Future of this Blog

This blog started as a project for my E-commerce class. I have actually enjoyed making it, though, and so I do plan to keep this site up and running, and to keep adding to it. However, the frequency of my posts is going to be severely reduced. During the period of time in which I have been running this blog so far, I have been posting about twice a week. For the time being, I am incapable of continuing to write that many posts, especially at their current level of involvement. Each post usually takes me about a day to write, so if I were to keep up my current post level, that's a week out of each month that I can't devote to my costumes. As I want to be a professional costumer, and not a professional blogger, that is unacceptable to me.

If I wanted to keep up that posting schedule, I would have to decrease the length and/or quality of my posts. That is not something I want to do. I know that for me, personally, I would rather read a smaller number of longer, higher quality posts than a lot of short, "look at this YouTube video I found" posts. Since this is my blog, I am going to run it according to my preferences. This means that I will be posting no more than once a week, and likely only once every other week. It will just kind of depend on what is going on in my life that month.

While I do kind of wish it was practical for me to keep up a good schedule, I know it's not. The only reason it's practical for me to keep updating at all is that I'm graduating this month. Between work, friends, my costumes, and the company I'm involved in, much of my time is going to continue to be spoken for even after I graduate. I don't see the time demands letting up any time soon, either. I don't know that I can say that I'd even want them to, honestly. I like where I am in life right now, and where I'm headed. I can definitely see myself consistently  posting once or even twice a week in the future, but for now, it will just have to stay 2-4 times a month.

My next post might not be until after Anime Oasis. While there are one or two posts I would like to do before then, I have a lot of costume work that needs to get done before AO. While I don't really many post topics in mind for the future, I'll probably do a recap of the convention and possibly a photo blog, similar to what I did for Sakura Con. I'll also do posts about every new costume and major prop (minor props will be included with their respective costumes) I do from this point out, as well as posts on major revisions I do to my current costumes and props. Other possibilities for the future include interviews with local cosplayer/costumers, and retrospectives on other conventions I've been to (Anime Banzai in particular holds a significance to me that almost rivals that of Anime Oasis). At some point, I would also like to have a page that showcases all of my costumes.

I hope that you'll continue to stick with me and support my work, even with the reduced content output.

Thank you.

Anime Oasis: Past and Future

One of the few decent photos from my first AO.

With Sakura Con now firmly out of the way, it's time to set my sights on the next convention on my calendar: Anime Oasis. This convention has a special place in my heart, as it was the first one I ever attended, back in 2011. Back then, I was still  living in Rock Springs and knew next to nothing about conventions or cosplay. Two of my costumes were essentially pulled straight from my closet, one was borrowed, and the other was so-so at best. In addition to my pretty lackluster costumes, I was pretty awkward there, as it was not only my first convention, but my first time out of town by "myself". (Meaning without my family. I did go with a friend.) I had little idea what one did at a convention, or how to interact there. I did have fun, for the most part, but a lot of it was me simply being drunk off of the experience. Even though I know looking back that there a lot of things I did not understand then, I still loved it. I wouldn't say "instantly", though, as it took me several hours to start warming up to the atmosphere and come out of my shell. Being at the convention just felt right. There were people there who I could talk to about my interests (video game, and anime to a lesser extent) without having to explain them first, because they shared those interests. I had never been very social before, and it was a very freeing experience, partly due to a "Who cares if I horribly embarrass myself in front of these people? I never have to deal with them again!" mentality I had talked myself into. It was also horribly overwhelming at times, and I spent most of the third day (Saturday) sitting in an elevator, riding it up and down. While, if I had to do it all over again, there would be a number of things I would likely do differently, I am really happy with how everything turned out. My only real regret is that I didn't take more photos, on a better camera. (I took less photos during the entirety of my first AO than I usually take in a day now. Most of them didn't turn out all that well, either.)

The first Resident Evil photo shoot. Literally a
life-changing event.

