalin was sick inside the wolf costume, sweating her brains out because of the fever. It seems that the overly used motto "Cosplay without pain is pretending" is almost always true.

The whole costume is in parts to make the dressing up more convenient. There’s head, gloves, shoes, shirt, corset and pants.  The head is fairly easy to take off and put on. There’s a strap holding it steady and tight at the back of the head. You can see out of the inner corners of the resin eyes and partially from the mouth when it’s open. The shirt is just a pullover and the pants stay up properly with suspenders and elastic band on the waist. The corset hides the seam of upper and lower part of the costume and brings more shape to the costumes silhouette. The tail is strapped around the waist with belt and some strings. It’s also partially sewn to the pants.

Kyuu Eturautti / Creative Commons Zero

It was really hilarious trying to fit Dalin in to a car with the costume on… She was half sitting half lying in the backseat and barking directions for  the driver.

Dalin made some really weird acquaintances while wearing that costume. Even though the costume wasn’t a stereotypical furry costume and more like realistic looking creature, surprisingly many people wearing furry costume came up to her with such familiarity and kindness that it was kind of weird. Not to offend any of these people, but Dalin is too dedicated to regular cosplay and isn’t going to join to furry-clan, even though the furry camps sounds fun. They put up a “wanted poster” for her on the wall. (Or so we think, considering the situation where we were.) Unfortunately Dalin’s emotional level for another human beings is somewhere below worms, so flirting with her is a final boss battle level stuff.

Dalin also made it to a cosplay music video and she’s really hyped about that. You can check that here;

Now when Dalin is partially done with the wolf costume, it’s time to think about our next bigger and more important project. You dear followers probably want to know what it is, but we are going to keep it in secret until the time is right. The only thing we are going to tell you right now is that is going to be EPIC!!

Ps. Thanks to everyone that commented and took a picture of Dalins costume, she's still a bit hyped about the response it got.


-D&E

KARJALANPAISTI

Well hello fellow cosplayers, it's Ennah here!

Desucon Frostbite 2014 is sadly over. I saw many of my dear friends, met cool new people and had an overall blast weekend. It had been over a year from a last 'real' convention  experience, since my whole Tracon was spend doing WCS-stuff.

I was going to do the major animal hybrid-costume project we had going on with Dalin, but decided that it might be wiser to do that one later when I have more time to do it. Better to do it in peace than hurry, right? I will be doing the goat-costume next summer!

I got Nintendo 3DS for Christmas present from my lovely parents. The first thing I did, as a hardcore Pokemón kid, was buying the new Pokemon Y.  I got so obsessed with it that I finished the game in four days. I have always wanted to cosplay someone from Pokemón, and I really liked one of the Elite Four trainers outfit. I'm talking about Drasna, who is a dragon-type trainer.

Drasna from Pokemon X and Y

I thought her bracelets and other accessories would be fun to do. I haven't really done much stuff like that, and my 3D perception is definitely not the best, so I thought this would bring me some challenge. I am more comfortable working with fabric, but getting away from my safe zone has always been one of the things that motivate me as a cosplayer, because you really can't learn too much.

I started of doing the shirt, which was ridiculously easy. The skirt was a bit of a challenge, but the main challenge was to find the right shade for the fabrics. For the shirt, I had to have a bit of elastane there to give it the right look, but for the skirt, the same material wasn't right. Finally I found this velvet fabric, which wrong side was the right color and shade. For the more reddish brown I used linen.

Most interesting part was definitely making the shoes. I bought some second hand shoes from flea market and started to build stuff around it. I was surprised how easy it really was! You can almost make anything with a creative mind, masking tape, newspaper, glue and wall filler. It might sound that I'm using weird stuff for making these things, but they were durable enough for me. I really don't watch much cosplay tutorials, so the stuff I'm using comes from what little experience I have.

Making the shoes.

I really enjoyed making these shoes, and I'm pretty happy how they turned out. The only damage I really had was on the heels. Walking for one day in the heels was maybe bit too much, as small pieces of filler broke off at the bottom of the heel. Oh well, nothing that I can't fix later.

Shoes with the first coat of paint and the neck pieces

I did the bracelets and the other pieces with the same technique as the shoes, doing the shape in cardboard, gluing newspaper and mask tape around it, and finally covering the whole thing with thick layer of wood filler. I was a bit sad because my usual wood filler ran out, and I had to get another brand, which wasn't as good as my normal one. As it dried up, the filler started to crack, and I had to do many layers of it before I could even think of sanding it. One thing I found out though, was that as the filler dried up, it was more durable than my usual filler. 

Bracelet pieces

Sanding all the pieces was hell, because I had to do it inside my house. It's been really cold here in Finland, and sanding outside wasn't an option. It definitely isn't healthy to do that, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. I had to vacuum my whole room every time I stopped sanding something. 

Bracelets

I had so much trouble with my wig for this cosplay. I bought one from eBay, and found out that they hadn't even had sended it month later. Luckily Dalin was in New York with her class, and she bought me one there. I really can't believe my luck and thank her enough for getting me the wig I needed. 

