Perhaps starting this thing up riiiight before the holidays started wasn't my best thought ever.
Oh well, here's what I've been up to;
Thor: not a whole heck of a lot.
Husband's been working and gaming (jeeze, like he has a life or something) and I'm at a stopping point until I can get him into his mock-up vest for some basic starting alterations. That should happen this week. (YAY Christmas!)
Bought some plastic child-size frisbees (4" and 6" across) and a plastic sphere for test molds of the iconic domed chest armor segments.
Thinking about using a paintball vest for the actual chest armor undergarment. Looks about right, and has the necessary structure. Have to finish mockup tests before I can decide on that.
Been thinking hard about keeping him cool, and looking at Blue Ice flexible cooling pack sheets for layering inside the vest. Pros: extra bulk, no heat exhaustion. Cons: fiddly little plastic (leaky?) baggies, hotel rooms don't have freezers.
Also looking into various pants materials, and ways to fake those stupid little diamond-shaped armor-platey bits on the legs. (He's going bare-armed.) Thinking about thin faux leather for the pants, and painting/sewing gridlines onto silver metallic stretch poly to form the diamond panels (needed for Loki also, dammitall.)
Loki: more fabric, lots of hardware.
Loki is going to be my undoing, I just know it. For some reason, although I know Thor's vest is going to be a true beast in construction, I'm more worried that all of the fiddly little bits of Loki's costumes are going to destroy my perfectionist self. It's like professional costumers don't even CARE that cosplayers don't have interns!!
Lots of various fabrics picked up at Goodwill for materials tests and (hopefully) actual costume bits - some really thick poly faux leather, stiff upholstery fabric for insets, a lovely brown silk satin I'm eyeing for the long jacket lining.
Bought two sets of cheap plastic "irons" cuffs (not handcuffs, but the old-fashioned pirate-y "clap him in irons" style) to use for hands and feet to base the construction of the full cuffs on. (Much alteration/addition needed.)
Sourced plastic chain links from 3/4" through 5" links. Thinking now I'm going to go for the 3," but it might be the 4" depending on how the proportions work out (I'm about 6" shorter than Mr Hiddleston is, and have to take that into account). The chain links will still need to be individually altered with Bondo or epoxy to get the right ornamental shape.
Sourced rubber training knife for cosplayer safety (I don't actually want to cut my husband's hand off...) : either this one, or this one. Again, either version will need to be worked over with Bondo or epoxy to get the right final shape to the hilt.
Jane: nada.
Waiting on Christmas holidays to take the dress apart and re-assemble it. Hardest part is going to be switching over to a side zipper, and deciding if the over-draping at the bust is going to be permanently attached or a separate piece.
Still no clue about her shoes.
And that's all she wrote!
Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and Happy Cosplaying!
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Weekday Wildcard: Girls Who Read
This has been making the rounds on the internet, and it is worth checking out: by Mark Grist and Roundhouse London.
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Prisoner Loki : the shirts.
I'm at a bit of a stopping place for Thor and Jane until I have some crafting/sewing time over the holidays, and can drag my man around to fit pants and boots onto, so I've been concentrating on fabrics and props that I need to buy instead.
Today I've been thinking about shirts.
First, pictures!
Loki has three outfits in his cell, and I'm doing two of them: the casual look, and the raggedy look. I'm not fussing about pants and shoes and that complex overvest yet - I'm on a shirt kick.
Loki reading is a good visual of the casual shirt:
Notes: it's a crossover at the neck, and we can't really see the hem that well, but it is long (see it under his wrist) so I'm thinking it's shaped like a martial arts gi (or a short bathrobe), made of really light and drapey fabric. How do I know? Partly by how it falls or stands out over the body parts (that's the drape) and partly by how easily you can see his arms through the fabric.
Loki on the floor - shots of the raggedy look:
Notes: this is easier to see in the close-up image, but this shirt looks to be waffle-knit (thermal-knit) fabric, which is stained/painted to look distressed. The collar is likewise distressed, but it still has the typical Asgardian zipper-trim around it. It looks thicker, warmer, more comfortable - like an old worn-out hoodie or security blanket. But, it also looks like it's been stained and abused. Hard to tell whether those are old or new stains, but the shirt itself looks faded and worn.
So, how am I going to recreate these two very different shirts?
The casual shirt is a pretty easy pattern to make, but not an easy one to find lying around for sale. No one really wears crossover tunics for anything but martial arts and sleepwear, and those fabrics aren't suited for what I want to do. Also, the color needed is so rich and pure, and the fabric so thin, that if I bought a pre-made shirt, it would have to be an exact match in color as well as shape, in order to work. That's a tall order, so I'm going to just bite the bullet and make this one from scratch.
