Catching up on last year's final con. No report for this one, just a collection of photos and video. I didn't have a camera for this convention at all - so the pics are even more self-centered than usual and photogs are labeled on each ^_^

The Video Ninja / Everage / Ralf Vandermeulen / Santiago Ortega / Toronto Cosplay Collection / Very Frank Pictures
Dream Land Photography / C4Murals

For several years I was going to one convention per year in Québec, between Con*Cept, Anticipation, Otakuthon, and G-Anime, but this year was the first time in a while that the timing to make the trip worked out! I was able to get the time off, and volunteering for WCS Canadian Preliminaries staff helped with the cost, and I had a great time ^_^ 

Friday was a very long day, starting with settling into the WCS greenroom before 8 am and not getting back to my hotel room until well after midnight. Most of the day backstage was pretty boring since my job was to guard the props belonging to the WCS entrants, but I did have good company from the rest of the staffers ^_^.  Things got more interesting once workmanship judging started and I was a more active Den Mom and runner. Even then, most of the teams had brought their own designated helper, so greenroom emergencies were few and far between. Some pretty ridiculous photos might eventually surface of Kurumasha and I helping Melting Mirror with her wings though! I say it every Anime North, and I'll say it again now... I like working masquerade Greenrooms. I like being helpful and giving back to the community with my time and energy, and I like having the chance to interact with all the cosplayers. The show itself didn't run late into the night, but we stayed behind until all the entrants had left, just to make sure that the room was fairly tidy. Then we had a late-late dinner with friends. Then back to the hotel. It was a really really long day.

Saturday and Sunday, on the other hand, were all about just bumming around the Palais des congrès in costume! Saturday was Cersei and included a private shoot with Elemental, and Sunday was Postal Twili Midna and I spent a lot of the afternoon keeping an eye out for Legend of Zelda cosplayers (and other awesome people) to hand out mail. Didn't got to any panels or workshops or concerts or game shows - I literally just walked around the con enjoying cosplaying. And while it wasn't terribly exciting, it was really nice to spend a couple of days doing that without trying to rush anywhere. And since I spent lots of time being visible, I even showed up in a bunch of photographers' galleries and a couple of cosplay videos! 

Unfortunately, neither costume was particularly good for keeping my own camera accessible, so I barely have any photos of my own! In fact, the only one of note is the selfie I took with an older gentleman on Saturday night; partially because I think he makes an awesome Maester (although that wasn't what he was cosplaying), but also because he was very nice, polite, and actually a con attendee. He was the kind of person I needed to run into after having two consecutive encounters on my way into the building with men who didn't have the first clue about anything geeky and just wanted to hit on women in costumes. It definitely wasn't the most pleasant way to end my Saturday night at the con, but unfortunately it's one of the realities of an event where the lobby and outdoor areas are open to the public and in a busy part of the city.

In any case, overall I had a great weekend hanging out with a lot of friends, wearing less "casual" cosplay than at most other cons this year, and eating lots and lots of BBQ pork buns (that's what happens when staying in the hotel in Chinatown hahaha). I stayed in Montreal an extra day after Otakuthon ended which was fantastic for just getting to chill, eat awesome food, and enjoy the weather walking around the city. If its possible to join staff for WCS Preliminaries again next year, I'd happily go back.

Extra shout-outs: Link Speaks, The Otaku Crypt, Naredo Photo, Takumi Cosplay Photography, Carl-philippe Aubin, Toodletots, Alain Dahan, MrJechgo Photo, PascalFl

July and August have been so busy. All summer I’ve been riding the work-sew-sleep-repeat-cosplay cycle and I’m really, really surprised that I haven’t burnt out yet. I have, however, pretty much run out of time for writing blogs and posting photos from all these events! I thought that I would have plenty of time for all that online stuff after Otakuthon; after all, I didn’t have any more conventions scheduled for the rest of the year. Then an opportunity to go to Fan Expo came my way, and I got invited to a bunch of smaller events, and this whole hot mess of a convention year is going to keep going! 

In addition to Fan Ex (which I’m trying to give another chance - I haven’t been back since the 2010 debacle), I’m also going to be doing the Parkinson Superwalk (in Brampton) in costume with a few friends [if you feel like sponsoring me with a donation to Parkinson Society Canada drop me a line], I’m considering attending the Niagara Wine Festival with Cosplay for a Cure (I just have to figure out transportation), and I’m also planning to check out Forest City Comicon pretty much entirely because I really admire Twinzik’s work and we don’t normally run the same convention circuit so I’m jumping at the chance to meet them ^_^

Anyways, moving forward from future plans to looking back to last month’s last event: ConBravo!

