Some troll stuff

Is it August already?! I really need to schedule a blogging day to our cosplay calendar…

 

We’ve been crafting our costumes and they are slowly taking form and starting to resemble more cosplay costumes and less gym wear with all the jersey and body/leggings patterns. I think that now after settling the material and pattern issues and trying every possible technique required at least once, the rest of the construction should go rather smoothly. 

This far there have been few setbacks from re-doing the clothing plans to having to raid department stores for certain blue stockings. And I’ve actually trashed few costume pieces with which I wasn’t happy with, but that and all the other hindrances have been worth it.

I love those toes!

Yoki’s visiting our third party member, who I will call Thalla from now on to simplify things. They will fit the costume for Thalla and wrap up our performance plans. I thought that this weekend would be a convenient moment to write something and show what we’ve been doing for the past month. Here are some pieces from here and there.

READ MORE - Some troll stuff

Nothing special, I'm just...

... Making new costumes!


Who am I kidding; I’m just too easily bored. It seems that I need to have something in the making or I won’t be satisfied. So after all the speculation, we are going to have new costumes to debut at Desucon in June.  I thought I could play a little game here and give some hint before revealing the characters. If you are inpatient, just scroll to the end of this post.


The characters are from manga adaptation of certain series. Finally we are able to cosplay female characters who are siblings! And I’m really happy that I can sew some modern, “real” clothes. We are currently in a situation where three people want to reclaim the jacket Yoki will be wearing after the convention.

I must also give myself praise that I get Yoki to wear a skirt. A short skirt.

Both of the characters have black hair and something sticking between their teeth. Yoki will be wearing light brown contacts, while I will re-use my blue ones.


One reason for choosing the manga version is that the gown I’ll be making for myself is really pretty. I fancy pretty dresses.

Yoki might be the one who gets recognized more, since her outfit appears in both anime and manga.

Time for the revelation! The characters we are cosplaying are Saya and Diva from the series Blood Plus!

Yoki’s outfit is nearly finished, I’m currently constructing Diva’s gown and will hopefully have it done on Sunday. I’ll try to make a post after I’m finished with it.

P.s Ja ei, äiti. En ole tekemässä morsiuspukua ja menossa salaa naimisiin, ei huolta!

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Yoki transmission- "--My lines!? Where!? Roaar!"

READ MORE - Yoki transmission- "--My lines!? Where!? Roaar!"

Moustaches et le patch

Last weekend we had a good laugh while trying on the wigs for our next characters. I had trouble keeping my composure after I had put the brown curly wig I had purchased for Cogsworth on Yoki’s head. She looked so bizarre with long hair! When we started our cosplay journey she actually had hair as long as the wig, so it shouldn’t have been that funny. I’m just so used to her short cut and the girly curls just seemed little out of place. The fun truly began when we applied the rolls Cogsworth has on the sides. We thought that we would die from laughter. And after I had finished the front tuft on my honey blond locks, we questioned if we could ever wear the costumes in public.


But something happened after I applied some make-up on us both and Yoki taped the mustaches on. Excuse me, Yoki’s face, what kind of miracle-maker are you? How anyone can look even remotely sane with those obscene hair rolls and mustaches? I’m seriously leaning to the idea that Yoki could look nice even as Gollum. To spice up Lumiere’s get-up I added a patch to accent his flamboyant nature.


I think Yoki will have the last laugh though. I’m going to wear crazy paned trunk hose after all.

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We've got something!

Last month was crazy, plain crazy. While Yoki travelled across Finland first taking care of her duty as an aunt and then tracking Saimaa ringed seals, I was married to my work for two weeks and then on holiday the other half of July. And somewhere between we worked on our costumes for Tracon VI!

Four weeks and this is the outcome? Pair of sandals!

The progress we have made is satisfactory. There is still lot to do, especially with the performance, but I could carefully state that we are half way there. Clothes are nearly done. Currently we are working on props and armors. Because of the workload the update speed will not increase much, but at some point I’ll make costume cross-sections from Luminara and Barriss and I also have some silliness from Megatron and Starscream shoot waiting on my photo folder.

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Foretaste of Decepticon femme humanforms

We made a record today! For the first time in our cosplay history we had a official photoshoot prior to wearing the costumes at convention. We headed out to the heat this afternoon with our ladyfied Decepticons and had the most pleasant shoot to date. Not because of the weather, we nearly fried, but thanks to Karan who worked as our photographer. Thank you a thousand times and few more to go with the rest! The photos turned out better than I ever expected! Also our location was most suitable for the shoot. Thanks to Yoki for that one!

