Noel Bolverk Guns - Complete!

Hi all! it's been a loooooong time since i've written about anything cosplay but i've got to say YAY! bc my noel costume is FINALLY 100% complete :D


noel's guns are presentable and i'm proud that i finished them in time for Oni-con.  Definitely learned a lot of things in my first weapon project and i'm excited for my next project: grell sutcliffe's chainsaw and yoko's gun :P


so where i last left off, i messed up one side of my guns bc of the spray paint/foam disaster and covered it up with craft foam.  Since then, i've been painting bajillion coats of paint on by hand and gluing everything onto the guns. the white took forever bc the foam was purple -_-


I added on the little circle things at the bottom of the guns....

then i added the triggers....

then i added the black pieces and the red handle with silver "screws" which i made by spray painting/painting tacks and pressed them into the foam.

i added the black strips at the top as well.  as you can see, the paint rubbed off a bit after carrying them around at the con =\

the front of the gun...i cut into the barrel a little and painted it to give the illusion of depth as opposed to just painting a black circle in the front.

the final product

:D not the best quality but it's decent for a first attempt.  i can't wait until i can get a photoshoot done with everything!

A-Kon 21 Day 3: Purchases, Rubix Cubes, and Relaxation

We actually left before 11 today! it was quite an achievement, even if we did cut it close lol

Tiffy and I didn't dress up for the last day of A-Kon, so we made it through a lot more without getting paparazzi'd -- although some guy almost asked me for my picture, because he thought I was ? from ? ... because of my hat?  I dunno.  Tiffy and I wore the hats we got yesterday at the con, and we just wore "normal-ish" clothes, so we were free to look around.

We bought a lot of art posters, some pins, and Tiffy also got some T-shirts and other things for her relatives.  Oh~  I also bought a postcard at h.Naoto so that I could get the guy I took the picture with to sign it XD  (The designer guy from Day 1.)  He was really cool~

lol i think cool is an understatement, Christine.  it was like he sparkled and you were in awe. it was funny :D
one of my best purchases was a new long red wig! i'm excited because i have some new cosplays in mind hehe but noel's guns first :P

At around 1 there was an Inugami autograph signing.  Surprisingly, there weren't that many people (but there usually aren't that many people the last day of cons anyways) in line.  Tiffy and Daniel were in the Dealers' Room for a bit longer while Jordan and I went downstairs to get in line.  We got our badges signed v(^w^)  They were really cool and nice.  I wanted to get this one pretty pin, but it was really expensive for a pin.  The last Inugami member noticed that Jordan had a Rubik's cube, and they were like "Sugoi~" (cool~).

Since there weren't that many people, we decided to go through again (and lied to the guy at the front saying we wanted to look at a pin they had for sale) so Jordan could show off his Rubik's cube skills XD  He had them scramble it, and then I timed him and he solved it in less than 20 seconds~~  It was super cool, and they were all impressed.  It was so awesome~~~ o(>___<)o  The person they had filming the signing was filming him doing it, too.  It was really really cool!

Later Daniel wanted to get stuff signed, too, but then the guy at the front was getting mad at us (me and Jordan) for coming back -___-;;  And unfortunately, apparently the policy is you have to buy something in order to get something signed.  So Daniel didn't end up getting anything signed =\

yeah i felt bad about that :( daniel had stayed with me in the dealers room while i searched for souvenirs for my cousins.  boo but i do want to thank jordan and daniel for putting up with all of christine and my stuff while we were at the convention. you guys were awesome  They were really good about it, too.  Thanks you guys, you are the best! :3

We were pretty much done by then... we went to the 3rd floor to see the art gallery, Tiffy and I took pictures with a random skeleton and some hamburger CD cases, and we went to check out the food court, but the guy wasn't there today QQ...  Daniel went to watch a video game orchestra concert.  He was going to meet up with a friend of his afterwards, so the other three of us just left.

