Showing posts with label cosplay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cosplay. Show all posts

Thursday, 3 February 2011

My Cosplay Lenses


Sunday, 23 January 2011

Dear Mother Gothel Cosplayers

I was rather thrilled to discover someone making a Mother Gothel costume on DeviantART and actually linking to my Mother Gothel page as her reference resource page. I was also slightly horrified.

I am NOT a cosplayer, and the last time I sewed was an attempt to make my brother a stuffed unicorn out of old curtains when I was ten.( I found it half-finished, thirteen years later. Last week. When doing a mass clear-out of the last few piles of things in my room, after which my dad knocked down the entire wall (he originally put it up - I had to sleep in the living room for my first month in that house!, and now they're renovating) ... uh, I've long since moved out, to clarify).

Fan art ArtRage Mother GothelMy costume analysis of Mother Gothel mainly comes from when I decided to draw her (in order to have some of my own art on the lens - I have a Thing about that :D ) - and therefore had to actually look at all the details (and decide if I could be bothered drawing the dagger, and how to best mimic the brocade without bothering to draw the actual pattern and if it should be shiny, and what colour her eyes really are, and so on).

This means that this costume description comes from the perspective of an artist, not a costumer. I've attempted to provide ideas and resources to help people get started - and more than enough to throw together a home made Halloween costume, but I do not delude myself into thinking that page is anywhere NEAR detailed enough for a serious cosplayer*

I know a little about dress patterns, wigs, and fabrics, but only what internet research will give you (I research stuff to death when I'm on a roll, but this kind of thing needs actual practical experience). Over time, as people actually create cosplays of Gothel, I'll have more information to draw on, but if you know something about this, then please:




  • Tell me if something is wrong/misleading


  • Feel free to suggest alternatives/ tips/ tutorials/ stuff you've done


  • Let me know about YOUR cosplays! (I always, always, link them back to the original, so give me the link you want it to go to).


  • Comments here, or on the actual lens are both fine.







  • *(... an example which IS, is my friend Bria's Rapunzel analysis - yeah, it's her fault I ever heard of Tangled, but I got her onto Squidoo, so it's probably self-inflicted. I do not like Rapunzel (PINK and airheaded and seriously ditzy - I do like the short-haired version at the end though) which may be partly why I am so fond of Mother Gothel.)

    Tuesday, 26 October 2010

    Auckland Armageddon Convention 2010: Day 2

    Sunday was my best day for sales - it wasn't quite as busy as Saturday, but the wrestling announcements were slightly quieter. Slightly. Also, I guess people were coming back through after running around making sure they saw everything. It was also the day I really got into making tiny paper people. I ended up with a small army of faces and fan art poking out of signs and lined up in the (very limited) space around the front.  I drew two Buffys, using my painting as a reference (on left) - the first I was very proud of, and gave away to Asgard, and the second wasn't nearly as good. Sadly, I forgot to photograph Asgard's, so will stalk her site and see if a photo goes up >.>

    Also finished off the leather-wrapped, winged girl I started at Doujin Overload (my report here) and stood her up. Interestingly, she was the only drawing from DO that I actually liked when I went through my book - all the ones I did to sort of 'do what was expected' and that I tried to ink neatly (she was just a messy sketch that I got into at the end) were really, truly awful. So, "giving up trying to do what other artists do even though it looks awesome when they do it, and accepting that I have to draw my own way" lesson learnt? Check :D

    Photo image dump at the end of the post! (for now)

    I also drew a fan art of Drake's awesome ninja cat, Ninjet. She's a white cat, in a black ninja bodysuit. It's actually a clever design - it's simple and easy to draw and very much 'cat'. I remembered him from last year - I told him to join DeviantART so that people could stalk him, as far as I know he hasn't yet - I don't think he remembered me (I'd have been very surprised if he had!), but he recognised my t-shirt (I was wearing the YinYang one) bcause he'd asked about it when I'd wandered off and missed him, while setting up. His site is down and has been for a while - apparently he's moving domains or something - which is annoying, because I wanted to add it to my Ninja Cats page. There's a listing for the comic here, for some kind of linkage. Bought a couple of small prints off him (actually, that was the first day - I used them as references for the fan art)... and he bought two cat stickers off me (both the Yinyang ones; colour and black and white; the other kitties weren't out and I picked them up from home later).


    I bought candy floss for the second day in a row. It was fun, especially the way it vanishes as soon as you eat it, although the attack of sugar starts burning my mouth by the end.