Like almost every con I attend, I feel like I missed out on a lot of interesting panels and events at Bravo. But at least I got lots of cosplaying in, especially doing the Needle Panic™ thing with Kurumasha! On Friday I pulled a serious “surprise” costume by doing my first crossplay since 2006. Kurumasha was going to wear Kate Bishop at the con, and I thought "while double-Kate is fun, it would be nicer if we had Clint-and Kate", so when I realized I could pull off a closet cosplay Clint for less than $5 the decision was made. I’d only told Sha (because cos-partner) and Mr Stark (because partner-partner and I wanted to borrow mens pants) and I’d say that the costume was quite successful in terms of being a disguise. I confused a lot of friends who didn’t recognize me until I smiled at them or started talking! We ended up only managing to catch the end of the fabric swap and have some photos done at the Cosplay for a Cure booth before having a late dinner and chilling at the hotel for the night, but I had a lot of fun :D

Saturday started with a field trip - Needle Panic™ took a walking tour from the convention, up a hell of a lot of stairs that we wish Google had warned up about, to our destination of Ann’s Fabric Shop, where we had a ball looking at alllllll the pretty fabric and trying to buy only a reasonable amount. In the end I got everything I need for a Captain Marvel costume, as well as a very pretty piece of chiffon for a different Captain Marvel costume (can you tell how much I’ve gotten into a few Marvel comics this year?). Unfortunately once we got back, it took so long to get into costume and makeup for our Postal Warriors masquerade entry that we just had to go straight to the greenroom for show prep and judging. Not too much of note about the masquerade itself… aside from disagreeing strongly with a couple of the greenroom rules (no practicing, no leaving) it was a pretty standard masq. Here’s video of the whole thing! The video below is just our entry, “Going Postal”!

We wandered the con for a little while after the show since we put so much effort into getting dressed and needed more time to enjoy wearing the costumes. Ran into Paul Hillier and got this sweet pic that I love ^_^ After dinner was just hangout in our hotel room with friends, because we had a kickass suite and know awesome people.

Sunday was the first time I actually got to hangout with Mr Stark all weekend! And I got to see the con in general! I threw on my super comfy “L.A. Woman" Kate costume and Sha and I bummed around the hallways and dealers room. I picked up a cute Hawkguy pendant from JellySquid Crafts in the Artist Alley, and a sweet custom Midna shirt from Chop Shop Goods. I learned that ProJared is a Hawkguy fan, and did a fun, goofy photoshoot with old and new friends at the Cosplay for a Cure booth ^_^. My day wrapped up with an invitation to run backup for Kudrel on her “Horns, Helmets, and Headdresses” cosplay panel! I love doing panels at cons but haven’t been on any lately because I can’t really keep up with new materials and techniques, so it was great to have been invited to join her ^_^

I helped Cosplay for a Cure with some of their tear-down and stuck around to have a really nice sushi dinner with the “Cure” ladies before hitching a ride back to Toronto. Overall it was a pretty good weekend, and I’m really glad I got the chance to hang out and cosplay with Kurumasha so much because we don’t get that many opportunities. I only had my camera with me on Sunday, and I was a little brain-dead by then,so photos for the weekend are a pretty slim selection; but here's the rest of my photos! 

Special bonus content: Dan the Video Ninja's weekend retrospective, in which he managed to catch me in all three of my costumes ^_^

In May I made two Hyrulian postal uniforms - one to be worn with my Twili Midna bodysuit, and one for my old Imp Midna. I don't want to reiterate too much what I already have written on my gallery page, but each outfit was made from scratch to have details related to the characters, but still look like the postal uniform. For myself (Twili) I made a tank top and skirt, postal hat, and delivery bag. For Kim (wearing Imp) I made a romper and delivery bag. More details on all the pics below!

Let's bring the photo-week to a close with a brand new costume! Team Needle Panic and friends had the awesome idea to make postal worker versions of our Hyrule Warriors characters when we didn't get the real costumes done in time for Anime North this year. So.... here they are, the big joke costume on the year LOL. We did a shoot with Elemental at Cosplay for a Cure, and a shoot outdoors with Very Frank Pictures, and got a handful of other photos from Sunday's mass Zelda photo shoot. As always, click on the link to see the full costume description stuff and all of my favourite photos...

