SpringFest 2011

Super late post. It is finally spring! Even though it doesn't look like it outside.. But here is my SpringFest report!

I went to SpringFest 2011 in Polytechnic NYU on March 12th. I wore my Hatsune Miku costume because I couldn't finish Yuna on time and she's my favorite character in Final Fantasy so where was a bare minimum of what I would have to complete to debut her, and I couldn't reach it. So I wore Miku instead!

I had my drawing class so I didn't get to go to SpringFest until afterwards. I met up with my friends, ~kadishu and ~Richumaru. I went to the Cosplay Contest/Meet up and met up with ~Kitsune-Intoxicated who was hosting it. Andrew from Conpics, and my friends, *knight28, ~GI10, *TheBigTog were there. There were a lot of people! Andrew and a few other people said I should join the contest, and I had nothing better to do so I did.

I ended up winning first place in Craftsmanship. The contest was a casual event and scheduled very last minute so there were no prizes, which wasn't much of an issue to me. But.. Miku is SO popular. Haha the crowd went wild, even though I was in her 'Magnet' form.

Afterwards I was interviewed by ~OutOfTimeProductions. Since I got there late, SpringFest was pretty much over after that. So that concluded my day. My friends and I went out to dinner afterwards.

All in all I had a good time. I'll definitely attend again next year if I am able to. Hopefully I'll get to venture around the rest of the convention next time!

Here is the interview!

Miku Hatsune

Name: Miku Hatsune/初音ミク

Appearance: Vocaloid 2

Variation: "Magnet"

Height: 5'3"

Description: The first product in the Vocaloid2 Vocal Series. It is considered as the most popular and well known Vocaloid. The name of the title and the character of the software was chosen by combining Hatsu (初, first), Ne (音, sound), and Miku (未来, future) thus meaning "the first sound from the future."

Worn at: Northern NJ Cosplay Picnic 2010, Tokyo Fashion Festa Part 2: Cosplay

Why I chose this costume: 

This one is an interesting story as well. My friend uploaded a picture of a pink wig for her Kururu from Air Gear cosplay and I told her it reminded me of Luka Megurine from Vocaloid. Somewhere in the conversation I suggested doing a Vocaloid group cosplay, and we ended up choosing the song "Magnet," because the outfits were the easiest. I was originally unsure if I should be Miku or Rin, but then I ended up choosing Miku so my friend and I could cosplay together. 

Mechanics of the outfit: 

I already had a black dress, so I used that as a base. For the waistband, I took a piece of white cotton (I want to say) bought some black floral lace. Then I realized that I was supposed to buy white floral lace.. But I had already asked the worker there to cut the fabric so I had to work with it. I sewed the black lace onto the cotton to create a waistband. I had originally pinned it, but I realized (since I made the waistband for my Luka) that the waistband would droop, so I'm going to lightly bast it on the dress (since neither of us want it to be permanent).

The hardest part was the headphones. I used this Youtube video tutorial as a guide. I'm going to post an actual tutorial for this later on. The contact lenses are Dolly Blue.

For the wig, I originally wanted to put pigtails in the wig, but I realized I couldn't make high pigtails without stubbing it. I also realized there's another costume I could use this wig with that I wanted to do, so I didn't want to end up chopping off the hair. I didn't buy one with pigtails because I didn't want to spend that much money to use on one cosplay, and there aren't many costumes with just short blue hair. So I just left the hair the way it was. More information on the wig can be seen here.

Personal Feelings:

I had fun with this costume. I don't think I'll do Vocaloid for a while though haha. It's very popular right now, and I tend not to pick costumes that are super popular because then everyone else is cosplaying them as well. There aren't too many Vocaloid ones that I actually want to do. The only outfits that I really love is from "Sandplay: Singing of the Dragon." For more images, check out my deviantArt!

The images are copyrighted to their respective owners.  © TheBigTog, Carroll Kong, and Andrew Baka

ReVamp (3/4/11)

I don't know why I said in my earlier post that I don't think I'd ever cosplay Vocaloid again. After listening to more songs.. I would definitely cosplay Vocaloid again! Anyways, here is the revamped version. Almost everything was revamped.

