Cosplay Time!
Last weekend Josh, Tara and I went to Sakura Con in Seattle. It was the Con's 10th anniversary (my 7th time, Tara's 5th or 6th, and Josh's 9th time going o_O), so we decided we would "dress up" for the occasion and do cosplay. Josh had never cosplayed before, and Tara and I hadn't done it since 2003 when we cosplayed Azumanga with tenshisama and her brother:
(Though, I guess technically I have cosplayed since then, since I wore that outfit on Halloween last year).
So anyway, we decided to do cosplay, but our first task was to figure out what we wanted to go as. We didn't want to do anything that everyone and their dog was doing (i.e., Bleach, Naruto, etc.), and, since we're long time fans, we wanted to do a series that was a bit old school. We considered many different ideas, and finally decided to do Ranma.
Initially, we were going to have Josh be male Ranma, me be female Ranma, and Tara be Akane, but for the purpose of having a wider variety of characters I decided to go as Shampoo instead. So, now that we had characters, we needed to start the costuming process. Josh's was fairly simple: since Ranma typically wears Kung Fu clothes, we just had to search online to find the pieces we needed (and I was able to buy the shoes and obi where I work). The black pants weren't too hard to get, but the red shirt with yellow buttons was a bitch to find. A lot of the shirts we saw had buttons the same color as the shirt, or we'd find ones that had contrasting colors but they weren't the colors we needed (like, a black shirt with white buttons). The one we eventually ended up getting had buttons that were more brown than yellow, but it was the closest thing we could find.
My costume wasn't that difficult. None of us could sew, and since Shampoo's outfits aren't exactly typical Chinese clothes I just ordered a premade costume from eBay (and a purple wig, too). I was panicking a little in the couple weeks before the con since I ordered the outfit in February and it still hadn't arrived yet, but it finally showed up about a week before the con. Even if it hadn't, I had a backup plan: one of the Chinese vendors for Uwajimaya had recently taken a trip to China, and as a gift he brought back Chinese dresses for each person in our department. But anyway, the outfit arrived on time, but it was a bit too big for me, so I had to do a lot of pinning it smaller the day I wore it (I was worried the pins wouldn't hold, but surprisingly they did).
Tara's Akane outfit was the simplest of all, so we decided to try making it. None of us can sew, but Josh's sister Andi and our friend Aimee know how, so we enlisted thier help in creating the outfit (as in, they did almost all the work since none of us knew what we were doing ^_^;;) Tara and I shopped for fabric, and we probably should have had someone with a little knowhow come with us, since all we bought was the fabric and a pattern, not piddly little details like thread or a zipper :P It took awhile to get everyone together to "git 'r' done", but the dress was finished soon before the con, and everything was fine....except, on the night before the con started, Tara still needed a plain white blouse for the outfit. We looked around a few stores near the hotel, and she ended up having to get one from a Macy's, where it was $45 o_O But she ended up just returning the shirt after the con, so no money was wasted :P
We chose Saturday to do our Cosplay, since it's typically the biggest day of the con (and we didn't want to wear the outfits all weekend, they'd get too smelly :P) Friday night we ran into a problem: we weren't quite sure how to style my wig. We could make buns in the hair, but they kept ending up lopsided and uneven and looking all too much like cinnamon buns. I said they were fine, they didn't have to be perfect, but Josh came up with a clever solution: bun covers. They would help keep the hair in place, and hide all the bobby pins we had to jam into them to keep them together. But, where could we find hair bun covers the night before our cosplay? The answer was in our hotel room: tissues. I was worried they would be too fragile, since the bobby pins kept jabbing through them when I tried to put them over the buns, but they ended up not looking too bad from afar (also, they got a little rained on, but luckily our hotel was right next to the convention center, so no noticable damage was done). Continuing his streak of clever hair ideas, Josh also came up with the idea of putting the little plastic wires from a Zeonography figure he bought in his hair to make the braid stick up like Ranma's does. It actually worked pretty well, though it's not really visible in most of the pictures.
