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Last Saturday I went to Anime Los Angeles (ALA) at the Ontario Convention Center. I got there around 10am and spent the first half of my day exploring the exhibit hall, eating food, and taking pictures. Here I am with the Hakuoki display looking very pumpkin-faced and happy. Some of you may already know, but Idea Factory International is going to be releasing a new Hakuoki for the PS Vita with more dateable bachelors! I already pre-ordered the game! There's also going to be a Hakuoki Festival this April. I bought my tickets exactly at 12:00pm when the tickets were released. I was refreshing my phone while on lunch break with much intensity. I wanted to get the Special Lunch Set tickets but they were sold out in literally one minute. I cried in my heart. Then after about six minutes, all the general admission tickets were sold out! I feel lucky to have gotten my tickets on time. But for those who missed the first wave of tickets, they are selling a second batch of general admission tickets here. I think I'm going to do a casual cosplay of Okita (my fav) at the event. Maybe the Sweet School Life version (which I never played but would like to). I'm also going to have HB do either Saitou or Chikage. Now here are some cosplayers I saw con... Isabela from Dragon Age II. She even had the tome! Medli from Windwaker. A sweetie pie Anise from Tales of the Abyss. I looove when I see TOA cosplays. Tidus from Final Fantasy X. Maybe I should have taken the picture somewhere with better lighting ;; but I was already too shy to take his picture lol. HB had to stop him for me. Prompto from Final Fantasy XV. Their costume looked sooo good! I hope mine will end up alright. Another Prompto with a Noctis. I had to chase after them when they were walking past me. I was DYYINNG when I saw the back of the Prompto's vest. And the fishing rod is really cute right?? Dancing FFXV characters. Saix, Roxas, and Axel from Kingdom Hearts. Soma and Erina from Shokugeki no Soma serving free curry. Lunch/snack break with HB, yuqicosplays, and munin742. Yuqi is dressed as Cindy from FFXV. The second half of the day, I dressed up in my Skyrim armor (Because I don't have any new cosplays). I saw lord_gundam cosplaying Fallout. We chatted for a bit. It was nice seeing him again :) I hope to see his Faraam Knight in person one day. And so wraps up my trip! I didn't attend any panels, but I still had a pretty full day. Oh, and this is kind of small but I really liked ALA's badge pick up. It was so fast and easy. I went to Anime California 2016 back in whenever, and badge pick up took soooo long. It was also a little strange because a college fair was sharing the venue with ACA. I probably won't go back to ACA any time soon, but I'll definitely be returning to ALA. (I'll probably give ACA another go later down the line, maybe when it's a little bigger?) Ok, moving on to all the loot I got from ALA. The first was this very adorable shirt I got from Uchuu Summer. I've already worn it a couple times. I want to buy more. A print by parakid. I framed it but haven't put it up on my wall yet. From left to right: Atelier Ayesha Artbook, Yona of the Dawn Vol.3, Tales of the Abyss keychain, Tales of Destiny keychain, and a Tom Nook button. The tales keychains/rubber straps were chance boxes. I was hoping to get TOA and TOX2, but maybe I'll be able to nab the TOX2 another day if I'm lucky.
I recently went to Mt. Baldy with HB to take photos of my Skyrim cosplay. We tried going a previous time, but I forgot my chestplate and we ended up only hiking instead. Oops. This time around I didn't forget anything (Ok, I forgot my hair tie but that's not that important) and there was lots of snow, so everything went great! We didn't have to drive very far up the mountain for our surroundings to change from dull green to a vivid wintery landscape. Since the snow was recent there were a lot of people around, but we found an area that was more secluded. I carried my things in a giant FFXIV bag. Selfies are expected right?? HB also caught a photo of me slipping and falling on my butt. Was laughing when I saw this. Here are the first set of pictures: Photographed and edited by harvestbuddy. Sooo happy with these.
More to come later! Today I went to LA Live to watch the Yo-Kai Watch movie! The only time I really visit LA Live is during AX, so it felt kind of empty without seeing all the cosplayers walking around haha. Speaking of, AX is the reason why I became interested in Yo-Kai Watch. When I was rooming with people in the hotel, we wanted to have a show on as background noise so we turned on netflix and picked Yo-Kai Watch (we brought the ps4 for netflix and games). Even though it's a kids' show, I secretly (ok, maybe not so secretly) fell in love with it; I ended up watching the whole first season on netflix. So yeah, I went to LA Live for the movie event, and Nintendo had a booth set up. They had a display board for the movie, some of their toys, a mini scavenger hunt, and "wishing plaque" prizes. I didn't participate in the scavenger hunt, but you basically looked for the Yo-Kai that were hidden at the ground level of the theater. Once you found all of the Yo-Kai you received a Hovernyan headband. As for the wishing plaques, you simply picked one of the colored wishing papers and you received a prize. Everyone also received a complimentary Hovernyan Yo-Kai Medal and lenticular image Yo-Kai watch. Nice! You can be a Yo-Kai Medal! The Wazzat pin was a mystery pin that was won from the wishing plaques. I think I want to collect more of the pins... The watch shows Robonyan in one angle and Shogunyan in the other.
