Surviving the Con: Preparing for Cosplay Part 2 - Cosplay Like You Mean It

Grüße!
So in my last blog entry, I talked about preparing for my cosplay last year. Last year was actually the first year I attempted cosplay, fun fact! I've been to other cons but never in costume. I didn't think I would be able to attempt it before last year you see, because the amount of exhaustion you experience at any con can be very overwhelming. When I attended San Diego Comic Con, for instance, the most sleep I ever got was when I camped outside of Hall H (the largest panel room in the convention hall) in a sleeping bag. I averaged maybe 4-5 hours if I got lucky. If you've been to a con like this before, you can probably relate.

*myself in my practiced Inside Out Anger look for Dragon Con this year!*

Despite this, I couldn't take not dressing up any longer. Not that there is anything wrong with not dressing up, but dressing up is so much fun! For anyone that hasn't dressed up in cosplay, just think about how excited you get when you get to dress up for Halloween each year and plan your costume. Now bump that up about fifteen levels, because you're not going to want to stop at your generic costume from a Halloween store. You're going to want elements of the character they don't have, you're going to want this and that, and thus you're thrown into the world of costume DIY. Let me just tell you, it's worth it!
Now, in my last blog entry I told you all not to wait until the last second to plan your cosplay and put all the pieces together. I stand by that. But take my own advise? Pssssssshhh no. So I pretty much had every idea I could muster for my own cosplay just a few days ago. I've been throwing it together since. Mind you, I had plans for only one costume this year - the Bride of Frankenstein. I had the outfit and wig figured out, I've been toying with makeup look ideas... Seemingly I had everything figured out. Well, no, not really... and by not really, I mean basically not at all. I decided that I didn't just want to dress up one day of the con like I did for Dragon Con last year. Time to throw some things together!
Bride of Frankenstein, Dr. Finkelstein (The Nightmare Before Christmas), Anger (Inside Out)... here I come!

Crafting

I got kind of lucky with my procrastination this time, which is great. I had already dressed as Anger for an Inside Out Party I had with friends (most people my age go to clubs and I planned a party to celebrate the release of a Disney/Pixar movie - this is who you're dealing with!), so I already had some of those things together. I was already planning on dressing as Dr. Finkelstein when I attend Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party at Disney Magic Kingdom this September, and the Bride of Frankenstein was always going to happen for Dragon Con this year. But I always want to do more! *I should note, the Inside Out party turned into a combination Inside Out & Avengers party, and these pictures are from that night! Featuring my cat, Sherlock!*

I jumped to crafts and hopped right on that path! I love wearing hair bows, and I love painting shoes, so I decided I would dive in where I could! So, with the help of my always handy acrylic paints & paintbrushes, I set to work! I didn't use any stencils for these looks, but if you don't feel comfortable not using a stencil, I can tell you what I have done before! For some shoes I have painted, I printed out the design I wanted, cut it out, traced it on the shoe in pencil, and painted it in! The shoes I did this time were either straight from my brain or done by using a picture for reference.

I have here my Inside Out Anger shoes, one of which I painted last year, and one of which I painted this year! The Inside Out shoe was used last year in my look for Disgust, so this year I painted an Anger shoe to match the already painted Disgust shoes! Also here are my Dr. Finkelstein/Nightmare Before Christmas shoes, which I loooved painting! Using pictures for reference, I drew on the designs in pencil and used the color scheme as best I could! One thing I do recommend you get if you are planning on matching colors like I did is getting yourself some small paint pots that you can mix your paint in and keep it fresh - this has been super useful for me, especially if I want to go back in and add to them at a later date. The last pair of shoes here are silhouette depictions of Frankenstein and his Bride, from the classic Universal Studios horror films! I used an already silhouetted picture of their faces for reference, and these were by far the most difficult to translate to the shoes! You feel a little crazy just filling in a wavy splotch where a mouth goes, but once the paint goes on, it really comes to life! For the backs of the shoes, I just wrote out "here comes" how it came naturally to me, and for "THE BRIDE" I used a reference photo of one of the original posters of the film!

