Animazement 2017 - Part 1

Animazement 2017

... was a blast. There are no other words for it.

I cosplayed--for the first time in years.

It was refreshing.

The costumes weren't anything brilliant. Friday's were very (obviously) last minute. But I had fun--and that's the most important part right?

Friday, my daughter Sophie dressed as Princess Aurora. It was a dress she had gotten as a hand-me-down from her cousin. She loves wearing it, and I thought Animazement would be an excellent excuse to wear it. Last minute, I decided to put together King Stefan and Queen Leah costumes for my husband and I -- because Aurora has a complete set of living parents and why not?

Saturday and Sunday, my husband and I and Ty, my oldest son, cosplayed as the three Marowaks from the Alolan fire trial (Pokemon Sun and Moon). A friend of ours came along dressed as the Hiker from the trial as well. This was a lot of fun. Technically we had Sophie dressed up as a Salazzle, but she wouldn't keep the costume on, so meh. You win some, you lose some.

In the end, I had a great weekend. I am going to post more later on con-going with a smaller child and on some of my great finds in the Artist Alley.

No pictures from Friday; I will try to find some. But here's one I found of us on Saturday:

Cosplay WIP -- Princess Serenity 2

A couple of weeks ago, I posted that I was going to be making a Princess Serenity cosplay based off of the Pullip doll design. I've actually started this project beyond just collecting images and whatnot. I spent an afternoon attempting to learn how to make fabric/ribbon roses, since there are 4 of these in the dress (minimum--I may adjust based on sizing so that it looks right, like 3 per arm instead of just 2) and one in the hair. Here is my first attempt:

It looked better before gluing it together, but for a first attempt I'm pleased. I am going to try a couple of different patterns, and then I'll select one that I like.

This weekend I will also be getting my ex-sister-in-law's wedding dress to cut up for fabric for this costume. FYI, she was given an opportunity to come get the dress, but it's been more than a year now, and my parents want it out of their house; I volunteered to take it off their hands. Who am I to turn down free fabric, especially nice fabric. Once I get my hands on that, I will have plenty of fabric and I'll be able to make a lot of progress on the costume. I may stop though beyond basic pattern designs because since it is for a toddler and I'm not planning on having her wear it for a couple of months. I'd hate for a growth spurt to throw a kink in those plans. We'll see.

I have a lot of cosplay ideas for Sophie: Sailor Jupiter, Rapunzel, and Daphne... among others. Those are just at the top. If I ever get around to making the Asuna/Kirito cosplays for my husband and I, Sophie will definitely be cosplaying Yui. I also have odd plans to make a Hughes/Alicia cosplay for my husband and Sophie because...it honestly seems obligatory, plus I have an awesome idea for it, so yeah... but more on that later. Maybe I'll do a post some time on all my cosplay dreams. There are many.

Cosplay WIP Post -- Princess Serenity

So this isn't so much of an actual "work in progress" post as a "what's coming" in my cosplay plans. A few months ago, I was scrolling through my Facebook when a friend shared this image and it actually showed up on my Dashboard (because we all know how stupid Facebook is about making it so you don't see most people's posts ever).

My 2 year old, Sophie, was with me. When I got to this image, she pointed to it and said, "That's Sophie." I asked her if she would like that dress, and she said, "Yes. I want that dress." So, I will be making this cosplay for her, because, although I am good at saying "No" to my kids when it comes to a lot of things, I could not turn down this request. Why? Because, one, cosplay. Really, that's all the reason I really need, right?

Also, I have been a long time fan of Sailor Moon. How could I turn down the opportunity to share my love for the series with my daughter? Ok, so she could honestly care less about Sailor Moon at this point in her life, and she really just likes the dress because she has an obsession with princess dresses. But... I'm not going to think too much on that. Also, a toddler Princess Serenity would be adorable. On top of that, my cousin has agreed to dress her son as Tuxedo Mask--he's about a year younger than Sophie, but it's close enough. =P

This will definitely be happening for Animazement this year.

Tinkerbell, Finished

Remember this post: http://gothicpandaart.blogspot.com/2013/08/something-special.html? And the progress post here: http://gothicpandaart.blogspot.com/2013/08/wip-volume-42.html?

Well I finished it, and she looked adorable in it. =D

WIP pic from earlier last week.

Up close of one of the leaf petals--can kind of see the quilting and sparkles.

Fuzzy picture is fuzzy. It was a little bit, but I wanted her to have room to grow. I did not make the shoes or wings.

