This is a really simple tutorial, but I’ve been asked how I got my Miku “01″ tattoo plenty of times so I figured I would show you guys how to easily make your own temporary tattoos! This doesn’t apply only to Vocaloid, you can make ANY kind of tattoo you want, really helpful for cosplay.

There isn’t much to making these, so this will be a very very short tutorial.

Materials Needed

Here’s a list of materials needed to follow this tutorial properly.

- Tattoo paper

- The tattoo design you want

- Ink jet or laser printer

How to make the tattoo

Miku (as well as all of the other Vocaloids) is very well known for her signature “01 Hatsune Miku” tattoo on her left arm. Adding this detail is very crucial to most Miku cosplays (excluding designs that don’t include it), and people add this element to their costume in many different ways. Most people draw it on with markers or make up of some sort.

However if you want a really clean “01″ tattoo effect, then you definitely want to use a temporary tattoo.

First off, you want to pick your design. Different Miku designs have different “01″ designs; or if you’re doing one of the other Vocaloids then you’ll be doing a different number altogether. Pick a good reference for your tattoo..

So even though this isn’t the best picture with the tattoo, it’s one of the better quality versions. Thankfully they have already produced temporary tattoos for Miku, Rin, Len, and Luka in one of the “Layers” magazines, so you can use those as a reference, but I can’t find any photos/scans of it online.

Take your reference into Illustrator and/or Photoshop and trace the design. I would personally recommend using Illustrator because vector designs are infinitely more crisp, and you can upscale/downscale it however much you want… but if you’re not familiar with the pen tool and whatnot, then you can just do it in Photoshop.

Illustrator users

Make sure your artboard is letter sized with CMYK color. Simply design your tattoo, duplicate it as many times as you want for your artboard, and print!

Photoshop users

Make sure you start a new document with the U.S. Paper size – 8.5 x 11″ at 300 dpi. You want to make sure your dpi is at 300 so that your tattoos come out just as you design them on the computer. If you print at a lower resolution, they will not be as clean or precisely as you drew them out on Photoshop!

Important note

If your tattoo design has as a specific orientation (meaning they are not symmetrical), it is very important that you remember to mirror your final image before printing. If you look up at my design in Illustrator, all of my tattoos are mirrored.

This is because you are transferring the design onto your skin. You will be placing the design against your skin, and it will show the design backwards on your skin. So please please please remember to mirror it! This paper isn’t as cheap as regular paper so I would hate for you to waste your resources.

You need to purchase some temporary tattoo paper, and the type that you order depends on the printer you have access to!

Inkjet Temporary Tattoo Paper
Laser Temporary Tattoo Paper

So pick the type of paper you need depending on the type of printer you have. I personally only have home-access to a inkjet printer, so I got the inkjet paper which has worked wonderfully for me! I’m sure the laser paper version works just as well, but I don’t have first hand experience. :) If anyone does try it, please let me know how that goes! Also, I’m sure there are plenty of other types of tattoo papers out there, but this is just the brand that I’m personally familiar with!

Next you want to print out your design onto your tattoo paper. After you have it printed out, cut one of the designs out of your sheet, trimming it about 1 cm away from your design all around the edge.

The Papilio temporary tattoo sheets come with “Liquid Tattoo Transfer Adhesive” and some sponges you use to apply the adhesive to your tattoo. The instructions state that you should apply the adhesive 24 in advance of applying the tattoo, but I have applied it in as little as an hour before… however I would still recommend applying it at least 12 hours in advance, if not 24 hours to be safe.

It worked decently with only an hour, but when I did apply it 24 hours in advance, it definitely held on a lot better.

After you applied your adhesive and waited 24 hours (or however long you decided to wait), place the tattoo where you want it to be applied and pat it down with a warm/moist towel or tissue, just like you would with normal temporary tattoos.

And then there you have it! You have successfully created your own temporary tattoo! As you can see, this opens up a world of ideas and possibilities for your costumes as well as even casual wear! This is definitely very useful if you want your costume to have that more clean, professional look – and to avoid the smudging drawing a design might have!

AND THAT’S IT!

I hope this tutorial was helpful to you! If you do end up using this tutorial, I’d love it if you’d comment here showing me your project. :)

I’ll be writing more tutorials soon, but if you have any specific requests for what you’d like to see first feel free to leave a comment here or on my Facebook Fan Page with input on what you’d like to learn!

Thank you for reading!

In this tutorial I am going to go over how to make silicone molds to easily reproduce simple flat-faced sculpts you might make (works well for buttons, emblems, etc.). This will only work for objects that have one flat face. Here is an example of a couple of casts I already did with my mold, but this tutorial will only cover how to make the actual mold itself. Resin casting will be a separate tutorial.

This tutorial will be split into two mini sections, how to prepare your mold and how to make your mold.

Materials Needed

Here’s a list of materials needed to follow this tutorial properly. Not everything is necessarily required for every single build, so you may change your material list accordingly to your project. I’m simply listing off everything that you could possibly use, but it’s not even limited to these!

Mold Box

- Master sculpt – can be made out of sculpey, super sculpey, apoxie sculpt, paper clay, etc.

- Foam board, wood, clay, or cardboard

- Hot glue gun (high temperature) or silicone caulking

Silicone Mold

- Silicone (MoldMax 30)

- Disposable gloves

- Wooden mixing stick

- Two plastic cups

- Gram scale

- Mold release

- Rice (optional)

Mold Box Preparation

This first part of the tutorial will help guide you through preparing your mold box for your silicone work. These steps are pretty crucial so that you don’t waste material through leaking walls, and also so that your silicone doesn’t leak under your master.

This is the item I’m going to make a silicone mold of – my exorcist badge for Mephisto Pheles from “Ao no Exorcist”. As you can see, the master lies flat on its back. Your master must have at least one flat face for this tutorial to work. If your object doesn’t have at least one flat face, you will need to do a two part mold (which I will be making a tutorial of later).

I sculpted this out of apoxie sculpt in two parts, the outer borders and then the inner pieces. I use apoxie sculpt mainly because it hardens on its own, meaning I don’t have to worry about baking, but because of this you only have around 1.5 – 2 hours of working time on your project. For beginners I would definitely recommend using super sculpey.

What’s the difference between regular sculpey and super sculpey? Super sculpey is a lot more firm, which allows you to get more details into your work. Regular sculpey is softer so it’s not as easy to get details.

To begin the process of making your mold, you will need to prepare a box for your mold. You can use anything ranging from wood, styrene, sintra, cardboard, clay, or foamboard. I usually use foamboard becuase it’s easier to cut and make a simple box out of. In this example I used a mixture of foamboard and MDF wood, only because I was low on foamboard and conveniently had a piece of MDF wood which was the right size and shape. (Normally even the bottom of the mold box would be foamboard)

Glue the sides of your box to the base using hot glue. You need to seal off the edges, which you can do with either hot glue, caulking, or clay. I usually use hot glue only because I don’t have any caulking on hand, but caulking would probably be the easiest to use for this step.

With this you’re basically making sure that none of your silicone will leak out of your box. This is crucial sot hat you do not waste material, and also so that you don’t have to add more silicone later to fully cover your master (if enough leaks out that would eventually expose your master).

Once you have your box all built up, glue your master to the bottom of your box. This is to make sure it stays in place when we get to then ext step. You want to try to make sure there’s at least a ¼” space between the master and the edge of your box, this guarantees that the silicone mold will be thick enough at the edge.

