Absol gijinka redesigned

First some background information. Absol is one of my absol-ute haha favorite Pokémon and I've been wanting and meaning to do a gijinka (human version) of it since 2010.

Official art of Absol
I drew my first gijinka version of Absol back in the start of 2010. It was basically a kimono style shirt with a fluffy collar, black gloves, a black sash tied in a ribbon at the back and white pants and generic black shoes. The hair was white and short (neck length) and layered with medium long bangs. Red eyes of course. Pretty boring right? Not so interesting although it wasn't really terribly bad either.
At the end of 2010 I redesigned it slightly; the pants, gloves and sash were the same and the shoes were pretty similar too. But I changed the kimono style shirt into a keikogi (with the tie at the chest) but the collar was still fluffy. Also added a black headband and the white hair was slightly past the shoulders and smoother, medium bangs still. I had planned to make this second design for a long time until last week when I started thinking about redesigning my Absol gijinka for the third and hopefully last time because it still felt.. lacking and bland... and just not so interesting.

So today I sat down and redesigned it. I kept some of the earlier elements but instead of black I decided to go with dark blue because I read somewhere long time ago that it's body is actually dark blue but commonly mistaken for black by fans. I also added some details and stuff and I must say I'm very pleased with this new design. Now it certainly has some attitude and looks much more interesting than before. I won't show how it looks surprise surprise~! but I really want to cosplay it next year, if possible. Masamune will take a fair chunk of next year to complete. If I start working on it I will post the progress here and you all can guess what the final product will look like while I work ~

Masamune Date - upper half coat patterns

Drew and cut out the patterns for Masamune's coat today, the upper half of it. Mom has been inspired to sew clothes for herself the last few weeks (she's a former fabric store owner and sewer after all~) and now she had been planning to make some kind of vest-like garment and after she had cut out her patterns I went and looked at it and thought "hey this could maybe work for Masamune if I modify it a bit!" BOOM said and done!

Good reference for the coat's upper half
So I first took mom's back piece pattern, went to get the pattern paper roll and pinned it in place. After some thinking and staring at references I figured that it's mostly the shoulder part that will need modifying on the back piece. So I curved the shoulder upwards and then cut it out.

Modifying shoulders
Back piece pattern cut out
Then I took the newly cut out back pattern, pinned it in place and drew out the front pattern with the same shoulders and width and stuff. I just modified the front to have a curved V-shape in the middle.

After I had drawn out the lines and was about to cut out the front piece
Front piece pattern cut out
I will need to use interfacing fabric to get the shoulders to stay up like that as well as the collar.. which I haven't made the pattern for yet. I tried the patterns on and it seems like they will work quite well. I lucked out on the measurements too because that lower half's pattern (aka spiky buttcape) is 100 cm wide from tip to tip and this coat pattern was by default 25 cm wide on the front and the back of course 50 cm because it will be cut from the fabric's fold. Perfect. I didn't even plan to get them to match up like this when I started planning out the lower half's pattern some days ago. xD Voittajafiilis!!

Plastic for armormaking

So some month or so ago I ordered a white matte polystyrene sheet from Etra store in town. I went and picked it up today when I finally got the chance to. I can't remember its measures or thickness right now but it's pretty thin, not super thin though. I've never worked with plastic before but I decided to give it a go now.. I hope that after all the research I've done that it will work for making Masamune Date's armor. At least based on what I found it seems like a material with good qualities for armormaking.. but we'll see when I start working with it.

The polystyrene is rolled up inside this blue protection thingy.
Just to show how big it is
(yes, I'm wearing kimono just because I can. Yes, mirror photo)
That's it for today. Hopefully I will do some Masamune cosplay progress this weekend.

Masamune Date - lower half coat pattern

Decided to start working on my Masamune Date cosplay for real, my big "projektarbete" for school. I already have the wig and eyepatch but now I need to start making the costume itself. Again, this will be the default armor version and currently I plan to do the game version, which is slightly more detailed than the anime counterpart, but I might end up doing some kind of game-anime hybrid version. We'll see. xD

I didn't get so much done today but I managed to draw and cut out the pattern for the lower half of the coat.  I did it all by myself after a lot of measuring and planning. It took me pretty much 2 hours.. It looked surprisingly good after I test-wrapped it around my waist. I was pretty sure at one point I would screw it up but luckily it seems like I didn't.

Lower half coat pattern cut out
I'm going to make it in an upper and lower part with a seam that will likely be hidden by the belt. Me and mom figured it might be easier that way and I wouldn't get any side seams on the "buttcape" part. lol buttcape~

Oh, and I used this as a reference:

It's from some kind of reference sheet for the anime.
A godsend for cosplayers haha ~
I know it's the anime version but it's much easier to find good references from the anime..
As I said I will aim on doing the game version when it comes to those finer details and colors and stuff. I will probably use the base references from what is easily available (aka anime references) and then, when working, compare the game and anime versions with each other and then modify accordingly so that my costume looks more like the game variant when finished.

I hope that now when I started working on this cosplay that I will keep the fire burning until it's finished because I have just about half a year of time left to finish it, document the progress and show my project supervisor what I've done. I should have started this earlier but I'm a procrastinator and had some other issues and I know that this is quite the challenge so I can't sit still and do nothing with the time I have left. Neither can I take on any other cosplay project (unless it's super-mega-easy or some wafuku cosplay..) alongside this now until I've progressed a lot further.
MASAMUNE, YOU ARE GOING TO GET DONE BEFORE SUMMER VACATION.

Ion Fortuna, Come at me.

I have a lot of projects for the coming year, the most daunting one, is Ion Fortuna of Trinity Blood. I'm actually not a Trinity Blood fan, but as soon as I saw this design, I felt extremely inspired, and couldn't help myself for making it a plan for next years Desucon.

All the sowing will not happen before next year though, so I'm trying to make most of the jewelry before that.
So here's a picture of the design that I'm working on, just so you know what I'm getting myself into.


Some months ago I started trying to figure out the detail designs for the domes, which is not easy mind you, since there really isn't much specific details on it. (artwork why?)
And since I know this isn't going to be a lightweight cosplay, I used Styrofoam, just to make it slightly lighter than clay would be.


And the the project was actually pretty much off until now, because I haven't been in a cosplaying spirit. BUT, today I visited an antique jewelry shop near my house. And oh my gosh, I found so much I can use for him, I really had to restrict myself from not buying everything they had in there (It was cheap too!)

So I got a varies of different beads, dangly earrings, broaches and stuff alike.
I also found a bag with all sorts of different kinds of beads, but most were silver, but that's nothing a little paint can't fix.
*click the imagine for the delicious details


So yes, that's an actual update!
After this find, I'm excited to start working on Ion again
Store: 2013 anime calendars!

Store: 2013 anime calendars!

Hasil Jepretan


Aku suka iseng foto-foto apa aja yang mau ku foto kalo lagi jalan-jalan 
atau kalo lagi pengen motoin apa aja.. 
Banyakan koleksi foto jadul yang aku aja lupa dimana ngambil fotonya.. 
Tapi nikmati ajalah ya... Cekibrot!!


*click picture for larger size


Loknya

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