WIP - Vol. 35

 It's been a while since I have been able to post anything here. I just got back from Anime USA and that is my last scheduled convention for the year. I will be at Magfest the first weekend of January 2013, which I still consider part of the 2012 convention season, but I will not have a table there--I'm on the wait list, but I'm not expecting anything to come from that. I've applied for an Indie Game table to promote the Anime RPG book (which we should have out as an e-book by then) and a new card game we are currently working on--more info on that to come. ;)

So anyways, this blog is just an over view of what I've finished since I got back from AUSA this past Monday. The top 2 pics feature a fox mini-plush I finished earlier this evening. I based its design off of one I made at Anime USA--it was in mocha colors but it sold within 15 minutes of finishing it, so I didn't get a picture of it. I don't usually make duplicates of the mini-plushies, but I might have to for that one. I really liked that color combination. I will probably be posting this on Etsy in the next week, so keep an eye out for it. ^_^

The next two pics are sketches for a cosplay idea I have for Magfest. I want to make a girl version of Link from Legend of Zelda (that's Rule 63 or something like that right? - I fail at keeping up with the interwebs). I want to take elements of Zelda, like the hair-style, to make it a little more girlish while still keeping the feel from the game. I'm using the Twilight Princess design since that's the one I'm currently most familiar with. It should be fun though; I'm looking forward to putting this cosplay together.

The last pic at the bottom is the first sketch (rough plus it's a bad picture, and I'm sorry for that) for the Firefly bookmark set I've been threatening to make for a while. I'm happy to say it's finally been started, and I'm hoping to have done in the next few weeks.

Looking Back, Vol. 1

I thought it might be fun to look back at some of the conventions I've been to over the last 12 years. =) My first convention was Animazement in 2000. I had just started the Anime Club at UNC-A. My aunt, who lives in the Raleigh, NC area, called me and asked if I'd heard of Animazement. I hadn't; the only conventions I had heard about were Trekkie cons, and most of what I'd heard there was hearsay. I passed the information on to the rest of Anime Club and we all signed up--all three of us. XD This was back when you really did have to walk over miles of broken glass to find even a pirated VHS tape with anime on it, let alone anything licensed. This was back when Anime Club met in a back room of the Student Center, and we watched whatever we had in our small personal collections and could borrow--this was not before DVDs but before they became mainstream, and was way before internet streaming became decently functional. We watched bits and pieces of Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z, Ranma 1/2, Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Kenshin, Tenchi, Slayers, and many more titles. Most we only got to see a few episodes of--anime was hard to come by then. The internet was not as prolific then as it is now, and it was tough to afford the $25 price tag on a VHS tape with only 2 episodes on it.

Anyways, back on topic... We preregistered in the fall of 1999. I got married in February of 2000, and decided that my new husband--not a die-hard anime fan like the rest of us, but he likes movies of all kinds so he was fairly tolerant of my obsession (I supposed he'd have to be though to have married me, right?)--would be coming with us. Also, not only would he be coming with us, but he would also be cosplaying. Yes, I was planning on cosplaying at my very first convention ever. When I first looked up Animazement's website, I saw the people in costume in the photos from AZ 1999, and I was hooked. I remember brainstorming with one of my best friends all the different characters I'd love to dress up as. I was in heaven... almost. The one problem with all my cosplay plans and dreams: I did not have a sewing machine and had absolutely no clue how to sew clothes (I'd done cross stitch for years, but I don't count that). XD

So mid-February 2000, I decided my husband and I were going to cosplay something... it wasn't until 2 weeks before the convention (then in March to align with most people's spring breaks) that I decided what we'd cosplay. One of my favorite series at the time was Ranma 1/2. My favorite characters were Ukyo and Mousse. I could have pulled off Ukyo easily; I had long, straight brown hair, so it wouldn't have been too hard to put her costume together. However, I thought it would be more fun to do a couple cosplay, since we were newlyweds and all that, and Ukyo never had a counterpart really. So, we went with Mousse for my husband (who also happened to have long dark hair back then and even wore glasses too) and Shampoo for me. I tried dying my hair purple--that didn't work so well; I have since discovered that my hair doesn't dye anything except black even with the help of bleach. I also cheated on my costume. I just wore a chinese dress my Mom got for me from China town on a trip she had gone on to China town the year before (it was blue too; should have been red for Shampoo XD), and I put my hair up to match Shampoo's.

My husband's Mousse costume was a different story. We bought blue jogging pants from a store, but the rest of the costume was something else. =P Thankfully, my mother-in-law was willing to help a little. We spent the Spring Break week (the week before the con) at her house. I took a reference picture, and we went shopping for fabric and patterns. Thankfully, Mousse's costume is fairly simple; we just got a pattern for a Christmas pageant wiseman robe. We found fabric. She helped show me how to read the pattern and a basic intro to how to use the sewing machine. I was still handsewing the details on the front of the robe Friday night after the first day at the convention. XD That last-minute costume work pattern hasn't really changed in all the years since then. Still, I was happy with the result. =) Here's a pic of that first cosplay--not very good quality and I've never been very good at posing for pictures (you'll notice how very few there are around here... in fact I think this is the first).

