blackwellcosplay

[blackwellcosplay]

Week 11

My overall mood is 'mild panic'. But everyrhing is going well, objectively.

Dyed socks! I think I managed to get a really close match!

The telephone prop is painted and weathered and has already survived many many rounds of skit rehearsals. I love how much it looks like a Barbie or Polly Pocket toy.

The new gem is resin cast and painted with nail polish on the back. The attachment is made from a paper clip. When I glued the resin gem to the foam I also glued in some pieces of thick thread. Then I sewed those to the gold cord and added hot glue to make it super secure.

The chest is aaaalmost done! As I'm typing this up, I'm still debating wether to stay up late, so I can paint the gold parts tonight.

I originally planned to paint the chest with airbrush... but there's something wrong with the airbrush I ordered and I have absolutetly no idea how to fix it. I don't know anything about airbrush... so I made the switch to acrylics and a wiiide brush and I'm so happy with that descision. The wide brush made quick work of the giant chest, I managed to get 2 coats on in 5 hours? Drying time included?

I'm also still sticking to my plan to practise for my skit every day, and that does wonders for my horrible stage fright. I am still super nervous! But I also feel like... I can probably do this!

(Also... still working on priming the scissor blade. Taking it slow and being extra careful really pays off, it's looking so smooth and shiny! I'm really looking forward to the finished blade.)

(Aaaand I got a new, simple, quick.... cosplan for LBM. We'll see...)

[blackwellcosplay]

Week 10

This week was off to a very good start! I managed to get into two competitions, both preliminaries for DCM! First one, AniMUC, will be just a month after LBM, so we'll see how that goes... if I don't place, I'll have another chance in August, in Magdeburg at Contaku.

But first, prep for LBM continues.

The giant cardboard chest got covered in foam. The handles and the lid are glued and then reinforced with a cord and two flat pvc pieces with holes drilled into them.

I dyed some socks. The first three I did with Simplycol, which came out dull and with a very slight tinge of blue, even though i used pink, red, and yellow. I suspect the pink has some blue hues in it. For the next three I used Kreul pink and yellow, but I didn't quite get it right. First pair came out too red and too dark, second pair too light, and then I managed to fuck up the third... It was the perfect brightness and needed just a touch more of the yellow. But when I put it in the yellow dye bath, of course a lot of the pink bled out! Stupid.

I'll try again tomorrow. Look at them in the daylight and decide what to do... (The last photo here was taken at night, and the camera just can't get the colors right. There'll hopefully be a better photo next week)

I also spent a lot of time practising my skit. The kinds of movements that look good on stage are very different from how I move my body in real life. Now that I noticed that, I'm feeling extremely self-conscious... not a great feeling. But of course I'll push through. I'll just keep practising.

Once again, it's a week that ends with a lot of open tasks. I hate this, but I know it means next week will be a good one, because I get to finish a lot of tasks! That' always lifts my mood.

[blackwellcosplay]

Week 9

Things are looking much better! I got a lot done this week.

Alastor's staff is DONE! I think it looks really nice and I'm happy with it.

My habit of cardboard hoarding finally paid off. I turned the packaging from our dining table into the base of this giant chest. Will be covered in foam next week.

And another prop for my skit is almost done. Telephone is ready for priming and painting. Couldn't find a spiral cable at the store so I bought a second hand phone on Kleinanzeigen and used it for parts.

Background for the skit is coming along and will be done tomorrow?? Aaah! I really enjoy playing around in Fusion by now.

And finally. Scissor blade has made her comeback. Once again, she's almost ready for priming. I'll make no mistakes this time, fingers crossed.

Tomorrow applications will open for another contest. That's the one I really wanted to do, before I decided I should try out what being on stage feels like. So now I'll do one contest in 3 weeks and hopefully another contest 4 weeks after that!

I'm so excited for the new week! Good things ahead, I hope!

[blackwellcosplay]

Week 8

There's so many things to do, and I'm not feeling good about anything at the moment. I could really use the feeling of finishing something.

