Updates are migrating to social media

Hi blog,

I'm migrating all my updates over to my new tumblr and facebook pages.

On facebook: http://facebook.com/sayakatcosplay

On tumblr:  sayakatcosplay.tumblr.com

I'm planning on starting to ramp up my costuming and # of cons and trying to meet new peoples, so to social media I go. Follow on over there.

List of upcoming projects

Starting sometime this fall/winter, I will actually finally be starting The Monarch and Dr. Mrs. The Monarch. A year after I said I was starting to do them. Better late than never. After that, the list of stuff I want to make now includes Seras Victora from Hellsing, and Diablo from Diablo.

I want to do smaller costumes that will be easier to transport and bring to other cons farther away (thus the first two on the list), but I also want to do something as a show piece for the next costume contest I enter. Thus, Diablo. Also, Diablo is scary and would be great for Halloween. Although Tyrael is impressive, it's not impressive to the general public; i.e. I didn't scare as many kids this year as last year. Plus I apparently want to add to the catalogue of Blizzard based costumes I seem to be making.

Now that I'm actually done with grad school and winding down with the left over details from graduating AND will be actually employed for a while doing grown up things, I'll have more free time to devote to making costumes. Hooray!

I won!

I won the women's category at Baltimore Comic Con 2014! Not the grand prize, that went to a huge Batbot, which was ridiculous, but still, v. cool to win. There were maybe 40-50 (maybe more? terrible at estimating) entrants in the women's category, and I honestly thought a lot of them were really good and could have placed. Was not expecting first place at all.

The whole weekend was great, the weeping angel was a huge crowd draw, and even before I got the whole thing on, people were crowding around to get pictures.  Below are a few pictures of the Tyrael costume from the con. The whole thing ended up looking really great. I did have a small malfunction and a piece fell off, but I brought my glue gun, so no big deal.

I did stand around in it for almost 4.5 hours and holy crap, that thing is a really physically demanding costume. My shoulders and knees are going to be yelling at me for a few days. I've done armor before, but not with a huge heavy chest piece over the harness with huge wings. Could not sit either, the things I do for a good costume.

Getting close...

Comic Con is in less than two weeks. I have about 3 working days left to get the wings together, and about a week to do the chain mail.

Slightly freaking out about the fact that the costume isn't done yet, but its getting there.

Over the weekend I finished all the painting and sprayed everything with an acrylic sealant, which did wonders to the costume and made everything really nice and shiny. I was worried about the paint, because on the pieces that are rounded and will be bending a lot the paint was cracking whenever I picked it up wrong. However, once I sprayed on the sealant, the texture changed and it became malleable and stopped cracking. So glad I decided to spray all the pieces with that stuff. Thank you Mod podge.

Here are some picture updates from last night, when I started putting everything together:

Hooray for getting things together! The sword is looking great, all the lights are installed, and its now fully painted. The chest has the tabard and the circles attached, and I set the velcro for the shoulders. I can't glue the shoulders down, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to get in the chest.

I may need to alter the shoulders, as they are huge when I put them on and may be too beefy looking as is, but I'll figure that out later today when I do a wear test.

Back from vacation, and super duper productive

So after defending my thesis, I went on a vacation, and got back just last Tuesday. In the past week, I have gotten a lot done. Everything still needs paint, but the bulk of the armor is now done, and the wings and sewn items are the only major things left to fabricate.



So far, I've completed the shoe/foot armor, as seen to the right. It's made from foam and worbla, the heel is attached to the arch piece by snaps, so it can rotate. Everything will get elastic attachments to the shoe.



Next, the lower leg and upper leg armor have been completed, although I don't currently have a picture of the upper leg armor. I'm going to add more velcro to the lower leg armor so that it doesn't bow out as much at the back.












I've also completed the knee pieces, the forearms, and the upper arm pieces. Most is foam, the forearms are worbla. To the left, you can see progress pictures of the forearms, with all the detail complete on one of them. They've now been gessoed and are ready to be sanded and painted.

What's left to do is the hand armor (need to make the gloves for that) and the upper thigh plates that Tyrael has. I have a pattern for those, so I just need to cut, form, and detail those pieces. I'm hoping to get that done today, so I can move on to painting and sewing. I have a week basically to finish, as I'm going away for labor day next wednesday. Then a few days before the convention for any last minute stuff.

However, based on how much I've been able to accomplish in the last week, I'd say I'm in a good place to get everything done in time. Bring on the costume competition!

I'm done!

With graduate school! Done! That took forever. On to bigger and better things (maybe).

Tyrael updates

So I have made some progress on the chest armor. Currently, it needs a few more coats of gesso, then it gets the crap sanded out of it before being painted.

This is my first time working with worbla, so there's some trial and error going on. I started the chest by trying to make a form out of craft foam to wrap the worbla around (I've read this is a good method for working with worbla). However, making a form to go over a chest that isn't flat is difficult to say the least. After screwing around with foam for a couple of hours, I ditched it and just decided to use the foam pieces as patterns for the worbla.

So after cutting out the worbla and trying to shape it, I realized how it will show every single little ripple if its lying on any non-smooth surface. Oh boy. Now that I've worked with it a bit, I realized doing the chest first wasn't the best route to go, but it didn't turn out too badly.

The first picture, you can see the front section and the back have been attached to each other (worbla sticks to itself wonderfully). I then added the collar, and did all the edge details with worbla strips. There's also small details around the collar.


There's going to be some rippling in places that I can't sand out, but most of it will be covered with other armor/fabric, so the small problems I see all over the place won't be very noticeable. The last chest picture shows the chest after about 4 coats of gesso. It needs maybe 2-4 more coats before its time to sand. I'm doing the gesso thing since worbla is a rough texture and not very metal like if painted raw. Thus the creation of a smooth surface for painting with the gesso (again, read about it on le internet).

I made the chest as one solid piece, but after adding the collar and the bottom pieces on the stomach, I couldn't get it on and off with the wing harness on (almost got stuck in it).

I ended up cutting the back in half, with cut out sections for the wing harness spokes, and added velcro closures. It goes on and off much more easily now, without scrapping my arms up from the worbla (that happened).

Other things I got done this weekend are the base forearm armor pieces. I need to add all the details and then gesso/sand/paint. Those are worbla over craft foam, they are much sturdier than the plain worbla chest. Live and learn.

The other thing that's mostly done are the circle armor pieces that go on the chest. They need to be sanded, and the worbla spikes need to be sanded and shaped, but they will be ready for paint after that.

There's a bunch left to do, but with the chest assembled, everything is much more manageable. Especially since I'm about to go on vacation and won't be working on anything for the next two weeks.

Because I'm defending my thesis tomorrow. Yep.