2016 Cosplay Plan

After being tagged on Facebook to share my 2016 Cosplay plans, so I thought I would share them here as well.

First off is Gabranth from Final Fantasy XII. I have started working on this one awhile ago, but so far I have only started on the swords and some leg armour. I'm hoping to have it finished in time for AVcon so I can wear it in the Cosplay Competition.

Next up is Mega Evolution X Charizard from Pokemon. I am hoping to have it done in time to wear it on the Saturday of AVcon along with my cousin Megan from Biased Raincloud Cosplay

Maltheal from Diablo is a maybe for Supanova as it depends on whether I want to make yet more armour after Gabranth and Charizard. I love Maltheal's weapons and I think they would be fun to yield. 

This is more of 2017 cosplay plan, but I want to do a Warhammer 40k Space Marine cosplay. Due to the size of them I will probably need all the extra time I can get. This is also one of the reasons that Maltheal is a maybe. 

Last of all is Nurse Joy from Pokemon. I have no actually plans to finish this in 2016 so I won't be stressing about. This is more of a I'm going to do some sewing to make myself hate making armour a little less project.

Funny Cosplay Moments Part 1

When you cosplay, it is only a matter of time before you run into some weird or funny moments with involving other people. While this years AVcon marks my thrid year of cosplaying I have had a couple of interesting moments. This one will be a series as it could end up a long one, and the more I cosplay the more funny moments I come across. I will start with a story from the very first time I cosplayed.

The first time I cosplayed, I cosplayed as Hope from Final Fantasy at the opening ceremony of AVcon 2013. I was with a couple of friends, one of which was my cousin who was cosplaying as Miss Fortune from League of Legends. We went to the opening ceremony and decided to go the Pancake Kitchen afterwards.
It was on a Friday night and we were on North Terrace where AVcon was walking to Hindley Street where Pancake Kitchen was, one street over. For those who don't know Hindley Street is well known for being the nightclub central in Adelaide, just about every second building is a pub or a club and on North Terrace there is the Casino. Mix that with the cosplay folk leaving AVcon, you can only image what kind of things go on.
Getting back to my story, we were leaving AVcon, with my cousin in front, me behind her, with our friends following us. We didn't get far before we pass two guys (I think), one of them stopped, looked at my cousin and asked what I thought was "Who are you from, Final Fantasy?" She just walked past, and I did too, but as I did I replied in my Hope cosplay "Get your facts right"
It wasn't till we got to the Pancake Kitchen that I found out that they actually said "I will be your Final Fantasy"

Why I loved Final Fantasy X

I love Final Fantasy. I really how they really pull you in with their games. My one of my favorite game in the series would have to be the very first one I played, Final Fantasy X.

I can't remember my very first thoughts of it, I just remember my cousin showing me it one day.  What ever I was thinking, it must have been good thoughts. Before long it had pulled me in as well, and we ended up playing it together even going as far as trying to play though it start to finish in as short period of time as we could. We had Final Fantasy fever bad.

One of my favourite character was Yuna. I loved how she could summon Aeons. Looking back I think being shy helped connecting with her as a character as she wasn't exactly the most outgoing character in the game. 

I also really loved the cutscenes. They were at the time really detailed and realistic. I loved it and I would rewatch some of my favourite cutsences again and again. My favourites were the opening sence and the lake sence with Tidus and Yuna. 

How I made Chaos Blade and Highway Star

Today I will be talking about how I made Chaos Blade, one of two swords belonging to Gabranth from Final Fantasy XII, the other being Highway Star. I will mention Highway Star, but won't go into great detail as they were both made the same way. If you want to watch a time lapse of it you can find it over on YouTube.

First I did some research. I looked up photos of Gabranth and his swords and saved the ones I liked the most. I also brought a Play Arts model of Gabranth off eBay which really came in handy.

I printed off a photo of the swords I found and traced them on to some paper. Once that was done I changed the shape of them to match the two swords that came with my Play Arts Model as I was only using the photo to get a rough size and shape. I than scan it and using my height, and some measurements I took off the Play Arts Model, I made it larger until I was happy with it a painted it off. I stuck it together using masking tape and cut out the two swords. Using the paper patterns I cut a wooden broom handle to the size needed.

From here on when I talk about sticking or glueing something, I used a hot glue gun to do so unless other wise mentioned.

I decided to start with Choas Blade. I traced the pattern on to some EVA foam twice to get the thickness I wanted. Cut it out and stuck it together. I than cut out a slot for the broom handle and glued it in.

From here I used my model to cut out details and glued them on. Once down I marked out the golden bit that goes down the centre and started to cut a edge to the blade using a knife.

I than went on to sanding the edge down, sanding out the golden bit, and shape the detailing I had already glued on. At one point I came up with the idea of glueing craft foam over the broom handle slot to hide it a bit.

Before I started on Highway Star I made the solid ring that goes around the bottom of the swords and attached them together. To do this I cut out two ractangle bits of EVA foam, heated them out and glued the short ends together. I than traced the shape it made on to craft foam, along with a hole in the  middle for the broom handle four times, cut them out and stuck three on four of the ends. Before glueing the last one one I glued some EVA foam into it. I than glued both things on to the already made Chaos Blade and the yet to be made Highway Star.

I finished off Chaos Blade, by glueing some craft form around the broom handle.

Highway Star was made in the same way.

My first Cosplay

Over on the Facebook page Adelaide Cosplay Girls, they have been sharing photos of people's first cosplay. My first cosplay was one that was shared, and I thought I would go into a little more detail about it.

