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OMG! This is a gorgeous dress! Look at all the love that was put into it. So beautiful!

Otakon was amazing. Finally getting to wear my Azem summoning circle gown in person was so much fun. I had multiple people stopping me to gush over my costume and people from HERE telling me they saw it online and were so excited to see it in person. I haven’t been to a con since right before the pandemic and it was so nice to come back to a space I love so much. My goal of someone knowing what I was without me explaining was reached (thanks to the ffxiv photoshoot)! And I can’t wait to see the pictures of the group photo shoot. I added more details to the costume and (minus the stars which were my nemesis falling off the whole day) everything was perfect.

The gown itself took about 100 hours total. 85 originally and 15 to add finishing touches. The top is gold lamé and the chiffon overlay was ripping so I removed it. I have a whole costume breakdown under the tag for the original dress creation.

The necklace has an Azem summoning stone that my fantastic friends brought me from Fanfest which I repurposed. The most added details are the stars. I felt the black spots between the p design and the beams was a bit too big and wanted something to bridge the gap. I also considered adding my statics job symbols in the circles but they keep changing jobs XD

I added some more filigree details to the main Azem design in the front of the gown and individual rhinestones to each of the right angle v filigree and each of the small mirrored circles that make up the big circles because I’m extra along with a gold ribbon for the hem

Then I decided to add lights

Again because I’m extra

I don’t have skill with LEDs so I used individual 6ft fairy lights with tiny battery packs. I painted each battery pack black because the white shows through the skirt especially when lit up. There are about 75-90 battery packs I lost count at 2 am on Wednesday honestly ahaha. I looped them twice up and down so the effect would be less spaced out but I might edit that in the future if I figure LEDs and how to get more powerful ones because they weren’t really strong enough for 10 hours (you can faintly see them in the pictures above) and I kept turning them off when I sat. I used the same petticoat but added a hoop skirt because I was wearing tennis shoes (sadly sensible instead of fashionable) instead of my platform boots.

When people complimented me I would ask if they wanted to see my favorite part (which is spinning) and the laughs and gasps of delight were fantastic. Overall I’m so fucking proud of this costume. Thank you to all of you fab people from the FFXIV coordination who said such kind things I’m so flattered and lovingly overwhelmed. It was an amazing return to cosplay.

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I've been wondering for a while now. Are you self-taught as far as manga drawing is concerned (because it looks seriously impressive and professional) or did you have classes or some other resources to help you?

I mean, you're obviously a professional artist. But how much of your manga skills do you owe to that?

I don't know about professional artist. I've only worked on 1 job since graduating over 10 years ago and my current job is an office 9-5 (kill meeeee). I went to college for animation, but art-wise I'm mostly self taught. I'm that quiet kid that doodled on the desk and all the notebooks I owned. Here's an example of some REALLY EARLY stuff.

In college, a friend wanted to make a Great Saga manga with the college group of friends. A year after we started practicing hand inking, we still didn't have anything to show/post. I argued that we show post/make anything just to keep improving and later, when we were proficient, we should work his Great Saga. Needless to say, that didn't happen and the bills were piling up and we all kinnda splintered off.

I started making Courtship of Lady Tokio to learn on my own. I figured that if I liked the story I would like drawing it (very true so far, with a few chapters that I just dreaded and procrastinated over for long periods of time [the current chapter, a victim of this at this moment]). I have a ton of manga in my closet that are filled with sticky notes and used as reference, they are a lot of different genres, which is probably why my work looks a bit cobbled together. I also have a folder on my computer of screenshots of manga I'm reading that I like. Things like the way the panel is set up or the use of black vs. white on characters/backgrounds, just anything that grabs my attention. I really really LOVE the look of CLAMP's Tsubasa & XXXHolic. All black and white with no/sparing tones (maybe some day I'll do something similar).

I still don't feel like I have a sense of good, balanced pages. I'm still working on balancing black and white spaces. And sometimes I struggle with "should this panel have a background? Or just leave it blank? Put a tone in there or just leave it white?"

Also, I'm starting to concentrate on adding some more action panels and breaking out of panels themselves. Also playing with panels on the pages. Not all panels need to be created the same all the time. Time to break all rules!

OMG... I totally ranted here. Ummm, so yes, the short answer is I'm self taught =D

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Create chaos at all times.

This was a single roll of 40 sq feet. Now I know I need at least 3 rolls to do the whole desk. Yes, live and learn.

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and back to the semi-aggressive cute doodles.

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Last year, I had the chance to work at a studio doing promotional material for a client. Even though I had Covid at the time and felt like I was dying, I really enjoyed working on these! There were so many that didn't make the cut, but these are by far my fav of the bunch!

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I've started drawing again... not a lot, but enough to make me smile. And I was playing around with some brushes =D

Yeah, I doodled the handsome Hades from @sigeel Punderworld. I love his horns.

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Still chugging along... slowly.

Also, the answer to Harada's question is "Everything. Everything is wrong with Souji."

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Goddamn AI bros and trying to make this a thing!

Well, now I'm glad I've only had a bootleg version since I was in college and never used iCloud.

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GODDAMMYOUTOHELL!!!

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I’m not a Flyers fan, but you, you go you strange agent of chaos.

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I made this back in Dec/Jan for my coworker's desk. She has a lot more cacti on her desk that are not pictured here.

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I love these, they are very detailed and nicely modeled and the movement is wonderful! The Kenshin one especially has a greate sense of flowing movement with his hair.

Sadly, I don't want to give Watsuki any more money. For a man who wrote a story about redemption, he showed no remorse for his actions.

New figures 2024, 2025.

Kenshin, Saito, Sanosuke so far.

Let's pray, they will make an Aoshi and Misao figure too in the future. 🙏🙏🙏

https://goods.liblo.jp/archives/24024173.html

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I had a moment on Friday where I just couldn't make myself go to work. So I called out and did this to get my mind to chill. It's cute and I made a few mistakes, but I like it a lot. It will go to my office so I can have some color in that grey cubical of soul sucking death.

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Finished another work or art for my customer service job. Unfortunately, I can only have it up at home.

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A very lazy, cursory search will give you this as of May 7, 2024.

$400 a trip is literally setting yourself up for failure.

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to add a lil something about the though process to this one:

This is what happens when I hang out with a certain group of peeps and ask no one in particular “what should I do?”.

My version of Falcone from the old Mighty Ducks Animated series!