Burning Man Jacket

I've wanted to go to Burning Man for many years. Unfortunately, living on a student budget on the east coast made this mostly impossible. But after I moved to Berkeley for grad school, the community and opportunities were hard to escape. I applied for a Low Income ticket in April, after a longtime burner friend of mine convinced me to go, and, to my immense surprise and gratitude, was granted one. In July, this friend got in contact with the people who built Dr. Brainlove, and suddenly, I was on board as one of the core crew to build an art car (post on that forthcoming). 

Two weeks in the desert loomed up in a month and a half, when I'd never been to a festival before or even gone camping for more than a weekend. And in the desert there are no coat checks; my usual strategy of multiple layers for warmth under a leather jacket against wind would probably be suboptimal for long nights that wavered between biking and dancing and sitting out in the open. I looked online for a while and hit up thrift stores, but didn't find a jacket that really met my needs and aesthetics. So I dusted off the Singer sewing machine my father gave me and made a custom jacket. 

Finished product first. Appropriately cyberpunk (shaved half hawk? check. Weird shapes? check. Military inspired lines? check. 120 degree angles? check. Asymmetry? check. Low life? uh, do the PJs and dirty bathroom count?)

Sheik Cosplay

Man, grad school is kicking my butt. But not for the reasons you might believe. No, what's happening is I'm maintaining a really nice work-life balance...and the BART to SF takes 40 minutes. BUT despite all this, I decided to do a cosplay for Animation on Display (AOD) in Santa Clara, due in some part to habit of the season because of the typical PAX East timing (/cry). 

Tuh! Tuh-tuh! /vague spitting noises as I dash around

Keira Hagai Cosplay Part 2

After finishing the crop top and pants, it was time to get the rest of the cosplay pulled together, including little details like the straps around the knees and shoes, the belt, and the choker.

While I was on a budget for this, I did do one little splurge since I wasn't spending as much on making a prop. I bought some really nice, disturbingly well-integrating elf ears, because for some reason the characters in this franchise can't be expected to ever wear a helmet. And I also bought a huge pair of goggles because extraneous goggles are about as ubiquitous as extraneous belts in 90s character designs.

Believe it or not, I've actually used these ears a few times after this cosplay for completely unrelated events.

Keira Hagai Cosplay Part 1

I knew all along that senior year was going to kick my butt. So I purposefully chose a low-key, non-prop-based cosplay, a throwback to simpler times of my youth: Jak and Daxter. I spent a lot of time as player 3, the strategist without a controller, watching my brother and his friends play video games. That's where my love of being a video game spectator began; it was like watching your friends star in interactive movies. So when I was staring at my hair in the mirror, wondering how I'd be able to not use a wig or a helmet, I immediately thought about Keira Hagai, the awesome mechanic (and Jak's eventual love interest) in the franchise.

Image from fanpop.com

Zer0 Cosplay: Costuming

So primarily what I'll be blogging about here will be my own little side projects, and the occasional project for school. My current work is in preparation for a cosplay at PAX East, which is a gaming convention that I've attended for two years now.

Last March, I cosplayed as Zer0 from Borderlands 2. This was probably my most complicated cosplay at the time; my two prior ones were the Engineer from Team Fortress 2, and Surge from X-Men, both of which relied mainly on sewing fabric and altering bought clothes, with some gauntlet making from molding materials or cardboard.

For the Zer0 cosplay, I found myself making two props: the sword and the helmet. In addition, the rest of the outfit required a more armored look, which I achieved via craft foam, sewn to the jacket under a layer of spray-painted lycra.

So in this costuming section, here's a pic dump of the process I went through to create the armored jacket and ...interesting pants that Zer0 wears.