Like i•ka•su•ze! cosplay on Facebook!

That’s right, like everyone and their grandma, we now have a Facebook fan page.  It has about 2 fans right now. Heh.  But hey! That can change really fast

What’s the point, you ask? What’s the value-add? Your ROI?  Well, you can talk to our awesome selves right on the site where we spend about 80% of our waking hours. How can you resist? Oh yeah, and updates on cons, props, you name it.  We won’t update it SO much that you immediately hit “hide” when we show up on your feed, but it’ll do stuff sometimes maybe. Really.

Yes, this is shameless attention whoring, that’s what this is. But we’re cosplayers so it shouldn’t be that shocking.

Ch-ch-check it out! —>

shiny facebook widget box 8D

The plan is to take our cosplay group and have everyone dress up as Final Fantasy beasts that you have to defeat during the game. And we’ll randomly encounter other Final Fantasy cosplayers to fight them

My plan is to be the Magic Pot (also called the Magic Urn in FFX and X-2).  And my urn/pot will have speakers in it to play various Final Fantasy battle themes – depending on what kind of FF cosplayers we encounter, of course.

This is my idea for the Final Fantasy Magic Pot

Yes, it’s a lot like that old meme of a really poor dude wearing nothin’ but a barrel, hehe.

We’re waiting on official photos from our Otakon 2010 shoots. The teasers we’ve seen so far are REALLY awesome. Cachalot as Shiva? Stopped traffic. Not even kidding you.  She was absolutely STUNNING.  Granted it took about 6 hours of prep time but it was definitely worth it.  She did an EEEEEEEEEEEEPIIIIIIIIIIIC job, can’t wait to show you guys the pro shots from our shoots.  It’ll be worth the wait — keep your eyes peeled on this blog!!

For a hint of the work Cachalot did on my Anima costume — remember, I had the easiest part with just the clothes, she did the wings and headpiece — here’s a teaser pro shot:

Photo by the absolutely amazing Anna Fischer!

We’re both really tickled that people knew and recognized who I was supposed to be. Nobody cosplays Anima… erm, ever… so it was a gamble if anyone would get it!  So glad a few folks did.

Anyway, thought I’d give a little status update on my Anima cosplay, as referenced first here.

Last night I finished the top, which is a Vogue pattern jersey cross-top. I really dislike using Vogue patterns and this gave me a little heartburn, but a few hours of sewing and it’s done and looks great. This weekend I work on the skirt, which will be very simple, and the outfit is done.

I also began the accessories last night. I gold leafed the icon that will hang around my neck in summon form. The rest of the jewelry will be a mix of acrylic stones and sculpey that I’ll paint.

As for the mask and wings, that’s Ger’s project. Pictures speak louder than words on that front:

MY EYES ARE LEDS AND THEY FREAKING GLOW, YOU GUYS.

Me, I’m working on the easy part of a difficult costume. Cachalot’s doing the really heavy lifting for this, I’m just making the dress:

Spec drawing for Anima/Seymour's mother costume - Otakon 2010

Dress should be done pretty soon and I know Cachalot’s making good progress with the scary monster head. Should be really neat — I’ll get to accompany her awesome Shiva, dual FFX summons at Otakon!

Here’s a list of the costumes online now—

Cachalot’s costumes:

• Osaki Nana
• Tifa Lockhart
• Suboshi

DancingMad’s costumes:

• Byzantine Angel
• Baaya
• Mozenrath
• Judge Q
• Fancy Toph
• Tasuki

But both of us have been sick the past few days so forgive us for the lag! m(_ _)m We’re doing the best we can.  It’s a miracle I’m sitting upright right now honestly xD

Oh, and we’ve decided on the second of our two cosplay groups for 2011. I am so excited I am about to ASPLODE.  I am going to wait on announcing  it because it’s still a new idea and people might change their minds, but I think it’s really going to happen!! (But, ehm, it’s in the tags if you are super curious…)

We are doing three total groups for 2011, but the third one is all original characters, so I hesitate to call it cosplay   But yea, we’re booked through now to 2011 for costumes and already have an idea for 2012.  WE ARE CLEARLY INSANE!

But you knew that ;D

• Costumes: hopefully by end of the week, there will be preliminary content for all costumes listed there.  As long as we have basic info up for all costumes, we can expand the pages for really BIG costumes (FFVI, FY) ongoing.  And if we want to be really ambitious, pages for costumes we’re working on can go there too.
• Props: will add some testimonials and reference some photos of Cachalot’s AWESOME PROPS OF AWESOMENESS
• Photoshoots: end of week/weekend I aim to have the Shadow + Kefka photoshoot online.  this is hugely ambitious! but I really want to have all the amazing photos from that session in one place so I can send the link around and brag :3
• Blog (you’re on it): I’m making some very minor tweaks. It’s basically fine though XD I don’t want to break something that works!
• ikasuze!who?:  Cachalot and I need to build our profiles.  No rush on this. I think it’d be hilarious if we made them like jrocker profiles and post totally useless information like our blood types (I don’t even know mine), our mottos, our home prefectures, and our favorite kind of juice or something. But obviously Cachalot I need your opinion on this XDDDD
• ikasuze!when?: I’d say this is done, actually. EASIEST PAGE ON THE SITE
• ikasuze!how?: Not urgent. I’ve got some ideas in my head but I just need to write them down… or port them from rants on LJ or something   I’d also like to put some specific costuming how-tos, like how we dyed our scarves or something, since I actually documented that.