    I found one of the Star Wars collectors' booths, with a variety of R2D2's, Star Wars suits of armour, and a Han Solo in Carbonite, as well as a large collection of Slave Leias in a large bubble display. I took a couple of photos, for drawing references, but most of them looked pretty tacky (and it was a bad idea, at least for a few of them, as the proportions were way off and I ended up sulking about the drawing a lot. Somewhat loudly at my stall-mates :D Turned it into a stand-up.)

    More R2's than I've ever seen in one place before, plus Darth Vader and Stormtrooper armour, Han Solo in carbonite and... a random droid (edit: apparently that's a droid bounty hunter called IG-88)

    R2D2 from Jabba's barge, serving drinks that look suspiciously human-blood-coloured

    The Slave Leias, trapped in their bubble/force field.
    A close-up on the Slave Leia statues and dolls; the two largest in the front, half-sitting, you can look at on Amazon below, the two tall ones at the back are just customised dolls, there's a Lego Leia just to the below-right of the centre, hidden behind the right-hand Leia, and the one standing up, holding onto the rope/pole is the one I tried to draw from.
    Some of the more expensive statues looked nice, though, and it turns out that there are some impressive version out there! (I had to look. And now I have to show! Not my photos, just showing off from Amazon - I don't think any of these were the ones on display)
    Gentle Giant Star Wars: Animated Slave Leia MaquetteKotobukiya Princess Leia EpVI ARTFX StatueStar Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi Princess Leia As Jabba's Slave Statue AccessoryStar Wars Princess Leia as Jabba's Slave Deluxe Statue by Gentle GiantLEGO Star Wars LOOSE Mini Figure Slave Leia (Light Flesh)1/4 Scale Premium Format Slave Leia


    Stormtrooper Deluxe Costume: M Funniest moment of the day: watching Bria & Vader's heads swivel as they watched a guy in a Stormtrooper outfit walk past as they tried to work out a) who he was, b) if he was one of their guys from the 501st stall, c) why he wasn't wearing it properly (the belt was loose, and ... well, that's all my uninitiated eye could spot ;D ). So Vader (not his real name. Oh, you guessed that?) follows him to the nerf gun stall, and it turns out it's the guy who organises Armageddon, who just bought his shiny new costume and wasn't too happy about having it corrected within five minutes of putting it on.

    Nerf N-Strike Stampede ECSBut they cheered him up with four people shooting him at once with nerf guns (which are awesome, if a rather lurid orange, and shoot a very loooong way... into the rafters in the ceiling *looks idly at very interesting object on far side of room to avoid meeting any eyes*. It wouldn't have happened if I'd been allowed to shoot AT someone!) and having all the foam pellets bounce off his armour spectacularly. It looked fun :D

    Bria-Silivren in a fight to the death with one of the Nerf guns. Behind her is the Dr. Who stall (Weeping Angel on right, Dalek on left) and I believe she's cosplaying Marion from the Indiana Jones movie (re-using the Anna Valerious shirt, anyway ;D )
    Apparently there were a lot of Dr. Who cosplayers, unsurprisingly, as the Dr. Who speaker had a panel and was signing stuff. There was a nice lady with a little stall tucked against a wall near us with Dr. Who -inspired jewellery - all cogs and wheels and things, in bronze and silver. The site's here - Whovian Jewellery. I haven't seen much of Dr. Who (no telly) so I didn't recognise any.

    Buffy the Vampire Slayer #19 Variant (George Jeanty Cover)Day 3 had mimes, skeletal t-shirts, left over posters, fizzy tablets, less money, Buffy comic artist George Jeanty, live rick-rolling, cosplayers, and energy crashing. Also a final tally of my haul. Plus will mention the (awesome) Drawfest stall, posters, t-shirts and earnings, and any other things I forgot.  It's late, and I'm on a crappy computer at my parent's house, so not tonight.


    But for now... PICTURES!

    My Tui t-shirt, and the back of the stall. And the charming model, of course.
    My tiny Willow drawing. I like this one! She stuck out the top of one of my displays for a day and a half.
    The second Buffy-head. With the traditional 'what would Buffy do?' caption 


    (there's even a book!



    )
    Complete view of the stand-up gladiator/bondage Angel. Someone (forget who) said she was Slave Leia inspired, to which I say she actually wasn't - the red was more of the memory of an old drawing I did, which had a girl all in red and white.