For dinner, we had hot pot and watched Advent Children (our next cosplay -- please look forward to it!).  I also made some tiramisu ^^ which was super yummy btw

Oh yes, about our next cosplay... Tiffy and I (and others, if possible) will be doing Advent Children.
The casting is currently as follows:

Tiffy: Tifa Lockhart

Me: Aerith Gainsborough

Wei: Cloud Striife

Jordan: Zack Fair

Daniel: Kadaj

Ran: Reno

Probably only Tiffy and I will be done, since the guys' are all pretty difficult and involve armor.  We're intending to go to Onicon, so please keep an eye out for future posts about it!

I intend for us to be better than this group! which is really good lol think we can get a rufus, loz and yazoo?

What~  They are so pro.  Good luck to us >__<;;;

All in all, A-Kon was a lot of fun, and I think we did really well for our first time costumes.  Thanks to everyone for a great time and a wonderful first cosplay!!
I agree with Christine :) A-Kon was pretty awesome and I hope that we continue to get better and get more people to cosplay with us! 

A-Kon 21 Day 2: Photoshoots, K-Pop, and Maids

Our second day of A-Kon started at approximately the same time -- we got up at 8:00 am.  I went downstairs and no one was up, so I finally got to wake up the four guys XD  (Because this is the first time they didn't get up before us =w=;;)...

Somehow, despite getting up at the same time, knowing what to do for our costumes, and not having to do as much makeup as yesterday, we left the house about half an hour later... I think it was the bagels for breakfast.  But that was fun, so it's okay~

Yesterday one of Tiffy's buttons fell off of her sleeve, so Jordan took us to Joann's before we went to A-Kon.  I had my wig/contacts/makeup and skirt and hoop skirt on (but not jacket and cape), and Tiffy was fully dressed.  Imagine Rachel and Noel shopping~  It was pretty funny actually XD

Actually, we didn't get as many stares as i thought lol 

One lady just asked us if we were going to some kind of convention.  We told her we were going to an anime convention that was going on this weekend, and she pointed to her husband(?) and told us that he also dressed in costume, but for a sci-fi show (I think).  I thought we should go to Walmart and have a picture of Rachel and Noel shopping, but we forgot to by the end because we were so tired >__<;

we got to the convention at 12:30 and true to the christine's jacket observation, the second we got her cape on, we got spammed by cameras =/ headed straight to the dealers room since we only made it through a quarter of it the day before. since the paparazzi frenzy died down, we managed to get through all of it before our blazblue photoshoot at 3pm.  got cute hats as well :D christine got kitty and panda ones and i got one with ounk bunny ears!

Red punk bunnny ears XD  Not ounk bunny ears  I almost thought you wrote "oink" or "pink" o_o

BB photoshoot was very fun :) never thought i'd ever be part of the large photoshoots i always see online but it was nice to get all the characters together: taokaka (x4), bang (x1), jin (x1), noel (x2, including Tiffy), rachel (x3, including me), arakune (x2), hazama (x2) and ragna (x1).  makes me kind of sad that our group never completely finished, but i think we could manage it for future cons :P despite that fact, christine and i did get lots of attention--from hardcore BB fans and creepy otaku and chinese food counter boys--as just rachel and noel. personally, i think we did really well for our first cosplay costumes and I can't wait to do more! being at the con is so inspiring...i have like 209520934803 ideas in mind :P

So the first day, we went to a Chinese food place in Plaza of the Americas (a neighboring hotel) to eat lunch.  Today we went to the same place just because (Tiffy, Jordan, and Daniel were in line and bought food there), and apparently the food counter boy recognized us and mentioned so today.  Tiffy and I think we should go there again tomorrow to eat and see if he still recognizes us without our costumes, haha~

after lunch, we lined up for the cosplay competition. the line was ridiculously long! to occupy our time, we had jordan provide 30 second entertainment for curious bypassers haha

Cosplay competition was fun. in a nutshell--

1. the japanese wannabes have no idea what kpop is lol which was apparent by the silence in the room when Lollipop by Big Bang started playing

2. Men with big bellies like to shake it....

3. Men with big bellies shaking it are really really scary....

4. AWESOME COSTUMES

5. cosplay skit 2 = ???