Wednesday WIP: June Part I

It's been a crazy month since I last posted a real WIP post, and sad to say, I don't have a whole lot new to actually post here, especially considering how much time has gone by since the last post.

Anyways, let's go with some updates to what I've been working on--much the same as what I was working on last time. Let's start with the plushies. Last month I started working on a set of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic plushies for Animazement's Art Show. We did not make it to Animazement, mostly because of little Sophie, but also because I spent so much of May sick that I wasn't able to finish either the plushies or planned costumes for the convention. The weekend before the convention we decided to cut our losses, canceled the hotel room, and stayed home Memorial Day weekend for the first time in 13 years (this will probably be a post topic for another day). I am still going to finish this set of plushies. They are still going to be one-of-a-kind. I will probably put them in Anime Weekend Atlanta's auction or maybe I'll do something online. In any case, here is a photo of the progress on that project: Twilight Sparkle is finished, although I may go back and redo parts of her mane; the other six planned ponies have most of their parts made--I still need to make their eyes and cutie marks, assemble the pieces, and add their manes and tails.

 
Along with the My Little Pony plushies, I was also working on a set of Soul Eater costumes for my family for Animazement. Once it became clear we weren't going to make it to the convention, I slowed down work on these. Generally speaking, most of these costumes are still piles of fabric. I have started Soul, although so far, about all I have is a little bit of progress on his jacket. I might have these done by the end of summer.... Maybe. XD

Then, I was working on that epic noir-themed Final Fantasy VI poster. That's still not finished. >_< It's really close though. My biggest problem right now is Photoshop. For every minute of decent work I get, I have to spend 5 minutes waiting for Photoshop to reload the file because it crashed and then I have to redo that one minute of work, or I'm waiting 3-6 minutes for the file to save before I can move onto the next minute of work. You'd think this was exaggeration, but sadly it's not. We thought we'd fixed the problem, but for whatever reason it reverted back after one session of good behavior. It's been incredibly frustrating. On the plus side, this project is almost finished. I need to add the rest of the color behind the picture and then do some minor touching up.

I have plans for a few other odd things. I am working on a set of My Little Pony human-form badges. I started this back at Anime USA last year, and I added two more character sketches at Magfest. These aren't necessarily new WIPs, but it's a project I'm going to be trying to finish up this summer. I'm also going to be working on finishing the Hunger Games bookmark and postcard set I started before we moved (for the last time). I've finished the designs for Katniss on the chariot debuting as the Girl on Fire and Katniss at her first Interview. the next one I am going to work on will be Katniss at her interview after she one the games in the first book. I've got a really cute design in mind, and I can't wait to get it down on paper. On top of those fanart projects, I am also working on a new original art set for Anime Weekend Atlanta--all I have for this set now though is scribbles and ideas, so no pictures to go with it yet, but I'm hoping that will change by next week. =) These are the main projects I'm working on (well more like my main secondary projects). There are also a myriad of smaller side projects that I'm kind of playing around with--as if I don't have enough to work on, but this kind of thing really suits my short attention span. This means though, now that I'm mostly settled, mostly well (and hopefully that stays that way), no longer pregnant and exhausted (believe it or not, even with reduced amounts of sleep being up with Sophie, I still have more energy), and done with distractions like travel and family events, which although fun, don't make ideal times to get work done, the Wednesday WIP posts for this summer should be filled with all kinds of fun and exciting things. =)

Wednesday WIP Posts Are Back

Now that I'm back to writing on this blog, Wednesdays will once again be dedicated to stuff I've been working on. Being that this is a convention month, I have a ton of stuff planned for this month. We will be attending Animazement in Raleigh, NC Memorial Day weekend; I believe this will be our 13th year going. Boy does that make me feel old. I will not have an Artist Alley table there this year. I am not particularly sad about this, since we will have a couple week old baby with us. I am planning on submitting some plushies to the Art Auction, participating in the artist charity event (if they hold it--which reminds me I need to email someone about that), and hanging out with family and friends (while cosplaying of course).