Usually you would want to actually seal your master to the bottom of your box before actually gluing the walls up, but I accidentally did it the other way around. Sealing the bottom of your master is important because it will prevent your silicone from seeping under your master. Sealing can be done using clay or caulking.

I usually use sculpey or super sculpey because it’s easy to line the bottom of your master using sculpting tools, or even your fingernails.

Here’s another mold box example – this one uses a combination of foamboard and sculpey. This was for one of the details on my Sylvanas gauntlets. I wanted to save on material so I filled in the area between each “spike” with sculpey, which definitely saved me a lot of silicone. You can be very creative with your mold boxes, just make sure you seal them properly!

Once you’ve got your box all built and ready for silicone, be sure to spray your master and the box with some mold release. I’ve been told this isn’t so necessary with MoldMax 30, but I prefer to do it anyways… Better to be safe than sorry – cheaper too!

Mold release is vital for two part molds though, to keep the silicone from adhering to itself when you cast the two separate parts. This will be covered in my separate two part mold tutorial.

Making your mold

Now it’s time to actually make your mold! Some of this may seem scary at first, but it’s really not that hard at all. I had to learn this all on my own from YouTube videos, books, and articles on the internet, but I was able to learn it well enough where I didn’t really run into any problems afterwards! So I’m really hoping that this tutorial will help you feel more comfortable about the process.

Now this step might seem silly, but it will help you be more precise with the amount of silicone you mix for your mold. You can actually measure how much silicone you will need by using rice. Just make sure you “tare” the scale to the weight of the mold box + master, and then pour in your rice. Smooth-On recommends that you cover ¼” over your master with silicone, but I’ve found that less can suffice. However, if you’re paranoid about your mold then you might as well just stick with their rule.

What is “taring”?

Taring basically sets a base number to your scale according to whatever is currently on it. Without this function you would normally have to weigh out your box itself and then measure out your box + the material, and finally subtract the two. Taring will take care of this for you automatically by subtracting the amount on the scale by whatever you tared to. Very very very useful for this process.

So now you’re ready to make your actual mold. This photo pictures almost everything that you will need for this process. The only thing missing from this photo is the mold release. Depending on the type of silicone you are using, you may need a differet one. I will be using MoldMax 30, which I found to be a good beginner silicone to start with.

The only downside to MoldMax 30 is that it has a 10:1 Part A : Part B ratio, so the gram scale is crucial for getting an accurate mix of each of the two parts. I’m not quite entirely sure what happens if you don’t have the proper ratio because I have not personally ran into that issue yet.

IMPORTANT: When getting ready to work on silicone mold making, please be aware that both silicone and resin have a specific shelf life. Silicone generally has about a three month shelf life, while resin’s shelf life is around six months. MoldMax 30 is much more affordable by the gallon ($90-100/gallon, whereas a pint is $25; 8x the amount for only 4x the cost), but if you don’t plan on using an entire gallon it might not be worth the extra cost for you.

Now that you’re ready to move on to actually mixing your silcione, measure out Part A on your gram scale (be sure to tare your cup weight so that you get an accurate reading of the silicone in the cup).

Next it’s time to measure out part B; because we had about 93g of part A, that means we need about 9g of part B. If your part A goes into the triple digits, it’s always okay to have a gram or two over of your part B.

It’s generally better to have more of part B than less because when you pour part B into part A, there will always be some part B still leftover in the cup (unless you really take it out like crazy, but this is not necessary).

Once you have your appropriate measurement of Part A and Part B, pour Part B into Part A. You generally want to add the lower viscosity part into the higher one, because it’s easier to pour out the less viscous part. This concept applies to both mold making and resin casting, or any two part materials in general.

Mix the two parts until you have an even color. MoldMax 30 turns into a pink color, other silicone mixtures might have different colors. A different silicone that I purchased was much paler in comparison. A good rule of thumb is to simply make sure the mixture is all the same color.

It’s extremely important that you mix the two parts extremely well, or else your silicone mold will not cure properly and you will have to re-do this entire process (while wasting material, which isn’t cheap). This happened to me once when I was creating molds of my Sylvanas armor borders – all of them went perfectly except for one. There was an inch of silicone that wasn’t mixed properly right next to my master so the mold was perfect up until that spot… but because it only messed up in that one spot I had to completely redo the entire mold – which was a lot of material!

Once you’ve got your silicone mixed together well enough, slowly pour it into your mold box. It’s better to pour it somewhere to the side, not on top of your master, and to just let the silicone fill itself over your master on its own. Don’t worry about all the bubbles, because as long as you have a longer curing silicone (such as MoldMax 30), all the air bubbles will rise to the top on their own. If you have access to a vacuum chamber then you can use a quicker silicone.

Next, it’s time to wait. This part all depends on the type of silicone you purchased, but it also depends on the type of mold you’re building. Some of them cure faster than others. The best rule of thumb is to wait about 12 hours minimum for your silicone to cure on its own.

If you poke the silicone and it feels relatively rubbery and solid, then it’s probably ready; but I would still highly recommend giving it at least 12 hours, especially if it’s your first time making a mold or if you have limited material.

Once it’s fully cured and hard, then you can peel it off your master! Here is the final mold that I made. The “tail” of the mold is covered because it wasn’t flush with the bottom of the box – but that’s what I wanted.

So now that you’ve got your mold, you can cast as many duplicates of it in resin, foam, or other materials! I’ll be writing up a tutorial up for that separately. I did one test cast using SmoothCast 300, but as you can see I didn’t completely fill the tail end of the mold, so it got cut short. Don’t worry if your first cast doesn’t work perfectly, I find that I almost always have to do a few test casts before I come up with a perfect result. :)

As you can see on this picture, I did one SmoothCast 300, two cold casted SmoothCast 326, and finally one more SmoothCast 300 which came out right with the tail. Your casts will almost always have some areas that need to be sanded off, so don’t worry if they look a little messy!

AND THAT’S IT!

I hope this tutorial was helpful to you! If you do end up using this tutorial, I’d love it if you’d comment here showing me your project. :)

I’ll be writing more tutorials soon, but if you have any specific requests for what you’d like to see first feel free to leave a comment here or on my Facebook Fan Page with input on what you’d like to learn!

Thank you for reading!

BlizzCon 2011 just flew right on by this past weekend, and I can definitely say it was extremely epic. I didn’t get to experience quite as much as I had wanted to, but at least now I know what to expect next year!

It’s a completely different experience than anime conventions, that’s for sure. I can definitely say I preferred the type of people that were there over anime convention attendees. It just felt more… mature?

I was originally supposed to arrive at BlizzCon midday on Thursday (the day before the conventin started) and go to the Cosplay dinner, but things didn’t quite go my way and Sylvanas took much longer to complete than I expected. I ended up being stuck at home until midnight on Thursday. Thankfully my very good friend FiveRings was willing to give me a ride to the convention, even in the middle of the night! So I was able to save some cash on parking. :) Thank you again Tim! Also, big thank you for allowing me to use your photos for my recaps. ♥

I ended up being up until about 4am in my hotel room finishing up the last couple of things on Sylvanas, and then I was finally able to sleep for a little bit.

VashFanatic and I began our day at around 7:30am on Friday. We were rooming with quite a few non-Cosplayers though so we should have woken up earlier because we weren’t abe to actually start getting ready and into costume until around 9:00am. It took a couple hours to get my make-up and body paint all put together, and I felt terrible for taking so long… but hey I had a lot of body paint to do!

As we finally left our hotel we ran into a beautiful Ysera cosplayer. I don’t know her name, so if anyone does know her name, please let me know so I can credit her here!

