Blizzcon Cosplay!

Well, Blizzcon 2009 was absolutely amazing. It's completely different from an anime con, and was twice as big as the biggest con I've been to!

I'm just going to focus on cosplay in this particular post, though as you might imagine, I have a lot to say about the rest of the con, as well. Going there was an absolute dream.

I have to admit, it was very difficult seeing all of the amazing costumes, because as I've mentioned many times before, I want to do WoW cosplay very badly. However, I had several very nice conversations with some of the people in the amazing costumes, so I picked up some good tips for when I start on mine! I mostly asked about armour making, as I've heard of so many ways to do it. Wonderflex was involved on everyone I spoke to (except one person, whose friends made his armour out of REAL LEATHER. Crap.), as I assumed, but the rest was varied.

The priest (first photo) used Model Magic on top of his armor, much to my noticeable surprise. I have heard of people making things with it, but it has some issues... it shrinks a lot, for one, and can be dented during various stages. He wasn't surprised at me being skeptical, so he went on to explain that it works very well and is nice and lightweight, you just have to remember to account for the shrinking when making the pieces. I'm now confident that if I do experiments to see how much it shrinks in different situations, I could form some pretty intricate pieces with it.

A girl dressed as a... which doctor? Shaman? From Diablo 3 told me that most of her stuff was made out of Sculpey, which surprised me even more than the Model Magic guy. Almost as if reading my mind, she said that it of course is very fragile, and she has to be extremely careful not to break it. She also used the much talked about Wonderflex/Friendly Plastic combo. She also used Bondo for a few things, and I asked her how easy it was to work with. She said don't use it on things that bend, which I pretty much figured. She also had a very cool system of LED lights embedded into cast resin jewels all over her armor. She explained that all of the wires were hidden in the cloth, and they were all powered by D batteries disguised in a scroll case! That was a great idea. I regret not taking a photo of her, but she was in the costume contest, so I'm sure there are many photos of her on the internet.

Kael'thas (second photo) is the guy who was wearing a costume made by two friends; one did the armor, the other the sewing. The armor was all hand-tooled leather, and was very impressive. Leather working is an in-game skill I have that I've always wanted to learn to do in real life. Hopefully some day I will. Anyway, he was very nice, and enjoyed doing Kael'thas's voice, which was fun.

I didn't get to talk to the Draenei Shaman (third photo) about his armor, but I thought it looked very cool. The LEDs gave a nice effect because the whole con was so dark. I wasn't so sure about the scale of his mace, but everything looked really great. You could tell he spent a great deal of time on it. I was also just happy to see a draenei male! More beard tentacles next time, man. Beard tentacles.

The costume contest was great fun to watch. I didn't have good seats, so I have no photos from it. It should be easy to find on the internet. The girl who won had a very intricate and amazing costume and, almost as importantly, was in character all the time! I saw her several times throughout the con, including on stage, and she was always acting her part. Congrats to her for all of her efforts.

Overall, there weren't many people walking around on the floor in costume, and I could see why. Most of the costumes were big and bulky, and the convention was completely packed and difficult enough to navigate in normal clothes. But... I'm going to try to do it anyway! Here's hoping I can get tickets next year.

Connecticon 2009 freakin' rocked...

It's true! Connecticon was completely awesome this year. I didn't make it to any of the panels I wanted to see, but it was totally worth it.

I went with some friends, and most of them made it to at least a few of the panels they wanted to see, so that worked out. For one of them, it was their first con, so that was all very exciting.

Four of us made a second attempt (from last year) at entering the Rock Band tournament under the name Tanhaüser Gate... and we won! :D I did the whole thing in Haruhi Suzumiya cosplay... oh well. I love that costume! (PS... this photo of me in my Space Commander Haruhi cosplay is actually from Anime Boston this year, but since that post was lacking photos and I wore this costume to CTcon as well... here it is! Shh...)

