Inkling - Guns and Tanks - Splatoon

Part 3 of the Splatoon Squad posts! Lets talk armaments! >:D If you are interested in the tentacle hats, go here! If you want to see how we put together the outfits, go here! Once again hats off to Elemental for the great shots from the photoshoot!

Now we delve into territory that I know little to nothing about: The Armaments. I had very little involvement in this area. I was a helping hand in the mass production line for the harnesses, ink pillows, and I helped put the electrical tape gauges on the side of the tanks. That's about it. Credit goes to the real masterminds Brian (Ragz Cosplay) and Adrien, and their very best shop gnome Andy (Yavarice).

Based on a 3D model that Andy did of the tank, Brian broke down and printed all the components. These had to be cleaned up (sanded) and painted, and then these were assembled into a full team of tanks. Andy gave a hand in this process.

All I can tell you about 3D printers is that they operate by wizard magic. I am fairly certain Brian is a wizard, and Andy is a sorcerer's apprentice.

The pieces were painted up separately using spraypaints and then glued together using a glue called E6000. The bottom of the tank is removeable so that the ink pillow can be changed. By changing the ink pillow you can easily re-purpose the tank for a different colour team.

The pillows are made from the same spandex as our hats. Michelle (Mage Cosplay) and I made fabric cylinders of varying heights and stuffed them. The pattern is literally 2 circles and a rectangle. Except Brian's, he made the top of his wavy. Because he is not lazy like me.

The harness rigs are made out of foam mats from walmart, black webbing, buckles and hot glue. The shoulder straps are 2" wide and tapered at the front end. After being cut to the desired length, we put a slit at each end for the webbing to be fed through. The webbing had the female end of the buckle sewn on to one end. We carved out a small depression in the inside of the strap and glued this end of the buckle in place. The other end is the adjustable side. When we had the desired length, the excess webbing was cut off. We burned the ends with a lighter so they wouldn't fray.

The two straps were glued to a back piece that is a dumbell shape that has a thinner webbing strap attached to it. This smaller straps has velcro and feeds through two slots on the tank. They make the tank removable from the harness. You can see where the tank attaches to the harness in this great shot of us beating up Andy.

As for the Splattershots, Adrien takes all the credit there. (Well, Andy does get some credit for being his resident shop gnome and doing much grunt work cutting out pieces.) Adrien created some foam pieces as templates and vaccuformed all the separate pieces over them. These were then cut out and glued together. But I assure you it is more complicated than I have described. I am still in awe of these, they are so professionally made!

I believe Andy's gun is a Nerf gun? With a logo added to make it look super legit. The logos were made from craft foam.

Overall I was really impressed how we were able to pull together a really cohesive looking group! I hope I get to take part in something like this again in the future. Special thanks goes to everyone who helped make this happen. I'm excited for Squids 2.0! :D

Inkling - Tentacle Hats & Wigs - Splatoon

Part 2 of the Squids or Kids series! If you are interested in seeing how we put together the outfits and accessories, go here! Once again credit to Elemental for her fabulous job doing the group photoshoot! So many really great shots!

Let get down to business; time to talk about those crazy squid hats! Patterning and painting the tentacle hats was my big group contribution. It was a bit of a challenge for me, as I have very minimal experience working with spandex/stretch materials.

We did some google image research to see what other cosplayers had come up with. We saw quite a few who had made theirs out of fleece. We decided not to use fleece because we wanted to a) be shiny and b) be paintable for the gradient. We also saw ones who had made the tentacles and covered them in wig fibers. We all decided that was more effort than we were willing to put in. I decided to go with a hat, while the other girls were more partial to the "tentacles sticking out of the wig" idea. So for them we used the same tentacle pattern, but instead of sewing it into the hat, they stitched/pinned theirs directly to their wigs. I may go back and change mine to match the rest... I'm still on the fence about that.

For the girl hat I started with drafting a basic pattern. The patterning process was very loosely based on how I patterned the Newboy Cap a few months ago. It consists of 5 tapered panels of various sizes that meet at the top. 1 front panel, 2 back panels, and 2 side panels that were the fronts of the tentacles.