Let's start with what I have planned for the AZ Art Show. Technically I have lots of things I'd like to do, but given time constraints, I'm going to keep it to one set of things. As you might know, I like to make little chibi amigurumi plushies. I also happen to really like the new My Little Pony: Frienship Is Magic show. I've been wanting to try my hand at making pony plushies for a little while now. I've debated whether or not it was something I wanted to make available on my tables and in my Etsy shop. I've decided to go with the "not" answer. With the manes and tails and some of the details (like cutie marks) I think they will be more involved than the plushies I normally make for my table. Considering I have a hard enough time keeping plushies in stock for that as well, expanding that inventory just doesn't seem like a great idea at the moment. So, I am putting together a set of one of a kind pony plushies just for the auction at AZ. I have seven planned: the main six plus Derpy. Given that I have about 2 weeks left to get these done, I guess we'll see whether I make that goal or not. Today's WIP photo features the bodies and appendages for Twilight Sparkle and Rarity, although Rarity's body is still missing it's stuffing. =P I will hopefully be finishing those two up in the next day or so and be moving on to the rest.

Next up is costumes. AZ is the one convention where we really focus on cosplay. We have participated in the cosplay Masquerade Contest every year for the last 12 years. This will mark the first year that we are not planning to compete. I imagine it is going to feel weird not spending most of Saturday on that. However, we are still planning on cosplaying. This year's costume set will come from Soul Eater. I have wanted to dress my 3 older boys as Death the Kid, Black Star, and Soul for a couple of years now, and now seems as good a time as any to try that. My husband will be going as Stein and I'm planning on going as Marie. Originally I was going to cosplay Blair--I really like her witch outfit and it didn't seem like there was any real "pairings" (romantic or otherwise) outside of the main 3 characters and their weapons--given a choice, my husband and I like to do "couple" cosplays or at least cosplay characters that have a connection with each other. Having watched more of the series since then, I decided that maybe I could do Medusa or Marie since both of those ladies have clear connections with Stein. I've picked Marie because I like her, I happen to already own shoes for her cosplay, and she's a giant hammer.... I have a big thing for giant hammers. XD This is probably why I gravitate toward paladins and clerics in fantasy rpg games. Anyways. That's our cosplay lineup. We are still debating on what to dress the new baby as. I am still leaning toward Blair cat if it's a girl. I'm thinking maybe the priest Death Scythe character whose name is completely slipping my mind if it's a boy. Current progress consists of printing out references and digging through my scrap fabric drawers to see what I can use from what I already have for these costumes. Amazingly, I am only going to have to get a little bit for my costsume, stuff for Stein's sweater, and the yellow on Soul. This is cool because it means my fabric shopping bill is going to be almost reasonable--this very rarely happens when you're making this many costumes. Today's WIP photo is a pile of fabric that will eventually be costumes.

Finally, I have been working on a massive commission project I picked up at Magfest. This has been an incredible challenge--in a mostly good way. I was asked to draw the entire playable cast from Final Fantasy VI as a poster in the style of the Nintendo Noir badge set I put together. Originally my customer had asked for a movie poster style picture, but after some brainstorming, I included a mock-up of a club scene with all the characters in it along with a couple of movie poster mock-ups with the first set of WIPs I sent and he really latched onto the club idea. In hindsight, I probably made more work for myself, but it's been a fun project, so I'm not going to complain--my only real frustration is that it's taken me so long to get it finished. Of course, realistically, I was putting fourteen characters into a picture, each of which had to be redesigned for the noir setting plus there are more background details to add and so on. It is a large project, and that, combined with the moving mess, means that it was going to take some time to finish. That said, I'm definitely on the home stretch now. The character redesigns and sketches have been finished. Everything has been scanned into the computer, and I am nearly finished with the lineart, which is where the bulk of the work for the noir pictures is. Everything gets shaded in black, and color is added behind that to keep with the noir style. Since this is a poster, and not a small badge, I have used several shades of dark gray for shading to give it more detail and depth as opposed to the solid black I used for the original badge set. I have a little bit to add to the background in the top and bottom corners on the right side of the picture, and then I need to put in the carpeting on the floor. That will finish the lineart phase. Then I will fill in the color behind everything, clean up the lines, and everything should be done then. So far, I am very pleased with how it's coming out. =D

Halloween and Cosplay

Since it's Oct 31 and Halloween, I thought I'd be super-clever and write about Halloween today; I thought I might also add a little at the end on how our Halloween party went this past Saturday, since preparations for that took up a large chunk of Friday's post. XD Growing up, Halloween was my absolute most favorite holiday. I loved dressing up, and the candy was a great added bonus. I made my first cosplay when I was 11--years before I ever even heard the word cosplay. That year, I dressed up as Brin Ohmsford from the Wishsong of Shannara. Absolutely nobody recognized me, but I had fun trick-or-treating with my cousin who was dressed as a black cat. I decided that she should be Whisper, Brin's black cat from the book. It wasn't anything super fancy--the costume involved a lot of heavy borrowing from my aunt's closet for belt and boots. For the green tunic, my mom found a cheap Peter Pan costume, and the purple drape was just a piece of scrap fabric with a piece of costume jewelry found at a yard sale for the clasp.

