Mosaic Fragments

Oh shit. Someone came out with an awesome Sima Shi.

Good thing I'd already gotten over my idea of cosplaying him.

Maybe I'll be inspired to do someone in one of the shows I'm watching right now. If not, preparing for the karaoke contest will probably keep my hands full anyway.

Man, time really flies. I guess I should post about Fanime before it all slips away...

It was a pretty chill con, so there's not a whole not to report. Compared to Yaoi-Con, when I was just running around from guest event to guest event, there wasn't a rigid schedule I had to follow at Fanime. I did go to a couple panels, but not really of the pure "fan" type: Awesomely Bad J-Pop Music Videos, the comedy club, Whose Line Is It Fanime. They were all quite good, but they were all in the evening, so didn't affect schedule much.

During the day, it was really just a bunch of wandering the dealers room and artist alley, multiple times each. And spotting cosplayers. And dropping in on random video rooms when our feet got tired. The only thing that was scheduled was the photoshoots. Also, somehow we could never manage to get to the con earlier than about 10 or 11, no matter how early we got up.

So I don't really have that many takeaways. It was a fun con, and another great masquerade year -- though it's a little discouraging that you almost have to be good at choreography/dancing to have a good skit. Not that I'd ever be in the masquerade.

One downer to the masquerade, which I might as well get out of the way: they told me at the door that I had to leave my staff under one of the tables outside of the auditorium. When I lifted the tablecloth to find a place to put it, the area was full of all sorts of random crap -- strollers, wall scrolls, and other people's long props. I had serious misgivings about leaving my staff there, but I tried to tuck it in the back in hopes that it would be spared. When I took it out, everything seemed fine at first. Then when I started to raise it, the red globe fell out and shattered on the floor. That kind of sucked, but at least I have plenty more where that one came from. But I realized later that there is actually a serious crack in one of the upper prongs, where it's pure papier-mache. To fix it, I'll probably have to sand off all the paint, and possibly several layers of newspaper, and then redo the whole section. All this, when if they'd just told me in advance, I could have gone and left my staff in the car.

So yeah, that still bums me out a lot every time I think about it. I try not to, especially since I'm retiring the Xellos cosplay indefinitely anyway. Maybe I'll never have to deal with it.

Don't get me wrong, I love my Xellos cosplay. Even if I had to wear glasses this time, and ended up not having a chance to get white gloves. I'm proud of how the whole thing turned out. And I think maybe I got slightly more recognition this time. Also, as shown in my pictures, we found another Xellos. I guess there are always two of us. :]

But I think two years is about right for a costume. Xellos is a classic, so I bet I could go back to it down the road, but not for a couple years at least.

So, window-shopping, photoshoots and random cosplay, and witty performances. I think that sums up the con.

Oh, we did watch the best videos of 2011 from AMV.org, which were pretty good. Even the serious ones. And there were some awesome comedy ones, like Every Anime Opening Ever Made (which kind of loses steam, and may be laugh-out-loud funny only in group settings, but which I think is still worth mention) and the dangerously addictive Fast Food Song (sorry, I really can't find an original video).

And while I'm posting videos, as I mentioned there were lots of great masquerade skits. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but here's a sampling:
Portal - Amazingly well put-together, even though I didn't recognize it at first.
Team Obsidian - Just a fun little Pokemon skit.
The Hungry Cosplayers - An example of what I meant when I said you have to be good at choreography/dancing. I enjoyed the skit, but I wasn't sure I recognized the series until halfway through.
And, of course, the martial arts Avatar skit.

...okay, rewatching them now on YouTube, I realize that there were just a ton of really good skits this year, so you should just go watch them all. I remember now: the majority of the first ten made no sense, but after that it was great.

I had a soft spot for the Sengoku Basara skits, as well as Sengoku Basara cosplayers, since that was one series I'd picked up since my last Fanime. Actually, I started watching it because Okiayu-sama mentioned it at Yaoi-Con. Apparently it was his one cosplay experience, for some promotional event. Of all the awesome roles he has that he could dress up as, he had to be . . . Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Ugh. And I went into the series knowing that Okiayu-sama didn't show up until season two and really wasn't that major a role in terms of speaking time. But it turned out to be a very fun series that I enjoyed a lot. Completely silly and ridiculous, but fun. I have to mention two of the skits. The first one because they capture Sanada's delivery and Masamune's random English catchphrases so amazingly well. "Here we go!" XD And the second one because it really is pretty witty, whatever you think about the ending. (I think DateSana is blah, but you can't beat the enthusiasm of squealing fujoshi.)