It is important to note that since these hats were being worn over wigs, all of the measurements were taken while wearing a wig and all mockups were tested over a wig for a more accurate fit.

The one difference between the mockup and the final hat is that after doing the mockup I realized that creating "bangs" with the front flap was going to be too challenging in spandex. So I opted to instead make the bangs of the wig stick out from underneath.

For the boy hats, I knew there needed to be a seam near the top that the tentacles could be attached from. The boy hat pattern ended up looking very different than that of the girl hat. It consists of two "semi circles" as the sides, and then a rectangular shape tapered near the top seam for the center front and back. After I put together a mock up that looked alright on me, I then had to create a second mockup in a larger size that looked alright on Andy. Because my head is really small.

After creating a mockup that I was satisfied with, I went fabric shopping. Affordable Textiles on Queen St. had a good colour selection of spandex for a decent price. When you are doing a group this large, it is more affordable to share materials--in my case the 1yd of white spandex I bought was enough for 3 pairs of girl tentacles with a bit of leftover. But the 1 yd length was necessary anyway because the tentacle pieces are so long.

After cutting the pieces out I realized that if I wanted to paint on a gradient on the green side and add a sucker to the white side I would have to do it before I sewed the two halves together. In both cases I wanted to work on a flat surface.

For the paint job I originally was only in charge of doing my own and Brian's (as payment for making my tank). But since I was the only real painter of the group, I was soon asked to do the full set so they would all match.

The gradient had a different tint to it in every reference photo. In gameplay most took on an almost purple-y hue at the tip, but in still photos it was a darker shade of the team colour. I decided to go with a darker shade of the team colour so it wouldn't look weird.

I was going for a watercolour & paint splatter look. I used round brushes and fabric paint. I did all the ones that had to be painted the same colour back to back so I could be consistent in my colour mixing. I started with the greens, then orange, then turquoise and lastly purple. I typically worked with a pair at a time.

I started by mixing my darkest colour. This would be the only colour I mixed for each. All of the hues in between were created by watering down my brush before painting. Sometimes I would only paint with water, to help blend the colours. At the very tips I used almost purely fabric paint. I would make darker spots here and there. Lastly I loaded up my paintbrush with paint and ran my thumb through the bristles to flick small spatters of paint onto the fabric. This left the dark little speckles. There was no real science to this process.

Above are the original 7 I painted, labelled as to who they belonged to. Louise and Patrick will be joining us for Squids 2.0.

The process for the suckers was relatively simple. First I cut out a 'donut' shape in white spandex. Pinning it in place, I then used a zig-zag stitch to appliqué it to the tentacle around the outer edge. Then it would get stuffed from the center. Then the center edge was pinned down. Lastly the center hole edge would get carefully zig-zagged closed. The picture on the left shows each step of the process.

Many thanks to Michelle and Andy for coming over and assembly-lining the cutting, pinning and tentacle sewing process while I painted. They did a great job!

The next step was to sew the tentacles together. They were pinned right sides together and then sewed with a slight zig-zag stitch. We left a hole at the base so we could carefully flip them right way out and stuff them.  This many tentacles required a surprisingly large amount of stuffing!

For the girls who didn't want hats the tentacles were at this point handed off to them to attach to their wigs. For myself and the guys, the next step was putting together the hats.

For the guy hat the tentacles were first sewn into the top seam. Then the two semi circle side pieces were sewn on. Lastly it was hemmed.

For the girl hat I sewed the two back panels together first along the center back seam. Then I sewed the two side (tentacles) to the center front piece. Then I sewed the sides to the back panels and trimmed the excess seam allowance from inside the hat. Then I hemmed the hat, tacking down the white fabric on the inside in the same stitch. 

I picked up this green wig from EpicCosplay. The colour match is pretty darn good, especially since there are so few colours of green to choose from when it comes to buying wigs.