We finally got into the convention center, and we were.. well, kind of overwhelmed by the difference between the anime conventions we were used to and BlizzCon. First off, it wasn’t as crowded -- which was very nice, and secondly, the inside of the actual exhibition hall was very dark. It made the entire experience a lot more “epic” feeling. I’m not sure how else I should describe it.

Just a warning, in most of my pictures I had a slight costume malfunction… my eyebrows were very droopy most of the day, so I look pretty depressed in all of my pictures. I had them fixed and adjusted later in the day, but many of the pictures I will be showing here show me all droopy and emo-looking. My make-up wasn’t done very well either until after the cosplay gathering.

We were asked for a lot of photos inside, which was normal for us. We were also video taped by someone, who didn’t give us a card -- so we have no way of finding the footage (if we even made it into the video hehe). VashFanatic and I checked in for the costume contest, and then we were able to relax and explore until the cosplay gathering.

We wandered around a little bit, being asked for photos every so often, until we finally ran into some of our friends. We ended up causing somewhat of a gathering of photographers -- and apparently we were being hit on by someone who “failed” to flirt with us successfully. I didn’t even notice they were attempting to flirt with us -- guess that’s how much they failed.

After wandering around for a little while, we finally managed to find our good friends Petrai and Cog Envy.
We were gathered together around the Illidan statue of the WoW section of the convention, and let me just say… we ended up being stuck there for a good fifteen or so minutes! The photographers just kept on coming.

Five minutes into standing and posing, people started hopping into the photos with us! It was actually really cute how everyone wanted to join us. :) We took a couple of varied “dueling” photos, and then we ended up having to somewhat split ways because Cog Envy had some personal business to take care of.

VashFanatic really wanted to head over to the Frozen Throne afterwards, and for good reasons! It was a perfect backdrop for her Arthas cosplay. Petrai ended up finding her way to us, as well as Winged Warrior so we just had to take an epic group shot together on the throne! (Of course I look emo as hell haha.)

Soon after that we had to head over to the annual Cosplay gathering at the fountain. The fountain was a fun get together, but it felt extremely unorganized. VashFanatic, Petrai, Cog Envy, Winged Warrior, and I were there early so we got the best spots for all the group photos and such, but we really had no idea what was going on most of the time.

There were so many cosplayers though! And it was especially nice to finally meet all the cosplayers I’ve been following on Facebook all these years. Everyone looked simply amazing and it made me proud to be part of the community finally.

Once the group gathering was over VashFanatic and I ended up heading back to our room to patch up for the contest. She had to fix some broken connections on armor, and I simply had to patch up my make up -- or basically make it look barely decent.

Then.. it was time for the contest. I had read horror stories in the past about how unorganized and unfair the costume contest was in many different ways, but I think I can happy say that they definitely listened to the feedback given by prior year’s cosplayers because it was wonderfully organized this year! We had to make our way backstage by about 4:30pm for check in, and it took about thirty minutes to actually get us all backstage, but the process didn’t feel too stressful or unorganized at all.

I had read that in the past they didn’t even fully judge everyone, and that there wasn’t even decent lighting to be judged in, but this year they looked at everyone’s costumes in clear lighting. I also read that in previous years there was a limited number of seating available and uncomfortable seating at that, but they provided us with more than enough seating and it was quite comfortable as well.

The only thing they could have improved on was how they actually sent us on stage. They didn’t really tell us what we were supposed to do on stage until quite literally right before we were on stage. I mean it wasn’t terrible or anything, especially since we weren’t actually doing any kinds of skits -- but more mental preparation time would have been nice!

Here’s a video covering the entier BlizzCon Costume Contest in under 9 minutes! If you’re interested in seeing the entire thing, you can check out this video. (I’m at 1:15 on the short video and 7:17 in the full version)

The contest itself was a lot of fun, especially getting to know even more of the cosplayers back stage, but I have to admit… anxiety got the worst of me and I messed up on stage! I didn’t even face straight forward. I still hate myself for that to this day — BUT! That just means I learned from past experiences and I know what to do next year!

After the contest I planned out a dinner with a couple of cosplay friends. We had to get all changed out of our costumes first of course -- no way we were going to a restaurant/bar in those outfits!

From left to right: Petrai, Jocelyn (Tormantor’s friend), Cog Envy, VashFanatic, me, and Tormantor. It was really nice to see everyone casually out of costume (considering I missed the cosplay dinner), but I unfortunately missed half the dinner due to confusion in directions. Once everyone was done eating we dispersed and went back to our rooms. I was hoping to drink more that night, but as soon as I got back to my room -- I kind of passed out. :)

And that’s pretty much a wrap up on Day 1! I’ll post about Day 2 soon! Here’s some more photos from Day 1, courtesy of FiveRings! Thank you again!

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My most recent project was Sylvanas Windrunner from World of Warcraft. It was a very big challenge which involved learning a lot of new materials and techniques, but it was definitely a lot of fun.

I’ll be writing a series of tutorials on how I did the armor, but my first one will be how I made the breastplate – or specifically how I made the “cups”. Before I continue, I need to give credit to Evil FX @ Bioweapons.com for the core of this tutorial. If it wasn’t for this blog post, I wouldn’t have decided to do my breastplate this way.

That’s what my final breastplate ended up looking like, just to give you an idea of what this tutorial is capable of creating.

The process behind my breastplate was somewhat roundabout, but it resulted in precisely shaped cups which were custom fit to my exact breast shape and size.

Materials Needed

Here’s a list of materials needed to follow this tutorial properly. Not everything is necessarily required for every single build, so you may change your material list accordingly to your project. I’m simply listing off everything that I personally ended up using, and that is mentioned in this tutorial.

Breast Forms

- Plaster of Paris (Home Depot / Lowe’s)
- Thick wire
- Wireform mesh
- Aluminum foil
- Push-up bra*

Armor

- EVA Foam Mats (Home Depot)
- Acrylic Sheeting
- Bra straps
- Eyelets
- Plasti-Dip (Home Depot)
- Spray paint and/or Acrylic paint
- Heat retardant gloves
- Apoxie Sculpt *
- Craft foam *
- Silicone padding *

* These are optional and solely depend on your particular build (depending on details), but I listed everything I used.

Plaster Breast Forms

I first went to Victoria’s Secret and purchased a push up bra that I liked, which would increase my cup size the amount I wanted it to. You don’t necessarily need a push-up bra though, you can simply use a normal bra.

I first began by building wireframe “molds” of my breasts. (I ended up only using one cup) I did this by first making the “outside” ring using thick wire to get the general shape. Once I was happy with the outside ring’s shape, I took some wireframe mesh, wrapped it around the thicker outer wire and proceeded to actually shape it to my breast shape.

How do you do this? It’s best if you’re shirtless with only your bra on, and you basically want to shape the thicker wire around your breasts. This might take a little bit of time to adjust and modify the shape to fit you perfectly, but just play with it until you’re happy with it.

After you have the outer ring shape, you want to cut out a piece of wireform mesh that’s large enough to cover the rings (plus some extra). Wrap the edges of the wireform mesh around the thick wire (making sure it’s securly connected), and then push at the wireform mesh little by little, to match your breast shape. Test it on your breast often, making sure the shape is accurate. I personally just pressed it against my breast and was able to get the shape just fine like that.

Reminder – if you are trying to make armored cups which are padded (with silicone inserts), you must be wearing your push up bra as you do this step.