My second Anime Oasis went much better. By that point, I had been to conventions before (the previous AO, and Anime Banzai.), and was much better able to handle it. I was far more relaxed than I had been the previous year, though I did have my moments. (every fangirl does.) One of these moments was when I found a Carlos (Leo, far left in the photo) cosplayer in the Artists' Alley. For those of you who don't know, Carlos is a fairly obscure character from the Resident Evil series of games, specifically the third game, one of my two favorites from the series. I was quite excited, as I'd never seen a Carlos cosplayer before. I asked him and the Leon cosplayer (Steve, second from the left) he was with if they were still going to be those characters on Saturday, as I was going to be Rebecca that day. He said they were, and that they might know some other people who were going to be Resident Evil characters. So we decided to set up a Resident Evil photo shoot for Saturday. Over the course of that day and the next, word spread to some other Resident Evil fans, and I spent time off and on with Leo. I spent a good chunk of the day of the photo shoot around other Resident Evil fans, talking about it and our other fandoms, and playing the Resident Evil card game. The photo shoot itself was two hours or so of taking photos with and talking to the other people there. I absolutely loved it and, even though I had fun on all three of the other days, nothing else from the convention even came close to to it in terms of how much I enjoyed it.

After the convention, when I had returned home to Rock Springs, I did keep in contact with some of the people I had met at AO that year, to varying degrees. The main person I kept in contact with was Leo. We talked just about every day over the Internet. We quickly developed a relationship, and have now been dating for almost two years. Likewise, Steve and the Fairytale Sheve (Judy, second from the right) also started dating soon after AO. Over the next few months, I would become friends with both of them, as well as some of Leo and Steve's other friends. As the year drew to a close, I had decided to move to Boise. By this point, Rock Springs held almost nothing for me anymore. My parents had moved to Kansas, and my grandparents were planning to move to Pennsylvania in the near future. I still had a couple friends left there, as well as two step siblings, but I wasn't as close to any of them as I was to my Boise friends. It was the only option I could see working out in the long run, and I haven't regretted it for even a moment.

The second Resident Evil photo shoot.  I am very close to
most of these people.

By the time the next AO rolled around, I had been living in Boise for about five months. It was the first convention I'd been to since moving here, and though not the first convention I'd gone to since I started dating Leo, it was the first convention where I felt like I was starting to become a real part of the Boise convention crowd. I knew a number of people there outside of my immediate circle of friends, and ran a panel with Leo and some of our friends. Additionally, this AO was when I debuted my Arcade Sona, which is, to date, the costume I have made the most things for. This was for the League of Legends photo shoot that I participated in, in addition to the Resident Evil photo shoot that we did again that year. I had a ton of fun at this AO as well, and probably more so than at either of the previous two, but there's not quite as much to say about it.

No matter how many conventions I go to, Anime Oasis will always have a meaning to me beyond what other ones ever could. I look forward to seeing what this AO will bring. But before that, I have some work to do on costumes. Join me next time when I'll be discussing the projects I want to get done for this coming up Anime Oasis.

Fishbones

The main reference photo I worked off of. 

This year for Sakura Con, i was commissioned by friend of mine to make a prop to go with a costume she was making. Specifically, it was Fishbones, the rocket launcher used by Jinx from League of Legends. Since I have had good results with it before, I decided to use this tutorial. I have previously used this tutorial to make a different project, to good results. I did not follow it exactly, as the "armor" pieces on Fishebones about an inch think in most places. Craft foam, however, is usually only about 1/16th of an inch thick. Instead, I actually used MMA floor mats that my friend and I ordered online. While this did lead to its own problems, it also delivered very good results in the end.

Sakura Con Photos

A collection of the photos I took (or had taken on my camera) during my time at Sakura Con.

Sakura Con

Captain Hammer. The peace-bonding
is too clever to not share.

I spent this past weekend at Sakura Con, in Seattle, Washington. It's definitely one of the largest conventions I've ever been to. (The only one that even comes close would be Rose City Comic Con from last September.) Because of the size, it was overwhelming, but I had a great time. I went with five friends of mine, to diffuse the costs of gas and the hotel. It was fun, for the most part, but friction is almost inevitable with that many people in one room.

Our drive to Seattle would turn out to be very indicative of our trip as a whole: plans didn't quite go how we wanted them to, but we still made the best of it. We didn't leave until an hour and a half after we wanted to, and had to stop more times than we would have liked, but we made the trip fun. Karaoke in the car, meaningful discussions, silly discussions, and just being with good friends.

The convention itself was a mixed bag. On the one hand, we met a lot of cool people, had fun taking photos of costumes we liked, having our pictures taken by people who liked our costumes, dressing up in costumes, and doing things with my friends. On the other hand, however, their prop weapon policy kept us from using many of our props, we missed almost every panel that we wanted to go to, and it wreaked havoc on my schedule. What was good about the convention was very good, but the experience was marred by some unfortunate circumstances. I do think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't had school weighing on my mind as well.

Guqin Sona. My favorite cosplayer from the convention.
This photo really doesn't do her justice.

