Cosplay Complex

With Ai-kon 2010 just a few short days away, it has been a mad rush around my place to get everything ready.

What does that mean of course? COSPLAY!

I briefly explained in my last post what cosplay is, but I'm about to go into it in more detail. Exciting, no?

It seems like this happens every year. Ai-kon draws closer and closer. In the months beforehand, I'll start to think "hey, I liked this series, I should dress up as {insert character here}" the thought will linger around in my mind but I'll never actually start to make a costume.

Until about a week before the convention. Then I'll start lurking around the message boards and I'll see all these people talking about their costumes. That's when I'll start to wish I'd got my ass in gear months ago and made my outfit. I want people to gaze in awe at my costume and to recognize the character I love so much! I want so much to be a part of that but sadly I am far too lazy and thus did not make my costume in time so I'll just have to be a normie walking around in street clothes. Alas, there will be no midnight 7-11 runs in costume for me.

Unless... I start making the costume RIGHT NOW. Yes, it's still the weekend before the convention! I still have five days to make my outfit - that's plenty of time, right? I mean, how hard can it be? It's not a complex character I want to go as, I wouldn't need to get a wig I can just style (or dye) my own hair! Yes, it's perfect I can totally do this.

That is how it begins. Suddenly I find myself at fabricland looking at a printed out picture of a character trying to figure out the best colour fabric to use. I start to think of ways I can hack the costume together. I don't need to *make* a skirt, I can just buy one at value village!

Before I know it, I've spent half the day at fabricland, value villiage and then wal-mart once I come to the sad realization that value villiage will never have what I need. I get home and I have all the confidence in the world. I can do this! So what if I don't have a pattern, I can just make one up as I go along! It will turn out just fine!

(No it won't.)

The rest of the day is spent carefully measuring and cutting out fabric. The initial sewing begins. That's when I realize I forgot about something very crucial. I forgot to take into account the fact that my hips are bigger than my waist. Or I measured my sides and forgot about boobs and now the shirt doesn't fit right.

So the process starts all over again. Thankfully, in recent years I have accepted the fact that I will inevitably screw up on my first try and buy extra fabric when I'm at the store. This saves time in having to go back because I ALWAYS use all that fabric.

That doesn't change the fact that by this time it is usually the end of the weekend before the con. I now only have Monday-Thursday evenings to finish this monstrosity.

It's usually around Tuesday evening that I realize I just won't have enough time. That's when the extreme happens folks. It's either give up on the costume or skip out on school/work on Thursday to get this thing done.

I've done that twice. Skipped college in 2007 and told work in 2008 "I NEED A VACATION DAY!!" In 2009 I didn't make a costume.

This year? Well, I'm sitting here writing in my blog as I look over at my 80% done costume. Maybe, just maybe I grew up a little (well, no, that can't really be true because after all I spent the whole weekend making a costume for an anime convention.) and realized the sad fact - I might just have to start early if I want to get it done this time.

Yeah, I count starting early as buying the fabric two days ago. One week before the start of Ai-kon.

This is the reason I'll never be able to make a very complex costume. I usually stick to school girl outfits and that tends to work out well for me. It's fairly simple, buy a white shirt, attach a collar and sew/buy a skirt. My only experience with sewing is making a costume once a year and shockingly they don't actually look that bad.

I guess after all that ranting I've got to post pictures of my past costumes now, huh?

Haruhi Suzumiya for Ai-kon 2007. Lots of fun at that convention with that cosplay, but that's for another post ;)

Miki Koishikawa for Ai-kon 2008. I only ended up wearing it for about an hour of the whole con. T_T

Sailor Moon!! Originally made as a Halloween costume when I was in the sixth grade, I wore this numerous times until finally retiring it in 2006.

(Title reference: The title of a fun anime short all about making cosplay!)