The fabric was ordered yesterday from www.fabric.com, where I searched for "crinkle cotton" and bought the last four yards of a discontinued run of perfectly-colored forest green lightweight cotton shirting for about $2.50 a yard. The pattern I already have, Simplicity 1946 (Learn to Sew Child's Teen's and Adult's Robe). The pattern needs to be altered slightly: the robe is too long, the shoulder seams are too generous (they hang over the upper arm), and the sleeves will have to be hemmed tightly at the wrist instead of left loose. One interesting note is that while I'm pretty certain that Loki's shirt does NOT have pockets, some portion of the shirt will be covered by his overvest, so pockets could be easily put onto the shirt along the sides under the arms for cosplayer convenience. I'm planning to include two smallish pockets on the interior of the shirt, one under each arm. Because it's that gi-style, they will be fairly easy to get to, and much less noticeable.
In contrast, the raggedy shirt is going to be a purchase and tear-down. Knits in general aren't the easiest fabrics to work with from scratch, and if you look at the general shape of the original costume, it's just a long-sleeved shirt and an added shawl collar. So I went to Target this evening, and bought two forest-green waffle-weave boy's long-sleeved t-shirts (the last two there, actually) for $19 total. There was one XS and one XL, which should work out perfectly. The XL fits me nicely (remember this is a child's XL) and the sleeves of the XS are going to be my shawl collar, while the front of it will be cut into swatches to practice fades, stains, and distressing, and the full back will be my final test once I get done working out methods on the swatches. If I had purchased the fabric, I probably would have saved a few dollars, but not enough to make it worthwhile for me to sew the shirt from scratch, then still have to fade and distress and stain it.
On a fun note, the cuffs of the XL shirt look like they are going to be perfect for a re-purpose as Jane's gold wrist cuffs that she wears with her fancy dress. Huzzah!
Today I've been thinking about shirts.
First, pictures!
Loki has three outfits in his cell, and I'm doing two of them: the casual look, and the raggedy look. I'm not fussing about pants and shoes and that complex overvest yet - I'm on a shirt kick.
Loki reading is a good visual of the casual shirt:
Notes: it's a crossover at the neck, and we can't really see the hem that well, but it is long (see it under his wrist) so I'm thinking it's shaped like a martial arts gi (or a short bathrobe), made of really light and drapey fabric. How do I know? Partly by how it falls or stands out over the body parts (that's the drape) and partly by how easily you can see his arms through the fabric.
Loki on the floor - shots of the raggedy look:
Notes: this is easier to see in the close-up image, but this shirt looks to be waffle-knit (thermal-knit) fabric, which is stained/painted to look distressed. The collar is likewise distressed, but it still has the typical Asgardian zipper-trim around it. It looks thicker, warmer, more comfortable - like an old worn-out hoodie or security blanket. But, it also looks like it's been stained and abused. Hard to tell whether those are old or new stains, but the shirt itself looks faded and worn.
So, how am I going to recreate these two very different shirts?
The casual shirt is a pretty easy pattern to make, but not an easy one to find lying around for sale. No one really wears crossover tunics for anything but martial arts and sleepwear, and those fabrics aren't suited for what I want to do. Also, the color needed is so rich and pure, and the fabric so thin, that if I bought a pre-made shirt, it would have to be an exact match in color as well as shape, in order to work. That's a tall order, so I'm going to just bite the bullet and make this one from scratch.
The fabric was ordered yesterday from www.fabric.com, where I searched for "crinkle cotton" and bought the last four yards of a discontinued run of perfectly-colored forest green lightweight cotton shirting for about $2.50 a yard. The pattern I already have, Simplicity 1946 (Learn to Sew Child's Teen's and Adult's Robe). The pattern needs to be altered slightly: the robe is too long, the shoulder seams are too generous (they hang over the upper arm), and the sleeves will have to be hemmed tightly at the wrist instead of left loose. One interesting note is that while I'm pretty certain that Loki's shirt does NOT have pockets, some portion of the shirt will be covered by his overvest, so pockets could be easily put onto the shirt along the sides under the arms for cosplayer convenience. I'm planning to include two smallish pockets on the interior of the shirt, one under each arm. Because it's that gi-style, they will be fairly easy to get to, and much less noticeable.
In contrast, the raggedy shirt is going to be a purchase and tear-down. Knits in general aren't the easiest fabrics to work with from scratch, and if you look at the general shape of the original costume, it's just a long-sleeved shirt and an added shawl collar. So I went to Target this evening, and bought two forest-green waffle-weave boy's long-sleeved t-shirts (the last two there, actually) for $19 total. There was one XS and one XL, which should work out perfectly. The XL fits me nicely (remember this is a child's XL) and the sleeves of the XS are going to be my shawl collar, while the front of it will be cut into swatches to practice fades, stains, and distressing, and the full back will be my final test once I get done working out methods on the swatches. If I had purchased the fabric, I probably would have saved a few dollars, but not enough to make it worthwhile for me to sew the shirt from scratch, then still have to fade and distress and stain it.
