AX 2012 - Day 1

Hello!


Today was our first official day of Anime Expo.  Tiffy and I cosplayed our first set of costumes: Lightning and Serah Farron from FFXIII.

We were the only set of Lightning/Serah that we saw, and we actually got a surprising number of picture requests.  Yay for set costumes! Yeah, I actually can't believe it turned out so well.  We were a pretty good duo :P  And Tiffy was actually taller than me!  It kind of freaked all our friends out.


Highlights of the day:
- Running into our friends at registration.
- Fluff Ice!

  

- Seeing other cosplays... Totoro, Kirby, baby Cloud, WoW, samurai people, Boba Fetts, monitor head peoples, and more!
- Visiting our friend Wei at the crunchyroll station, seeing the new Necomimi ears, and sneaking some free drinks from their back room.
- Meeting up with my cousin for dinner at a super popular Italian restaurant/bakery, Bottega Louie.


First day reflections of AX? hard to say lol we spent most of the day walking around, failing to coordinate meetings with friends and posing for pictures.  we'll definitely have to make an effort to attend some shows/panels tomorrow.  However, like always, we leave exhausted.  until tomorrow!

Anime Expo 2012 - We're Here!

Greetings from Los Angeles, CA -- home of gorgeous blue skies, lovely beaches and of course, Anime Expo! After one year of planning (and procrastinating!), Christine and I are finally here :) and with two completed costumes as well.  The last couple of weeks have been hellish, and the 2.5 hour wait for badges today was absolutely brutal (though at least the weather was beautiful, and we're not in the 100 degree Texas summer heat wave) but we are excited to go on another cosplay adventure together! Stay tuned for more updates, pictures and musings about our times here at AX 2012.  Anime Expo, here we come!

Cosplay Progress Report: FFXIII Lightning and Serah

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since we've updated, but we are still working on our costumes for this year's Anime Expo!  Tiffy and I have started on our FFXIII costumes for Lightning and Serah, and we've also gotten our wigs.  I also just ordered our contacts (for 20% off, yay!). update: korea big eyes seems to be phasing out prescription lenses :( so i shall be ordering acuvue color lenses

Here's a brief progress report on how we're doing so far:

Serah Farron

I'll be doing Serah for AX this year.  (Obviously.  I totally couldn't pull off the awesome Lightning look; I'm in no way cool-looking like Tiffy is.)  

Tiffy and I both got our wigs from the same eBay seller, fashiongarden3000.  You can find Serah's wig here; unfortunately, it looks like they stopped selling the one I purchased.  The wig quality is decent, probably along the same as the wig Tiffy got for Noel from cosplay.com (about 3 editions of their site ago).  The hair is smooth and the right color, but it's not heat resistant.  Luckily, I was humble enough to recognize how inept I am at styling wigs, so I just purchased mine pre-styled and saved myself the heartache. i'm glad i bought my wig prestyled too. the lightning one is still available :)

For the contacts, I purchased these NeoCosmo Sunflower Edge Aqua contacts.  Since my astigmatism is terrible, spherical contacts don't work for me (as I discovered when I cosplayed Aerith), so I just decided to get non-prescripted ones and double layer the contacts like I did for Rachel.  Word to the wise: it's probably really bad for your eyes, so don't do it very often.  I'll only do it for the one day we cosplay FFXIII.

So far, I've finished the skirt base, which took way too long, because I am slow.  I just need to add the lace and the gold decoration in the front.  And by the way, because I don't have Serah's long legs, the skirt is SO SHORT.  I know how Tiffy felt as Noel now :P  And I've been totally obsessing about it.  I promise to stop being annoying about how short it is soon.

We'll post a separate entry on costume construction when we're done with the costumes so you can see our arduous work (just kidding -- well, not really).  Until then, hopefully we can post periodic updates!  (That way I'll feel pressured to finish my costume and actually finish it...)

Lightning

yeahhhh i need to costume more because i am very very far behind =\ i have lots of fabric sitting around since i've taken advantage of all the joann's coupons that come out, but i haven't really sewn any of it. i've finished the skirt but it's not as nice as i'd like it to be.  i have yet to figure out how to properly design waistbands.

the skirt is dark brown kona cotton with silver 5in fashion zippers.  it's pretty short, but luckily lightning wears black shorts underneath so i got to skimp on lining the entire thing >__<  i also haven't figured out how to attach the zipper boot onto my sewing machine, hence the pulling at the end of the zippers -___- will have to fix that later. overally though, it'll suffice. lightning wears tons of other things over it anyways lol


also in the works...the mini corset thing, which i'm making out of dark blue denim, silver grommets and leather twine. i decided to make it separately so i could adjust it, but a lot of cosplay websites make a high waisted brown skirt with laces in the front. same difference >__<


i've also started making her waist belt.  i bought a light coffee/safari colored vinyl, which will serve well for the boots and vest adornments.  i'll have to use some darker acrylic paint to make the belt the right color.


more to come (i hope!)