    A first attempt at Dark Willow (failed, but helped me remember what she actually looked like), a headless Leia (because the head was terrible and nobody is looking there anyway), tiny Tara head to go with the nice Willow, and a teeny little 2cm tall tui bird that I gave to my mother.
    Tall figure-referenced fail-Slave Leia standing up, with tiny-Slave Leia next to her for reference.
    The paper army scouts! Seductive tiny-Slave Leia distracts and seduces; the all-seeing Eye (referenced from my Buffy painting again) sees all; and tiny-Dark Willow floats in a spooky way wherever she chooses.



    My Ninjet fan art - copic to fill,black brush pen lines and shiny silver pen for the sword.


    And finally, the posters I bought on the Saturday; Unicorn from Kotorigaro and random-painting-chaos-guy from Murk (a.k.a. Cannibal-Cartoonist)

    Also, two awesome guys turned up and came and said hello - actually knowing people at Armageddon makes it 5 times better, and having people attending actually come find you triples the awesomeness again. This guy who I pimped earlier dropped by and inflicted me on his friend who was very nice about it, and bought art (and I gave him a discount, of course ;D ), and the person I skipped out on at Saturday and left to cope with students on his own (I'm sorry! No, wait. I'm not. Here, have this as a token of my forgiveness.) dropped by with his friend (I didn't know I gave him permission to have friends...). Huh. I never did go to the Laserstrike tunnel.
    ....and the rest must come later.
    Click for Day one update.

    Saturday, 23 October 2010

    A brief Armageddon update - Day 1

    A quick update from today, the first day of Armageddon. On silly netbook - everything looks slightly stretched. Hope it's the netbook, not my pictures!

    Only sold about $30 of stuff - very slow today, for everyone, but apparently my posters on the Drawfest (DeviantART) stall have been selling well. Also RIGHT BY THE WRESTLING. AARGH. SO LOUD.

    Some interesting stalls this year; Dr Who jewellery, art... the creators of Looking For Group and LICD (Lars Sohmer and someone else, i think) had a stall, which WOULD have been very cool six months ago - a month after finding, and two months before getting very tired of - the webcomics. Bought a couple of posters (one from Murk, the awesome guy-painting-rainbow-everything picture, and an artist I don't know, with a realistic donkey-unicorn; left posters on stall overnight so can't look up the signature...)

    I was bored and drew one of the other artist's ball jointed dolls. It's called Ophelia, is apparently a vampire, and is both creepy and disproportionate.


    I also drew Chell, from Portal, with the Companion Cube on her back, but couldn't remember what the portal gun looked like.
    pencil chell portal fan art blue weighted companion cube orange  jumpsuit

    Arkillian's moving to share with other artists on a spare stall tomorrow (they didn't get told to turn up on Friday to get their ticket-stuff, so had no stall today but will have space tomorrow). As we have no space, this is good - I will be left to plot with ThePlanPony (who will then escape back down to Hastings and avoid repercussions).

    Was disorganised - don't have any kind of business card, and have two t-shirts from Redbubble to sell (which are attracting attention = good) but hadn't considered taking orders. Also should have ordered more common sizes. Did get to wear my YinYang one though and feel arty :D

    Also saw Bria Silivren in her shiny black armour of -50 movement penalty, at the 501st/Rebel Legion (Star Wars costuming group/s) stand. (Okay, Fem TIE pilot costume).



    And drew a friend who couldn't make it and cut it out and stuck it everywhere and photographed it. I doubt I'm allowed to put that up. Even though my drawing doesn't really look anything like them cause I was drawing at an angle (...and then sat up and looked at it straight on and went "oh.....piffle").
    Fem TIE pilot costume

    Also TPPony bought a Firefly print off Jason Palmer, who Bria has been telling me lots about. So I said 'Hi my friend knows you and keeps showing you the art she bought" and he knew who I was talking about, and so did not go "ARGH ANOTHER PERSON TRYING TO SUCK OUT MY TALENT BY SHAKING MY HAND" and instead politely shook my hand and said hello in a friendly way. And I sucked out his talent. mwahaha.

    The post for Day two is here

    Wednesday, 13 October 2010

    Payday! And Recent Squidoo Trends

    Both Squidoo and Zazzle paid me today! Zazzle sent me $37 and Squidoo earnt me $143 (with some going to charity). I'll have to update the Zazzle Earnings lens :D

    It is also officially my two year anniversary on Squidoo. I even got a trophy and 500 points ^_^


    Really looking forward to next month, as I've written a whole bunch more lenses and they're doing better, too. (Three in Tier one versus two, $15 pending in Amazon sales, versus $6, plus the huge list of mystery ebay auctions I won - money only updated once a month from eBay, I think).