My first cosplay - Hope from Final Fantasy XIII

In 2012 I went to AVcon along side my cousin Megan from Biased Raincloud Cosplay. We just want for just one day. I heard of people dressing up as different characters, and thought I would give it ago. I didn't put much effect into it and pretty much throw it together either the day before or the morning before I was due to leave to head to Adelaide. I went as a Pokemon Trainer and because of little effect that went into it, I consider it less as my first cosplay, more of a intro into cosplay. Megan and myself saw so many people cosplay and thought that it looked like so much fun that we thought we would do it next year. 

I decided to Cosplay as Hope from Final Fantasy XIII for AVcon 2013. I think I chose Hope as I had been playing Final Fantasy XIII and he is my favorite characters in it. I decided to buy the costume off eBay as I had no sewing skills. The listing said it would take 4 months to make as it's made using measurements you give them. So I ordered it early in case of delays. It didn't include shoes which I find at Kmart, or a wig.

The wig, nothing nothing about wigs I brought from Cheap as Chips. They didn't have the length or style I wanted so I cut it to how I wanted. The first I cut it, I did such a bad job that I brought another one and retried it. This time less badly.

At the convention Hope was super comfy to wear expect for the wig. I had a red line across my head form the wig after wearing it for a short period and was given a sore head though out AVcon because of it. I hated it so much that I actually brought a better wig for it after AVcon. 

My Geeky Story (so far)

Hi my name is Sarah and I'm a geek. I love to play video games, reading (both novels and manga), cosplay and watching anime.

I thought I would share my background as a geek as a way to let you get to know me better.

This is my Geeky Story (so far)

I was a 90's kid, the youngest of four, and Nintendo was king. I can't remember which one we got first, but my first leap into gaming and geekdom was though the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo Gameboy.

My siblings and myself would spend lots of time playing with each other and with friends on the 64. Our favourite games include Super Smash Bros, Mairo Kart, Snowboard Kids. We also enjoyed playing other games like Mairo 64 and Donkey Kong. Being the Pokemon fan I was, I also enjoyed Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2.
Fun fact I got Pokemon Stadium 2 as a Christmas present one year and one of the first mini games I tried to master was the one where you had to catch eggs falling from the top of the screen using Chansey. To get a prefect score you had to catch all 100 eggs and it was crazy on hard, but I think that just made playing on hard so much more fun.

Oh yes, I loved Pokemon and everything to do with Pokemon and it was all thanks to my neighbour who introduced me to it. My very first Pokemon game was Pokemon Blue on the Gameboy and since then I have been addicted to it. I used to collect so much Pokemon stuff that looking back I am surprised that my parents let me get half the stuff that I did. Most if not all of which I still have even to this day.
During high school my love for Pokemon did calm down a bit. I was still playing the games, but I wasn't going crazy about all of the other stuff like toys, videos/DVDs, the cards etc. Now its just BUY ALL THE POKEMON STUFF!!!!!!!!!!!!

I feel that I should mention books, but there isn't much to tell, other than I read a lot. One series that did make a impact though was the Ranger's Apprentice.
While most other kids who read were reading and loving the Harry Potter series, I was in love with Will and the adventures that he would go on, most of which were with Halt. I started reading Ranger's Apprentice back in about year 6 (give or take a year) and to this day it has remained my all time favorite series.
I was rather upset when I finished the last book, that I think the only reason that I didn't have a breakdown was that I was on my lunch break, and I really need to go back to work.

Eventually the PlayStation 2 came out and by that stage my oldest sister had moved out and the remaining two siblings and myself decided we wanted one. It though the PS 2 that I really started to like different games than my siblings.
My cousin who was a similar age to myself discovered Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy X and introduced them to me. Both of which I really loved.
I remember trying to finish Final Fantasy X with my cousin in as short a time as possible and in order to do so we would take in turns to play so that the other could rest. We could not have been older than 12 or 13 at the time.

Small mention goes to Fire Emblem: Sacred Stone. I loved playing this game and only picked it up because I was looking for a game to take away on holidays and it was the only half interesting looking one at the shop. I ended up replaying it a few times, and want to play more of it, but for quite a while I couldn't find another Fire Emblem game. Until Radiant Drawn came out. It was good, but it wasn't great, and I wanted something more. Something only Awakening could fill.

During high school nothing made a big impact on me as the likes of Pokemon or Final Fantasy. I knew what I liked and I kept to those things and those in a similar category. That was until I became friends with a girl I was friends with at the start of high school but than drafted apart from.
We hit it off pretty well as we were both into gaming. It was during this period that she introduced me to a thing called Anime and Manga and it all went down hill from there (in a good way).
The first anime she showed me was Ouran High School Host Club and I was in love and wanted more. Now some of my favorites include Say "I love you" and Sword Art Online.

She also told me about this thing called AVcon.

After finding out about AVcon I thought it sound cool and that it was something that I wanted to go to. Which I did end up doing the next year. I had so much fun that I have been every year since (that was in 2012) and I have started cosplaying.

Its a bit hard to know about conventions and not know about cosplay. When I saw it I thought that it looked fun and that I should give it a go. My very first cosplay was Hope from Final Fantasy XIII. I call him my first even though I wore him and Edward Elric for the first time at the same convention as I brought Hope first, and Edward was a bit of a afterthought. Since than I have enjoyed making my own cosplays.

And that is my geeky story (so far). Thanks for reading!