Considering my early interest in cosplay, it's really no surprise that I latched on to anime conventions once I discovered their existence in 2000. On the downside of that, though, once I found anime cons, Halloween has slowly lost it's luster. For the last 10 years, we've hosted a Halloween party for our friends, family, or whoever shows up. We include a costume contest, a murder mystery, a ton of food (some of it is actually healthy), and lots of other fun games. As we've aged though, we put less and less effort into costumes for Halloween--most of the time, in my family, we just recycle old convention costumes. This year was the first year since 2003 that I actually made a costume just for Halloween, although I do plan on wearing it to conventions--it may not be anime, but who cares? Each year I see more and more non-anime costumes at conventions, and really it would be a sad thing for a costume to only be worn once.

This year's Halloween party was fun. I did get our costumes finished. I did not get the Tim Burton badges finished--can't have everything, especially when I had such unrealistic goals. For those that wanted them as a collectors item--some of our regular attendees have collected the badges for the characters they've played in the mystery over the years--I would finish a badge for them and have it ready for the next D&D game, or mail it to them for the people who aren't part of that group. So, you can expect to see at least a couple more of those coming up. I think I'd still like to finish most of the set, although I might change around the character selections since I don't have to match them to the murder mystery now. It may take time, and I may be late, but I do like finishing things. I will do the rest of the Tim Burton designs, turn them into bookmarks, and print the requested ones as badges. =) We had our first ever 3-way tie in the costume contest. No one managed to solve the murder mystery, so the prize for that went to the kid who played the corpse of Tim Burton--one of our friend's nephews decided he'd be the corpse, and he actually laid on the floor in the middle of the circle of players with a white "sheet" (technically it was a lab coat from someone's costume) over him for more than an hour without moving, not even shifting positions. We were all very impressed that a 9-yr-old kid could do that. We watched lots of movies (Tim Burton's of course), played lots of games (especially Zombie Munchkin and Munchkin Bites), and generally ate way too much. I meant to get pictures, but that didn't happen. XD One of these days I'll get better at remembering to pull out my camera. In the mean time, I hope everyone has a fun Halloween. ^_^

Works in Progress No. 1, Vol. 8

This weeks WIP post will include stuff for this week and last week, since I missed posting last week's due to pre-AWA craziness. Actually most of this post will be for last week's stuff; I haven't actually gotten much done since AWA--I've spent most of this week catching up on sleep so far. =P

So, let's start with art--that's the big one, so let's get it over with. I did finish the Zodiacs... all of them. It was exhausting, but I was glad I had them all finished for AWA. That's about it for art though. I'm starting new sets this evening though, as soon as I finish putting together this post, so there should be some cool, exciting, new stuff starting next week. =D

The big time sink last week, outside of finishing the zodiacs and getting all the badges cut out and laminated for AWA, was the Anime Tarot Deck. I wanted to include pictures of the booklet we were putting together for the deck with last week's WIP post, which was why the post got put off so late that it didn't happen. It took us literally all day Wednesday to finish tweaking the formatting so the book would print properly, printing it, cutting out all the pages, arranging the pages in order, folding the book, adding the cover which also had to be cut out, and stapling it. Random bit of trivia: the insides of this book are one of the only things on my art tables that I have printed from home. Usually we take it to another place to print; we did have the cover printed elsewhere.

Uncut pages

Assembled Book

Finished Deck

The next spiffy thing I finished (mostly) last week was my Fluttershy costume. The dress in the photo is a little wrinkled and the wings are a little squished from the trip home, but that's nothing a little trip through the wash then ironing and a pile of heavy books won't fix. Fluttershy's butterfly cutie mark is still missing from the dress; I will have that added by Halloween, since I'll probably be re-wearing it for our annual party.

Finally, I started a new plushie kitty during AWA. It's going to be another Kisa-colored one. =D

Works in Progress No. 3, Vol 6.

Wow. I can't believe I've actually been keeping this blog up for 6 months now. It really feels like I just started it. I've only missed a couple of posts in that time. I'm encouraged. If I can keep this up, maybe I do have a chance at keeping a webcomic going--my husband and I have been wanting to run a webcomic centered around the characters for the Archetype set. I've been holding off because I want to make sure that once I start I keep up with it consistently, and with all the moving and crazy stuff going on, I've felt like it's not exactly been the best time to start a webcomic.