In the room where the contest is, they have a stage at the front, a big TV to the left, and, for some inane reason, a huge raised platform where the control center is right in the middle.  And they, for some equally inane reason, decided to put chairs behind the control center anyways.  So we, by great misfortune, ended up sitting practically right behind the control center, but a little to the right so that the control center blocked both the stage and the TV (what wasn't  blocked by the center was blocked by people's heads QQ)...  A lot of people around us ended up leaving because you really can't see anything.

After some talking and awkward-looking dancing by the hosts and random people they pulled from the crowd, the show got started -- with Lollipop by 2NE1 feat. Big Bang.  They played the whole music video and everything.  It was really weird, because, well, it's an anime convention, and everyone there knows J-Pop and anime songs sure enough, but K-Pop??  I think only Tiffy, Jordan, and I really knew it, and we were kind of singing along.  Daniel, who went separately from us and sat a few rows behind us, said that one girl in front of him knew it also.  I thought that if they played Nobody we should dance along XD  Rachel and Noel dancing Nobody?

The show itself was pretty good.  There were some amazing costumes like Tiffy said: Princess Ai (three furies and the really tall girl with red wings and a short pink dress), Jet from Cowboy Bebop (because he totally had the Jet feel), a few animal(-esque) cosplays, and some really nice fancy dresses.  I don't remember all of them.  Then there were the skits, most of which were pretty bad (or just random).  The first one had a website called Ilikenonexistentgirls.com, which apparently takes what you want in a girl and spits out an anime girl for you.  It was pretty funny~  XD  The second one was definitely wtf like Tiffy said, they had really weird and nonsensical dialogue that was made worse by the fact that they sort conglomerated in one corner of the stage... behind the podium, where the announcer was.  So not only could we not understand them, we couldn't see what they were doing.  There was a cute one from Castle... crashers? of these four characters doing a little dance.  One had Faye Valentine doing a dance, musical-style, to a song from Lady Luck, "Cowboy."  What else... there were lots of weird singing/dancing ones.  Oh, but the absolute best one was last -- they had a bunch of props, and they did a skit to "Tick Tock" with Roy Mustang and his assistant, a girl.  They had Roy singing over the song and changed the words to fit, and then at one part, Ed shows up and dives in on his knees with his arms raised just as the song goes "The party don't start 'til I walk in~"  It was so good~

i was definitely disappointed in the quality of the skits though...i thought they'd all be a little more entertaining? some of them were so random and the funny thing is...you have to submit your skit ideas in advance. i demand to know who was screening these skits :P 

I had some ideas for skits that we could do~  One is a BB skit in which there are two gamers who try to play the game, but the characters just ignore all the commands they try to do XD  For instance, Bang versus Litchi, and using Rachel (who doesn't feel like fighting and just sits down for tea).  Then at the end, we line up and do the Haruhi dance XP

Or we could do one in which two guys start fighting over a girl (literally, fighting), and then somewhere in the fight they begin bantering back and forth.  The insults turn into "I bet I can ___ better than you," which then turns into a dance competition that isn't even about the girl anymore, and they pull a second girl in and start doing the waltz from FF8.  And at the very end, they both do an extravagant dip XD

While the judges were deciding, there were random shows involving big men lifting their shirt and... bouncing up and down.  It was pretty gross.  But there was one funny part in which the announcer told us how someone told him to order his food at McDonald's in his narrator/announcer voice, and he and another guy demonstrated to us how a conversation would go in a drive-through:

Cashier: May I take your order?

Announcer: (in booming voice) Yes, I'd like a number 3!

Cashier: Uh, I'm sorry, I don't know the numbers... what would you like?

