Cosplay: Six Days to Go!

So all of a sudden, after months of work, the con is in six days and I have SO much left to do to finish my Tali costume!  I've been working almost non-stop for the last week, and I've made a ton of progress, there's just so much left to do!!

The jumpsuit has been my biggest point of progress.  It's totally finished -- painted, lined, and completely ready to go. In this pic, it still needs its outlining around the diamonds, but it's almost done. That process alone took 3-4 days.  

The shawl is so close to being done I can taste it. The hood is finished and attached, and the leg wraps are just perfect.  It still needs its final edging to match Tali's, but the designs are done and it's almost ready to go! 

Despite all the progress -- the belt is complete, the gun is painted and glazed, the shoes are sprayed and ready to wear -- so, so many things have gone wrong.  Like the faceplate.  It's supposed to be this beautiful, dark purple that obscures the face but remains transparent.  As you can imagine, this isn't easy to achieve; I tried four different methods before I finally got one to work.  

This is the mask I'm using.  Shape and flexibility-wise, it's perfect; I cut a notch out of the underside with a dremel and used a heat gun to bend it into the right shape.  In no time at all, that part, at least, was finished.  But the coloring was the bitch.  

First: I coated the plastic with headlight vinyl, a method I'd read about online that seemed to meet with great success.  The results, while a pale purple, looked so poor I didn't even bother to take a picture.  Second I tried coloring the plastic by hand with a purple Sharpie, another method people had tried online.  That worked, definitely, but I was left with a mask marred by horizontal lines every 4 millimeters down the whole length. Not exactly attractive -- again, not worth a photo.  

Then, getting desperate, I figured out that you could effectively dye plastic using RIT fabric dye and really hot water.  A lot of people online have boasted of their success with this method, so I gave it a shot.  It worked really well with an old pair of safety glasses I had around the house, so I set up shop in my kitchen and gave it a whirl with the faceplate.  

This is my kitchen, the faceplate happily simmering away on the stove like some sort of demented stew and old operating room towels (my mom got them from the hospital where she works) on everything to prevent my countertops from taking on the same purple hue as the mask.  

I'm not saying that method worked really well -- much of my stove was purple by the time I was done, and I had to hang a towel from the vent to make sure I didn't also stain my walls that color.  But hey, with some Comet and a lot of scrubbing, it came off. Oh well! 

If only my results with the mask had been as beautiful as the mess I made in the kitchen.  

After more than 5 hours bubbling away on the stove, this pale, sad result was what I got.  

 I'm not even sure you can call that purple -- more like "vaguely pink."  And even worse, when I went to Windex it to get my fingerprints off, most of the color wiped right off too.  So much for the fabric dye method!

Finally, four days ago, I had given up. Tali was going to have a clear faceplate and that was that; there was nothing else I could do.  Then my husband happened to look at my office, strewn with fabric and elastic bands and paint, and said, "Why don't you just use purple fabric?"

And it worked perfectly.  A simple, sheer fabric from Joann's and the mask was done.  Here, the edges aren't trimmed yet, but it's all glued and ready to go.  And all it took was an easy week of my life spent fighting with that stupid plastic.  

Now, there are mostly just details left.  The list above isn't totally updated: the arm plating is finished as of this morning, and the shoulder armor is pinned and waiting to be sewn.  I'm only typing here as a short break before I head back to gluing on the faceplate; the patterns for the pieces are upstairs and clipped to the mask, just waiting for me to finish it.  

It's progress.  Last week, I'd have said I wasn't sure if I could get it done in time. Today, I'm feeling like I'm almost there.  

Six days! 

The Thing About Voices

Voices, be they in video games, movies, or TV shows, often present a problem for me.  I fall in and out of love with them on a near-daily basis, a phenomenon I find hard to explain, particularly to my husband.  Benedict Cumberbatch, Steve Valentine (Alistair from Dragon Age), Brandon Keener (Garrus Vakarian from Mass Effect), I love the sound of all of these voices.  And yet, I am not particularly attracted to any of them physically.  That's where the confusion sets in.

Here's the guy who voices Garrus Vakarian, one of my all-time favorite video game characters:

Brandon Keener, from what I've read online, is a generally nice human being.  And he takes a good head shot, I'll give him that. He's been in a lot of stuff, including an episode of Castle with Nathan Fillion.  That combination alone should be a no-brainer nerd-gasm, and yet he just doesn't do it for me.

However, put that voice of his on Garrus....

And I am instantly in love.  I can't help it.  Those deep gravelly undertones are obviously edited in (you can check out some samples of his best lines here), and maybe that makes it perfect.  I can listen to his dialogue over and over and never get bored.  He's an alien, obviously, a turian, who are known for being spiky and scary and supremely unattractive.  It's not that I find Garrus himself, as he's designed, sexy;  it's just the voice they put on him.  Yum.

Alistair, from Dragon Age: Origins, is designed and animated to be totally cute and endearing, and it definitely works.

In a lot of ways, personality-wise, Alistair reminds me of my husband: he's sweet and charming and funny and I totally just want to take him home and snuggle him every time he shows up in the game.  (Or in real life -- my husband, I mean). I think that's part of why I love the character so much.