Postal Warriors Cosplay Gallery

Another Anime North has come and gone. This is going to be a relatively short con report, partially because large blocks of my time were taken up doing single events, and partially because I went back to my no-photo-taking habit from previous years. AN ended up being less of a social convention for me this year, which makes taking photos of or with people difficult, but I'm aiming for another "selfie-con" gallery from NFCC :)

Anyways, Yavarice was awesome and drove Elemental and I out to the con on Friday afternoon. It took a while to check-in, which is normal for Anime North (except for the additional confusion about our room since the way we were booked in as staff was different from previous years), but eventually we got keys, got badges, grabbed lunch, met up with Ragz, and settled in. Kurumasha's crew arrived from Ottawa just in time to swap our costume components (she had ordered some contacts for my Mai, I had her Hawkeye bow) and head out to the Congress Centre together. I spent a while handing out all the Yaya Han patterns that I had picked up for people at C2E2 and just generally browsing. I made just one single purchase, because as soon as I saw the sloth plushies at Critterama's booth, I knew I wouldn't be leaving without one. Totally worth it. It's super cute and extremely huggable (now accepting suggestions for names). Unfortunately, Mr Stark arrived just barely in time for his evening panel and not early enough to cosplay Zuko with me, so that was sad (but not entirely unexpected). He and I did get to all do a large-ish group dinner at Kelsey's though with Kurumasha, Yavarice, DarthMarySue, Ragz, Dan the Video Ninja, and Derek. Good way to wrap up the night and start off Anime North.

Saturday was my casual Chell cosplay since I needed something comfy and appropriate for staffing. Kurumasha and I went to the resin casting workshop with Chris Warrilow at 1pm where we enjoyed getting to try our hand at resin for a minimal cost. Unfortunately, when we paid for the tickets to the workshop it was labelled as being Saturday morning, so having the start time scheduled for 1:00 when the program was released was an unpleasant surprise. We both had to leave early to staff the masquerade, and put together with a late start-time, we didn't get nearly as much of an opportunity to make things as we should have. We did at least get to make one item each, and learned from someone else's mistakes about what not to do when creating a silicone mold LOL. From there the masquerade greenroom was mostly chaos-as-usual. Of course there's always different problems from year to year so anticipating what will go wrong at my level of staff is pretty much impossible. Thanks to all the entrants who were very patient in the greenroom and asked questions or voiced concerns politely! This year I ended up with the task of having numbers ready for each entrant's judging Polaroid, which was definitely a change of pace from previous years, but still gave me the opportunity to see every entrant up close and to say hi or have a brief chat with many of them, which is my favourite part of being backstage at the masq. Once the show started we had ninjas running the entrants from the greenroom to the stage, so I actually got to sit with KW Iron Man, Cloudbreak Cosplay, Mel Colley, Ice Phoenix Art, and Evie-E in their den and watch a bit of the show on the live feed! Other years we have always had problems getting dinner once the show is over since the restaurants are always packed, so this year we just ordered pizza and it worked out great. And we got another evening of conversation with friends in the hotel :)

Sunday was the big photo day for me! It was quite the hassle trying to get in a full costume with excessive makeup and fixes/repairs for the rest of the group while also packing up to checkout (especially with both suits of armour in our hotel room) but somehow we managed. So what was my mysterious Sunday "backup" costume? Since I didn't get Midna done in time for our Hyrule Warriors group, and Kurumasha didn't get her Agitha finished either, we decided to just go with the main pieces of each that were done and make postal uniforms to match Yavarice's Postal Link. To help fill out the group, I decided to put Hikarimoro in my old Midna costume and make her a uniform as well. (More details on all this stuff will be going on my Zelda gallery page with the next site update)

Kurumasha, Yavarice, and I ended up randomly meeting up with Chanelley and Kymera Cosplay who are also HW cosplayers, and we got a Hall Costume Award from Kaijugal while waiting for Hikarimoro to arrive. Once she got there, we put her in her costume and did her makeup in a hurry and then it was off to spend the afternoon doing photoshoots! I got photos or video with Viewtiful Design, Trillance, Elemental at Cosplay for a Cure, The Video Ninja, Very Frank Pictures, Paul Hillier, and we stopped by the massive Legend of Zelda photoshoot too LOL Most of those photos will be going up once I set up the new gallery, but in the mean-time, a few teasers are below.  The weekend ended with a shared cab ride home for Elemental, The Video Ninja, Mr Stark, and myself; followed by a very nice sushi dinner.