The wig was borrowed from my friend, Kitsy Dolly. The hat and headphones remained the same. New dress, same shoes, and the gloves and stockings were borrowed. The images are the same as the ones from my other post from Tokyo Fashion Festa.

2010 Northern New Jersey Cosplay Picnic

On August 14th, I went to the 2010 Northern New Jersey Cosplay Picnic in Chatham, New Jersey. The picnic was held at Passaic River County Park. It was held by the lovely Tanya Wheelock and her sister Autumn Wheelock. Where do I begin to describe this experience..

This was the first cosplay picnic I have ever attended. Overall, it was a lot of fun! It was only a small group of people, so it wasn't too bad. Getting there was probably the worst. There is no address for the place. The main road you take winds around. It took us at least.. half an hour of getting lost?

But all in all I had a blast! I invited my photographer friend I met at AnimeNEXT, TheBigTog. If you remember, he shot my [first] Tifa Lockhart photoshoot. ^^ Anyways, I did two photoshoots. The first, my friend (the Hiei from AnimeNEXT) wanted to do a "shipping" photoshoot for Hiei and Kurama. So I went to the picnic dressed as Kurama.

Then after the photoshoot was done, I debuted Miku Hatsune from Vocaloid, with her outfit from "Magnet," while my friend cosplayed as Luka Megurine. We debuted the headphones and waistband that I made ^^ I will be making a tutorial for the headphones soon!

After I did my Miku x Luka photoshoot, I just hung around with everyone and we went our separate ways. I made a bunch of new friends ^^ I had fun haha. Will definitely go next year if there is another one. I'm going to upload some photos from the two photoshoots in a different post. I had Miku shot a few times by several different photographers, but I think I'm only going to upload the ones TheBigTog photographed on Blogspot. For the others, check out my deviantArt!

2011 Cosplay Plans Update

Soo my cosplay plans changed a little. I'm still doing Yuna, Ringo, and Miku. I may not do Ciel Phantomhive anymore. I decided not to because Black Butler is still very popular so there will be 9483578495 Kuroshitsuji cosplayers.. I'd rather be one of the few people cosplaying a certain character. It's more fun that way haha. If there are so many of the same cosplay, unless yours is one of the best of them all, it'll just be looking at the same thing. So I have 3 new ideas. I also figure that if I go to Otakon next year, I need 3 epic cosplays xD

One is Zhen Ji from Dynasty Warriors 6. She's one of the few female characters you can actually play in the game. She resides in the Kingdom of Cao, and her husband is Cao Pi. (hehe one of my favorite male characters) She's one of my favorite female characters. Sun Shang Xiang being my first of course.

Anyways, I was on Skype with one of my friends I met from AnimeNEXT. Somehow we got to the topic of Dynasty Warriors 6. He wanted to cosplay as Cao Pi and I said I'd cosplay as Zhen Ji (I like her outfit anyways ^^).

So we're going to do that for Otakon 2011, unless my other two cosplays I have planned fall through, then AnimeNEXT 2011!

The next cosplay idea I have is a Sakura one from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles. I have to finish reading that actually.. But the storyline breaks my heart, even though I partially know what happens in the end, but still! I love the idea of a Sakura x Syaoran storyline.

This one is in the making actually, I'll most likely have this one for AnimeNEXT as well. I already began making the dress portion of it last night for no reason xD I just wanted to see if I could actually do it.

It's actually coming out pretty decent actually. It's long and flowy :D The only problem I have is that.. I didn't use a pattern when I made it. I sort of took a piece of fabric and started snipping and sewing away. Soo.. we'll see how it comes out in the end! ^^ If it works, I'll use it, if not, then I won't.



Last but not least! I wanted to do another cosplay, where the character had sort of a baby face or looked like a child. Mainly because.. I'll only look like a 12 year old for so long xDD Don't worry I'm not that young.. but I get that a lot hahaa, so I figure do all the children looking one before my face matures and I don't look like that anymore..

So I decided to do a Chii cosplay. I've always wanted to cosplay as Chii. There's one Chii cosplay that I make, it's my dream cosplay. But! My skill level isn't there yet.. So I don't want to make it at the moment. This is her from Tsubasa Chronicles, hence the animal-like ears. I'm probably just going to do her persocom ears.