Announcer: I said, a number 3!

Cashier: Sir, are you threatening me?  You sound like you're threatening me.

Announcer: No.  Have you ever seen Dragonball Z?

Cashier: Yes, I've watched some...

Announcer: Well then, I want a number 3 -- and super saiyan it!

Afterwards, we just headed home.  Wei, his brother, Scott L, and Faruk went to the bath house again for some reason, and then came over later when they were done to drop off Faruk.  Ran came back around the same time (as Jordan, Daniel, Tiffy and I were finishing up dinner).

like i said before, it's strange how much they like the bathhouse and getting scrubbed down o_O tee hee hee i kid i kid

And... that is when, the following ensued, as Ran shared with us about his adventures in the maid cafe...

Ran: When we won, the punishment game was for them to do jumping jacks!  And we won twice!  (in a squeaky, excited voice) And when they did it, the ruffles just come up like this, and you can see... the ruffles just come up like this!  *waves hand in a flapping motion by his thigh to demonstrate*

Scott: I'm depressed just knowing him.

Tiffy: (to Wei) You know that when you go to Japan, you're just going to be spending all your time in maid cafes, right?

Ran:  No, but I'm sad that we can't talk to the maids in Japan though.  I'll just be like... *takes Wei's hand and stares into his eyes, breathing heavily* ... I just... my KOKORO... my feelings are hard to express, but right here... *touches chest over heart* ...It's just DOKI DOKI."

oh Ran....for those of you that don't know Ran, he has sort of a maid fetish haha it has something to do the with the frills and ruffles and general cuteness of it all...sigh.........lol  

Yep >__<  I also think we should do a maid cafe skit with Ran as the main guy and a bunch of cosplay girls from different series that are roughly lolita-ish.  Ran should toss in that line at the end to one girl with a lot of frills and curls and such... and then the maid speaks with a man's voice XD  (We think that Wei should play that maid~~)

christine, we need to look up revenge of the vampire bunnies!  Oh right, so apparently one guy thought I was Mina from Revenge of the Vampire Bunnies... talk about random...

A-Kon 21 Day 1: The Real Version...

So, our day 1 at A-Kon.  It started at 8 am, but somehow we didn't leave the house until 11...

We styled Daniel's wig roughly like Ragna's, but in the end he looked like Riku from Kingdom Hearts XD;;  He made Ragna's gloves, though, which was cool.  We turned Jordan into a JRocker with straightened/spiked hair, foundation, and fancy eyeliner~  Well, it really just looked like Rachel and Noel with three JRockers by the time we were all ready.

lol i think rachel can have a JRocker harem.

i did not expect A-kon to be so tiring. we were bombarded almost every second at A-Kon with flashes of light and cameras once we stepped into the con. it got old after a bit since we couldn't look at anything :( It took 2 or 3 times as long to get to places just because we stopped so much. As much as i was surprised with the number of people who knew about blazblue, i think it was just the fact that Christine's dress  was absolutely gorgeous :D and big and showstopping haha case in point--



man: please tell me you're who i think you are
christine: who do you think i am?
man: mina....from revenge of the vampire bunnies
LOL christine and i just look at each other...

christine's rachel was one of the only 3 there and I think it was the best :) not bc i'm biased (because i am lol) but objectively, it was made well and faithful to the original artwork hehe
there were several other noel's at the convention as well. mine's wasn't bad in comparison, considering it's my first costume ever.  Definitely had lots of wardrobe malfunctions lol it's a good thing we packed up a emergency con kit.  I lost a gold button and my spray paint rubbed off on my outfit giving me terrible deodorant-looking marks (grrrrrrrr.....), people kept stepping on my streamers, deflating the metal tips etc. lesson learned--i'm top coatiing future metal pieces and lol by the end of the night, i pretty much perfected my streamer wrap/unwrap process so that i wouldn't get stepped on.