I will make a full photoshoot post after the weekend, but here is one for a sneak peek. Enjoy!

Photo taken by Karan.

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White, cool yet hot? Snowtroopers!

The first trial run of Snowtroopers ended just 15 minutes ago. The atmosphere inside the helmet was hot. Tomorrow it will be cold instead as we leave the home base and head out to vast fields of snow for photoshoot. Costumes 93% ready. The remaining 7% sounds little and it is, but Hiron used some pretty powerful words to describe the final work stages. But I'm sure that after wearing the costumes we will get a positive power burst and finish the remaing items in no time.

Keep on eye out for upcoming video about freshly graduated snowtroopers!

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Sneak peeking

You know the feeling, when everything is finished and ready to go. It makes you feel satisfied and somehow empty. All your hard work and effort can be now packed and prepared to wear on the big day. For us it is usually a passing feeling. It lasts about two minutes and we usually haven't really packed all our stuff away, because we still need to sew some stitches and glue something to something. The two minutes usually take place between finishing everything and wearing it on the morning of the convention.

But now! Now we have that feeling and it's still two DAYS to the convention. We even took some photos to test our costumes. Wicked! Oh yeah, we needed to take them so that our faces would not be visible, because we didn't have the make-up on.

Finnish cosplayers and other con-goers, see you soon at Tracon!

"Of course it is legal. Trust me!"

Sniff... No sniff! Muddler!

Joxter using his time beneficially.

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System mallfunction! Or... what?!

Few days ago, a very small bottle of clear liquid was found inside my mailbox. Thanks to Karan we were able to try to attach Muddler’s whiskers. Two attempts later the glue passed on to Hiron. She made the job look easy, again. The whiskers are made out of grayish fishing tackle, which I found after a quick search from mighty wreck storage.

Hazy picture of the whiskers trial.

Few days has also passed from the construction of Muddler’s evil shoes… or socks, but evil never the less. Yeah, Hiron was unhappy to be forced to take yet another round with them, but she didn’t shoot me when I suggested few alterations to them.

Oh yeah... Almost forgot. We are practically ready. Four days before the convention we are heading. This is our record. And because of that, we are in awe.

Almost finished!

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Make-up test for Joxter

I got inspired yesterday and made a trial version for Joxter's make-up. I still need to improve the shape of the brown nose area. When I was applying make-up to my nose, I got caught up with the thought, WHY the nose is darker than rest of the skin… Which is quite irrelevant, when you go trough all the polymorphous creatures on Moomin Valley. But still.

I tried to alter the shape of my eye by the placement of the eye-liner. In the corners it's on the inner eyelids and in the middle on the outer, to fake the strict cornered, almond look of the eyes which Joxter has. I used brown and black pencil eye-liners and a lot of fading. The last, black lining is left un-touched. For the nose I put basic foundation on a palette and took a piece of bronzer and made a paste from them. I used a sponge to apply it. The sides need some more fading, I think. The base is just foundation I usually use. I applied bronzer under the cheekbones and under the jaw to make the shape of the face more distinct. Flash tends to make face look flat as a pancake.


The wig still needs some styling. I need to lighten it and try to flip the ends. For the make-up, I will apply the darker foundation paste on the whole forehead. And I will make the paste more beige and natural looking. It looks too terracottaish. I'm not wearing contacts on this particular photo. I altered the color a bit with Photoshop, but it’s still little off from the assumed, more turquoise color. “The contact lenses- test drive” will happen after few days. That’s something to look forward to!

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New cosplay debute- Snowtrooper

Finished! Well, almost... but atleast it's wearable! We finished the costume eight hours before it was to be worn by Yoki. We dropped the backpack from this first version, but I think that Snowtrooper from Star Wars series is making an impact even without it. When we manage to finish my costume all the missing objects will be done... and also some adjustments for Yoki's armor. There were casualties. Yes, there were... Yoki might post about them, because I witnessed only some of them.

So this is the huge project we have been battling with three months. Some armor making changes occured during the construction. We planned doing the armor parts from fiberglass but ended up doing them from PETG plastic using vacuum forming method. It was new for us and a great learning experience. I will post more detailed information about this costume later on, possibly when we have both of them entirely done. We have also planned some shorts skits and hopefully we will be able to shoot them when we still have snow.

But I must say... Star Wars costuming is epic!

Yoki

READ MORE - New cosplay debute- Snowtrooper

Creepy Halloween!

Sneak peek of some sort for sake of Halloween. Have nice day with or without costumes! <3

READ MORE - Creepy Halloween!