But once I was done with the shoes... Well, I wasn't really done! I decided that since I had finished these relatively quickly, I should move on to hair bows... naturally. Naturally, right? I can't be the only one! Keeping it in this year's cosplay family, I decided to make a bow for all three looks! They'll be pinned into the wigs I wear respectively, which I cannot wait to do! I decided to buy these bows instead of making them since I'm short on time, and I got some blank ones from the craft section in Walmart, so if you want to do the same they should be fairly easy to find! *I also bought some plain cheap shoes at Walmart to make these, and they're really comfortable and a great canvas!* So I used these plain white and black bows and, as usual, acrylic paint! Once you're done, it's important to seal your work off with Mod Podge. I've said this before, but don't apply too much Mod Podge! Your shoes can crack if you use more than just one layer, as can any other bendable surface you apply it to. I only applied Mod Podge to the parts of the bows where I actually used the acrylic paint so that they were still flexible. If your design covers the whole surface of the shoe, use one coat over all of it (the cloth part), otherwise just apply to the painted areas!

Clothes

So since I don't yet know how to sew and I wanted to do a different take on these characters, I started looking for outfits that looked like a modern inspired version of each character. So basically, I wanted to make Anger & Dr. Finkelstein a human, and I wanted the Bride of Frankenstein to be dressed to reflect modern day. Thus I began to plan every bit of my outfits - some even came from things I already had in my closet that I decided to re-purpose! I found everything that I wanted and needed from Torrid, Hot Topic, Fashion to Figure! Torrid and Fashion to Figure have perfect clothes for curvy women, so when I go shopping, generally it's there. The only things I have for my cosplay from Hot Topic were their amazeballs socks. For real, they have all kinds of socks for just about any pop culture you can think of. It's awesome.


Makeup

I love going all in for makeup looks! For the looks planned, I will be using pictures of the original characters, my own ideas, and some inspiration from NikkieTutorials & Patrick Starrr!

Inspiration from Nikkie: 

Nikkie's Film Noir Tutorial

Nikkie's Hunger Games Tutorial

Inspiration from Patrick: 

Patrick's Bride of Frankenstein Tutorial 

I pulled inspiration from the eyes in Patrick's BoF tutorial, and I learned how to contour in B&W from the lovely Nikkie!

Inspiration for the Anger makeup look started with Nikkie's Hunger Games look and evolved into my own creation!

That's it for now, folks! Look for my next blog entry about Dragon Con coming soon!

Bis zum Nächsten Mal!

RayKay

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Surviving the Con: Preparing for Cosplay

Grüße!

So I think the title is self-explanatory, but I'm going to say it anyway - the con life isn't for the weak! ;) Seriously though, it snowballs into more of a stressful affair than you'd think, preparing for a con. Especially if you cosplay! You've got to figure out exactly what you're going to cosplay as (obviously), and then you've got to figure out how in the world exactly it is that you're going to put that cosplay together, and all before your time limit. 

It creeps up on you faster than you think! What outfit should I wear? What wig do I need? What accessories? Is that even allowed at [insert name here] Con? What makeup do I need? You'll find yourself swirling down that vortex really quickly. Funny enough, the reason I found myself in the makeup world is because of preparations for my Dragon Con outfit last year, when I dressed up as Disgust from Disney/Pixar's Inside Out. Thank you, Youtube, for you saved my life last year and sent me on a completely unexpected one that I never thought I would continue.

Side note: Seriously, if you've never checked out makeup tutorials on YouTube, you're missing out. A special mention to a makeup-guru that you couldn't possibly miss or mistake, NikkieTutorials. She is extremely talented and empowering, and I bow down to her skills. She has taught me half of what I know about makeup, and I'll never forget it!

Back on topic, that picture there is me last year at Dragon Con! I was and still am actually very proud of how that turned out, being that my makeup skills were at the 'I don't know what I'm doing and I've watched makeup tutorial videos a few times in the last two weeks' level! My eyebrows were completely green, I got a huge pair of green lashes, and a pair of green contacts, as you can see... Those contacts killed my eyes. Word of warning to anyone who has never worn contacts before, I wouldn't advise trying it out for the first time on a Con day. If you feel the need to, bring the contacts case with you so that you can take them out when the inevitably irritate your eyes... trust me. Just trust in me.

