Conceptual Cosplay Part 2

   So for this entry I’m going to talk about how I came up with and made my second Pokemon gijinka cosplay. The first one I created was made to be a hoodie for casual wear as well as taking to cons, but for this next outfit I wanted to really look like a Drifloon and show off it’s characteristics.  The first thing I did was sketch out a picture of a Drifloon; you can just pull up an image of the Pokemon you want to use on your computer. This is so you can reference the image while you come up with ideas for your cosplay.  

   Then you have to decide what kind of an outfit you’re going to make: pants and a shirt or maybe a dress? I choose a dress because Drifloon only really has one part of its body, the balloon head, so it makes sense to only have one piece of clothing. Then I decided that since the dress represented Drifloon head that it should have the face on the body of the dress. I decided I’m make the dress hooded and put some white fluffy stuff on the top to represent the poof on Drifloon’s head. Then for the last touch I’d hang two pieces of lace from the bottom of the dress and attach big hearts to them, like Drifloon ‘s little string legs. So I did some more sketching and came up with something that looked like this:

   After I had the idea for the dress all flushed out I had to figure out what fabrics to use. I decided that a poly-cotton blend would be best; it’s stretchy and lightweight. Finding the right colors and right amounts of fabric took a while but I wanted to make sure it all looked good. Then there wasn’t anything left to do but get down to business, after plenty of cutting and sewing I was done:

   And there you have it. I wore it to SugoiCon 2010 for the first time and it was pretty popular there/ I think Pokemon in general is pretty popular with people who go to anime cons so cosplaying as a recognizable gijinka will get you a lot of attention, lol. 

Conceptual Cosplay

*Note: This entry is aimed at people who have a basic knowledge of sewing skills. I’m not going to go over the details of how I actually sewed the cosplays I made so if you’d like more in depth instructions then just feel free to ask.

   There are plenty of times when you decide on a cosplay that the outfit is pretty straightforward and you have lots of reference images for the character you want to play. But there are other times when you don’t have as much to go on or you want to make a conceptual outfit for portraying an animal, inhuman character, or making a more realistic version of a character’s outfit. Many people like to cosplay as Pokemon and making an outfit that resembles a certain Pokemon is called know as making a gijinka. (Here is a Deviant Art Group all about gijinkas http://pokedex.deviantart.com/) Pokemon gijinka are usually very popular at anime conventions and thus the specific topic that I’m going to discuss today.

   Some gijinka outfits are created to make a person look as much like the Pokemon as possible while other outfits are made to look like more realistic versions of how that Pokemon would look as a person.  If your creating a gijinka cosplay then you can lean towards one side of that spectrum or find a place anywhere in the middle that you like. That’s one of my favorite parts about Pokemon cosplay, you can pretty much do whatever you want with it. I have two different (though similar in concept) gijinka cosplays of the same Pokemon, my favorite Pokemon Drifloon!

   So after you pick the Pokemon that you’d like to be you have to decide what kind of outfit you want to create. You can look online for ideas or simply wing it and be as creative as you want to be. The first Pokemon item I made was a Drifloon hoodie.  I wanted to make a hoodie because I could wear it to a con as a cosplay but also wear it around at home like a normal hoodie. So I sketched out a basic idea of how the hoodie should look then cleaned it up in photoshop to get a better picture of how I wanted it to look. But you don’t need any fancy programs to take the extra steps like I did, I suggest just drawing up a picture of what you want and then adding details once you get the basic idea set in stone. So here’s how my sketch turned out:

   The next step was figuring out how much of each fabric and what type of fabric I would use. I picked fleece because its soft, stretchy, and warm. I also decided to use fabric glue to place the eyes and x-mouth onto the hoodie because I din't want any stitching to show around the edges of those details. Then I just had to hope that I could find material that was close enough to the right colors. After several hours of measuring, cutting, and sewing I was done:

   So you can see how my idea transitioned into a real life hoodie. It turned out a tiny bit small (the store I got the fabric from was a little short on the amount of purple fabric I needed but it was the best purple fleece I could find) but it still fits all right. Since this blog is getting a little long I’m going to leave off here and next time I’ll cover my other Drifloon cosplay and why I feel like it’s a better outfit for a Pokemon gijinka.  