Top priorities for me are the costumes and photoshoots pages though, as they require the most heavy lifting.

WOW THAT WAS A LOT OF WEBSITE NERDERY.

Here’s something shiny to distract — Cachalot and I have our photos up on the official Tokyo Kid costume contest page, which is here: http://www.tokyokid.com/?p=646

Our group picture is towards the bottom:

Shadow and Kefka at the Tokyo Kid costume contest 2009

I LOVE the fact that Naruto is just lurking behind us.  It’s so perfect!

As you can also see towards the top of the page, I got 2nd place in the Master/advanced category for my Kefka.  I am super tickled about that, especially since I would definitely NOT consider myself an advanced cosplayer. I am really not sure how I got placed in that category? xP

But, happy though I was to win, what I’m bummed about is that Cachalot and I couldn’t enter the contest together.  We really are a group entry—my costume had a lot of flash, but Cachalot put tons of hours of work into her costume too, it’s just more subtle because she’s super ninja like that.

That’s one of the more aggravating aspects of cosplay though… a lot of the time, unless you make a costume of a character that’s really flashy and well-known, you won’t get much (if any) recognition for your work.  Kefka was the first costume I’ve ever done where people instantly know who I am and just fawn all over the work.  Everything else I’ve done has been really obscure, I’d be lucky if 2 people in a day had any idea who I was.

Sucks though when you’re a weirdo like me and everything you like is from shows nobody has seen.  You want to cosplay characters from what you like, but if nobody knows who you are, it can be a BIG let down at a con.  Let’s not fool ourselves, cosplay is ultimately an expression of vanity, and you want those photos taken.  (Anyone who says they’re in it just for the craft and not for the recognition is lying.)

That said, Cachalot won the evening when a photographer instantly recognized her as Shadow but took a few minutes to realize I was Kefka. Never would have guessed that would happen, but it is super awesome that it did.  NINJAS RULE!

(–and insane clown mages are pretty cool too)

I have neglected to post here lately and I apologize XD Halloween ate up so much of my time — as any good cosplayer knows, it’s basically a great time to test-run stuff for upcoming cons — and now that the flurry of pre-Halloween activity is down, I have time to do other important stuff, like, oh, I dunno, finish the ikasuze! website that I’ve neglected?  It’s going to be awesome once it’s done, we’ll have tons of photos and notes about costumes as well as some tips and how-tos.  But I just need to finish coding the damn thing!  Sorry Cachalot xD

Tasuki’s trenchcoat is an ongoing effort that will take a lot of effort to fine-tune.  But new projects always keep me going and I’m very excited about my 2010 costumes: Temari from Naruto (her ” semi-kimono” or 2nd look) and LeBlanc from Final Fantasy X-2!  I’ve been hitting the gym a lot just to get in better shape for these outfits, especially LeBlanc.

AI YI YI. I’d better keep going with those crunches!!

Guess I need to sell the one I have soon, too.  It’s not a bad machine for easy stuff, but at the level I’m sewing now it just doesn’t suffice.

View of Disney's Mozenrath

I made a very literal version of this costume several years ago for Halloween. It was OK, I guess, though I wasn’t super happy with it, simply because it was very very simple.

Halloween 2006 Mozenrath costume

Mozenrath’s costume is so simple because it was drafted for a poorly-animated cartoon show in the early 90s–low bandwidth, low budget, and drawing any kind of detailed costume (without computer help) just can’t happen.

I thought the best way to update this costume would be to put it back in the spirit of the 1001 Arabian Nights, my favorite book growing up, and what the entire Aladdin series is extremely loosely based on.  TheMozenrath character is supposed to be an evil wizard-type character, and I’ve determined that if anything he probably should be Persian (even though most characters in the Disney series are very vaguely Arab).

With that in mind, I started to research 16th century classical Persian fashions to reverse-engineer what a Mozenrath might look like in garb of that time.

I'm not very good at crosshatching

What I’ve found is lots of brocades and damask silks, a great deal of ornamentation and detail work. Basically the complete opposite of how he appears in the show!

This entire costume is very much in the preliminary planning stage so, aside from a sketch or two, I have nothing to show.  But I have found some handy damask silk and brocade stores online as well as an incredibly detailed classical Persian clothing pattern site.

Rashid’s Persian Patterns – historically accurate Persian clothing patterns complete with antique fabric swatches to get an idea of the colors and detailing in the clothes.

Persian Miniature Paintings — more good reference

Decorative International Silk — some good silks here, including some damask silks, though they are upholstery weight

B.R. Exports — some great silks direct from India

Will keep you posted…