The next step was to actually build my plaster breast forms. I did this by lining the inside of my wireframe cups with aluminum foil. Then I poured a very watered down mix of Plaster of Paris. I had to do this in a couple of pours to avoid overflowing the wireframe shape. I first filled it to the “rim” of the cup with the watered down mix. (As seen on the second image with the red line – the red line representing the “rim” area) Next we have to add extra plaster to cover the areas which extend past the rim (as you can see on the picture, going up towards the box in the background).

To do this you want to make a mix of plaster which has less water than the previous mix. You basically want to get it to a consistency where you can apply it to your aluminum like a spread. Fill in the extra areas until you’re happy with your general shape.

NOTE - Make sure there are no “thin” walls in your plaster build. Later when we’re actually going to build the cups you will be applying a lot of pressure onto your form to shape the material, so the thicker the plaster the better (to prevent breakage).

Here’s one of my final plaster forms. I ended up making two, but you only really need to make one (unless you have really differently shaped/sized breasts, or if you want super accurate shapes haha).

The Armor

Now time to cover the actual process of building the armor. My tutorial only really covers how to make the cups – I don’t cover how to actually template out the rest of the breasplate because there are plenty of other tutorials out there about it (and I kind of BSed the templating haha).

Now that we’re finally building the actual armor, this is when you need to get EVA foam mats. You can buy these at Home Depot. (Four sheets for about $16.99 or so, if I recall) It’s definitely worth the price through, because I ended up finding myself using it a lot in other parts of my armor. For padding, support, etc.

Here I have my plaster form on top of a glove for cushion – make sure you have something soft underneath the plaster, because if you have it against a hard surface teh plaster might crack and/or break under the pressure you will be applying.

You’ll need to trace the plaster form’s general shape onto some acrylic sheeting, and cut the shape out afterwards (you can see my acrylic sheeting laying on top of my glove + plaster form). Make sure you make the hole a little bigger than the actual cup shape, to account for the EVA foam’s thickness. Another thing to consider is giving your plaster sheeting plenty of outside space. If you make the outside of it too small, when you go to heat form you might accidentally crack the acrylic. I cracked my sheeting a little bit even with all that extra space I have.

Edit It has been brought to my attention that even simply using cardboard will suffice for this step! So if you’re on a budget, you can pull this step off with cardboard! Thank you Blastella Cosplay for this information!

IMPORTANT – I used a dremel for cutting the acrylic. It is extremely important to wear both safety goggles as well as a respirator while cutting materials like this. As you cut the acrylic sheeting with any motorized tool, you will most likely be melting the acrylic as well as shooting small bits of it all over the place – so be sure to protect your eyes! The burning/melting of the acrylic also smells really bad, so a respirator is a must have.

Next you’ll need to cut a piece of the EVA foam mat, large enough to fully cover your plaster form (I tend to cut a piece with plenty of extra space, just to make sure I end up covering the whole plaster form). I put the EVA foam into my oven at about 400º Fahrenheit, for about 3-5 minutes. Sometimes the time varied, but I would generally wait until the EVA foam mat was relatively floppy when I’d pick it up. Once it’s at that point, take it out of the oven – MAKE SURE YOU ARE WEARING GLOVES FOR ALL OF THIS.

Immediately place the EVA foam piece onto your plaster form, followed by the acrylic sheeting on top of that and press down on the acrylic sheeting around the edge of the hole to “heat form” it around your plaster form. Make sure you keep applying pressure around the edges for a good three minutes or so, until the EVA foam cools down.

Once you remove the acrylic sheeting and the EVA foam off the plaster form, you should see a clear cup shape that has been formed in the foam! Tadda! You succeeded! :) Repeat this process to make your second cup!

After you’ve completed the cups comes templating. I ended up making a total of three breastplates. The first one was complete trial and error and I completely messed it up. The second one I ended up with a good template, but it was messy – so I re-did it a third, and final, time. You just have to be patient with this process.

As you can see in this photo, I initially was templating out the placement and distance between the cups with tape and wire. I used the same wire that I used for my wireform mold to give it underwire support, as well as holding the shape I needed for the front of the breasplate. The tape was used to imitate how a push up bra worked.

Here’s a shot of how my completed base breastplate looked. I used my dremel to trim the edges of the cups, as well as sanding down the edges to give it a natural curved look (especially because the EVA foam was quite thick, I didn’t want it looking so thick at the edges). I used silicone padding that I purchased at Joann’s to complete the push-up bra effect with my armor.

As for adhering the parts together, I used a simple high temperature hot glue gun to glue the cups to the body of the breasplate. As you’re gluing just make sure you apply constant pressure for a good minute or so to guaranteed the bond between parts.

In regards to actually designing the rest of the breastplate – I used the “tape form” technique (I don’t know how else to call it!). There are plenty of tutorials around the internet about this technique, but I’ll summarize it here for you guys. You want to find a T-Shirt that you don’t need anymore and wear it. Once you’ve got it on, wrap the desired armor area with tape (so I basically taped up my whole breast area). Once you’ve got yourself all taped up, draw the armor out how you want it to look on the tape. Once you’ve got that drawn you canc ut the tape/shirt off of yourself and cut the armor pieces out. Tada! You have a pattern for your armor!

I’m not covering that part in this tutorial because I don’t have adequate photos to accurately cover the process. Just look around online if you need more details on it.

The inside of the breasplate isn’t very pretty because I was in a hurry. (Was running out of time before BlizzCon!) You can see where I have the underwire support in the middle, which I ended up covering in foam to keep it from pressing into me and hurting me. I used large pieces of PVC vinyl to adhere parts to the breastplate (the more surface area is hot glued down, the better stability you have).

Here’s some close ups the invisible strap connections. I attached invisible straps to the breasplate with Wonderflex bands, which were glued down by PVC vinyl. The Wonderflex made the invisible straps removable, yet very stable and durable during wear. It is important that you use large pieces of fabric to help stabilize the glued connection between parts on your breastplate. As I mentioned before, the more surface area that is glued, the more stability you will have. I cannot express this enough.

I used eyelets to build a “corsette” back. This allowed me to tighten the breastplate enough to make sure I had the proper “push up bra” effect. I made everything sturdy enough to be able to tighten both the invisible straps as well as the corsette back.

And here’s the final completed breastplate. I don’t have progress pictures of how I did all the detailing, but I can describe it.

Preparing the surface:

I sprayed on about three layers of black Plasti-Dip (which you can purchase at Home Depot), to give it a “rubbery” outer coat, which made my spray paint and acrylic paint adhere much easier (which saved me paint), rather than being absorbed by the foam. You’re not supposed to be able to sand Plasti-Dip that well, but because I had sanded the EVA foam down to make it thinner, when I applied the Plasti-Dip there were some really rough areas, so I sanded it down anyways.

This Plast-Dip technique is used by armor makers, particularly Halo spartan suits. Those tutorials recommend that you use primer and wait 24 hours between coats, but I was short on time so I skipped those steps.

If you’re interested in learning more about this technique please check out this tutorial. It covers this process very thoroughly.

Detailing:

The details on the cup, as well as the lines direcly below the cups, were all made using Apoxie Sculpt. I sculpted the general shape of all the details, and once the Apoxie Sculpt cured I sanded it down by hand with 60 grit sandpaper.

The bottom band area was all done using craft foam (due to lack of time). The “gem” in the center was sculpted out of Apoxie Sculpt. The dangling elements off the bottom of the breasplate were sculpted out of Super Sculpey, but I also purchased some beads for it. (The bottom beads as well as the elongated beads are the ones I sculpted).