This week I recorded all the voice lines for my skit, and I'm almost done with putting it together, adding music and sound effects. I only need to fix some minor loudness issues.

I also started on the background video. Same here, base is done, it would work the way it is. Buuut I want to add a few effects. I don't really want to spend too much time here, because there is so much left to do.

I'm ALSO almost done with Alastor's staff. Most of the pieces are painted.

I really hope I'll finish all of this in the coming week. And more... there's so little time! Ah!

[blackwellcosplay]

Week 7

My duelist pin is almost done. I bought a cheap fabric rose at Ikea (ok I bought 3, in case I messed up - and I did), cut the petals shorter, built the center out of the scraps und formed the petals with the help of a hair straightener and hot glue. A little worbla loop holds the rose in place on the brooch. Only thing missing is a bit of gold paint and an actual pin to attach it to the jacket.

Mitsuri's katana is done! I'm so happy! The pink parts are all made from the shiny fabric I used for the blade. For the engraving I printed out the mirrored kanji, carefully sketched them onto the wrong side of the fabric, painted a pearl white gradient on the right side, and then cut it all out and glued it on with fabric glue. The paint isn't meant for fabric and cracks when stretched but this part of the blade won't stretch, so it doesn't really matter.

To make Utena contest ready I glued black felt to the underside of the epaulettes. It's wrinkly but a lot neater than the previous hot glue mess. Ventricosus wears it well.

I also hemmed the holo chiffon skirt. It's 3 circle skirts so doing a rolled hem on that whole situation was out of the question. I had tried to hem it with tacky glue before, which stopped the fraying but did not look neat at all. I searched for transparent iron on hem tape but couldn't find any. Instead I bought super strong tesa tape. The reviews said it was a bit stretchy, and I thought maybe it could go around my curved seams. I took my time to figure this out, because it lost some curve definition after stretching and glueing. I cut it into 1 cm strips, taped it onto my cutting mat in a much tighter curve than I needed and when I took it off the cutting mat it relaxed just into the right curve for my hem! I taped it all around my skirt and cut off the outermost edge to make it look super neat!

Another prop for my contest skit is coming together. I'm really trying to make it fast and ignore my perfectionism with this one. I'll only use it for this one skit, so... it's really only important that it's recognizable... (I'm struggling so much with my perfectionism getting in the way of getting things done)

I started recording the voiceover for my skit. This was so weird and cringe?? I was so self conscious while recording. Listening to my takes afterwards, I could tell I got more comfortable about halfway trough. I still have some recording to do, I hope it gets easier. Finally, I built this little chest mock up. The final version will be slightly bigger :D

And now for the sad part. Scissor blade continues to be my worst nightmare. It got 3 to 4 layers of primer. I use flexbond, and I had forgotten that you can smooth it out with a wet finger. So the blade looked really lumpy bumpy after 4 coats. I then tried to sand the primer! Which was a horrible idea! It did not work great, but it took me 3 days of sanding to realize I was digging my hole in the wrong place (digging deeper isn't going to help). I finally made the decision to peel off all the primer and start over. Unfortunately the primer also took off most of my filler which I had worked so hard on the previous week.

Scissor blade has been banished to the closet to think about what she has done. I need a break. I'll resume working on it maybe next week? There's enough other stuff to do, so we'll see.

I was super bummed out about this, but typing out and adding photos of all I have accomplished this week really lifts my spirits. This tumblr was a good idea. :)

[blackwellcosplay]

Week 6

I spent a lot of time working on my cosplay props, but I don't have too much to show for it. But! Sanding is done!! Finally! I can't believe it took me one whole week. This is the first time that I thought maybe 3D printing would've been easier and faster. Don't have a 3D printer, though.

Also, what's that on Mitsuri's blade??

It's what I call a sword sock!