He's also got the sexiest accent, a kind of Scottish/British combination that is so perfect I find it hard to believe it exists.  Or that this is the guy who produces it:

I mean, sure, he looks friendly and nice, but he is so not what I picture when I hear him talk.  He's had small parts in all sorts of TV shows, from Big Bang Theory to CSI, so there's no shortage of him on YouTube if need be.  But him as Alistair will always be my favorite.

My finding voices attractive becomes a little more complicated when they're attached to actual human beings, instead of just as my beloved video game characters.

Take Benedict Cumberbatch: (Yes, please! But only if he narrates the whole time... ;))

There's really no denying that he is attractive.  But it's his voice that makes him -- his face is just a little too stark and angular (the classic Sherlock Holmes description, hence his casting) for me, and he looks like he weighs about 100 pounds -- like I could snap him with a hug, and I am not exactly a big girl.  Yet every time I get a message and my phone chirps, "I've got a text!" in his voice, I swoon.

Oh, and in Star Trek: Into Darkness?  I could listen to him all day, just letting that voice wash over me. I'm just still not that attracted to him -- the slicked-back hair is sexier, to be sure, lending him a much more "bad boy" quality than is present in Sherlock, but I still wouldn't do him (as if that would ever happen, right).

There are others whose voices I find blindingly attractive: Michael Fassbender comes to mind, as does James McAvoy -- First Class and Days of Future Past are just pure joy for me.  And Fassbender I find to be an incredible actor, to be sure.  But my god, their voices...

OMG Steam Summer Sale!

The Steam Summer Sale has thoroughly disrupted my life.  One moment, I was sitting at my computer, contentedly working my way through Dragon Age: Origins and a second play-through of Mass Effect 3, and suddenly I have almost a dozen new games to play and not nearly enough time to play them all. And it's only day 4 of the sale...

To be fair, I knew it was coming: Bishop (my husband) has been talking about the Sale for about a month now, but a) we thought it was in August, and b) I've never been through it as a gamer before, being only about 6 months into my gaming career. I'm the type that, when I get interested in something, I throw myself in wholeheartedly; I played through my first video game, Mass Effect, in roughly 3-4 days. Since then, I've been slowly accumulating a Wishlist of games I want to try, never guessing that I'd had the opportunity in only a few short months.

So now the choice comes: Do I start with Skyrim, once Dragon Age: Origins is done? Or confront the darkness that is the Bioshock trilogy? Should I continue my fantasy binge with Fable: The Lost Chapters? Or plunge into the existential mess of Borderlands 2?

I have so many new options, and all I really want to do is go hang out with Alistair and Wynne.  For now, I suppose I stay the course -- for a few more days, at least.

**update**
and now a Hitman collection went on sale, Nooooo.....

Baby's First Cosplay

My very first cosplay happens in just a few weeks.  One of my friends, the illustrious artist Bone (look him up on deviantart, he's pretty cool), goes to Anthrocon every year in Pittsburgh, and despite not being members of the subculture, my husband and I sometimes attend with him.  It's more a chance to have fun and explore nerd culture for an extended weekend than anything else, and I always enjoyed it.

The first time we went, I was in awe of the fursuiters.  Not because I felt that I too needed a fursuit, but because of the freedom they had.  No one knew who they were; with the giant mascot heads on, sure, people were looking at them, but no one had an identity, and what's more, no one cared.  They got to run around, do what they wanted, photobomb people, all that fun stuff that gets tempered by the fact that I embarrass easily.  Maybe I never grew out of that feeling that everyone is always looking at me, but I always feel self-conscious when I do silly things in public.  I was so jealous of the fursuiters!

So back in March, when Bone invited Bishop (my husband) and I to attend Anthrocon with him again, I decided I wanted to cosplay.  And since around then I was embarking on the love affair I call Mass Effect, I knew I had to go as Tali'Zorah.

Here is Tali, in all her quarian glory. 

I've never cosplayed before, never even made a costume. As Bone said when I told him, "Tali. That's ambitious."   But I'm a pretty determined person, and it's slowly taking shape as time goes on.
I have transformed my office, where formerly I graded papers and constructed lesson plans, into a full-on studio, complete with a sewing machine and modeling clay galore as I attempt this project.  The "To Become Tali" list has slowly dwindled as the school year ended and my summer began, and now I'm starting to feel like I'm almost done. Almost.

This is my original "To Become Tali" list, complete with all the things I had to learn to do in order to do this right.  There are some truly amazing Tali cosplayers out there, and there are some that turn out less than stellar; I'm determined that mine, at least, will be in the middle, if not closer to amazing.  Here're some progress shots thus far:

The buttons and clasps for her various belts and the back harness. 

The careful construction of the jumpsuit pattern. This alone probably took 1-2 hours. 

Slow progress on the M-4 Shuriken from Mass Effect 2 & 3. It's been finished and glazed since this picture, and the holster is done too. 

A shrug pattern on Amazon saved my butt on this one -- it was easy to make and didn't require insane sewing skills that I don't possess.  It's not done yet; it still needs edging and a lot of armor attached, but it's progress.  

Everything is slowly coming together.  A bunch of smaller items, like her gold collar and belt and the start of the harness are already finished.  I have the boots and just need to shape them properly, and the leg wraps are cut and pinned and ready to be sewn.  I have no idea how many hours I've spent working on this project; a lot, I imagine, and it's been totally worth it.  The to-do list is much shorter than it was, and I'm so excited for Anthrocon! 

More progress to come in future weeks.