Two-Headed Giant

*I’m trying to get my second post on cosplay up, but I want to add some sketches and my scanner is broken at the moment so it will be up later. For now I’d like to make a quick post about my first experience playing a game of Two-Headed Giant  Magic.

On Friday night I was playing Magic like I usually do but I wasn’t playing the standard format. It was my first time playing the Two-Headed Giant format. For anyone who isn’t familiar with the format here are the basic rules:

Two-Headed Giant Constructed decks must contain the minimum of sixty cards. Two-Headed Giant uses the Unified Deck Construction rules. With the exception of basic land cards, a team's combined decks may not contain more than four of any individual card. (For example, if one player is using four Naturalizes in a Multiplayer Constructed event, no other player on that team may have a Naturalize in his or her deck.) Sideboards are not allowed in Constructed Multiplayer tournaments because only one match is played between teams. Each player has control of their own deck but they share one unified turn. Players may communicate their moves and show each other their hands to discuss strategy. The two players share a total of 30 life points and must take 15 poison counters to lose the game.

So for this tournament I was playing a changed up version of my Red Deck and my partner was playing a Green Deck thick with elves. The plan was for me to wipe the opposing team’s field and then my teammate would swarm them with elves. It was a pretty effective strategy and we only lost one match out of four, so we placed 4^th in the tournament. In the match we did lose we were facing a team with Infect creatures. They pulled some combo where they made us discard our whole hands, then wiped our field of creatures, and then hit us for 15 poison counters in two turns. It was pretty intense.

Overall I have to say that playing the Two-Headed Giant format was pretty fun, though fairly confusing. Determining how certain cards and abilities will affect players as individuals and teams as a whole got a bit tricky at times but it just took some careful reading to clear things up. Fortunately Battlecry works for all attacking creatures so my creatures could boost my teammates’ creatures. 

Well, that's all I have to say for now. I've got to be off to work soon. But if you have any questions feel free to post them.

Post 1 on Cosplay: Choose Your Cosplay

One of the first things that I thought would be a good idea to cover on this little blog of mine was something I have a fair bit of experience with, and that’s cosplay. I’m going to cover each of the big steps that I think a person should take in making their cosplay and provide some picture examples where I can.

The first step that you always need to make is choosing your cosplay. This may sound like a simple step, “I love random anime character from random anime, so I’m going to cosplay him/her.” Well folks, it’s really not that simple most of the time. There are a lot of aspects that you need to consider before making your definitive choice. Though I will say that choosing a character that you know and love is important. If you just choose a random character that you don’t know much about simply because you like their outfit or hair or some other detail, then it wont really be as fun for you to play that character and you wont get a lot of references that people will make about the character.

So, after you pick a character that you think you want to cosplay the next thing you need to consider is, can you make it? What level of difficulty are you capable of sewing/crafting and will you have the time to do it? I’ve seen plenty of cosplays where people have simply hot-glued strips of fabric onto shirts, used markers to try and draw on details, or just bought clothing/items that looked kind of similar to what they needed. That kind of cosplay just looks tacky. So right up front you should know if you can make it and if you have enough time to make it. Putting together a complete cosplay can take quite some time and you want to make sure you have it done before the convention you plan to go to.

*Lina Inverse from Slayers has an moderately detailed costume as well as large shoulder armor and a cape, creating her outfit would take a good bit of effort and skill.

Lina Inverse from Slayers

*Kiki form Kiki's Delivery Service has a simple costume that can could be created by someone with minimal sewing knowledge. And you can play it up by adding accessories to make yourself easily recognizable, like carrying around a broom and plush black cat.

Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service

After you decide that you can create the cosplay you’ve chosen then you have to consider the next most important factor, can you afford to make it? Even if you have the skill to create a detailed costume or craft yourself some armor, that doesn’t mean its going to be cheap. You should consider how much the materials are going to cost including: fabric, thread, zippers, buttons, shoes, fabric glue, paint, accessories, and everything else you might need. Also, don’t forget to include the cost of a wig if you’re getting one. Once you know you can afford it all you should make sure that you'll be able to get all the supplies you need. Check local fabric and crafting stores to see if they have what you need and if they don't then you can go online to search for other supplies.

Some other things to consider when your choosing your cosplay are: Will it look good on you? Will you look like the character? And, is the outfit allowed at the convention your going to? If you’re a tall, tan, girl with large breast then cosplaying a pale young girl just wont make sense, right? Finding a character that you can look somewhat like and whose outfit will look good on you makes the whole event more enjoyable. Also, many conventions have very specific rules about what kind of costumes and accessories you’re allowed to wear/have. We all know that many anime characters skimpy/sexy outfits so find out right away how much skin you’re allowed to show at the convention. You don’t want to do all that hard work creating a cosplay just to get kicked out as soon as you get there. And if your character carries a weapon make sure to check policies about that as well. Even if they’re just made out of cardboard some conventions wont allow any weapons to be carried around, while others just have a “keep it in a holster and don’t swing it around wildly” policy. 

Well, that's about all I have to say on choosing a cosplay. If you have any questions feel free to ask, and remember to have fun with the character you choose.

Next Post: Conceptualize Your Cosplay

Magic the Gathering: New Phyrexia

Anyone who is an active player of Magic the Gathering should know that the next set, New Phyrexia, will be out very soon. Launch Parties for the new set will be the weekend of May 13-16, that’s less than two weeks away as of today. Of course I’m excited to see lots of new cards but I’m not sure how excited I am about seeing even more creatures with Infect. Personally, I just don’t like going up against it. In the new set it seems like every color will have creatures with Infect. This will add to the range of different types of Infect decks that players can create which will make things interesting and probably means that everyone will be carrying around poison counters.

Right now I play a Red deck full of goblins and a few artifacts. I have a lot of small cost little creatures and I use creatures with Battlecry to boost them all up. Looking over New Phyrexia I didn’t see any Goblins and there were no Red creatures with Battlecry. (IF I missed any then please let me know.) I was rather disappointed with that but it just means that I’ll have to try a new kind of deck. I’m thinking that a Red deck with Infect could be pretty nasty if it was quick enough. Use the instant and sorceries to get rid of your opponent’s creatures and then attack them directly for Poison Counters, which would go faster than attacking for Life Points because they only need to get 10 Poison Counters to lose the game.

The last thing I’d like to mention are some of my favorite cards from New Phyrexia at this time.

Mindcrank: Artifact. Cost 2 colorless. “Whenever an opponent losses life, that player puts that many cards from the top of his or her library into his or her graveyard.”

–Now that’s adding insult to injury. It’s cheap and its mean.

Shrine of Burning Rage: Artifact. Cost 2 colorless. “At the beginning of your upkeep or whenever you cast a red spell, put a charge counter on Shrine of Burning Rage.”

Pay 3 colorless and tap: “Sacrifice Shrine of Burning Rage: Shrine of Burning Rage deals damage equal to the number of charge counters on it to target creature or player.”

-A cheap card and those counters could add up fairly quickly if you play your cards right, you should be able to get atleast 2 counters per turn or more if you couple it with something like Surge Node.

Surge Node: Artifact. Cost 1 colorless. “Surge Node enters the battlefield with 6 charge counters on it.”

Pay 1 colorless and tap: “Remove a charge counter from Surge Node: Put a charge counter on target artifact.”

-Another cheap card with a fun ability.

Well, that' all I have to say for now. I'd like to talk more about New Phyrexia in the future after I get a chance to see the cards in action. Below are the links to information on the new set and an image library of the new cards.

>New Phyrexia Prerelease Primer
>Card Image Library