I know I haven’t posted much, and I’m sorry about it! Â A lot has been happening and I haven’t had much time to update, but I’ll be sure to update again regularly from now on.
First off, a few changes and/or updates on my life.  I’m officially part of the AniMaid Café staff as the Webmaster, so I pretty much have all control over the website design and whatnot.  I’m currently working on re-designing the whole site into a Wordpress based site, just like this one.
Secondly, I’m also now part of the ePublications staff of Anime Expo. Â I’m the graphics designer of the site, which makes me feel rather proud. Â I’ve already done a few small things on the website such as creating some of the banners, making the design of the countdown widget, and a few other things that haven’t been released yet. Â I will soon be designing some more major aspects of the Anime Expo website… I’ll announce it once things are published.
Thirdly, I’ve completed my Miku Maid cosplay as my maid design for AniMaid Café.  Here are a few of the highlight shots from the photoshoot I did with Fiverings:
I’ve been trying to do more artwork, so that I can finally join artist alley at either Fanime Con or Anime Expo. Â I just recently completed this out-of-character painting of Miku Hatsune. I’ll have prints available of “Sexy Miku” at Fanime and/or Anime Expo.
I’ve also finalized my Cosplay list for 2010. Â My main main cosplay is Miku Hatsune, but [...]
Today was rather odd. Â I woke up pretty early since I had been so ahead on sleep already past few days… I would check my temperature, discover that I no longer had a fever, and just go back to sleep because I was too lazy to get up. Â I repeated this probably about three times before I finally decided to get up out of bed. Â I didn’t get too much done today, I guess…
I tried to get the video section up for the AniMaid Café, but that didn’t work out since my internet likes to fail on me whenever I upload any large files.. =/  So I’m going to have to have Kerry do that for me.  I was hoping to get it done today, but oh well.
I began altering a pattern I found for my Yoko maid outfit. :3 Â I’ll be working mainly on that tomorrow.. as well as my Yoko boots. Â I’m adding many many white coats onto them so they’re steady in that sense hopefully.
Mokona (one of my fellow maids) invited me to do two dances with her, both of which are really cute and fun.  So I’m full up on dances I’ll be learning for the maid café.  I downloaded and got them ready for getting ready to learn.  Didn’t quite want to do much dancing today yet though since I just barely got over my sickness.
I’ve become re-addicted to “Hide & Seek” by Namie Amuro. I want to learn to be sexy like her. XD [...]
ell, I have the photoshoot pictures now! Â I’m really happy with them! Â These shots just seem so professional, they amaze me. @_@ Â I’ve been spoiled with amazing photographers, haha. Â This shoot has really inspired me to improve myself though… I’m trying to learn to use make up better now and I’m going to be working out more, dieting better, and whatnot to get a better figure. ^_^ Â It’s really amazing how much cosplay can help someone, hehe. (If you happen to be a cosplayer looking for a photographer, ask Tim Vo or Omar Hussain! Â They’re both wonderful, as you can see with these beautiful shots!)
To the right is a sketch I worked on for my next mini cosplay project, gothic-lolita Miku. Â I’m going to be using my wavy wig and black yukata as well as making little accessories for the ponytails. Â I’m going to look into purchasing tattoo paper so I can design myself something for my cheek. Â I need to get some shoes and some cute socks, and possibly buy some mini bows to enhance a few spots (ie; socks). Â Really looking forward to getting this look down, though I need to figure out what kind of make up would look good with it.
Working on AniMaid Café stuff and commissions now, as well as juggling school work, so busy! And I just realized I need to finish writing the step-by-step tutorial of my gun, though I ended up not getting progress pictures of the end steps.. >_> Oops, but [...]
Oops, I haven’t posted in way too long! Â I guess I’ll try to recap everything that’s gone on this past week.
ast weekend as some of you may know/remember, was MikomiCon. Â I didn’t get to spend too much time there, but there were a few things that were really awesome. Â I discovered that on our way to the convention that my gun’s magazine and pistol had broken off my gun. Â I was pretty upset because I was looking forward to showing off my revamped gun and hopefully getting a photoshoot done with Magume as Kamina. Â I tried to take it to the convention with me, but they fell right off.. So decided it was time to take it back to the car after all. Â My friend Impulse offered for us to go to his house and possibly try to fix the gun up with hot glue, so we took the offer.