But anyways, this is the Wednesday WIP post--yes, I know it's Saturday. XD This past week has been an adventure. Tuesday we spent with my in-laws because my husband had a faculty conference he had to be at for work Tuesday and Wednesday that was near where they live. Then, Wednesday afternoon, we drove to Black Mountain. Black Mountain is probably the most awesome place in the whole world to me. I grew up there, and going back there really reminded me how much I really love the mountains. After the long day of driving, we opted to pass out early and I watched Tangled instead of posting my blog. (Tangled is awesome; go watch it if you haven't.) Thursday was the day of my brother's wedding and we spent that with family and catching up with old friends I haven't seen in years. Friday morning I went shopping with my mom for fabric for Suzaku and Euphemia at Carolina Fabric Outlet--this place is absolutely amazing for fabric. They don't have everything, but what they do have is good quality and well priced. So, I thought I might post when I got home last night. Clearly that didn't happen. XD But, I'm posting it now, so, yah!

Since we've been out of town most of the last week or so, I haven't gotten a whole lot done, but there has been progress. Let's start with art. Squall and She Ra are completely finished. I finished the Capricorn and Aquarius sketches posted last week. They're nice and clean and ready to be inked. I've also started on sketches for the new Pisces and Gemini. I've included pictures for Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. I've got a design I like in my head for Gemini, but so far there's nothing more than scribbles on paper, so no Gemini this week since as far as I know there isn't a way to photograph something that's inside my head. =P This week, I'll be working on more Zodiacs and the card back for the Anime Tarot Deck.

There's not a whole lot new in the world of crochet. The mini-Garden-Bunny I was working on is almost finished--he's missing his button eyes and little cotton tail. I've also started a Pikachu since I need to restock my plushies from Otakon.

We've also got a new product in the works. My husband and I wanted to try something that was more of a collaboration between the two of us. We, of course, collaborate on a lot of the art sets you see on my site since I do the art and he does all the writing, but we wanted something where we had to work together a little more. What we've come up with is decorative props. We liked the throwing knives my husband made for my Mai cosplay, so we're going to make similar throwing knives that I will then paint with pretty designs on them. I've included a photo of the rough sketch for the first design we're going to try and make. This week I hope to get this first design finished, plus I want to see some more concrete work finished on the Suzaku and Euphemia costumes (considering AWA is now 6 weeks away and counting).

Aquarius

Capricorn

Pisces

First Decorative Prop Design

It's a Pikachu, for realz.

Garden Bunny - almost done

Moving Update

I posted Friday that there was a 50/50 chance that we might have to move. Now there's a forecast of 100% chance of moving, so I have 2 weeks to pack up and move most of a house into storage. I can't say I'm super excited about this, but it's just one of those things. I won't bore you with the details of the whole mess. The simple version is the housing market sucks and after a year of trying to sell our house while renting another much closer to where my husband works (like 3 hours closer), our house still hasn't sold and we can't afford to pay for 2 places, so we're moving back into our house and will just have to deal with a very long commute.

Obviously this will have some effect on my crafting world. I am trying to be very careful packing right now so that all (or at least most) of my crafting supplies stay available. I still plan on continuing to work on the many projects I've posted about in the last several weeks. The real challenge is going to be learning to keep my crafting mess *very* contained since our house will still be on the market. Basically I'll have to somehow craft while making it look like I don't craft--in other words, it should look like one of Martha Stewart's craft spaces, except I don't get to hire anyone to help clean up after me. =P

Packing is going very well so far. Because of the situation, it's forcing me to be 100x more organized than I usually am. Naturally, I'm actually a very messy person--not that I don't like clean, just that I don't notice that messes are in progress until they've consumed everything; maybe it's just part of being an easily distractable, compulsive multitasker. Cosplay projects tend to be the worst--at least with my art, since I do most of it digitally, and my crochet I can only make so much of a mess simply because of limited supplies. Really, how much damage can I honestly do with a crochet hook and a ball of yarn? Ok, so I could make a huge mess if that ball of yarn multiplied into the 7 balls of yarn that are now sitting next to my computer with 4 different crochet plushies in various stages of completion--if that's doesn't count as proof that I'm a chronic multitasker then I don't know what does. =P Considering what I do with just yarn and crochet hooks, imagine the mess a cosplay project makes with all the patterns, fabric, thread, needles, and notions, and that's all just for clothing parts; it doesn't take into account materials and tools for making props.

On that note, I am going to *try* to make the Suzaku and Euphemia cosplays for Anime Weekend Atlanta. We'll have to see how this goes. I'm going to have to really keep on top of things and avoid cosplay clutter; if it's not working, I guess I'll have to "shelf" the project, which will make me sad. Hopefully, that won't have to happen. =D I can be optimistic about this, although I still have my doubts. XD

I Can't Belive It's Already Friday

Seriously, when did that happen? For some reason, my brain is having trouble processing the fact that it is not really Thursday. XD So, today's post is going to be pretty informal with a mix of what I'd planned on posting Wednesday and the results of some of the yesterday's adventures.

