Because I am a terrible person... take two

Here's a selection of the best pictures from Otakon and Anime USA. Mostly for the sake of Rayless, who doesn't use Facebook, not that I blame her. Otakon was first, Anime USA second.



waiting in line... Why did we have to get there so early again?


Hare Hare Yukai lead by Haruhi. I couldn't resist.
These two won the cutest couple at the con award in my book. They lead a panel on how to properly put on a kimono.

It's Nova!

These people won best in show for hall cosplay. It took the guy a full year to make the Trinity Blood cosplay for both of them.

I found the Wonder Chef! I got a recipe for Lemon Cake!



Cutest Naruto cosplayers ever, although Sakura was definitely not happy to be there.

Italy of the Northern variety!

Waiting in line for a panel.


Steampunk panel. The difference between my pictures and the pictures taken with Hillary's camera prompted me to buy a new one. None of the pics really capture how awesome it was.


TURKEY! GET THE TURKEY! GET THE TURKEY! (Best quote of the weekend.)


Miriam is now a certified state alchemist with the watch to prove it.
Ion! Awwww...

Here's the beginning of Anime USA pictures. Some finished sword action pics. They look so much better with the polycrylic. The other side of the tsuba got finished as well. ^^






These two receive my con's cutest couple award for Anime USA. They were all dressed up to go to the Steampunk formal ball.

Most crazy grouping ever. Sync, Link, and Renji walk into a bar. The bar says, "Ouch!" Yes, that is Renji's Bankai behind them. She could actually carry that thing.


Death the Kid from Soul Eater


Here's the beginning of the Hetalia stalker photos. They were having a gigantic gather of all Hetalia cosplayers on the terrace, but there was no way we could get down there in time to take legit photos, so instead we stood up on the third floor and zoomed. Yes, these are taken through double paned glass. I love my camera.

Edit: After reading some message boards and stuff, I am realizing how incredibly sketchy it is that I took pictures like this. It was a photoshoot, and the elevators weren't working, so I couldn't have gotten down there in time, but if anyone in these pictures objects to the unorthodox way in which they were obtained, I will remove them, no matter how much I love how they turned out. Leave a comment with a cosplay.com ID or some other way to pinpoint that you are indeed a person in these photos instead of a random troll, and I'll do it.




Fave picture of the group. I love the drunk England.




If you are wondering who Hungary is going after with the frying pan, that would be Prussia.




Steampunk fashion models

Grandpa Rome!

Progress Report

So I haven't been all that good at taking along my camera to get pictures of the in progress stuff for the actual costume. All of the amusing photos of me dressed in a paper version of Raine's coat are on my cousin's camera. Since I made Lloyd's twin swords at home, however, I was able to document the progress a little better. To get the general shape, I used Deviantart swordmaker *chioky's tutorial extensively. I made some major modifications, however, on method and materials. My piece of strip pine was twice the thickness of what he recommended, resulting in a chunkier sword, which is the look I was going for. Nearly everything in ToS is chunky, and Lloyd's wooden swords are supposed to be especially rough looking. Since it was so much thicker, I didn't have multiple pieces to the swords. They were shaped by hand out of a single piece of wood. The tsuba (tsubae?) for the swords weren't MDF as suggested because they had to take a stain like the rest of the sword. I used luann plywood left over from an around the house project. Also, there is no balsa wood anywhere on these swords. The habaki is made of mitered pine trim from the same home project cut via an antique miter box. (That was fun to figure out, let me tell you.) The hilt of the reference sword itself was unshaped and had a fan motif carved into it to match the tsuba, so it was filed down with the rest of it and painted after staining with acrylic paint to invoke those designs. I had no wood files of the sort the tutorial suggested, so I did the rough shaping of the blade with a plane and a series of wood rasps and then did the finer sharpening with coarse sandpaper wrapped around a metal file. The swords are yet unfinished, but I thought it would be good to post pictures before I forgot.



During cutting. Here's another shortcut where I violated the tutorial. I used my dad's ancient saber saw to cut out the rough shapes. Of course, isn't that the purpose of a tutorial: to serve more as guidelines than actual rules? Let's say this way was much easier.


More cutting. How 'bout that fancy workbench?


These are the rough shapes prior to any sharpening or shaping. They really don't look all that sword-like.


After planing but before fine-shaping. It has bevels in all the right places, but it still looks boxy.


Both semi-finished products after staining and painting. I stained them with miniwax red oak.


The painted tsuba design. I am officially sick of David's taste in techno music. I had to watch that video so many times to get a good idea of what the tsuba looked like, and even then, there were a lot of artistic calls made.


The shaped and painted hilt. Might get eventually wrapped halfway, might not. It's really David's call, but I like it the way it is right now.

And a shot of the semi-final product. It still isn't polycrylic'd or anything, and the back of the tsuba might acquire identical designs to the front. It looks kind of bare the way it is.