Overall, Anime North was as enjoyable as always, and of course I'm looking forward to being back next year. :) Shoutouts to everyone I haven't already name-dropped because as always, they are just too many awesome people at AN to tag them all ^_^

I was tagged by Ragz to post my 2015 cosplay plans... I posted something similar already in December, but this is a more... complete... list.

Top row is actual goals for 2015: "Modern Mai" from Avatar fan art for whenever (with KW Iron Man as Zuko), Extremis Pepper (have to get off my butt and finish the glove), cover-art Kate Bishop from Hawkguy with Chris & Carrie and friends' Hawkguy group and/or Brian's Wiccan aiming for C2E2, Twili Midna from Twilight Princess/Hyrule Warriors for Anime North (dream costume; WHY WON'T YOU MAKE YOURSELF???), and Nightingale from Atomic Robo to wear with Featherweight as Robo (pants and boots done, need to finish the jacket, wig, and hat).

Second row is stuff I don't even have hopes of finishing this year, but since I have stocked fabric/wigs/etc for all of them if I find myself with free time will be putting work into them. L-R: Lolita Thor, Journey protagonist, Ygritte, Espeon, Miz Mishtal. Realistic completion on second row is 2016-2017 - just in time for Costume Con to return to Toronto! lol

I think everyone I would have tagged already has been, but if you haven't: feel free to pile on (and leave a link in the comments ^_^ )

I have been meaning to post about my upcoming costumes for a while now, especially since I don't have any new photos or progress to write about, but I do have a LOT of projects in various stages of being started. The recent meme going around about posting the next 4 in the works seemed like a pretty good place to start though, so here we go with that :)

Fan art Mai (and Zuko) is mostly purchased items. Boots need to be altered, shirt and vest need to be sewn, and the wig needs to be styled. Deadline: none.
Nightingale has been on hold since Oct 2013. Anxious to get back to work on her jacket and hat. Also need gloves and to style the wig. Deadline: none.
Twili Midna has been on hold since May 2014. Recently got the last supplies I needed so I should be back to work on that. Bodysuit is 95% complete, everything else is still just supplies. Deadline: Anime North 2015, but that's just a goal, i'll finish it when I finish it.
Extremis Pepper is just waiting for me to work through the baffling design of Pepakura patterns (and this coming from someone familiar with how clothing patterns work). Had a test-run at Halloween this year using the arm that KW Iron Man made for me, and borrowing his glove since I'm making my own for that part. Deadline: none. 

More to come next time!

In the lead-up to costume con, I was posting regularly, some photo sets, some progress blogs, upcoming stuff, lots of fun. Then nothing at all... did I fall down a hole or something? Almost... I've been working my butt off to try to get my latest costume wearable for Anime North (this weekend) and competition-ready for Colossal (two weeks after AN) and I haven't even had time for upkeep on my site. 

Over Victoria Day weekend I managed to get the bodysuit I've been working on for the last 6 months to 99% complete, but burnt myself out on the costume in the process. So I'm putting it on hold for now. I still feel like working on stuff, just not Midna, sigh. So tonight I'm going to leave you with a collection of progress shots since my last update, as well as my AN cosplay plans*. More updates will be coming as I have just given myself some extra free time every day ^_^

*subject to change

There's just a few days left until CC32 and I am a mix of emotions about it. As I mentioned previously, I'm not making anything new which is really one of those "disappointed in myself" things. It's not really helped by seeing so many of my friends either posting progress photos or working on things in Google Hangouts - I've also been working on costumes the last couple of weeks, but not quite with the same commitment since my next deadline isn't for a while yet and I'm doing several things at once to boot.
 
So what have I been working on? In my last progress blog I mentioned working on bodysuits, and that's what I've been doing, although it's been a slow process. I have 3+1 bodysuits ahead, and I'm working on Midna first, though there's some simultaneous work going on for all. Unfortunately, all the suits require different patters and they all have to be hand-drafted so... I hope I'll be really good at this by the time I'm done. Progress pics of things so far below:

Also, spending face-time with friends:

and speaking of Costume Con... my cosplay plans are below. Aside from doing Alice on Friday, I don't have plans for which costume for which day. I'm not entering any of the masquerades, but I am going to be part of the Future Fashion Folio event on Sunday, modeling a couple of dresses for Andrea Schewe. I'm excited just because I get to wear the Cercei dress XD. I might not want to take it off LOL. Looking forward to sharing photos and maybe videos from the con once it's all over <3