I also have a thing for doing gender-switch cosplay, not to be confused with crossplay which is flat out cross dressing. So this idea was born.

Here is what Stein looks like in his fight scene with Medusa from the anime as made into a figure that I covet holy cow.

Female!Stein will wear fishnets, a dress that mimics the shirt and pants he wears, have heels instead of shoes of the same color and with painted stitches, a longer hair style, glasses, and the labcoat (not pictured) that he wears.

I met a few stein cosplayers at Otakon this year and most seemed to either not bother making his screw make noise or they used the guts from one of those New Years Eve sort of noise makers. I think my pill bottle idea was good, but now I’m not so sure. Besides, the sound is actually mechanical… go here and you can hear it for yourselves… Hmm… not sure how I’d mimic that, but here’s the shematic I gave propsmistress cachalot (she’s also making the scythe!!). Also, the headband goes under the wig and the pieces will be screwed in through it.

Any ideas on how to get a metallic sort of sound into this??

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

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!!

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…