Another problem I had after I started wearing the outfit was that the shoes were too big. They didn't come with the outfit, so I'd had to go buy ones that looked similar enough. A couple days before the con, I went to Payless and found some red shoes that looked close to what Shampoo wears (they had a little design on them, but they were good enough). The size options I had were either 6½ or 8. I typically wear about a 7½ to 8, but the 8 in these shoes was a bit big, but I couldn't even get my foot into the 6½. So I ended up with shoes that were a bit too big, so they kept slipping off my heels when I walked. On one of my trips back to the hotel room in the morning, Josh suggested I put on socks to help stop the slipping. The only color options I had were gray or yellow. The yellow matched the sash, so I went with those, even though they kind of stick out ^_^;; They stopped the slipping a little, but my feet still kept coming out of the shoes occasionally throughout the day.
So, now that you've heard about all the issues we had and can easily point out the flaws mentioned above, here are a few pics:
Josh in his Ranma outfit.
Me in my Shampoo outfit.
The typical pose we used for most pictures other people took (we also used me glomping and kissing him on the cheek and a "wacky hands" pose where we're each balancing on one foot, a pose that almost caused us to fall down each time we did it ^_^;;)
I know probably around 15 people took pictures of us, but so far, after looking through thousands of con pictures on a bunch of different sites, I've only found one of them. If anyone else has seen any of us, please show me where to find them. But here's a couple that were taken by another Ranma group:
I think this is the only picture we got of Tara, and she's not really visible here.
The other Ranma group had me take a picture with them since they didn't have a Shampoo with them.
So overall, we had a couple problems, but everything worked out OK. We even started talking about future cosplay possibilities. With the long purple wig I have, I was thinking I could be Maya from Tenjou Tenge (though I'm not quite, err, busty enough for that ^_^;;) or maybe Gunter from Kyou Kara Maou (if Josh were Yuuri, I would have an excuse to glomp him all the time ^_-) Any other ideas? Preferably costumes should be from series I've seen part of or all of, though I'm always open to watching new series ^_^
(Though, I guess technically I have cosplayed since then, since I wore that outfit on Halloween last year).
So anyway, we decided to do cosplay, but our first task was to figure out what we wanted to go as. We didn't want to do anything that everyone and their dog was doing (i.e., Bleach, Naruto, etc.), and, since we're long time fans, we wanted to do a series that was a bit old school. We considered many different ideas, and finally decided to do Ranma.
Initially, we were going to have Josh be male Ranma, me be female Ranma, and Tara be Akane, but for the purpose of having a wider variety of characters I decided to go as Shampoo instead. So, now that we had characters, we needed to start the costuming process. Josh's was fairly simple: since Ranma typically wears Kung Fu clothes, we just had to search online to find the pieces we needed (and I was able to buy the shoes and obi where I work). The black pants weren't too hard to get, but the red shirt with yellow buttons was a bitch to find. A lot of the shirts we saw had buttons the same color as the shirt, or we'd find ones that had contrasting colors but they weren't the colors we needed (like, a black shirt with white buttons). The one we eventually ended up getting had buttons that were more brown than yellow, but it was the closest thing we could find.
My costume wasn't that difficult. None of us could sew, and since Shampoo's outfits aren't exactly typical Chinese clothes I just ordered a premade costume from eBay (and a purple wig, too). I was panicking a little in the couple weeks before the con since I ordered the outfit in February and it still hadn't arrived yet, but it finally showed up about a week before the con. Even if it hadn't, I had a backup plan: one of the Chinese vendors for Uwajimaya had recently taken a trip to China, and as a gift he brought back Chinese dresses for each person in our department. But anyway, the outfit arrived on time, but it was a bit too big for me, so I had to do a lot of pinning it smaller the day I wore it (I was worried the pins wouldn't hold, but surprisingly they did).