For no logical reason, I'm going to start with progress on our cosplay projects. Yesterday I had to pick up some stuff from the Scout Store, which happens to conveniently be right next to Hancock Fabrics (the only fabric store within 40 miles of where I live). We hadn't planned on buying anything yesterday; we were mostly just researching available materials for our upcoming costumes, since we're really still in the planning stages. We found some okay whites for Suzaku and Euphemia, although I'm still not sure about Suzaku's white. That one's going to be tough (at least I think it's going to be). It'd be awesome if I could find something similar to what is used in real military uniforms or maybe marching band uniforms. Anyone know what that is? We also found the most awesome yellow-gold fabric for Suzaku; the weight and texture were good and the color was perfect. As an added bonus, it was also on clearance. =)

Not the best background for the picture, but if you hold the fabric up, it is a spot on match for the gold on Suzaku's jacket.

Casting supplies we picked up yesterday.

Yesterday we also went to Michaels. The goal for this trip was to find supplies to make another attempt at resin casting. I had tried making resin gems for cosplay accessories several years ago, but the result was always very sticky and never seamed to set right. Fev--an awesomely talented artist and propmaker--recommended a different brand of resin when I asked her about the stuff she casts, so I'm going to give that a try. By the way, you should all go follow Fev; her stuff is amazing (Link to her facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/fevereon). Right now, we're mostly going to be experimenting with the stuff, but I'd like to use it to craft parts of the Twilight Princess Zelda costume remake.

Finally, I talked a lot about plushie making and art and stuff a few posts back, so I thought I'd share a brief update on how Otakon preparations are going. I haven't gotten much more finished on the new Aries design. She's inked, but I've spent most of my art time fighting with my computer to get it to work with the file--the zodiac psds file range from 70 to 90 Mb in size and my poor computer has trouble processing that. This probably means I need to upgrade my computer, but that's not really in the budget right now, so I'll have to deal with it. I've also been working on plushies. Earlier this week I finished pale yellow bunny and kitty mini-plushies, and I'm almost finished with a gray bunny. I've also been trying to build up my stock for some of my other plushies--which up until now, I've only kept one of on hand. So, I got a picture of all my finished plushies: from left to right starting with the back row: Black Mokona, Moogle, White Mokona, Pikachu, Pikachu, Kirby, Umbreon, unfinished Toothless, Pikachu, unfinished Kirby; front row: unfinished Gray Bunny, Yellow Bunny, Yellow Kitty, Peppermint Bunny, Peppermint Kitty. My goal right now is to have 3 of each fanart plushie and a decent (vague, I know) number of the mini-plushies.

Pre-Con Stress

It's Monday, May 23, and I have four work days left before Animazement. As usual, I'm not even remotely ready (rushing to get stuff done is why there are no pictures in this blog today). I suppose it's worth mentioning that I'm doing better than most years at this time. In this blog, I'm going to go through a little of what I do to prepare for conventions--this season will include a record number of 5 cons starting with Animazement and ending with Magfest next January.

First, cosplay has always been a large part of the con experience for me. I have been going to Animazement since 2000. I have had new cosplays for our family every year since then. Admittedly this wasn't that hard to begin with. In 2000, it was just my husband and I. In 2001 we added monkey #1, and in 2003, there was monkey #2. Even then, it wasn't so bad. Cosplay for small children is fairly easy. Luke's, my #2, first cosplay took me only 2 hours to make--it was an infant Final Fantasy I Black Mage. This year, however, I am making 5 costumes for my family, and the kids are getting older which means more complicated costumes for them. On top of our family costumes, I am making one costume for one friend and helping another with significant parts of his costume. It's amazing how that starts adding up.

Add, on top of that preparations, for Artist Alley. I did my first AA at Animazement in 2009 (first AA ever was Anime USA 2008). That adds a whole new dynamic to the list of things to do. To start with, it usually involves sorting through whatever was left from the previous convention, taking inventory, and deciding what needs to be restocked. Then, there's the new stuff. I try to have new stuff at my table for each convention--I see a lot of the same people at the conventions I go to, particularly Anime Weekend Atlanta to Animazement or Animazement to Anime USA, and it's always nice to say hi and point out what I've done since they saw me a couple of months earlier. Even though I'm still wait-listed for Animazement, a friend of mine who did get a half table offered to let me share a corner of her space, so there's that, and there's also the chance that I will end up getting a table. So, being prepared is a good thing. The worst case scenario is that I will have less to do when preparation time comes around for Otakon in July.