Excluding my wig--which I cut myself--the rest of the group's wigs were cut and styled by the ever lovely Louise, who will be joining us for Squids 2.0! For the girls we cut blunt bangs straight across the front and trimmed the backs a bit. I wanted the back of mine to be more flippy, so I pinned it up in sections, lightly sprayed it with hairspray and then used a warm hairdryer to set the curls. Then I combed them out. They were a bit too curly, so I used a warm hairdryer again to get them to relax a bit.

For the guys Andy and Brian went with two different styles. For Andy's wig, Louise took the bangs and pulled them completely back and pinned them out of the way, under the wig. She left the sideburns, which she trimmed a bit, and then trimmed the back as well.  For Brian, he wanted to keep the bangs, so she just trimmed them to be shorter and out of the eyes. The sideburns were done similarly to Andy's wig.

For both of theirs, because the weight of the tentacles made the hat back heavy and the spandex was super slippery, they had to have the hats hand stitched to the wigs. For a finishing touch they added their own hair accessories to the tentacle "topknot" hat. As far as I remember Andy used some bright coloured hair elastics. Brian added the white headband and a dollarstore bracelet as a hair tie.

Tomoyo - Wig & Accessories - CardCaptor Sakura

I only have 1 wig for both of my Sakura costumes. So I decided that I should turn my sailorsuit outfit into another character, so I could have a pair of costumes to wear with my sister's Sakura (1st opening outfit). It was a bit of a no-brainer to make it into a Tomoyo costume--she's one of my favourite characters in the series!

Transforming a Sakura costume into a Tomoyo costume was fairly easy--they both wear the same uniform. It was simply a matter of changing the wig and accessories.

...Now, saying that is the easy part, but the real problem was figuring out what colour of wig to buy!

Edit: Special thanks to EleventhPhotograph for the fall photoshoot. The pictures have now been added to this post!

I looked through hundreds of reference pictures and eventually put together the above collage to pose my question to the wise sages of the internet--my facebook fans.

I knew I wanted to go curly like the manga illustrations, but the discussion eventually decided on purple-black as Tomoyo's hair colour/the colour that would look the least weird as a wig. The trick was then finding a wig that reflected that choice. After much searching I managed to find Arda Wigs' Luthien in Dark Purple, which looked perfect.

I must confess, I had not bought a wig from Arda before this because they are a bit more expensive than other sellers. Their quality and colour selection is top-notch, but I just couldn't afford it in the past. Before they had their Arda Wigs Canada store, their shipping prices for Canada were outrageous. (Approximately 20-25$ for regular shipping--no tracking, not fast--on a 30$ wig was not in my budget back then. Still not really in my budget.) But the new store has made things much more affordable for Canadians, even if they don't have as large a selection in stock as the American counterpart.

The wig arrived and I gave the bangs a trim. I made the blunt bangs a little rounded so they would look softer on my face. (Blunt bangs are not the best on me.)

I had to take Sakura's sailor hat and enlarge it by an inch, because it would not fit over the extreme volume of Tomoyo's hair.

As you can see the wig is a blend of black and purple fibers.

I had to add a comb into the front hairline because this wig is super back heavy, and does not fit super snugly on my head. (Most wigs are too big for me because I have a small head and short hair.) The comb hooked into my bangs which I had tightly french braided horizontally along my hairline. It meant that the wig wouldn't slip and slide around all day. I sewed in the comb by hand with some heavier thread.

I may trim the bangs just a touch more, but I think it looked pretty good. Fluorescent lighting does nobody any favours (as you can see right), but I changed how I did the makeup for this costume and it turned out much better.

As for props: I kept Kero with me (Sakura had her hands full with the Clow wand) to make myself more recognizable. My Sakura had dance rehearsals all day and wasn't at the con until 3pm, so this turned out to be a good idea. We attracted tons of photos as a pair in the afternoon, but I was not so recognizable as a solo costume.

My favourite ancient relic of a prop is a disposable camera i had leftover from the 90s! I used it to take pictures of all the Sakuras at the con.

Still waiting on photos from our professional shoot from AN... hopefully they will be done soon...