Painting:

I used Montana Gold spray paint for most of the base purple coat. The weathering on the purple areas was done using black acrylic paint. The golden rustic areas were done using a combination of Rub n Buff, Enamel Paints, and acrylic paints.

And that’s it!

I hope this tutorial was helpful to you! If you do end up using this tutorial, I’d love it if you’d comment here showing me your project. :)

I’ll be writing more tutorials soon, but if you have any specific requests for what you’d like to see first feel free to leave a comment here or on my Facebook Fan Page with input on what you’d like to learn!

Thank you for reading!

BlizzCon was a BLAST, and I will be hopefully posting about it this week! Sylvanas came out pretty well, but she’s not 100% complete yet. I plan on doing a Sylvanas photoshoot in a couple of weeks, so I’ll post up my cosplay overview then – which will include the processes I went through to complete the project.

I’m already beginning to plan and construct my next few projects!

Gender Swapped Mephisto Pheles is going to be my next “major” project which I will be working on, hopefully to debut at Anime Los Angeles 2012. I have big ideas planned for this project. :)

I also think I have my BlizzCon 2012 costume picked out already – a Blood Elf wearing the t11 priest set! I absolutely love the color scheme, and all the lighting!

The staff in the picture is just a placeholder, as I’m not compeltely sure on which weapon(s) I will be constructing yet. I plan on really pushing this project far though, with many many effects. I might even have to look into Arduino programming.

Other than those two, I have Saber Alter (possibly) planned. I’m still deciding on whether I want to do it yet or not, but if I do decide to work on it I’ll be trying to complete it by Fanime 2012. I also have a “secret” Cosplay which I may or may not be doing. I’ll be posting progress pictures of that on Facebook, so although I won’t be announcing what it is you’ll still be able to guess what it is from progress!

And for smaller “easier” projects, I’m supposed to make Taiga Aisaka for ALA 2012, and Raspberyl from Disgaea for AX 2012. We’ll see if I actually manage to pull through with all these projects!

I’m going to be an extremely busy bee the next year! Aside from all these personal projects, I’m hoping to start doing prop commissions finally for some cosplay supply cash!

If you’re interesting in active updates regarding commissions and/or costume progress, just head on over to my Facebook FanPage (VensyCosplay)! I update there quite frequently, so if you have any questions for me you can ask me there, or on a comment here on my website. :)

You guys will be hearing from me again soon!

I didn’t get too much done this summer unfortunately. My last semester ended mid-May, and I finished up all of Touhouvania Suika for Fanime; and then right after Fanime I had to work on Black Gold Saw for Anime Expo. I got 95% of BGS done, but I still have to improve her here and there… I need to completely redo her claws.

But for now I’ll be focusing on working on Sylvanas Windrunner for Blizzcon! I’m very excited to be working on her, but it’s definitely going to be a lot of work. I probably won’t be posting many entries here until Blizzcon unless I finish a major part of Sylvanas and want to document it here, so if you want to follow my work be sure to follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/VensyCosplay, I promise there will be plenty of updates there! :)

I think that’s it for my mini update.. I just wanted to let people know I’m not dead. Here’s some of the work I’ve done for Sylvanas so far:

These photos feature my sculpting work, in preparation for molding/casting them, as well as the start of my Intefoam armor work!

Progress has been slow – I’ll admit that, but I figured I might as well actually take some time off during my summer to relax and enjoy myself before school starts. But now that I feel I’ve relaxed more than enough it’s time to get into gear and pump this Cosplay out!

I arrived at Anime Expo on day 0, but I wasn’t able to relax! I still had a lot of Black Gold Saw prop work to do. So after finally getting settled down in my hotel I had to work all night to get stuff done -- and unfortunately I wasn’t able to get all done that night. I still had to work the morning of Day 1!

Day 1

I barely got to the convention as Black Gold Saw on day 1 by about 2 or 3 pm, which only gave me about two hours of time to relax before I had to go to a scheduled photoshoot with FiveRings.

Until then, VashFanatic (as Great Black Sword) and I roamed the convention for a couple of hours. We got pulled aside for a couple of mini photoshoots by photographers who were fun to work with.

Then we had to go to our shoot with FiveRings. The shoot was a lot of fun (like they always are -- FiveRings is so fun to work with!), but unfortunately the tip of my sword had broken off earlier in the day… so I’m not too satisfied with the photos considering the tip is blue in all the photos. Haha.

Once I was finished with FiveRings’s photoshoot I met up with FastMatt to do a mini video shoot of Black Gold Saw. I’ll include the video footage at the end of this post.

After the photoshoot I went to dinner with some friends from high school… It ended up being some extremely fancy restaurant. I wasn’t too happy about that. Hahaha~ The most expensive item on the menu was $140. The highlight of this restaurant trip was the fact that they asked me to remove my Black Gold Saw horns upon entry, but I told them I couldn’t, since the horns are attached directly to the wig. And then immediately afterwards they informed me that they would have to confiscate my sword for the duration of my stay. Oh man was that amusing~ Needless to say, once I sat down I realized what I was wearing and I began to feel extremely out of place. Once dinner was over, day 1 was pretty much over for me.

Day 2

Day 2 was .. very interesting nonetheless. It started off pretty bad for me because I completely had forgotten that I still needed to do some work on Miku before being able to Cosplay her. I had to fix a couple of my wire connections, as well as completely make the ponytail squares. I managed to fix everything and get everything ready in a (somewhat) timely matter. Honestly, I was very impressed that I was able to pretty much make both ponytail squares in one hour~

Right as I was getting ready to leave for con… I decided I would bring my solder equipment with me to con -- JUST in case I needed to repair any wire connections… I stupidly forgot to unplug the solder, so I grabbed it and burned my left hand. Fortunately I’m so used to burning/cutting/hurting myself in general while working on cosplay that it didn’t phase me at all -- I just put my ice cold AX Staff water bottle to it immediately.

When I finally got to con, I happened to run into acksonl, who asked me to do a Miku video shoot with him! I was extremely excited for this opportunity, even if I was in pain at the time hahaha.

The rest of the day before the concert was spent either meeting up with friends, resting, or fixing my cosplay. My Miku cosplay is so high maintenance. OTL

Hatsune Miku Concert

The concert was amazing. I can’t even fully describe how exciting it was to actually see one of these concerts live! And to be completely honest, I still don’t fully believe I was actually there.

(Photos courtesy of FastMatt/DriftDoctor)

The concert was extremely exciting, especially because they played almost all of my favorite previously-used concert songs! I was especially excited to see “Clover Club” used!

The main downside of the concert for me was my seat. I received complimentary AX Staff seating which was on the very far left -- so basically Miku looked “ghostly” most of the time, unless she walked to the left side of the screen. This is exactly why Crypton didn’t want the full Nokia theater being filled up for the concert.

My fellow staffers and I ended up standing in the middle-back area of the theater, so that we could at least see the concert the way it was meant to be seen. She was tiny on stage, but at least she didn’t look obviously fake by being semi-transparent most of the time!

Here’s the song list that was used at Mikunopolis (courtesy of Bamboo Updates.)

Project Diva desu.

World Is Mine

Electric Angel

Koi Suru VOC@LOID

Clover Club

PoPiPo!