Thankfully, for most of the conventions I go to, I don't bother with new costumes; that's just for Animazement. This leads up to the blog title: Pre-Con Stress. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not even close to being finished with preparations. I have 1 costume out of 5 finished--3 of those left have at least been started, but there's still 1 costume I haven't even started yet. I have new stuff and old stuff printed for the table, and I got the badges cut out, but I still need to cut out the bookmarks, the text for the back of the badges, and laminate the whole stack of stuff. I meant to have the Beholder plushie, 3 11x17 prints, and a quilt ready for the Art Show; the Beholder plushie is the only thing finished. One out of the 3 prints is almost finished; the other 2... I won't even go there. The quilt--it's ready to be quilted, but that's only because I started the project 3 years ago. XD I haven't gotten any work on it done recently.

It gets a little daunting when looking at a To-Do List like that--of course it's been worse... like the year where I had no finished costumes at this point and 3 out of 5 not even started. XD I keep saying that I'm not going to be up at 1am the night before the convention laminating stuff or doing last minute throw-together stuff for unfinished costumes (<3 safety pins, duct tape, and hot glue), but so far, that has yet to happen. I'm going to blame pre-con stress for missing Friday's post--I had plans, but in the chaos of trying to get parts of cosplays finished, record the audio for our skit (first year doing this), and *trying* to squeeze in a few moments to try and get the 3-4 pieces left I wanted to have ready for the auction... it didn't happen. To make up for it, if I can figure out how to upload pictures to Blogger from my phone, I'll post an extra Convention blog this Saturday. In the mean time, here's hoping I can wrap all this stuff up (reasonably) before Friday morning, although this wouldn't be the first year either the sewing machine, the laminator, or both got packed. =P

Wednesday WIP - May III

A lot has been going on this last week. This is one of those instances where I'm glad I'm doing this on Wednesday. I was feeling buried, but putting this together makes me see that things are getting done. =)

Moogle:  Finished. See it here: http://kasumiangel.deviantart.com/#/d3g3nwf

After

Before

Cosplay: Sometimes I forget why I like doing this. XD So, let's go down the line-up. Mai: I started the wig. I've included before pictures and "after" -- try and keep in mind that the final version should look a little better. Right now a lot of the hair has just been partitioned out for the 3 buns or various pieces hanging down. I am so glad I did not try styling my natural hair like this--it's doable, but it would have been such a pain in the butt, plus I don't think it's long enough anymore right now (I got mad at my hair back in February and chopped it all off--it went from waist length to shoulder length). Zuko: I've got a pattern mostly together for his boots? Nothing new worth photographing though. Jet: Mostly done except for details; I need to get supplies for the armor and leg wraps--I will be going out next Monday for that. Random side note: It's an hour each way to get to the nearest fabric store and another 15 min from there to the nearest craft store, so that's 2.5 hours driving just to get supplies; it's been weird because that means I have to plan a whole lot better than I'm used to since last minute trips to the store for little things just aren't going to happen with gas prices like they are. Momo: Hahahaahaha... yeah... nothing here, still a pile of fabric. Azula: Pants are finished, shirt is in progress, mostly still a pile of fabric. *fail* XD Props: They've been sanded, have a layer of primer and been sanded some more. I'll paint them soon. 
 

 Nine and Ten of Wands: So I did stuff that wasn't cosplay this week--I liked that; I was getting a little burnt out on the costumes. Here is the lineart for the Nine of Wands--Witch Hunter Robin, and a sketch for the Ten of Wands--Wolfwood (<3 Trigun). 

 Mages: This is a project I actually started about 2.5 years ago, but they sat as sketches for about 1.5 years. I then scanned them in and put a base layer of color down and let them sit for another year. XD I'm trying to get them finished now to go in Animazement's art auction. For the auction they will be printed as 11x17" posters and framed. I think I've really drug my feet on these ladies because this isn't stuff that I normally draw--it's not my style. They were started as a challenge at AWA 2009. The guy at the table behind me had nothing but fanart posters of pin-up girls like this (a few guys). They all had the same vacant (I guess sexy) expression. So, I was like: "Pft, I could do that; I just don't want to." Friend and husband: "Really?" (skeptical) Me: "Yes... >_< ... Fine I'll prove it." This is the result. I refused to do something like this with straight-up fanart--I did pin-up girls based off the Final Fantasy I mages instead (yes more Final Fantasy, I know I'm obsessed). This made it more interesting for me. Currently trying to finish up White Mage, then I'll move to the other two. The black background is there to help me fill in the color and find where I'm missing stuff.

Toothless: My newest plushie design-in-progress. Right now I'm debating what parts I'll keep and what I can get away with leaving out. Since it's a chibi version, I can't include all the little ridges and horns and stuff. Right now I have the legs finished, and one "ear." I will definitely include the 2nd ear, the tail and the wings. Once I have those pieces pinned on, I'll see what can and should be added.