As I may have mentioned before, Tomoyo is one of my favorite characters from the show. What is less well known is that Tomoyo was my very first cosplay. Ever. I'm still looking for the photographic evidence but I know I put that costume together for Halloween way back when I was in grade 5. It had a horrible blue wig that we got at Shopper's Drug Mart in the Halloween section. It was awful and itchy and I have thrown it out since then. I even made my own camera. Out of tin foil. It was pretty impressive. ;D We all have to start somewhere?

Suede Mittens

Hey all! It's a pretty chilly February day, so I thought I would post about some cute mittens I made this past Christmas! (This purple pair was for my Secret Santa gift!)

They were surprisingly easy to make, but look pretty professional. My one suggestion for anyone who wants to work with leather/suede: invest in the proper needles for your machine.

The pattern is based off of  pair of mittens that I actually own.

First I cut out all the lining pieces in black fleece (this fabric is leftover from my Toothless onesie!). Using those as a template I traced my outer suede pieces to be lightly larger. This is so that the lining fits comfortably inside. Because both fabrics are fairly bulky.

I also cut out the holes for the thumbs and the thumb pieces. You could alternatively just make a 2 piece mitten pattern (with the thumb part of the main piece), but I find these have more articulation.

Keep in mind when cutting out your pieces that you are supposed to be making 2 mirrored mittens and that the fabrics have good and bad sides. Make sure you don't end up with 2 rights or 2 lefts! When you construct the lining make sure the good side of the fabric is going to be on the inside.

I first sewed my linings together, for the main part of the mitten, assembled the thumb pieces and then sewed the thumb into the thumb hole.

Then you repeat the exact same process with the suede, except that the good side should face out and the seams should be on the inside. And also that the stitching will be a lot more challenging. I had some difficulties getting the thumb piece to properly fit in the hole...
Binder clips can be useful to a certain extent, but don't rely on them too much.

When both the inside and outside are assembled, they are slotted inside one another and a trim is sewn along the unfinished cuff to hold both pieces in place. On the purple ones I just used a strip of my purple suede folded over the edge. On the black pair, I ran out of black suede, so I used a contrasting green suede. This black pair with the green trim was made for my older sister! ;D

Presea - Dress - Tales of Symphonia

(Edit: photos finally added many years later!)

This is the first part of my in-depth look at how I made my Presea costume from Tales of Symphonia. (Attn: I currently have no pictures of the finished costume, as I need to make some major repairs to my axe before doing a photoshoot. I will post photos of the finished costume sometime soon!)

This costume had been in the works on and off for over a year. Originally meant to debut at Otakon in 2012, I encountered a lot of set-backs in the initial build that made it impossible to get it done for that con. Instead, I set it aside, to be finished for the following year. It was received quite well at Otakon 2013! Though I am a little sad I missed the Tales photoshoot.

Presea Combattir is a character from the Gamecube game Tales of Symphonia, released in 2004. This game, although being primarily single player, had the option of setting one of the computer controlled party members to player controlled during combat. So, I spent a great deal of time playing this game with my older sister. Originally, the party is quite small, and there are not too many characters to choose from, but later on there are about 9 characters and Presea was always one of my favourites. She was a silent badass, wielding a mighty axe, hefting trees, fighting off the bad guys. Also a very cute character. (Much preferable to Colette, as far as the main cast goes.)

It's interesting for me to compare how I made things 1 year ago to now. There is a lot I have learned over the past year, and there are many things I would have done differently on this costume had I made it now instead of then. The dress was the piece I finished first when I first began making the costume, so when I returned to the costume a year later I decided to leave it as it was, rather than improving it.

Like Suppi, this is another costume where colour is debatable because every reference picture is different. This dress ranges from blue to grey to purple. I decided to go with purple, because a) I like purple, b) I found purple fabric, c) I like purple on this character, and d) that is the colour the dress is in actual gameplay. Haha

 Finding the correct colour of purple fabric was not so easy however. The only purple I found was in the drapery section, so yes, my dress is made out of drapery fabric.
I started by tracing a shirt to get the width and armholes I wanted. I made the dress a wide a-line with no darts. All the cinching at the waist would be done with the belt. From there I made a broadcloth mockup. I drew my desired diamond neckline onto the mockup, then transfered it onto the paper pattern.