All and all, I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I've got more confidence in my abilities and even though there are always imperfections (like the wrong order of pearls in the neckpiece -__-), I do think that in this cosplay, the good things override the bad parts. 

Kyuu Eturautti / Creative Commons Zero

MEHUJÄÄ

Oh damn, Frostbite is coming and fast!! 

We started to plan our Hakkenden cosplays, but Dalin called quits for it. She realized she couldn’t fit out of her apartments door with the costume. In case if you’re wondering what the hell did she planned on making if it couldn’t fit out of the door; well, look down to last post. See that huge black fur ball? Yes, that one. That’s the one she was planning on making. That's the one that she will make when her doors give in!

So now about the other costume Dalin has in store for Frostbite!

*

Last year when I was studying in Holland, I visited Elfia Fantasy Fair -event in Haarzuilens. There were some incredibly awesome and gorgeous costumes and the whole area of kasteel de Haar was really magical place. If you are ever planning to go and visit some other European events I really recommend going there. Couple costumes caught my eye and I really wanted to try and make something similar myself.

These two little furry cuties are my inspiration for Frostbite. I proposed the idea for Ennah and she was excited about the costumes. I’m not 100% sure, but I think these costumes that I saw there were made by ClockworkCreature. 

I’m designing a wolf hybrid costume and trying to make it as realistic looking as I possibly can. Considering the other ,and the only, one with an unhuman anatomy structure was Cherubimon cosplay, and that was an easy job.  I have most of the materials ready and the next step would be patterns, planning and sculpturing the wolfish body shape. Ennah wanted to make a sheep costume and our third companion “S” is making a dragon hybrid costume. So little time, so much work.

Anyways, I started to make my wolf costume about two weeks ago. I’ll show you some pictures and tell a little bit what I did.

I’m not so good at writing tutorials or what you should do and how, but you probably get the gist of what I am doing here! If there are some parts you want more details put us some messages!

After many sketches and planning I started to build the head out of chicken wire. When the head was cut and molded to the shape I wanted the next phase was to cover it inside out with paper mache. I used the same technique with Mitsuhides armor parts so I have already written the detailed process of this technique. The reason why I use this instead of worbla or some other plastics is that this is the cheaper method.

So, when the head was covered and still wet it weighted ridiculously, but when the paper mache dried up it got lighter. The most essential part is to keep it in the right position when it dries. It’s pain in the ass to try and break it and mold back after the paper mache is dry. It’s like playing surgery and your patient broke their jaw and you as a surgeon need to break it even more to rearrange it back to it original shape so it heals properly. I had to do this couple of times because I wasn’t satisfied of how some parts just wouldn’t work. Like the jaw. Especially the joint part which holds the jaw connected to the head and allows it to move up and down was a pain to get on the right place. 

After that was done, tested and working I sculptured the nose by using clay. This was easy part with the help of some reference pictures of wolfs. The teeth’s are made out of Fimo clay (or Cernit clay, same thing).

I also made the lips and gums from hot glue. Yes, that was the most brilliant idea I had that actually worked. After playing couple of hours dentist with gluing the teeth’s on their right places I was ready to paint.

When everything was painted the next phase was to cover the whole thing with fur. Cutting the fake fur is a nightmare. There’s fur and hairs everywhere in my apartment and I don’t even bother to vacuum anymore because it would be on the same condition the next day. Oh, how badly I would like to have another room as a work space.

The horns were molded from chicken wire and tinfoil and covered with paper mache to get the structure and to harden it. (Yes, I’m too broke and stingy to even use worbla to make the horns.) Also I destroyed one silver-white wig for this project to get fabulous hair for my hybrid wolf creature.

The eyes were interesting to make. I bought this clear resin from Paperilohikäärme-shop in Tampere. It’s really fantastic material and I was excited to try it out. To put it simply, it’s two liquid components that you mix 1:1. I poured it on these molds and let it dry and harden about three days before smashing them out of their molds. And I really mean smashing. They were so difficult to get out that I had to hit them with hammer and break the mold around them. The resin took this considerably well and didn’t break no matter how much I had to hit them. The surface was quite dim and wasn’t as see-through as I wanted, so I mixed a bit more resin and with paintbrush added a thin layer of resin on the surface. After it hardened it cleared the whole piece and was like glass.

My first idea was to paint on paper the eye and then cut and glue it to the resin eye. I tried this and it didn’t bring the color and the essence of an eye as clearly as I would have liked. So, I painted it straight to the resin eye with acrylics. This came up really well and now the eyes are just perfect ;DD

I have really tight schedule with this project. We are leaving to New York with my class on February and we are coming back on Friday 14^th morning. Yeah, cutting close with Desucon Frostbite. Good thing I live in Lahti so I just need to come straight from the airport and leave the stuff home, change clothes and walk to Sibeliustalo!!  I will be wearing this wolf costume on Saturday, because I’m probably too tired on Friday to even think about putting something as complex as this on me.

See you at Frostbite!!!
-D