Cinderella and Romeo

Ura-omote Lovers

Puzzle

VOiCE

1 / 6

Disappearance of Hatsune Miku

Butterfly on the Right Shoulder

Meltdown

Just Be Friend — Thanks LA

World’s End Dancehall english ver

from Y to Y

Saihate

Viewfinder DSLR remix-re: edit

SPiCa

Ai Kotoba

StargazeR

Hajimete no Oto

Amazing song list, in my opinion. The only thing that felt “off” to me was the English version of “World’s End Dance hall”. I know they were just trying to incorporate English Vocaloid to the American debut concert -- but for some reason the singing didn’t feel nearly as clear and crisp as the Japanese singing.

One thing that really excited me about the concert though was that they pulled off the whole “encore” break in the concert! I’ve always loved that in the concerts in Japan, and I was praying they’d do it here too! It was also great seeing Rin, Len, and Luka -- but I do wish they would have had more songs! Well, in general I just wish the concert could have been longer in general~

And just cuz, I’ll include a concert coverage video which is provided by SEGA!

But that’s not it for day 2, the night definitely didn’t end there… I met up with FastMatt and acksonl to do some Miku video shoots right after the concert! It was a very fun, eventful, and productive two hours! Here’s some photos from acksonl’s video, as well as the video itself!

I really love these shots, especially because of how dynamic they are. And so many colors~! I definitely didn’t expect to spend around two hours of shooting right after the concert, but it was definitely worth it. :) During the shooting, I was interviewed by the sponsors of the Miku Hatsune concert -- some Toyota representatives from the Miku Hatsune Toyota commercials! That was really exciting.

We were also around when they began putting away the Miku Toyota cars, so we were able to get some footage of me standing around the cars as they were being driven~

I also ran into a couple of my friends -- IdolYuuka and Kiyoko!

Once we were finally done with that shoot, we split ways and went back to our hotels and retired for the night.

Day 3

The third day of AX was probably the most hectic for me out of all the days. I was asked to be on the Vocaloid panel “Mirae no Neiro” -- which was both extremely nerve-wrecking but also just as exciting! @_@ I didn’t want to just cosplay Miku on day 3, since I had already cosplayed Miku on day 2… so I decided to pull a cosplay switch -- which I hate doing.

I ended up doing Black Gold Saw during the first half of day 3, and then switch into Miku for the panel. It was fun taking all my Miku stuff to AX on the shuttle, while wearing all of Black Gold Saw (and carrying the sword). Thankfully Kisuka was nice enough to help me get from the shuttle to the AX Live room, where I was able to put on the rest of my Black Gold Saw armor as well as store my Miku cosplay. Big thanks to Kisuka and Frances for helping me get Black Gold Saw fixed up at the Cosplay Repair Station! Your help really meant a lot to me.

I was able to wear my Black Gold Saw for a good two or so hours before I had to leave, start practicing my script lines for the panel, and change. Those are probably my two favorite pictures I’ve gotten so far of Black Gold Saw. On day 3 my sword was fixed, so I didn’t see painful blue tips in any of the photos that day!

It was funny though because I could barely even move as Black Gold Saw. @_@ I was constantly getting stuck in poses for anywhere between two and ten minutes per pose… Until I finally had Q, my boyfriend, help me not be stuck constantly by people. Hahaha~

After that was time for “Miraei no Neiro”, the Vocaloid panel of AX 2011. I had gone to “Mirai no Neiro” last year as well, but as a regular attendee. This year I was actually on the panel. @_@

The panel was a lot of fun, especially after I met the Rin and Len that were on the panel with me! They were so adorable~ Vi-vi (Rin) and Tsubasa Gaki (Len) were so much fun to work with.

I have to thank them because once we did start talking, my anxiety/nervousness levels definitely went down a lot! Most of the photos and information I will include here about the panel are referenced from Behind the Nihon Review.

“Mirai no Neiro” was broken into two parts because of how much information/content was to be shown! The first part of the panel featured PVs as well as messages from the authors about the PV/song. I didn’t get a really good look at the videos because I was on the panel, but I could see a mirrored version from the back of one of the projectors!

Here are all the videos (or for the PVs that haven’t been published yet, then the songs are included) that were played during the first part of the panel!

【Kagamine Rin】 honey & clover club -rearrange-

【Kagamine Rin】 Daughter of Evil

【Kagamine Len】 Servant of Evil

【Megurine Luka】 DYE/Re:flection+

【Hatsune Miku】 Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!

【Hatsune Miku】Ronde of Possible World

【Hatsune Miku】Strobo Last

【Hatsune Miku】Sweet Devil

【Hatsune Miku】Electric Love

【Hatsune Miku】Memories

【Kaai Yuki】Innocent Girl

【Miku + Rin】Amayumerou

That’s all the PVs which were played during the first part of the panel! A few of these were actually world premier’s, which were shown at this panel for the first time! For more detail on each one, please visit Behind the Nihon’s -- Mirai no Neiro Part 1 article!

Now on to part 2 of the panel! Part 2 was extremely exciting because we basically got to introduce all the guests!

The panel featured many Vocaloid producers as well as the father of Hatsune Miku, Hideki Kenmochi! The Vocaloid producers which were present at the panel were:

すんｚりヴぇｒP　（SunzriverP） -- Twitter -- Website

思春期P (ShishunkiP) of PENGUINS PROJECT -- Twitter -- Website

ざにおP (ZanioP) aka パイパンP (PaipanP) of ZANEEDS -- Twitter -- Website

ゆうきP (YuukiP)

It was really cool to see all these producers and hear what they have to say! For more information about what each one of them said, please visit Behind the Nihon’s -- Mirai no Neiro Part 2 article!

I’ll also include the videos which they included in part two of the panel, and for the guests that their videos haven’t been released yet I’ll include examples of their work until the pieces from the panel do get published.

SunzriverP【Kagamine Rin】Boring Bowling

PENGUINS PROJECT【Hatsune Miku】Galapagos

ZANEEDS【Kagamine Rin】 Socialist Darling

And then Hideki Kenmochi spoke about Vocaloid software, but I couldn’t really see the screen very well so I didn’t get to see it. I do know he basically made Sweet Ann sing “Happy Birthday” for someone in the audience!

After the panel we had to stick around to help out with the raffle, but it was pretty entertaining to do. Masa also gave Vi-vi, Tsubasa Gaki, and I cute little knitted “Toeto” hats. :3

After waiting for everyone to clear, all the producers and Kenmochi-san came back and we were able to take some photos with them!

FastMatt was kind enough to wait around with me for everything to calm down, as well as take those two photos for me! I really appreciated his company, especially because the panel ended so late.. and I didn’t really want to walk to the shuttle alone at night -- especially while having to carry all my Black Gold Saw props and stuff still.

After the panel FastMatt and I did a few more video shoots of my Miku cosplay for his videos. He asked me to do some specific things to be used for the closing shot of his last video. It was a lot of fun working with you, Matt! I hope to work with you again at future conventions!

Here are all four videos that FastMatt made for Anime Expo!

After the shoot with FastMatt, I finally went back to my hotel room -- where I finally had my first drink of the convention! An “Adios Mother Fucker”. How classy, but -- please excuse the language -- fucking delicious. :) And that wraps up day 3.

Day 4

The last day of any convention is always the most depressing. Fortunately our hotel room didn’t have to check out until day 5, so we didn’t have to scramble and pack everything away.

I decided to bring out Touhouvania Suika at least once during AX, so I brought her out on day 4~ A big thanks to my hotel roommate, Nic, for helping me numerous times with getting to con! I really appreciated it! As soon as I got to con I decided to drop by the AX Live room because I knew that Jean wanted to see my Suika cosplay.