I'll add links/photos when we're actually able to get our hands on them. I'm pretty sure they're being held hostage in the cameras of the guys who came out from Harmonix to judge. They were very nice! They gave us prizes and let us talk to them for a while about games, a business which I hope to enter very soon, so it was a very valuable way for me to spend some time.

All in all it took about 6 or 8 hours to do all of the tournament stuff, so we missed most of the con stuff. It was totally worth it. Like I said.

On Sunday, we roamed about a bit more. I went to an anime sing- and dance-along panel, which was run by a voice actress. It was pretty fun! I'm sure there's some video on the internet somewhere of me in a Carmelldansen conga line at 9:30 in the am in a Haruhi costume... ah, conventions. I got to sing and dance Hare Hare Yukai a few times in my costume, so that made me very happy. An enjoyable time overall... I hope they do it again next year. ^_^

Later on Sunday, we dropped by the Legend of Neil booth to play some Settlers of Catan with Sandeep Parikh, who was in The Guild and who had been very nice to us all weekend long. He tried to make a lot of bitch trades with me, and I was having none of that. I can't remember who won. I think it was him, the jerk. Then he signed our posters. :<

I wish I had gotten to check out more cosplay, but I didn't have much time because of the tournament. I saw some very good costumes! My personal favourite was a little girl I saw at the beginning of the day Saturday who was dressed as Yotsuba. It was great. She was so cute! I feel kind of bad that I put it on the internet :<< but I had to share her cuteness with the world. I wish you could see the hair better. It was a good idea; they made it out of felt. It looked much better in person!

I really hope I can make Connecticon next year, because they just keep making it bigger and better every year. Maybe they'll also remember to put the Rock Band tourney finals on the program so we can play to a crowd of more than a dozen!

...it was still awesome.

Did you go? What did you think? What did you do? And, most importantly, what did you wear?

[end]

Sad Incidents, and Things to Look Forward To

Well, I'll be a day behind on my costumes already, because last night my sewing machine totally broke. Bah! I'm going to go back to using my mom's old machine, which I used to use all the time until I was gifted a new one. I'll only lose one or two nights of work.

Before it happened, I managed to finish the front and put a collar on, but I'm not happy with the collar so I'll be resewing it.

Luckily, I know I have enough time to finish my costume work, and I'm really looking forward to the convention! Only a couple of my friends can go this year, but it should be a good time... it's easier to coordinate fewer people anyway, I suppose.

Also, I wanted to mention that there's a pretty cool-looking game that quite literally was just released called Sacred 2: Fallen Angel. I didn't play the first Sacred game, but this one seems pretty interesting, and the character designs caught my eye. Anything with a Dryad in it is worth trying out, to me. I often see games coming out that I want to get, but I rarely do... they're so expensive! I usually wait for a sale, holiday, or to buy it used. Fortunately, this time I'm going to have the opportunity to play this game almost right after its release to see how it is... I'll let you know ^_^;

You can check out some screenshots, videos, etc at the Sacred 2 website, if it seems like it might be your thing.

More costume updates to come in the next few weeks! Hope yours are all coming together!

Phantom Hourglass... Here's why I'm not that into you.

I was just here getting ready to pack up my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass to ship off to some person in New York, who will be sending me a copy of Mario Kart DS in trade, and I started thinking about why I'm shipping it off in the first place. Why did I put it up on swaptree.com before I even finished it? Why haven't I picked it up in months... and don't want to?

I'm a big fan of the Legend of Zelda series, and having heard only good things about Phantom Hourglass, I asked for it as a gift and... yay!... got it. I started playing it and was happy with it immediately. Everything you're expecting is there... cute village, cute characters, fun dialogue, and pouncin' around hacking at grass to find rupees. The touch screen made it pretty fun and interesting, though I never got a precise hang of tumbling... oh well. The boat was also quite fun, and I liked the interactivity of the whole thing... drawing your route, checking out mysterious ships floating around, etc. And writing notes on your map? Sweet! Saved me the trouble of keeping a notepad around.