    Zazzle's probably going to be around the same - it's fairly static right now, fluctuating between $25-$40 every month or second month (depending on if I make payout; if not the second month is up in the $40 range).

    Christmas should be fun. Seducing Bria Silivren further into Squidoo's coils by collaborating on a Swarovski niche (she is very fond of sparkly Swarovski jewellery)...
    I've been experimenting with writing 'sales' pages. I tend to pick a topic I know will make a good niche, rather than one I'm terrible passionate about, then go on a COLLECT THEM ALL spree, and make great big multi-page lenses.
    For example...

    Swarovski Dragonflies: Crystal Figurines and Jewelry
    and
    Disney's Snow White Figurines, Ornaments, Dolls and Collectibles
    Snow White Princess FigurinesSnow White has been recreated into a variety of beautiful figurines, by a range of skilled and highly collectible designers. From the stunning Armani, to the affordable Disney resins, one of these figurines will look perfect on your shelf.

    But I did get to make some very fun pages recently - I've discovered that cosplay is a big traffic driver, so adding a bit about cosplay on my (fun to write) character lenses means that I can write them and not feel guilty about them never having a future in visitors!

    Captain Malcolm Reynolds
    Holli Would: The Sexiest Cartoon Ever
    Margarethe Cammermeyer (okay, no cosplay for this one. But awesome lesbian who sued the US army and won!)
    Illyria From Angel

    Plus of course, VERY happy about the two Pratchett lenses - both are getting (small) amounts of traffic and ranking highly for searches on the upcoming books.
    Snuff: The Next Vimes Book
    The Long Earth - An Upcoming Pratchett Series

    ...okay. Boring linking over. This journal was more for me than for you!

    Sunday, 22 August 2010

    The Best Geeky California Gurls Parodies

    Okay, I'll admit to a certain fondness for Katy perry's "I Kissed A Girl" - without it, I'd never have discovered Jill Sobule's original version, and a myriad of disney femslash videos would not have been spawned.

    The "California Gurls" song mostly just makes me cringe. And squint. However, there are at least two three awesome geeky parodies out there.

    The latest one from Team Unicorn has Stan Lee, Seth Green, and Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff! And even better - quotes!

    Geek and Gamer girls
    We’re unbelievable (Tri-force!)
    We all know
    That Han shot first (It’s a trap!)
    Anime
    No dubs
    We want originals
    Ooooooh oh ooooooh
    Geek and Gamer girls (Level up!)
    We’re undefeatable
    RPG
    Achievement Unlocked
    Browncoats represent (Shiny!)
    We aim to misbehave
    Oooooooh oh ooooooh




    Geek and Gamer Girls Song - Watch more Funny Videos

    "...virgin skin so white we're indoor only types"




    Comic Con Girls
    We're incredible
    Slave girl
    Leia bikinis on top
    Star Wars chicks
    So hot
    We'll melt your lightsaber
    Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!

    Rapunzel's Revenge and other Rapunzel Links


    You all know the story of Rapunzel, I hope? Well, did you ever think about making a lasso out of all that hair? Or reins for a wild warthog? Then you might want to check out the graphic novel, Rapunzel's Revenge.

    Rapunzel's Revenge is a whip-cracking lively and colourful graphic novel that takes the old passive princess in a tower and throws her away in favour of a fiery, moral and stubborn redhead who gets out of her tower and goes to save the world from evil Mother Gothel. It's one of my favourites out of the various books retelling Rapunzel.

    If you like the Rapunzel fairytale, you may be interested in browsing the Rapunzel-related posters on this lens. They're mostly from Zazzle - Rapunzel herself, Mother Gothel, and her tower - but there's some on Amazon for the new Tangled movie already.

    I also discovered a new song by Emilie Autumn when researching for that lens and this rather funny little short film






    tangled disney rapunzel pink cosplay dress costumeLastly, if you're actually interested in Tangled, and/or cosplay, Bria Silivren has written up an analysis of Rapunzel's costume complete with giant pictures from the upcoming Disney film. Bria's a semi-professional (...she doesn't make any money at it!) cosplayer who's already made one of the previewed (and, I think, rejected) costumes from the film (photo on left) and I strongly suspect is gathering pink silks and researching blonde wigs already for a second run.





    Image link: Rapunzel 1 on DeviantART


    featured lens
    And finally, now the film's out, I've written a page about Mother Gothel herself.