Made from stretchy fabric in shiny black and pink! It's only glued to the blade at the top so it doesn't inhibit sword floppiness :D (and then I covered it in cling film so it stays clean)

Priming has begun. I'm looking forward to the new week, things will go so much faster from now on!

[blackwellcosplay]

Week 5

The battery cover on Marcille's staff didn't work. It warped while drying. I don't want to deal with it.

Scissor blade is sanded as best as I can do it. Now I smother it in Kwik Seal to smooth it out. I hate this step. Because I'm really bad at it.

It never turns out remotely smooth so...

...I spend literal DAYS sanding it down again and it still does not look great. It was not a good week for Scissor Blade.

But Mitsuri's katana is almost done! The blade needs an edge and then I can start priming. But I haven't yet decided if I should use the dremel or a box cutter with an angle attachment to cut the edge. Don't want this to go wrong. The silver lining is, this won't really need any Kwik Seal, yay!

I do not enjoy being micromanaged, but it helps SO MUCH, so Tobi took on the thankless task of micromanageing me working on my competition skit and props. And it works, I put some nice check marks on some tasks! Go, me!

This week was... not good. There were some accomplishments, but they are overshadowed by so much stuff not going my way.

Next week will be better!

[blackwellcosplay]

Week 4

Fixed the back of the staff. I need the battery pack to be accessible. It's not the prettiest, but I'm fine with it like this. It's held in place by magnets.

Started on one of the props for my skit for LBM. I want to cosplay a certain version of Ryuko (not for LBM but hopefully later this year), that's why I'm trying to make the scissor blade look as polished as possible. Volpin props made a crazy good one and I'm looking at photos of it while working on my version.

Once the layers of foam are glued the one thing left to do is dremel the hell out of it. But as I want this to look really smooth I can only work on it in daylight.

My night project was another sword! When it got too dark for scissor blade I made Mitsuri's whip katana from scraps and a cheap flat pvc ....thing which has the perfect floppiness.

On Sunday I finally remembered box cutters exist and carved some excess off the blade. This saved me approximately 2 hrs of dremeling and set me on a good path for the next week.

[blackwellcosplay]

Week 3

Berlin was a great to take my mind off things. Back at home disappointment was waiting for me.

The grey foam clay had lost all shape while drying. I redid the knot in silk clay and also did the rest of the staff with it. Not what I had planned, but silk clay was sooo much better to work with. It keeps its shape, dries faster, doesn't stick to silicone tools, and it even smells better. I also remade my Utena duelist pin in silk clay with worbla backing.

Thursday!! A few days ago I had decided I wanted to try and see what being on stage in cosplay might feel like and that I wanted to try and get a spot in the Leipzig cosplay competition. And I got in! I'm really nervous about it. But I think my idea for a skit is ok, and so Marcille is on hold while I prepare props and audio/video for this.

I got two new friends cheering me on.

[blackwellcosplay]

Week 2

Put up my wall calendar! I had one printed with my fav cosplay photos for motivation! All important con dates are on there for optimized con crunch pressure.

Got this really cheap 2nd hand wedding dress on Kleinanzeigen. Instead of sewing a complete new dress for my genderswapped Beetlejuice cos, I'm just going to paint the stripes on. It's a beautiful dress and I do feel a bit guilty about repurposing it for cosplay.

Made great progress on my Marcille staff! The soldered lights work! They are attached to the base staff with hot glue and covered in silk clay. The knot contains the battery pack.

I also worked on a Senshi cos for a friend. Hoping we can finish this for LBM at the end of March.

With all that done I went on a little trip to Berlin.

[blackwellcosplay]

Week 1

I want to try documenting or something, so I maybe I can look back at this at the end of the year and feel accomplished? So, this is definitely something I'm doing for myself. But I guess I don't mind doing it on the internet (at least at the moment).

Anyways, week one I went fabric shopping for two cosplans: Temmie and Beetlejuice - and found nothing! However, I bought this red lace for Tobi's Lydia costume.

Starting out a bit slow but it's not even a full week. It doesn't really count.