I soon began to become disenchanted with the whole thing. The elements I liked were still there, but there were these new annoying ones creeping up on my as I played. Like wait... didn't I already complete this level of this dungeon? Why do I have to open all these doors again? And again? And AGAIN?? On a time limit! With enemies you can't kill, and that never disappear? I started to long for a dungeon in WoW, where when you clear a section of raid up through a boss, that section never respawns (at least not until reset).

I put down PH for a while in order to get some serious play time in on a Phoenix Wright game. When I picked Hourglass back up, I was faced with a problem... where was I? What was I supposed to be doing again? It took me a while to get reoriented. Once I got rolling along, I uncovered some new things I liked, such as the golden frogs in the ocean... sort of like save points. I also found some minigames, something we have come to know and love in the Zelda games. And finally, I found this crazy ghost ship! I boarded it! Something is really happening now, I can feel it.

...Well, maybe not. I worked my way through the ghost ship dungeon, rescued all the stupid girls, and then... was stuck. I don't honestly remember where or why, but I couldn't figure out what to do or where to go. So I put the game down again, frustrated. I picked it up about a week later... to find that I had to FIND THE GHOST SHIP AGAIN. What? I was there! I saved it there! This is getting ridiculous...

And as I wove the ship through the fog, waiting for the fairies to dance around and trying to avoid exploding barrels, I realized something... I don't want to do this. Not right now, and not really ever again. I'm unconcerned about where the plot is going, partially because I can't really remember it, and partially because I keep being sent back in time for some unknown reason.

And so, when I made my swaptree.com account, Phantom Hourglass was unfortunately one of my first "have to trade" items that I listed. It's really a shame, because I like Zelda, I like my DS, and I liked the game in many ways. But I didn't want to keep doing the same things over and over again... something I hope they realize when they make the next game.

I still quite love the character designs... that aspect has been carried on successfully through the Zelda games. I've seen some good Phantom Hourglass cosplay, too (one of which is in this post). I probably won't ever be wearing any myself, though.

How about you? Do you have any games that your friends just loved, that you couldn't make it through? Something critically acclaimed that was just terrible? Or just some random game you picked up that ended up being incredibly frustrating to play? Share in comments. ^_^

One final note... no, I don't work for swaptree or anything, I just think it's a really cool site, both in general and through personal experience.

Phoenix Wright: Justice for All

I just finished the second installment of the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney series for Nintendo DS, and I had to write to say how amazing I think it is.

It's even more fun than the first one, more exciting, and more amusing (and I thought the first one was great). They expanded on the game's system to make solving the crimes even more exciting.

If you have never played or heard of Phoenix Wright, now is a great time to start; the third installment was recently released in the US. I'm waiting for my boyfriend to finish so I can borrow his. :3

PW is a "visual novel" type game. It is mostly text based. As a defense attorney, you have to defend your clients, scouring for clues and presenting evidence to prove them innocent. If you like solving mysteries, figuring out puzzles, and/or participating in an interesting and engaging story with a wealth of great characters, you will like this game.

I'd like to cosplay as Franziska von Karma some day. She's sassy as hell.

Wonderflex and Friendly Plastic

I've been reading up on this newfangled Wonderflex and its friend Friendly Plastic.
I've been searching for something to make, at the very least, the calf armour for Gwendolyn, and potentially any and all armour for Oswald, if my boyfriend decides to go as him. Both are from Odin Sphere:

After reading the FAQs and tutorials for using Wonderflex and Friendly Plastic, I feel confident enough that this could be a good solution for making armour and maybe even weapons. I am going to order a small sheet of Wonderflex and a small container of Friendly Plastic to experiment with.
I am also going to pick up some Bondo, because (1) I have never used it before, heard some mixed opinions, and want to see what it can do, and (2) I wouldn't use gesso as suggested in the Wonderflex FAQ because there is no way that will not come off in chunks.

Once I get the materials and play around with them, I'll post my results with photos.

Links:

Wonderflex, Fosshape, and Friendly Plastic Purchase Page
Wonderflex and Friendly Plastic Tutorial/FAQ
Wonderflex FAQ