Hatto wa mangekyou.
Aug. 15th, 2007 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dejanaTaking a break from a busy evening to post this. >)
First, to whom it may concern, I have friends flying in for a visit this weekend, so I'll have to miss the Detour meeting.
Now, as promised... my first cosplay! :D
Wow, is this going to be embarrassing. But it was fun. :)
I went into this as someone entirely new to cosplay, having never done any of this before. The most I'd ever done before this was some very basic sewing, little more than a big piece of cloth with a couple of seams in it. Even though it's a simple costume and didn't turn out perfect, it was still a good experience. ^^
Sailor Pluto has always been my favorite character, but there's no way I'd ever be caught dead in a sailor fuku. So the next best thing is her princess dress.
Thank you Takeuchi-sama for the awesome resource that is the Materials Collection! On a side note, though... the two black streaks extending down on either side of the dress appear to be ribbons, yes? Where are they attached? To the top of the dress? To the choker? Some of the other dresses have the choker tied in a bow at the back of the neck, so extra-long ties are an easy guess there, but Saturn and Pluto's don't seem to be that way.
I didn't have a lot of time before AnimeIowa, so for now I left out the ribbons and the train, but I plan to add them before my next con.
For the dress I used a basic formal dress pattern, added shoulder straps, and modified the upper edge. The top edge ended up being a giant pain and I'm still not happy with it or the way the shoulder straps fit, so I need to try to fix that. Also, I couldn't find the materials I wanted to use for the shoulder strap decorations and I had to resort to using fun foam. Ugh. Anyone have any suggestions for better materials?
Anyway, Here's the dress as it is right now, on a duct-tape dressform that I made.
For the wig, I started with an emerald green "Amanda" wig from Cosworx.
Here it is after I finished styling it.
I sewed down the bun a bit after these pictures were taken to secure it, and it still doesn't quite fit snugly against the wig, but it's not very noticeable.
On to the best part - the Time Key! I know, Pluto doesn't carry her staff in her princess form. But too bad. :P To be honest, the whole reason I made this costume was to have an excuse to carry the staff around cons. The Time Key rocks. I wanted one. :3
This is also the item I started first and have been working on the longest. I'm pretty sure I've been working on this thing for more than a year, in bursts of effort here and there. The various pieces of the staff are made of foam covered in Wonderflex (plastic that is shapeable when heated), given a few coats of gesso and sanded to make them smooth, and then attached to two wooden dowels and painted. It's near impossible to transport something of this height, so I've designed it to come apart in three pieces. There are pieces of threaded pipe hidden in two sections of the staff, and the dowels screw into them.
First, in two halves:
And screwed together.
The paint needs a bit of touching up, so the very top is only attached with hot glue so it can be detatched later for more painting. I also had some trouble screwing the two halves together after it was all painted, so I'm going to have to fix that joint up a bit as well.
Next... me actually wearing the entire costume at AnimeIowa. Be warned, I'm a fat girl. If you have a problem with that don't look.
The gloves have gotta go. I bought the longest that store had and they were far too short and of pretty poor quality. I also need to find or make the necklace Pluto wears with the dress, and add the train and ribbons. The dress ended up a little shorter than I would've liked, because when we pinned it I didn't realize I'd be folding it up twice instead of once, but that's no big deal. Overall, not bad at all. I even found a picture I didn't want to set on fire. xD
I do need practice posing, though, big time. I had no idea what I was doing and it kind of shows. And my makeup needs work. I did get quite a number of compliments on my costume, though. ^^
There's still much to be done, but for one day's wear on Saturday, it worked out okay. All in all, not bad for a first try IMHO. :)
More details on the process and work-in-progress pictures can be found in this thread on dotmoon.net.
First, to whom it may concern, I have friends flying in for a visit this weekend, so I'll have to miss the Detour meeting.
Now, as promised... my first cosplay! :D
Wow, is this going to be embarrassing. But it was fun. :)
I went into this as someone entirely new to cosplay, having never done any of this before. The most I'd ever done before this was some very basic sewing, little more than a big piece of cloth with a couple of seams in it. Even though it's a simple costume and didn't turn out perfect, it was still a good experience. ^^
Sailor Pluto has always been my favorite character, but there's no way I'd ever be caught dead in a sailor fuku. So the next best thing is her princess dress.
Thank you Takeuchi-sama for the awesome resource that is the Materials Collection! On a side note, though... the two black streaks extending down on either side of the dress appear to be ribbons, yes? Where are they attached? To the top of the dress? To the choker? Some of the other dresses have the choker tied in a bow at the back of the neck, so extra-long ties are an easy guess there, but Saturn and Pluto's don't seem to be that way.
I didn't have a lot of time before AnimeIowa, so for now I left out the ribbons and the train, but I plan to add them before my next con.
For the dress I used a basic formal dress pattern, added shoulder straps, and modified the upper edge. The top edge ended up being a giant pain and I'm still not happy with it or the way the shoulder straps fit, so I need to try to fix that. Also, I couldn't find the materials I wanted to use for the shoulder strap decorations and I had to resort to using fun foam. Ugh. Anyone have any suggestions for better materials?
Anyway, Here's the dress as it is right now, on a duct-tape dressform that I made.
For the wig, I started with an emerald green "Amanda" wig from Cosworx.
Here it is after I finished styling it.
I sewed down the bun a bit after these pictures were taken to secure it, and it still doesn't quite fit snugly against the wig, but it's not very noticeable.
On to the best part - the Time Key! I know, Pluto doesn't carry her staff in her princess form. But too bad. :P To be honest, the whole reason I made this costume was to have an excuse to carry the staff around cons. The Time Key rocks. I wanted one. :3
This is also the item I started first and have been working on the longest. I'm pretty sure I've been working on this thing for more than a year, in bursts of effort here and there. The various pieces of the staff are made of foam covered in Wonderflex (plastic that is shapeable when heated), given a few coats of gesso and sanded to make them smooth, and then attached to two wooden dowels and painted. It's near impossible to transport something of this height, so I've designed it to come apart in three pieces. There are pieces of threaded pipe hidden in two sections of the staff, and the dowels screw into them.
First, in two halves:
And screwed together.
The paint needs a bit of touching up, so the very top is only attached with hot glue so it can be detatched later for more painting. I also had some trouble screwing the two halves together after it was all painted, so I'm going to have to fix that joint up a bit as well.
Next... me actually wearing the entire costume at AnimeIowa. Be warned, I'm a fat girl. If you have a problem with that don't look.
The gloves have gotta go. I bought the longest that store had and they were far too short and of pretty poor quality. I also need to find or make the necklace Pluto wears with the dress, and add the train and ribbons. The dress ended up a little shorter than I would've liked, because when we pinned it I didn't realize I'd be folding it up twice instead of once, but that's no big deal. Overall, not bad at all. I even found a picture I didn't want to set on fire. xD
I do need practice posing, though, big time. I had no idea what I was doing and it kind of shows. And my makeup needs work. I did get quite a number of compliments on my costume, though. ^^
There's still much to be done, but for one day's wear on Saturday, it worked out okay. All in all, not bad for a first try IMHO. :)
More details on the process and work-in-progress pictures can be found in this thread on dotmoon.net.