Once we got there though, he unfortunately couldn’t find his hot glue gun. ><” So we just decided that the gun would take a break, haha. Â We stopped by at 7-11 and grabbed slurpies and headed back to the convention. Â Kerry, Impulse, Carl, Kat, and a few others were hanging out together at MikomiCon. Â Got a few pictures taken, inlcuding the one on the right (taken by Cephas of cosplay.com). Â I “met” Tim Vo for the first time and saw April again (another Yoko cosplayer – wonderful one at that), which was nice. Â Didn’t really get to talk to [...]
So after talking with the ebay user, they decided they would send me a whole new wig and ponytails altogether, sweet deal! Â At least they’re thinking ahead well, cuz they decided to send me the whole thing to avoid color differences between the new ponytails and the old base wig. Â I’m pretty psyched. Â I’m going to do one of two things with the new wig. Â I’ll either just sell off the old one (to someone who is willing to fix it?) or I’ll use the old wig to build up the new one and make it more fuller. =3 Â The wig got shipped today (Sunday night as in Monday in China haha). Â I can’t wait to get it.
I also finally got off my lazy ass and ordered the styrene plastic I will be using to construct the ponytail accessories and my headset! Â I’m going to have to snag some resistors from Ben for the headset’s LEDs. Â It’ll be so awesome in the end! Â I also picked up some a cheap base headset from the swap meet. =] Â I spray painted that black today, just gotta build up the headphones on them now and color the microphone part of it with two teal rectangles. Â I’ll probably order my EL wire as soon as I get my plastic, it shouldn’t be too expensive thankfully.
So after the long wait, my Miku wigs finally came in… Â The wavy wig, at first, really upset me because it looks really green and weird in person.. but in photographs it looks beautiful, so I guess that’s all that matters, eh? Â I really love wearing it, though I’m a little afraid of dancing with it on. Â Wondering if the curls will undo if I bounce around too much? Â I guess time will tell… and I can technically learn how to make the curls/wigs to redo them if it does flatten out I guess.
I’ll get better pictures on Saturday at the Anime Expo Forum Meet & Greet. For now these are just some shots that I tried to take by myself. Â Headset is temporary placeholder, going to make some myself.
My other wig came in today, and I can say I’m really upset with how it is. Â
Part 1 | Part 2
So today I mainly worked on my Yoko gun. Â I got quite a bit done. Â I added the rings to both body pipes of the gun (they’re mostly aesthetic, but two out of three of them serve as anchors for her strap). Â The one for the main body of the gun was a pain to do, I had to hammer it down the pipe into position which took me about half an hour. @_@ Â My hand has been shaking all day after working on that too haha…
Sorry that the photos aren’t that great. =P I’m not too good at these “step by step” photo thingies… Half the time I find myself forgetting to actually take pictures. XD
I began by cutting a 1 1/2″ coupler to get the aesthetic base anchor for the main pipe of the body.
Part 1 | Part 2
I began the reconstruction of my Yoko sniper rifle today… Oh man, I didn’t even do much to it yet today but my hands are in pain… Lol. Â So far all I’ve done is take the wood core of the butt off the main pipe of the gun… I had to remove all of the styrene plastic off of it, which was incredibly tedious because of ho well I glued it on there originally.. Heh.
I need to get this redone by next Saturday/Sunday for the Nisei week festival… so I have about a week to get it done, which doesn’t sound too hard at all. Â My clips already came in, so I’m pretty much set for the cosplay. =] Â So now it’s just a matter of time of putting everything together and being patient with paint layers and whatnot~
Here’s my leftover material from when I first made the gun… Well, I had to buy a few pipes, but the total cost of new materials was around $11. (New 1 1/4″ PVC pipe, new 1 1/2″ PVC pipe, spray paint, and a few connectors. Â Still have to buy a new connector and reducer.)