As for my makeup here, I took inspiration from a Poison Ivy makeup tutorial on YouTube. If I were doing Disgust this year, you could bet you would see more than the simple makeup I did last year, but I digress. There are many more tutorials out now that are specifically about Inside Out characters, but since there weren't then, Ivy saved my life! Probably not a coincidence, as she's my favorite female DC villain! If you want to go for not just face makeup but body, I recommend MadeYewLook on YouTube. She is beast.

As for the rest - putting this all together was a ball game, let me tell you! You start head to toe, and if you're anything like me, you want to make it as perfect as you can. Long green wig? Check. *Warning - not for the faint of heart - the heat and the weight of that wig, they get to you!* ;) Contacts? Lashes? Makeup? Check. And let me tell you, picking all those out, though they may seem trivial, can take hours each. Should I get neon or forest green? It feels a little like picking out paint colors. Have you ever done that? Whatever choice you make, you always doubt it. I went through at least 4 different lipstick shades before I chose red. I was going to do lilac but didn't think I could pull it off at the time. Fast forward a year and I wear purple on my lips like it ain't no thing! *This look here was one of my makeup tests for Disgust!*

But you can't stop with makeup! I wanted to have an outfit that represented my girl, but I also don't know how to sew yet, so my sister and I had to get creative. Luckily, I had a green dress already that worked really well for Disgust, but my sister was to be Joy, and she had nothing. You wouldn't believe how long we looked for a dress that would work with no results. So we finally turned to... that's right, folks, dying some fabric! For this, you need a giant pot, and I do mean that, some good fabric dye, and just the right amount of mixture for your color. (We used Rit Dye for ours, and you can find whatever color you want and how to achieve your desired look on their guide here.) You can only keep it in the water for so long to get the color you want, and God help you if you spill the color! But do I recommend? Heck yes! This was so much fun. And since I couldn't find a pair of shoes I wanted, I turned to a favorite of mine - shoe painting! I cannot for the life of me find a picture of the Disgust shoe I painted, but I made an Inside Out shoe and an Anger and Sadness shoe! For this you need any old canvas or fabric shoe, acrylic paint, and Mod Podge. Use as much acrylic paint as you want, but only do one layer of Mod Podge, or the shoe cracks and your work can easily be destroyed!

Another project we found ourselves working on was the accessories that the characters carry around with them, and myself, my sister, and our friend Bogdana (and she has an awesome blog about all the books she reads that you should check out!), landed on carrying around their memory orbs. Although Joy also carried around a backpack, so we bought a plush Bing-Bong and a plain canvas bag that we dyed purple with the same Rit Dye and that I then painted over with the acrylic paint and Mod Podge that I mentioned before.

We made the memory orbs with ornament balls that open up from Hobby Lobby, and we got some standard school glue, foam paint brushes, glitter, and shoelaces. First, we lined the inside of the ornament balls with glue using the foam brushes, then we dumped some glitter inside, closed the ball, and shook! We just did this with each color until we were satisfied with the glitter coating. When those were dried and done (we left them sitting open overnight to dry), we closed them up and stuck some shoelaces that we dyed the appropriate color through the loop at the top of the ornament and fashioned it into a bracelet of sorts. See, we knew we wouldn't necessarily want to hold on to them all day, so we tied a good knot at the base of the ornament loop, and when we were ready on the day of the Con, we tied the other end around our wrists. It was lightweight and portable, and it gave us something fun to play with all day while we waited in the lines for panels! We're really just kids at heart, after all! In these pictures, you can see Sadness holding up her memory orb and Joy holding hers and pointing to Bing-Bong!

We had loads of fun at Dragon Con and took a ton of pictures of amazing costumes there - some of these people just knock it out of the park and blow me away! Like all of these guys that absolutely killed it!

 

 *top left - Cosima & Delphine cosplay from Orphan Black; top right - Sherlock & Irene cosplay from BBC Sherlock; bottom - Thranduil & Tauriel cosplay from The Hobbit

I hope you guys like what we did or maybe picked up some ideas at the very least! Enjoy the nerd life, everybody!
Oh, and if you get anything at all from this... Plan ahead! It's worth it in the end and usually really fun to put together!

Bis zum nächsten Mal!
RayKay

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