As sad as it is to say, this is one of her simpler ones xD I love a lot of her other outfits, but they're lolita-esque, so many of them are poofy, and I don't really know how to make the cosplay round like that.. And it doesn't help that I don't have a dress form either.. D: There is one other one I really want to do, but the way the picture is drawn, it makes no sense.

I really love this one, I like the idea of Chii as a princess, she looks really cute and elegant. But! This would only make sense to me if the opening was in the front, but the way the picture is drawn, it's open in the back. That and if it were opened that way, you can't have a petticoat. Without a petticoat, the dress wouldn't poof. Without a poof, it wouldn't be much of a princess dress.

If I can figure out how to do this one then I will. ^^ Oh CLAMP.. You and your gravity defying clothing.. >< But yeah.. these are my new cosplay plans.. So I'll end up having to do.. 6 cosplays next year?? o_O

I'm hoping to finish Yuna before next weekend.. Miku is pretty much done. Ringo is an easy one. Then there's these three.. xD Zhen Ji will probably be the hardest. Sakura, I pretty much have the base dress done. Chii.. I may just do a circle dress for the one.. Not sure yet..haha

eBay Wig Review: superoutlet-2009

I needed a wig for a Miku Hatsune "Magnet" cosplay. My friend and I are going to cosplay as Miku x Luka from Vocaloid 2 for this cosplay picnic next weekend. I was basically frantically searching for a wig last week because sometimes shipping takes around 2 weeks, more so because the wigs I tend to like are overseas in Asia.

I debated on getting a straight wig to put pigtails in (probably not the best idea) or to just buy the wig in the pigtails by itself (usually sold as a combination of a short wig and long pigtail clips). The issue with the latter is it would be more expensive, almost double the cost of a straight wig. I fell in love with this particular wig.

I pieced together some pictures from the product page. Usually when I buy wigs, I want to make sure they are heat resistant. You never know when you need to straighten/curl a wig.

This is the reference picture on the right. It's always a little tricky with Miku wigs, because in some songs, her hair is a darker or lighter shades than other songs.

Looking back on it, I sort of wish I got this one for only 45$ + free shipping. But a partial reason I didn't want to get it was because I don't know many cosplays with a bob haircut in that particular color. And what would I do with blue colored pigtails by itself anyways?

Anyways, I had a positive experience with this seller. I ordered on July 25th, they shipped it the next day. I received it on August 2nd, so I got it within a week ^^ The shipping on eBay said 1-2 weeks.

I really love the quality and color of the wig. I didn't receive a wig cap like they said would come with it (as a free gift). But I already had a wig cap prior to this so it wasn't a huge deal for me. I won't go complain about it xD The one thing I was more interested in getting was the wig brush which I'm glad I have. It's so much easier to comb a wig now.

The quality is not bad. I'm not sure what type of fibers they use, because they don't list it. But it has sort of a chalky feeling, if that makes any sense. It doesn't feel like real hair like my red Kurama wig did. I wish I could upload a photo of me wearing it, but my camera makes the wig color look blue.

Rating: ★★★☆☆/ 3.5 out of 5.

Pros:
- Fair quality
- Shipped quickly
- Wonderful color, matches image
- Heat resistant
- Comes with a wig brush [and wig cap]

Cons:
- No tracking number
- Didn't receive a wig cap
- Has that synthetic feel

Price: 22.69$+9.99$ shipping = 32.68$
Item Location: South Korea

Would I purchase from them again? That's debatable. I didn't like the feel of it, and it tangles easily. I would have to really really love the color and not have been able to find it somewhere else. The wig color I received is not as bright as the one in the reference image, but it'd probably look be better in a brighter light. And you can't expect the color to be 100% exact as the image on the screen xD

If you wish to purchase this wig, search "GREEN BLUE Long straight cosplay party wig B207 F7G" in the eBay search bar, or look through superoulet-2009's eBay profile.

EDIT: This wig I received looks greenish blue, however for some reason, it photographs blue! Here is the post I made for the costume.