The first day was my favorite day. My energy was the highest that day, and I was able to spend most of the just wandering the convention (primarily the dealer's room and artist's alley) with my friends. The second day was a close second, mostly due to our costumes. For that day, I went as Arcade Sona and my friend went as Jinx. It took us forever to get anywhere, because of everyone who wanted to take our photo. It literally took us an hour to get into the convention, most of the way to the dealer's room, turn around, and down to the League of Legends photoshoot. It took us 15 minutes just to get out of the foyer area. It was very flattering, but also exhausting. Even relatively light props get heavy after a while, and especially for my friend, whose character is very high-energy and requires a lot more active-looking poses.

Lisa Garland. I always love to see people
cosplay otherwise overlooked characters.

Unfortunately, the third day was not anywhere as good as the previous two. A large part of it was due to circumstances unrelated to the con. The other parts were due to missing several panels that I really wanted to go to, some due to my own lateness and some due to insanely long lines. In specific, I'm talking about the autograph lines. They really were ridiculous. For the Attack on Titan signing, we were there about 25 minutes before it started, five minutes after people were actually allowed to start queuing. Six minutes after that, the line was completely full. Overfull, actually. The line went longer than the time allotted. I had a friend with me, otherwise I probably would have given up. Fortunately, the other autograph line I wanted to get in to (Matt Mercer's line) wasn't as insane. By this point, my other friend had shown up, too (she wanted his signature as well, having previously been wandering the dealer's hall), so we had a good time together. Afterwards, the three of us and two other friends we went with, all went out to a nearby restaurant to get some desserts to finish off the convention on  a high note.

All in all, it was a pretty good convention. I am considering going again next year (although its prop weapon policy that excludes even no longer functioning Air Soft guns is stupid to the point of putting me off of wanting to go), only because I should be graduating this year. Going to a convention during the school year can be quite stressful, outside of the normal stress of an out-of-state convention. I know it sounds like I'm complaining a lot about Sakura Con, but I really did have fun. Good friends can make all the difference when it comes to how much you enjoy a convention, and mine most certainly made it one worth remembering.

Things Don't Always Go As Planned.

So, I had planned to have a post about the construction of Fishbones go up yesterday, but circumstances beyond my control have caused that to be delayed. For next Monday, I had planned a reflection on my trip to Sakura Con in Seattle, Washington. I still plan on posting this, but most likely not until later this week. My post on Fishbones will be on this coming up Monday instead. My apologies.

Introduction

My original Princess Mononoke costume
from Anime Oasis 2011.

Hello, my name is Krista and I am a costumer from Boise, Idaho. I have been actively costuming for about three years, though I have always had a love of costumes. I have been attending conventions almost as long. My first convention was Anime Oasis 2011, here in Boise. At the time, I was living in Wyoming, so it was quite a trip to get there. Nevertheless, I loved it. After the convention was over, and I was back home, I already wanted to make more costumes and go to another one. I would, too, in October of that same year. Anime Banzai, in Salt Lake City, was my second convention, and the one that would cement my love for them. I was also inspired by the wonderful costumes that I had seen, and pushed myself to both improve my older costumes and to make more challenging costumes in the future.

My Mononoke costume, much improved from
its original form.

The following year, 2012, would be a pivotal year for me. It was at that year's Anime Oasis that I would meet my current circle of friends. These friends would be the reason that I would take two additional trips out to Boise that year (for Fandemonium and Tomodachi Fest), and the reason that I would eventually move out here.

Once here, I settled into the costuming community quite nicely, even joining the still-forming local chapter of the International Costumer's Guild, the Gem State Costumers. Currently, I am the GSC's representative to the ICG forum, meaning that I keep track of what's currently being discussed on the forum for the rest of my chapter, and am the voice of the GSC on that forum.

My Rebecca Chambers costume. The vest was my
finals project for my Costume Construction class.

In the future, I want to open up my own costume shop. My love of costuming runs so deep that I would be perfectly content dedicating the rest of my life to it. For now, though, I want to grow my presence in the costuming community. I plan on doing this by continuing to make costumes to the best of my ability, learning and growing as a costumer as I do. I also need to get my name out there, and show people what I can do. That's where this blog comes in. My plans for this blog are to use it to document my projects, convention experiences, and other related things, in the hopes of gathering a reader base that enjoys my work and will support my business as it gets off of the ground.

Join me next time as I discuss the making of my first commission: Fishbones.