The movie itself was fun; it was very much like the tv show (except longer). There was also an animated short/episode after the credits, so make sure to stick around for that if you're interested! I keep telling myself that I want to be a more active blogger and have more frequent posts... but look at me. I procrastinated and put off my Skyrim post until now. Here, I'll be discussing the construction process of my Skyrim cosplay that I wore to AX 2016. First, let me go over a little background info. In-game, I had a female Argonian that was wearing Elven Armor paired with a Dragon Priest mask. I wore these for a good chunk of the game so it didn't require a lot of thought for me to decide, "HEY! This looks like a good cosplay idea!" Though, when I actually sat down and started sketching out a rough draft I realized that I didn't want to make boob molds and opted for making the male version instead. I chose to make a recolored version based on this mod, because I felt it would be more visually striking than the original full brassy-gold. Progress Now let's get to the good stuff! Before working with any materials, I started with a small sketch of each armor piece. This made it easier for me to visualize all the components needed for creating the in-scale paper patterns later on. Here's some of the sketches I drew. After getting an idea of how the front and back pieces attach to each other, ect. I made paper patterns that were scaled to my body. This process consisted of a bit of trial and error. I made measurements, sketched out the pattern, tried it on, made adjustments, tried it on, ect. When I found the patterns satisfactory, I rolled out my leather and placed the paper pattern on top (I decided to make the armor full-leather this time around, but if I was working with foam, it would be a similar process). Afterwards, I lightly traced the outline of the pattern onto the leather with a pencil (be careful because the pencil could scratch the leather and permanently show). Then depending on the thickness of the leather I cut out the traced leather with a pair of shears or a knife. Here are the bracers for example: Then, after designs were added: Once designs were done, I dyed the front and back of the leather with black leather dye (Dying the back is not necessary, but I just prefer its appearance). After the dye was dry, I dry brushed the leather with lumiere paints for color then let it dry again. I then applied a thin layer of satin shene leather finish, let it dry, then applied a leather conditioner on top. Here's are the fully assembled bracers and gauntlet: .Anyways, these are the steps that I take. But since I may or may not be handling the leather "correctly" it'd probably be better to do some extra research if you're interested in working with leather! Here are some more progress pictures to give you an idea of my work process: Hope this helps!
This year I attended Anime Expo for all four days and stayed in a hotel with six other people. The weekend went by smoothly. For this year's con, I wanted to cosplay both Skyrim and Disgaea 5 (for Red Moon Day!), but I wasn't able to complete my Disgaea costume on time. The wig was killer, and I couldn't finish styling it. It's alright though, because I can just wear it to future cons ^^. Here are pictures of my Elven Armor from Skyrim: I had originally wanted to make an Argonian tail to match my in-game character but I wasn't sure how to tackle the tail. I might attempt to make it in the future though. (I'll include more information on my costume construction in a separate blog post.) Anyways, I dressed in Skyrim for two hours on Saturday and half-day on Sunday. While I was in costume I met an Argonian Maid and freaked out. She was super cute. I also took a picture with the giant NIS Prinny twice. Once while I was in costume, and once while I was out. I bought a Prinny hat specifically to wear it to the Red Moon Day gathering lol. When I got there, the NIS staff gave out free stuff and a very premium looking silver pin. Sometime during the expo, I also found an amazing Tales stand in the exhibit hall. I love Luke, Ludger, and Jude so ofc I had to take a picture. I don't know much about Asbel though. I will probably love him too if I play the game (which I will, eventually). Other interesting things happened while I was at con too, but as usual, I didn't take too many pictures. Now on to the merchandise! Some of these were bought, and some were free. Left: Sprout Clip, Tales Keychains, Nyanboard, Gigi Doll, Prinny Hat
Center: Atelier Sophie Art Book, Ensemble Stars Art Book, OLDCODEX CD, and ticket stub Right (all the free stuff): Mugen Souls Art Book, Prinny Pin, Atelier Meruru Art Book, Natsume Yuujinchou bookmark, Yuru Yuri Pin, Twin Star Exorcist Talismans, The Pilot's Love Song Stickers One more thing I gotta mention! The concert for OLDCODEX and FLOW was really good! I wanted to get FLOW's CD as well, but it was sold out. I never went to any of the AX concerts before, so this was a real treat. Y'know how sometimes bands sound different in-person compared to their audio files? Well, they sounded great in-person too. So I'll be going to future concerts from now on. That wraps up my post. The next cons I'll be attending are probably Anime California and Anime Los Angeles (Not 100% for either though). |
AboutHi I'm RQ and this is where I blog about my cosplay and daily life.
*I'm taking a break from cosplay.
Looking back at what I wrote in my posts make me cringe, but I'll leave this blog up in case people still want to use my cosplay progress/WIPs as a resource for their own projects. Categories
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