On a fun note, the cuffs of the XL shirt look like they are going to be perfect for a re-purpose as Jane's gold wrist cuffs that she wears with her fancy dress. Huzzah!
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Of Mjolnir, Runes, and Loki in Chains
Or, Why did Marvel screw this up?
As will probably become quickly apparent, I tend to overthink things, and I'm also a fierce perfectionist. Great qualities for a cosplayer, right?
However, it does lead me to discoveries like this:
1) The runes on Mjolnir are misspelled. *headdesk*
2) The runes on Loki's impressive and elaborate chains at the start of The Dark World ARE THE SAME (misspelled) RUNES! *froths at the mouth*
WHYYYY!!!??
Pause for details and background:
Classic Marvel comics has Mjolnir (Thor's hammer) with the following incantation: "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor."
In the films, they went with: "He who wields this hammer commands the lightning and the storm." which mimics a statement made by Odin in the first Thor film. It also gets nicely around the comics issue with other people picking up Thor's hammer and getting his strength and godlike Asgardian abilities along with his nifty storm-king tricks. Marvel Movie Thor appears to be quite capable and durable even without his hammer - note the S.H.I.E.L.D infiltration in Thor.
So that's all well and good. Interesting background, good reason for a minor change. But, they misspelled their own phrase, and used the wrong runes (in my opinion) for the letters.
How can people tell? It's just a transliteration of the English words into Elder Futhark runes. However, unlike English, there are different choices for the sounds that T makes (looks like an upward pointing arrow) and the sound that TH makes (looks like a p with the line extended upwards - called Thorn). In addition, there are also a few different choices to make for the vowels involved, and one rune for N, and another for Ng (like the end of "sing"). Besides all that, it looks like they threw in some plain and simple misspellings ("woh" for "who") to round it all off. Delightful.
Youngpaddy1 of the excellent maker community at theRPF.com (his post is #7 in the linked thread) made clear-image files of the runes in question, correcting misspellings, but not the odd rune choices. The phrase starts with "He" at the top of the circle, looks like HM.
Notable nits to pick regarding rune choices:
"This" is transcribed in the image as Thorn, H, EI, S, but really, it should either be: Thorn, I, S. or T, H, I, S. Likewise both "the"s are created with Thorn, H, EI, and should either be Thorn, E or T, H, E.
The hard K sound of "commands" is the K rune, which is cool; this is phonetic-ish transcribing here, and there isn't a rune corresponding to our hard C, BUT they use Ng instead of N, which is odd.
"Lightning" is also a little weird: L, EI, G, H, Thorn, Ng, EI, Ng, G. Which is weird as hell, because I would go with L, EI, G, H, T, N, E, NG.
"And" is also using the NG rune instead of the N rune.
"Storm" is using the Thorn instead of the T rune.
So, you can do it to match the film, you can match the film's rune choices but correct the misspellings, or you can do it to make it scan better letter-by-letter, or phonetically, whichever you prefer.
So Mjolnir is sorted. But that doesn't solve my problem for Loki, because I really don't like that those chains, as elaborate as they are, don't have appropriate wording on them (remember the overthinking?). So, I'm in the market for some anti-Loki charms if I choose to go that route. I need (short!) phrases that are designed around cutting off Loki's trickster abilities and physical power. Any ideas?
And yes, I do know WHY Marvel re-used the runes for Loki's chains. The whole scene was a very late addition, and the pick-up photography happened in a rush, many months after actual filming was finished. Still, if they had time to imprint runes onto the prop at all, it couldn't have taken that much longer for someone to pick out and inscribe a different, more applicable phrase.
As will probably become quickly apparent, I tend to overthink things, and I'm also a fierce perfectionist. Great qualities for a cosplayer, right?
However, it does lead me to discoveries like this:
1) The runes on Mjolnir are misspelled. *headdesk*
2) The runes on Loki's impressive and elaborate chains at the start of The Dark World ARE THE SAME (misspelled) RUNES! *froths at the mouth*
WHYYYY!!!??
Pause for details and background:
Classic Marvel comics has Mjolnir (Thor's hammer) with the following incantation: "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor."
In the films, they went with: "He who wields this hammer commands the lightning and the storm." which mimics a statement made by Odin in the first Thor film. It also gets nicely around the comics issue with other people picking up Thor's hammer and getting his strength and godlike Asgardian abilities along with his nifty storm-king tricks. Marvel Movie Thor appears to be quite capable and durable even without his hammer - note the S.H.I.E.L.D infiltration in Thor.