So I know that was totally disjointed, but that's what I remember of Fanime right now. I was going to include thoughts about next year's Fanime -- since I'm going to be working downtown, I might as well go -- but I think I'll save that for another post. And thus I will slowly train myself to post regularly again . . . or something.

Fanime 2008 | Fanime 2007

Highlights from '08 include:

Tons of Phoenix Wright pictures, starting here.

Tons of Dynasty Warriors (different groups), starting here. I guess 5 was a big hit. (Not like 6...)

Silly poses from the Final Fantasy VII gathering, starting here. And by "Final Fantasy VII" I mean, "90% Advent Children".

A. oryzae.

The best fake-out ever.

And dude, there was this awesome Lina that I'd forgotten about. Why didn't she come this year? ;_;

As for '07, I only went for one day and wasn't really focused on taking pictures, so I can't say there are highlights per se. But there was Hard Gay.

I have to say, of all the cons I have been to, Fanime 2009 was probably the one I enjoyed the most. Looking back at my comments on the previous two Fanimes, it's kind of hard to tell what was different. Maybe it was just the cosplay. Maybe there were subtle changes in operations. Maybe it was the realization that, even though Fanime guests are obscure and tangential to my interests, they are generally cool, amusing people. But whatever it was, it worked.

( Panel fail. )

( Masquerade win. )

( Cosplay win. )

( Random remainders. )

And that's Fanime 2009!

I really think Fanime hit its sweet spot this year. Enough people and things going to have constant excitement but not so crowded or busy as to be overwhelming. I'm afraid that it will soon pass critical mass and become "line con", but for this year at least, it was good.

[Pictures forthcoming, I promise. It's hard to juggle the rest of my life with bar review classes -- I had to write most of this post over the course of several lunch breaks. *sigh*]

ETA: Masquerade video links! Kuroshitsuji and Pokémon.

( Pics. )

Sadly, there was no Slayers revival from Revolution and Evolution-R. I saw one other Xellos, and that was it for Slayers cosplay today. Also, many people did not recognize me, which is sad. (A group of people told me they thought I was from dot Hack. *facepalm*) BUT! Everyone who did recognize me was very excited about it, and I got glomped on several separate occasions. Forget counting picture requests; I have never cosplayed anyone that made people randomly run up and hug you. :D

One of said girls who glomped me said she would cosplay Filia tomorrow. I'm hoping to find her and do some action poses together. I hope she has a mace, though I doubt it.

Also, posing with the other Xellos was fun. I felt like our costumes complemented each other in what parts we had ghettoed and which parts we had tried to do faithfully. He had a nice wig (though, like almost all Xellos wigs I have ever seen in pictures online, I thought the purple was a little too bright) and the white gloves. But I don't think his cape was lined, and I think my foam sheets and polymer clay broach thing looked better than his cardboard and foam one. Anyway, I'll have that picture later and you can compare. Sadly, he said he wouldn't be Xellos tomorrow, so he will not have the benefit of Filia.

So that was Fanime Day 2 as far as my cosplaying was concerned. Report on everything else later. Though I will say now that the masquerade was quite excellent.

Man, cosplay is hard work. I feel like I haven't done anything but costuming all week. It's not true, but that's how it feels. Every day when I wake up, the first thing I do is check on my staff on the back patio. Maybe because of that, it's the most finished part of my costume. I felt a little behind and rushed earlier today, but I got a lot of stuff done, and I think I'm in decent shape.

But oh god, the yellow and red border on the cloak is the devil. I knew this from the day the notion of Xellos cosplay crept into my head, but the reality is almost worse than I imagined. I've kind of gone back and forth on that. First came the realization that the little drapey part of the cloak (which will hereinafter be known as the "tea cozy", because that is how I made it based on a cosplay forum's recommendation) is not flat on the bottom. It looks flat when draped, which means it's actually an arc. Which killed my first two bright notions for the lining: ribbon or fabric. I think fabric is do-able, but probably quite painful. So, also on advice of said forum, I decided to paint it on.

The recurring theme of this project is "who knew a little one ounce bottle could go so far?" The thing is, I know nothing about paints. Not what goes on what material, not which ones are safe to get all over your skin, not which ones eat styrofoam, not which ones wash off with water and which ones don't. And, because I don't understand paints, I don't trust them either. (I know, I'm such a bigot.) Every time I pick up my staff, some part of my braces for all of the color to come off onto my hand. I've done this a few times now and am mostly sure that is not going to happen, but I still handle it very gingerly. I guess it's another reason not to wear gloves.