It was fun taking pictures with the little mini-me! After stopping by the AX Live room I went down to the convention center lobby where I hung out for a little bit. I finally got to see some of my friends, since that was the only day of the whole convention where I basically was able to relax… I got a free Mikunopolis poster from the Toyota table in the lobby -- if I had known they were giving out different posters each day I would have gone each day! Oh well~

A fun thing about day 4 was that I got interviewed as Suika, and I totally played the part of Suika! A drunk lesbian!

I’m at 3:27!

The rest of the day was pretty relaxed. I just mainly hung out with friends that I either didn’t see at all during con, or that I barely saw during con. Otherwise I just wiggled my way around con, having my last few hours of actual con-relax time. Hahaha~ Fun fact: I drank all of day 4 as Suika~ I was drinking sake out of my gourd all day while at con. That’s the most I drank all con too! I also was randomly given some Touhou keycharms as Suika! That was really sweet of the attendee. ♥

I dropped by the NicoNico both on day4, which was an interesting experience I think I can easily say… I was too camera shy to do much on there. ; -; But from what I did get to show of myself and say, I think I did ok. I need to get better at talking to the camera! OTL The comments I got on there were .. interesting to say nonetheless.

Q and I then went to Dead Dog, the Anime Expo staff dinner on day 4, where we got to hang out with our good friends Elie, Ricky, and a few others registration. It was a fun last few hours…

And then it was all over. :C Dun dun dun~! I’m pretty sure that’s all there is to day 4!

That’s all the loot I have from AX! The first picture features everything I got.

Art print from my old friend Lavender-Ice

Sylvanas art print from exhibition hall

Sylvanas figurine (refernece for my cosplay of her that’s coming up!)

Toeto cap that Masa gave me

Hair scrunchie that Masa gave me

Touhou keycharms that the guy gave me at AX on day 4

Hatsune Miku AX posters

That’s pretty much all that I got, mainly because I had already spent so much pre-con on cosplay that I didn’t quite have the funds to buy more!

At least I’m responsible-ish with my money right? Haha~

So I think that’s about it for my AX2011-Recap post. If anyone sees / knows anything I might have forgotten to cover in this post, please feel free to let me know. I had quite a bit to cover as is that I may have easily forgotten to remember to write about some things.

Shout-out to everyone that helped me out during con! Thank you to everyone!

]]> http://vensy.net/convention/anime-expo-2011-recap/feed/ 3 http://vensy.net/blogging/vensydotnet-3-0-live/ http://vensy.net/blogging/vensydotnet-3-0-live/#comments Tue, 12 Jul 2011 23:00:38 +0000 Vensy http://vensy.net/?p=1401 ... Read More]]> I’m happy to say that Vensy[dot]NET v3.0 is now live!

There isn’t much new to this layout; I just decided to finally be un-lazy and make my own WordPress template from scratch. (The last version of the site was simply modified from a pre-existing theme) I can say I’m very happy with it because it forced me to learn a lot more of the WordPress codex more thoroughly. I also forced myself to learn how to properly style things using CSS instead of cheating using DIV positioning (hurhur).

I’ll be writing soon about Anime Expo and Black Gold Saw! I will also hopefully have quite a few photoshoots done this summer!

Summer 2011 Goals

Work on Sylvanas

Photoshoots (Black Gold Saw, Miku Hatsune, and Touhouvania Suika)

Make some tutorials finally!

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy my new layout. :) If you find any bugs, please let me know here!

]]> http://vensy.net/blogging/vensydotnet-3-0-live/feed/ 0 http://vensy.net/cosplay/touhouvania-suika-overview/ http://vensy.net/cosplay/touhouvania-suika-overview/#comments Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:09:42 +0000 Vensy http://vensy.net/?p=1265 ... Read More]]> Touhouvania Suika was a really fun project to make for sure. It was challenging, required a lot of planning, and did require some ingenious planning.

The design really called out to me as interesting, but I knew it would be difficult because of all the detailing. I was very thankful for such a good reference. I know a few other Touhouvania characters don’t have such nice references, but I do believe this cosplay without the reference sheet would be impossible because of all the detailed work.

I first started with working on the horns and gourd. I unfortunately don’t have any photos of the pre-mache stages. This is after I designed the horns and gourd in Illustrator, printed out the template, traced it in cardboard, did the expanding foam work, and carved it down to shape. I would then cover the piece in painter’s tape, followed by paper mache (this step).

Here’s the horns and gourd all plastered up. (I was also working on my Black Gold Saw horns at the same time) This is before I sanded all the plaster down, so it looks really rough at this stage.

Here’s a detail shot of the gourd when I was painting it. I detailed the cork to look as realistic as possible with a lot of texturing. From a foot away the cork looks real! The best way to do this step is to Google search a referenec of the texture you’re trying to imitate and emulate it as closely as possible. Contrast and subtle color changes are everything!

This shows all he swatching I did before working on the gourd. I made a nice palette of colors so that I’d have a nice array of natural colors using some of the color mixing skills I acquired from my Color Theory class at Otis. I used combinations of browns, yellows, reds, greens, and purples mainly to obtain these colors as well as a little bit of white here and there. I avoided using black though.

Here’s a picture of the detailed Kanji painting work I did on the gourd. I had a photo reference from the Griffon figurine for the labels and I would lightly sketch out the Kanji on the stickers first with pencil and then i would carefully paint them in. I had a difficult time deciding whether I wanted to use the original Suika gourd design or the Touhouvania gourd design (regular design has only two stickers, while Touhouvania has three). I ended up going with the Touhouvania design (since it would fit better, and just in case I never end up doing regular Suika anyways).

Then my issue was the fact that the back of the gourd would look so empty, so originally I made it so that any angle you looked at the gourd from you would always see either two or three stickers… But by the time the gourd was ready for Clear Acrylic Coating for protection, I kind of felt that the gourd looked too “busy” with a total of six stickers on it, so I ended up painting out two of the stickers, leaving me with four total, just for a little bit more visual interest.

The skirt was fun, but it took a lot of paint. I started it off with a circle skirt because it would be easier to paint. (Miraculously it was just the right size to work on my dining room table) I made a custom purple color by mixing different purple acrylics together to make the perfect blend I liked. When you know you’re going to paint a lot, it’s better to be safer than sorry and paint a lot of the color, so that you’re consistent. (I ended up using the same purple mixture for the shirt anyways)

As for painting it onto the skirt, I mixed the paint with fabric textile medium from Joann’s. I purchased two small bottles (in the photo they’re the two bottles on the left) but I only ended up using half of one for the entire project (which was very surprising to me). After I was done painting, I later had to reduce the circle skirt by a great amount to reduce the amount of visual overlap (that would have been too much of a problem with the hanging chains).

Here’s my shirt. it’s an altered version of a pattern I purchased. I used the same purple as the skirt to make the design. The design was made in Illustrator (one side, and then mirrored over to make the other side symmetrical). I then printed out the design and traced it with pencil on the shirt to have a stencil to follow for painting. The design at the top is pleather which I glued onto the shirt.

You can also see the collar in this piece; all the collars, bracers, and belts were made from scratch from one yard of pleather I purchased at the fashion district. I hand sewed all of them (not confident enough to use the machine to sew pleather yet).

I did these close to the end of the project because I couldn’t decide on the scale I wanted to use. It all depended on the size of the cube really because that one has to hang off of my hair. The cube and sphere are just Styrofoam shapes I purchased from Joann’s which I did the same painter’s tape and paper mache steps too. I added the D-rings onto them before adding the tape and mache, to give them more stability.

The pyramid I built out of my usual cardboard and expanding foam method. The most difficult out of all of these was the cube because I ended up having to carve down the cube from its original size – so I had some issues making sure all the sides were completely flat.