Personally, I think that Tiffy's Noel was the best of those there.  Both the hair and costume fit her well, and she just sort of had a video game character feel, you know?  Okay, maybe I'm biased too, but really -- Tiffy looked good as Noel.  Two others had a light blue that didn't look quite right.  Lots of people stopped her for her picture, too ^^  And she definitely had that fight pose perfected by the end, even if she didn't have the guns.  The only problems we had, I think, were that my ears kept flopping over and one of Tiffy's buttons fell off on her sleeve.  

I'm sad that I didn't have Nago and Gii, though TwT  One Rachel had Nago, and the other Gii.  The one with Gii had incorrect hair styling and her costume was not terribly well made, but she was so cute that she probably fit Rachel the best of the three of us.  I'm going to make Nago and Gii for our next round, definitely~  And Tiffy will make her guns, and we'll be even better v(^w^)v

i definitely have to make the guns...otherwise ran will just keep making fun =/

in the afternoon, wei and faruk arrived as carl clover and arakune. together with ran as hazama, we were a pretty good set :D i think by the next con, with daniel as ragna and jordan as jin or hakumen, we'll be awesome!

christine, i think we'll have to make a special post about our costume construction :P  Yeah, probably XD  Or else this post will be too long.

Due to the paparazzi crowd, we only made it through about 1 row of the Dealers' Room today.  After we ate lunch at a Chinese food place in Plaza of the Americas, we headed to stand in line for the opening ceremony.  Unfortunately, the ceremony consisted primarily of them thanking this or that person, and then bringing up a bunch of the guests that none of us knew because most of us only do anime/manga in Japanese.  (Well, scanlated mangas, but not webcomics or anything.)   The only person I recognized was Inugami Circus-Dan, a visual kei/J-Rock band.  Here, a picture:

They're an interesting group, although I don't really listen to their music.  A friend in high school introduced me to them, but I think I wasn't as interested in their style as some others back then.  (Subsequently, I forgot what they sound like.)  They were pretty cute, though.  They came on stage, and Kyouko (the singer, female) said a few things in English but seemed really embarrassed and shy.  Then one of the guys whispered in her ear for every line in Japanese she said after that XD

she really was cute :D "tonight we have a live" hehehehe

After that, we were thinking to go into line to see Inugami perform, but we had to wait an hour, so we wandered around for a while before getting back in line.  We were all pretty tired and gross, so we just stayed for one song.  Their music is interesting -- it's borderline hard rock music background, with guitars and drums, with a sort of old Japanese (maybe enka?) sound for the vocals.  I really liked the background music, but the vocals were so-so (just not my style, that is).  I'd like to look back into their music, though ^^

Somehow, we decided to go to King Spa Sauna, a Korean bath house that Wei has been talking about forever.  It was authentic Korean... which means getting nekked all together (with the genders separated, of course) and showering/sitting in hot baths together.  Tiffy and I had not been expecting to go on Friday, so we didn't bring extra clothes or shoes... it was kind of weird.  But we took our contacts off and couldn't see anything XD  Wen-shin, another girl who came to join our group (we went to middle school together, and she knows Scott C) as Tsubaki Yayoi, came with us.

Yeah i'm not sure why the boys were so adamant on going to the bathhouse...maybe there's something going on that we don't know about christine :P jk! but for once, i'm glad i have terrible vision. if you really think about it, there's something strange about stripping down with your friends and strangers o_O

As we were very awkwardly stripping down in front of the lockers, Wen-shin got us two towels each... but the towels were so tiny!  So, stifling embarrassed laughter, we shed our clothes and attempted to cover ourselves with those towels.  All three of us came out clinging onto those towels, and the Korean ladies there were laughing so much at us (=w=;;;)a  I'd have to admit, it must have been a pretty funny scene, though.

i'd liken it to a scene in some cheesy movie. i wonder how it's going to be when we go in japan...probably not any less awkward lol