So that's all well and good. Interesting background, good reason for a minor change. But, they misspelled their own phrase, and used the wrong runes (in my opinion) for the letters.
How can people tell? It's just a transliteration of the English words into Elder Futhark runes. However, unlike English, there are different choices for the sounds that T makes (looks like an upward pointing arrow) and the sound that TH makes (looks like a p with the line extended upwards - called Thorn). In addition, there are also a few different choices to make for the vowels involved, and one rune for N, and another for Ng (like the end of "sing"). Besides all that, it looks like they threw in some plain and simple misspellings ("woh" for "who") to round it all off. Delightful.
Youngpaddy1 of the excellent maker community at theRPF.com (his post is #7 in the linked thread) made clear-image files of the runes in question, correcting misspellings, but not the odd rune choices. The phrase starts with "He" at the top of the circle, looks like HM.
Notable nits to pick regarding rune choices:
"This" is transcribed in the image as Thorn, H, EI, S, but really, it should either be: Thorn, I, S. or T, H, I, S. Likewise both "the"s are created with Thorn, H, EI, and should either be Thorn, E or T, H, E.
The hard K sound of "commands" is the K rune, which is cool; this is phonetic-ish transcribing here, and there isn't a rune corresponding to our hard C, BUT they use Ng instead of N, which is odd.
"Lightning" is also a little weird: L, EI, G, H, Thorn, Ng, EI, Ng, G. Which is weird as hell, because I would go with L, EI, G, H, T, N, E, NG.
"And" is also using the NG rune instead of the N rune.
"Storm" is using the Thorn instead of the T rune.
So, you can do it to match the film, you can match the film's rune choices but correct the misspellings, or you can do it to make it scan better letter-by-letter, or phonetically, whichever you prefer.
So Mjolnir is sorted. But that doesn't solve my problem for Loki, because I really don't like that those chains, as elaborate as they are, don't have appropriate wording on them (remember the overthinking?). So, I'm in the market for some anti-Loki charms if I choose to go that route. I need (short!) phrases that are designed around cutting off Loki's trickster abilities and physical power. Any ideas?
And yes, I do know WHY Marvel re-used the runes for Loki's chains. The whole scene was a very late addition, and the pick-up photography happened in a rush, many months after actual filming was finished. Still, if they had time to imprint runes onto the prop at all, it couldn't have taken that much longer for someone to pick out and inscribe a different, more applicable phrase.
Because I hate myself
Hello!
Hopefully this site will (eventually) have some handy resources for cosplayers (and costumers) from all levels of ability, for a variety of different cosplay characters and costuming needs. However, this blog is mostly going to be cosplay related, well, blogging!
For example. You might notice that in the Progress Logs above, I've gone from mainly makeup-and-hair based cosplays (with a bit of basic sewing and patterning) into full-on Oh God I've Gone Crazy and I'm going to turn my husband and myself into Thor and Loki from Thor: The Dark World.
Why do I do this?
Well, partly because my husband is 6"6', blond, bearded, and stacked, and has been begging me to make him a good costume for Dragoncon for the past SEVEN YEARS. (Apparently dressing him in sweatpants and giving him a NATO Phonetic Alphabet (we went with Kilo) designator for a name doesn't count... )
Partly because I really really love Marvel's take on those two brothers, and while I am not QUITE a screaming Loki fangirl, I'm not proud of my obsession levels these days.
Partly because it's nice to find a well-known character set that works for our (general) body types and sizes so well.
Partly because I need an incentive to move into hardware work that isn't entirely kludge-based.
But really, honesty impels me to admit that it really is (everyone say it with me) "because I hate myself."
Hopefully this site will (eventually) have some handy resources for cosplayers (and costumers) from all levels of ability, for a variety of different cosplay characters and costuming needs. However, this blog is mostly going to be cosplay related, well, blogging!
For example. You might notice that in the Progress Logs above, I've gone from mainly makeup-and-hair based cosplays (with a bit of basic sewing and patterning) into full-on Oh God I've Gone Crazy and I'm going to turn my husband and myself into Thor and Loki from Thor: The Dark World.
Why do I do this?
Well, partly because my husband is 6"6', blond, bearded, and stacked, and has been begging me to make him a good costume for Dragoncon for the past SEVEN YEARS. (Apparently dressing him in sweatpants and giving him a NATO Phonetic Alphabet (we went with Kilo) designator for a name doesn't count... )
Partly because I really really love Marvel's take on those two brothers, and while I am not QUITE a screaming Loki fangirl, I'm not proud of my obsession levels these days.
Partly because it's nice to find a well-known character set that works for our (general) body types and sizes so well.
Partly because I need an incentive to move into hardware work that isn't entirely kludge-based.
But really, honesty impels me to admit that it really is (everyone say it with me) "because I hate myself."
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