I then cut out my pieces from my purple fabric. I cut out double, making the dress double thickness to make it stiffer.

I sewed the side seams, and shoulder seams, then finished the inside edges.

Then I made the collar, which was 2 pieces of my purple fabric, with 1 layer of interfacing to keep it stiff. The collar is slightly shorter in the back than in the front. These pieces were basted together, then attached to the neckline.

I then added a black modesty panel, and a long row of hook and eye tape down the front.

Next step was to finish the bottom edge with black bias tape.

Then I added a dart coming in from the armhole. This stopped it from gaping weirdly at the front. The armholes were also finished with bias tape.

The last step was to finish the collar with black bias-tape. This was the first time I had done sharp corners with bias tape. I put the corners into the bias tape before sewing it on.

Kero & Suppi - Tails - Cardcaptor Sakura

For the last part of this tutorial lets talk tails! This was my first time making tails, so there was a bit of trial and error to get it right, but these ones turned out really well, and I am super happy with them. Particularly Suppi's; look at that fabulous spiral! :,D

Go here for the Shirts & Shorts, Wigs & Ears, Aprons & Wings and Props & Accessories! Special thanks to Eleventh Photograph for taking some great pictures of us! See us in his Otakon gallery!

The secret to these tails is that they aren't stuffed; I used foam insulation tubing for 1/2" pipe. Normally this stuff is used in construction around pipes. It's a flexible foam tube with a slit in the side. You peel off the yellow strips and it adheres to become a complete tube. Also it's dirt cheap. Pretty cool stuff! 

Let's start with Kero's tail, as it was the easier of the two.

I started by cutting a section the length I wanted (keeping in mind the pouffe on the end would add to the length). Then I stuck 3 lengths of wire down the center, leaving excess at both ends. Then I pulled off the adhesive strip, closing the tube.
The end of the foam where the tail base would be I cut on an angle. Then I bent the wires into loops pressed off to one side. This would make the connection secure.

Then I made a long tube of my yellow fabric just slightly wider than the circumference of my foam tube that I snugly slipped over the tubing.

The base piece is a covered piece of styrene plastic. The cover has a slit built into it where the wires come out of it.

I drew a center line on this piece that would line up with the slit, then carefully glued down my wire loops using hot glue. The nice thing about styrene is that hot glue bond really well with it. But be warned if you make a mistake the lumpy glue will pretty much never come off.

Then I cut off the excess fabric, stuffed it inside the tube and hot glued it in place.

The slitted cover is then slotted around the wires and stitched together along the top edge. The cover is then sewn to a fabric belt. This kind of belt is easily picked up for cheap in Kensington Market in Toronto.

The pouffe was constructed out of leftover scraps from a costume of my sister's. That is actually part of a sheepskin rug from Ikea. :P

Suppi's tail was a lot more challenging to construct. The main issue was getting a spiral with a cover that wasn't completely wrinkly. This meant that part of the cover had to be a curved tube.

Making the spiral itself was pretty easy. I simply cut out triangle wedges from the inside edge of the tube to allow it to curve more sharply for the spiral portion. I fed 3 wires down the center, then removed the adhesive strip, sticking the tube together. Then I bent the wires into a spiral, keeping my slits on the inside edge. The length of tube was 4 ft, but I didn't cut it any shorter, as the length was necessary to make the spiral.

Then I made a test cover piece. How I patterned it is really quite easy. I measured the inside edge of the spiral, then the outside edge of the spiral. These two numbers I divided by 20. Using these two products I then made a trapezoid pattern piece that would then be drawn 20 times to form a C-shape.

I cut 2 of this shape, sewn right sides together, then flipped inside out. This was then slid over the spiral end of the tube. I made a normal rectangle tube to fit over the straight part of the tail.

Where the two covers met they were hand stitched together, and the tail end was hand stitched closed.

The base was done in the exact same way as Kero's. :)

And that's it for Kero and Suppi! These costumes were a blast to make and to wear! I loved having a tail, wings and ears. ;D I only managed to drag my tail through one puddle...