We showered at these little stalls, sitting down.  It's pretty similar to the Japanese hot springs, actually.  After that, we all went into the hot (103 degrees) green tea bath for a while, then to the regular bath of the same temperature.  There was also a hotter bath (106 degrees), which I tried after that, and then Tiffy and I both went into the cold bath (73ish degrees).  We got separated from Wen-shin, but went together to the wet sauna, back to the cold bath, and then finally into the green tea bath.  It was actually pretty nice, once you get over the being unclothed part.  Though when we showered at the end, we were sitting on opposite sides (backs to each other), and Tiffy asked me if people ever have shower wars  XD  She then proceeded to spray me with her shower.  After a while we were just spraying each other over our shoulders... haha, the ladies probably thought we were so immature.

lol i couldn't resist. there are all these shower stall things with showerheads...it's hard to believe that not one person thought of doing that

When we finally came out, we wore these pink clothes they had available, and went outside to the common  area.  It turns out we were the last to come out (no concept of time in those spas), and we ran into Jordan.  The others were at a table in the corner eating (we totally missed them when we came out somehow).  Jordan showed us to all the interesting rooms they had: the Volcano Room, Ice Room, Salt Room, Pyramid Room... what else... there were a lot of rooms with different healing/cleansing powers.  The Ice Room felt pretty nice~  They claimed that it feels like the North Pole but... no, no it doesn't >__<;;

We got back and ended up sleeping at 4 am again...sigh

A-Kon 21 Day 1: Tired.

We are tired.

Lesson learned: cosplaying is being papparazzi'd... very little time to look at stuff.

Wardrobe malfunctions...

Never go to opening ceremonies.

First concert-y  thing ever with Inugami Circus-Dan was pretty fun ^^

King Spa Sauna is weird... Korean ladies laughing at us for being modest ...;;;

Wei looked really good and Faruk actually came as Arakune...

Somehow we left the con early but ended up sleeping at 4.. ish... Tiffy, Jordan, and Daniel are currently planning out sets for the next cosplays (Vampire Knight, where Tiffy is Rima Touya, Jordan is Kaname, I'm Yuuki, and Daniel can be either Zero or Aido..

Too tired, the end, good night~

Revenge of the Penguins?!

hello everyone :) i'm back from florida and ready to spam my costume for A-Kon 21 :P

A-Kon is the oldest running anime convention in the US...at least that's what they say on their site haha check it out! http://a-kon.com/ i've wanted to cosplay for the longest time, but never found anyone to go to A-Kon with me again, never mind dressing up. when i went to A-Kon for the first time, i went with my parents -_- slightly mortifying with all the boys in dresses and scandalous outfits around....

anyways, I'm really excited to be able to dress up this time with Christine, Wei, Daniel, Ran, Scott, Faruk as characters from the fighting game Blazblue! Don't remember how exactly this came about, but we've been planning for this event for a very long time lol We chose Blazblue for the diverse cast of characters and interesting costumes.

I'm going to be Noel Vermillion, blonde-haired NOL lieutenant with dual wielding guns :)

and Christine is Rachel Alucard, a gothic lolita vampire with a long hair and a cat-shaped umbrella hehe

cute huh? Christine's costume looks awesome :) I'm really excited to see it be completed! and mine's well...it's getting there haha i definitely was ambitious on my first cosplay but i hope i can get at least my costume done before the convention on June 4th-6th...got some hemming, boot covers and tie to finish. My weapons are a whole other story...

Tiffy's costume looks really good so far ^ ^ There will be no umbrella or fuzzy red thing in my cosplay though XD My excuse is that I got bored of them and... well, you know what vampires do :3 I'd also say that this was ambitious for a cosplay for me QQ~

Keep reading over the next couple of days! There will definitely be updates on our costume progress, frustrations and pictures as A-Kon gets closer!

By the way, why is this called revenge of the penguins?

lol to confuse everyone....for some reason, it's A-Kon's theme this year and i'm not sure what it means