Anyways, going back to the fabric paint... I really seriously thought it was not going to last halfway around the tea cozy. It took so much paint to cover such a little bit of fabric. Today I painted enough to reassure myself that I wouldn't need more acrylics, but I decided that I would need another bottle of yellow fabric paint. That bottle is now sitting happy and unopened next to the first bottle, which still has some life in it yet. It's not like it was super-expensive or anything, but it's kind of annoying. And I don't really want to return another bottle of fabric paint. Because I'm having a different kind of issue with the red. Which is to say, I don't believe the red color I want exists. Maybe it's a chemical thing, y'know, no pigment that is compatible with the fabric paint base. But seriously, I can understand that the first bottle I bought, being called "berry red" or something, would be too much on the pink side. But this time I got "scarlet pearl". I chose it over the "crimson" one because it was a little darker. What do you want to bet the "crimson" one is perfect? But I'm not going to go and find out. The scarlet will do. But it may need a double coat of yellow underneath. So I might still need that extra bottle. Probably not, but maybe, and it saved me stressing out about running out, so I guess I should say it was worth it. But I still can't believe it lasted the second coat, too. Even though the second coat was so much easier than the first.

So now that I've answered the first two questions I posed previously (paint or sew the border? paint. gloves? no.), I guess I should keep going. [Before that, an additional note on the gloves: while not wanting them to turn brown from holding the staff is also a concern, I mainly decided not to have them because I don't want to sacrifice the dexterity in a situation where I'll be continually fumbling for my camera, money, the schedule, etc. Also, they'd be expensive, I bet. And after a minor fiasco in fabric-buying, I am feeling kind of penny-pinching.]

So the red jewel-y things. I think I had those as number two on the "this will suck" list, after the yellow border. But several forum posters were blithely assuring that any craft store would have them. Fat chance. After a long search, I did find some jewel-y things that were transparent red and shiny, except they were faceted, they were half the size I needed, and they came in a $15 variety pack of 200 other jewel-y things. So I finally gave in and bought a $2 block of polymer modeling clay instead. That worked out quite well, I must say. [I took a few in-progress photos of various things, which I will post eventually.]

This project really has been an adventure in different media. Papier mache, clay, foam sheets, fabric... I'm amazed I've been able to handle them all. Back in the day, my sister and I played with polymer clay a bit, but no matter what we did we always managed to burn part of our creations. So I was kind of worried about that this time, but both my test piece and the actual ones turned out fine. Now I just have to hope that plain white glue will hold it to the foam. Glues are another thing about which I know nothing.

I am also glad I took sewing in junior high. Though I really need to sew more. For all my boasting about experience making cloaks for Ditch Day, that was the last time I touched a sewing machine, and having to relearn how to use one every single time gets a little old. But although a lot of sewing is intuitive, there are little tricks that I never would have figured out but for sewing class. Like cutting little notches in the edges that curve outward, so when you turn them in they won't scrunch up. Or pinking edges so they don't fray. (Though I'm still a bit of a skeptic on how effective that really is.)

And then there's papier mache. I think of all the media I'm working with, it's my favorite. For all my lamenting last time, I did get the staff to look pretty good. And it just surprises me every time how strong newsprint and flour can be. How versatile the shapes you can make. And it's just such a simple and easy to understand process. The only downside being all the rubbing I have to do to get the crusted paste off my hands afterwards. Given all the chemistry I took in undergrad, I probably shouldn't be saying this, but if it started out as just powder and water, why doesn't the water wash it away?

Anyway, I should go make the yellow sashes now. I've kind of forgotten I need them, which won't do.

So last night, figuring I wouldn't have time to go through the Hawaii pictures, I played with LJ's gallery by uploading some older pictures I'd been meaning to share. This ended up taking a long time in itself, and then I spent several hours reading Gokusen... -- but anyways, the point is that there are now 3 galleries of old pictures for you to peruse, with the Hawaii pictures still forthcoming. ^^;;

First, I put up some more pictures from our trip to Europe here, which aren't the same as the ones in my original entry.

Similarly, I put up some pictures up here from our earlier bus trip to Yellowstone, which also included other places in the southwest -- or whatever you call the area -- including Zion and Bryce Canyon. Someday, I will also repost the journal entry I wrote back then, which had mini-collages of many more pictures than I put in the gallery.

Last of all, I finally put up pictures from various conventions in a gallery called Cosplay. For some reason, I decided not to scale down any of these pictures as I did the other ones. [In case the subjects want them . . . or something . . . I don't know. ._.] But yeah, there's lots of coolness there, including the awesome UCLA Bleach cosplay, Shounen Bat, Sakaki being bitten by Kamineko, and more. :D

P.S. The travel galleries, including the Hawaii one, are flocked for reasons of nonspecific paranoia. I'll probably post some non-locked highlights in the entry, though, so no worries.