Tara's Akane outfit was the simplest of all, so we decided to try making it. None of us can sew, but Josh's sister Andi and our friend Aimee know how, so we enlisted thier help in creating the outfit (as in, they did almost all the work since none of us knew what we were doing ^_^;;) Tara and I shopped for fabric, and we probably should have had someone with a little knowhow come with us, since all we bought was the fabric and a pattern, not piddly little details like thread or a zipper :P It took awhile to get everyone together to "git 'r' done", but the dress was finished soon before the con, and everything was fine....except, on the night before the con started, Tara still needed a plain white blouse for the outfit. We looked around a few stores near the hotel, and she ended up having to get one from a Macy's, where it was $45 o_O But she ended up just returning the shirt after the con, so no money was wasted :P
We chose Saturday to do our Cosplay, since it's typically the biggest day of the con (and we didn't want to wear the outfits all weekend, they'd get too smelly :P) Friday night we ran into a problem: we weren't quite sure how to style my wig. We could make buns in the hair, but they kept ending up lopsided and uneven and looking all too much like cinnamon buns. I said they were fine, they didn't have to be perfect, but Josh came up with a clever solution: bun covers. They would help keep the hair in place, and hide all the bobby pins we had to jam into them to keep them together. But, where could we find hair bun covers the night before our cosplay? The answer was in our hotel room: tissues. I was worried they would be too fragile, since the bobby pins kept jabbing through them when I tried to put them over the buns, but they ended up not looking too bad from afar (also, they got a little rained on, but luckily our hotel was right next to the convention center, so no noticable damage was done). Continuing his streak of clever hair ideas, Josh also came up with the idea of putting the little plastic wires from a Zeonography figure he bought in his hair to make the braid stick up like Ranma's does. It actually worked pretty well, though it's not really visible in most of the pictures.
Another problem I had after I started wearing the outfit was that the shoes were too big. They didn't come with the outfit, so I'd had to go buy ones that looked similar enough. A couple days before the con, I went to Payless and found some red shoes that looked close to what Shampoo wears (they had a little design on them, but they were good enough). The size options I had were either 6½ or 8. I typically wear about a 7½ to 8, but the 8 in these shoes was a bit big, but I couldn't even get my foot into the 6½. So I ended up with shoes that were a bit too big, so they kept slipping off my heels when I walked. On one of my trips back to the hotel room in the morning, Josh suggested I put on socks to help stop the slipping. The only color options I had were gray or yellow. The yellow matched the sash, so I went with those, even though they kind of stick out ^_^;; They stopped the slipping a little, but my feet still kept coming out of the shoes occasionally throughout the day.
So, now that you've heard about all the issues we had and can easily point out the flaws mentioned above, here are a few pics:
Josh in his Ranma outfit.
Me in my Shampoo outfit.
The typical pose we used for most pictures other people took (we also used me glomping and kissing him on the cheek and a "wacky hands" pose where we're each balancing on one foot, a pose that almost caused us to fall down each time we did it ^_^;;)
I know probably around 15 people took pictures of us, but so far, after looking through thousands of con pictures on a bunch of different sites, I've only found one of them. If anyone else has seen any of us, please show me where to find them. But here's a couple that were taken by another Ranma group:
I think this is the only picture we got of Tara, and she's not really visible here.
The other Ranma group had me take a picture with them since they didn't have a Shampoo with them.
So overall, we had a couple problems, but everything worked out OK. We even started talking about future cosplay possibilities. With the long purple wig I have, I was thinking I could be Maya from Tenjou Tenge (though I'm not quite, err, busty enough for that ^_^;;) or maybe Gunter from Kyou Kara Maou (if Josh were Yuuri, I would have an excuse to glomp him all the time ^_-) Any other ideas? Preferably costumes should be from series I've seen part of or all of, though I'm always open to watching new series ^_^