I don’t have any pictures of it, but the horns were attached to the wig directly by being hot glued to felt and then having the felt sewn onto the wig. It worked pretty well and was pretty sturdy, but if someone accidentally walked into my horn (which did happen a few times ;_;), they would slightly un-glue and I’d have to go back to my hotel room and repair them. I’m sure this technique would work perfectly for smaller horns, or more vertical ones (these had a lot of horizontal gravitational pull).

And there you have it, that’s pretty much a thorough description of all the WIP photos I have for Suika. :) If you have any other questions feel free to ask in a comment on this post or on my Touhouvania Suika Cosplay page.

New Photoshoot!

Here’s a shoot that I was in featuring my Suika Cosplay. :) Photos courtesy of BKaguya. The photos I selected for my site also feature Vash_Fanatic as Touhouvania Chen. This photoshoot was a lot of fun to do because I was actually drinking red wine out of my gourd, so I was pretty in character for Suika. xD I was just being ultra silly.

(More photos from the shoot can be found here.)

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Remember if you want to see the most up-to-date updates from me in terms of Cosplay progress, then follow me on my Facebook page @ www.facebook.com/VensyCosplay :) I’ll be posting updates on Black Gold Saw and Synchronicity Miku there!

]]> http://vensy.net/cosplay/touhouvania-suika-overview/feed/ 2 http://vensy.net/convention/fanime-2011-recap/ http://vensy.net/convention/fanime-2011-recap/#comments Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:36:35 +0000 Vensy http://vensy.net/?p=1242 ... Read More]]> Fanime for me this year was tipsy-con. Suika Ibuki style.

Fanime this year was pretty eventful, I debuted one of my most ‘successful’ Cosplays to date. I didn’t get to “party” as much as I would have liked to, but that’s fine. I can easily say I thoroughly enjoyed the convention with my boyfriend Q, Vash_fanatic, and my other friends. :)

Touhouvania Suika
Cosplay Page

I can definitely say I’m extremely proud of this Cosplay, as it definitely was the most challenging so far and it was a lot of work. I’ll make a basic recap of the Cosplay construction in a separate post after I give a brief overview of the convention itself.

Day 1

This was the first day I got to wear Suika, with Vash_Fanatic as Chen. We had a lot of fun wandering the convention halls, and we got a lot of pictures taken. I kind of went crazy in the exhibition hall…

As you can see I kind of went a little bit crazy. I purchased the Griffon Enterprise Suika Ibuki figurine to go with my Flandre Scarlet figurine (I try to only buy figurines of the characters I cosplay as -- for reference and for the sake of having them as a ‘award’ of some sort?).

I also got a Black Butler wallscroll (which I love), a “Lady Baba” art print which my boyfriend bought for me as a gift ♥, a Touhou folder (which I will be using to store all my Cosplay notes -- I used to use a BlazBlue folder), numerous pins (the Ciel Phantomhive one was given to me as a gift from Vash_Fanatic ♥), and a phone strap.

All in all, I’m happy with everything I purchased. I do feel I went slightly overboard with the Suika figurine, but considering I have the Flandre one and both Suika and Flandre are my favorite Touhou characters.. I just had to buy her, hehe.

Otherwise it was a pretty chill day of hanging out with Q and Vash_Fanatic mainly. I had sake in my gourd this day to be in character as Suika, which was really fun.

Day 2

On Day 2, Vash_Fanatic and I cosplayed as default Miku Hatsune and Kaito together. We had a lot of fun walking around and taking “couple” pictures together.

Here’s a sample of the type of photos Vash_Fanatic and I were taking together. So cute~ She was so happy when she got that ice cream bar, it was so adorable. :)

Here’s a nice picture that the wonderful Tanpopo took of my Miku Cosplay on Day 2. :) It was really comfortable wearing this Cosplay (for once), because I decided to not bother with the lights for Fanime -- since I will be completely upgrading almost all of them for Anime Expo. (Except to see better skirt lights than before, and more lights in general on the entire Cosplay!)

At night, once we felt like we had Cosplayed Miku/Kaito enough for the day, we changed into Flandre and Rainbow Dash for a couple of hours at night.

(Please excuse how derpy my hat looks in this photo XD) I thought this combination was really a lot of fun to do because we’re both so “rainbowy”. Vash_Fanatic’s Rainbow Dash was extremely popular amongst the con attendees because there weren’t very many My Little Pony cosplayers around. I guess she scored on that. :D

Day 3

This was our second day of cosplaying Touhou. The best summary of Day 3 would be: photoshoot, photoshoot, photoshoot. Holy crap was that day busy. We were quite literally dragged from one photoshoot to another all day.

Photo features:
Kotodama as Marissa, Pandacornn as Alice, OwlDepot as Sakuya, Nami as Remilia, Vash_fanatic as Chen.

This was probably our biggest photoshoot location that day. There were so many photographers there, most of whom I didn’t even know! Yosi Photography, Abbott Wang, BlankLogo Photography, and a couple others (I think) were there, but as I’ve said… I didn’t know most of them… So if one of you sees this post, please let me know and I’ll include you in!

We didn’t do that many group or “character-couple” pictures as I was hoping we would have, but that was alright -- I’m pretty sure we still all had fun.

Before I go on further with the day, before I went to go do the group photoshoot I actually got pulled aside by Ackson L. to do a small “video” photoshoot. Here’s the video that I was included in! (I appear around 1:54)

After this photoshoot a bunch of us went to a local grocery store to grab lunch, where I purchased a nice bottle of Ménage à trois -- one of my favorite red wines -- for my Suika gourd to enjoy for the rest of the day. ;)

Later on we were dragged to a photoshoot with Minh Phan and Bearded Kaguya. That photoshoot was a lot of fun (especially for me because I was quite literally in character -- tipsy!). I don’t really have any photos from that photoshoot yet, so I unfortunately can’t include any in this post.

Photo by Daniel Wright
Haha I love this photo, I look so derpy and silly -- as Suika should be! XD

After that shoot, we were found by Mr. Postman who requested our presence for a mini photoshoot, which we happily obliged to. Same goes with this photoshoot, I don’t have any photos yet except for two photos that Minh Phan and Bearded Kaguya took on the side.

Photo by Bearded Kaguya
I actually really like this photo a lot.

Photo by Minh Phan
This photo is just silly, my boyfriend wouldn’t let go of his fun dip stick!

After that photoshoot we just hung around the convention center a little bit more until we could do one last night shoot with SnowChef. This photoshoot was a lot of fun and it was very different from anything Vash_Fanatic and I have ever experienced before. We had awesome lighting equipment as well as a fog machine. That’s right, we had a fog machine for our photoshoot! How much more fancier can you get? Haha.

Photo by SnowChef
Playing with Vash_Fanatic during a foggy night.

All in all I can definitely say Day 3 was extremely eventful. After we got back to our hotel room, we were supposed to get out of our Cosplay and go party it up with some friends, but unfortunately I started to feel pretty ill. As soon as we changed out of our Cosplays I basically ended up knocking out. Boo! No party~

Day 4

Day 4 of any convention is always the most depressing, and it was no different for Fanime. Nothing really eventful happened except for last minute shopping and saying our good-byes to friends.

So that was basically a general recap of the convention. Of course there was a lot more to it than just this, but these are the biggest highlights I guess you can say. :) I’ll be posting a Cosplay-recap for Touhouvania Suika in the next couple of days, so keep your eyes out for that!

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