イベントレポ: Manga Matsuri

Hello everyone! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas! I certainly had ;D

Spontaneous as I am (...) I decided to go to Manga Matsuri today (yesterday, actually...) and to sew a new costume.

The convention


Well, it's been the 3rd Manga Matsuri this year, each was held at a different location. And each pretty much sucked. But oh well, it's a local event, it's cheap and you can meet up with friends. Honestly, chatting with friends is pretty much the only thing you could do. Therefore I was really looking forward to
today
yesterday, because I knew some of my friends were comming, too. I should have asked when they wanted to show up before, because I had to leave early so I hardly met anyone >__< On the contrary, I met/saw a lot of people/costumes I definitely didn't wan't to see. I was prepared to see crushed velvet and cheap satin all the way (and I did). I was also expecting to see a lot of "street style" cosplay (Why bothering cosplaying an existing character if you're not wearing his or her costumes anyway?). But the combination of the two was truly horrifying.  


The costume

Sheryl Nome (Macross Frontier) I've been thinking about cosplaying Sheryl for quite some time now. She's such a beautiful and strong woman and I love her different (stage) costumes. This particular costume however is not one I had originally planned, but seeing I had only 48 hours I decided on one of Sheryl's private outfits. It was really quick to sew (although I'm afraid it's too rushed) and coloring the wig also turned out to be much more easy than I expected. ↓My sister took some pictures ♥ (Yeah, I know: Oh, the variety)

ママ!! 私、テレビに出たよ!!

"Mommy! I was on TV!" XD

I'm so tired. Beware of crappy English!

As I said in my last entry I was invited to the MTV Game Awards on Nov. 20th this year as a cosplayer.
I don't know about other countries, but this was the first game award show in Germany evar. Apparently the video game shows on MTV (Germany) have become quite popular lately so they decided to do an award show just like the MTV movie and music awards. So for this show they recruited cosplayers who were supposed to act as both audience and claqueurs.


When I got the message from MTV asking me to come I didn't really need to consider it. I mean... Games? MTV? Simon and Budi (hosts of "GameOne", a TV show on German MTV)? For free? Hell, yeah!


Since they asked me to invite some more of my cosplay friends, I dragged Anni, Cari and some more people along XD


THE RECORDING
I met up with Anni (who came all the way from Kiel) right after uni ended (about 2 p.m.), then we put on our cosplay makeup ("Panda to the rescue!!") and went to the studio/hall where everything took place.
This is what we looked like when we arrived at the dressing room at 3:30p.m.:


We were pretty much the last ones to arrive, everyone else was already chatting. We were cosplayers 15 alltogether, much less than I had expected but thanks to that I got to know everyone personally. ♥
We also finally met Janina, who was in charge of us and told us the following procedures:
Rehearsal starting at 5 p.m.
Changing from 7p.m.~8:30 p.m.
9 p.m.: Start
During the rehearsal we still wore our normal clothes, but we noticed it would get quite hot because of all the lights...
I was still soooo optimistic back then... XD
Anyways, because we weren't allowed to take pictures during the actual recording, the rehearsal was our only chance to get some photos. As MTV tried very hard to do a show for both gamers and "normal" people, there were also some non-game related things like music acts:


Left: Polarkreis 18 (#1 in Germany atm), right: Sido (a rapper who apparently wasn't really happy to be there)
The other thing that wasn't related to games even in the slightest... were the hosts! It was clear to see that they have never laid a single finger on a game pad before and they just seemed so totally unmotivated and wrong.


Joko and Hadnet, the hosts. They wore several costumes during the show. I feel utter sympathy for the poor seamstress that had to sew 6 costumes in 1 1/2 weeks...

In case you're wondering what the hall looked like and where we were standing:

On the left side you can see one of the two stages. We were standing right above there (where you can see the children on this picture).


Anni was standing right next to me. Waving for the cameras. She knows good fanservice! XD

After the rehearsal we headed back to the changing room. Luckily I don't need much time to put on my Rao costume, so I could enjoy the buffet first. They had cold and warm dishes, both very yummy~

Then we changed into our costumes and chatted with Janina.

Me and Janina. She was so cute ♥ She really cared about us (;o;)

Next... was the show. Nervous? No. ｶﾞﾀｶﾞﾀ(((;OдOll)))ｶﾞﾀｶﾞﾀ
Well, the actual recording was nothing new to us, since we already knew everything from the rehearsal. BUT this time there was an audience below us (which made me regret wearing a mini skirt), watching uns, taking photos, pointing at us.
It was akward, but... quite fun actually, being in the limelight for some minutes XD


This photo was taken by Janina shortly before the recording started. Gosh, I'm such a camhore XD

During the show it was getting hotter and hotter and it was propably only thanks to Janina who supplied us with water that no one fainted. Himbeerpudding (who was standing second next to me) wore a black leather coat and I can only imagine how she must've felt. She was my hero of the night for bearing the heat!!

Luckily, the show only lasted 1 1/2 hours and we all were glad when we could finally escape into the cold and fresh air backstage.
Unluckily, due to the extreme temperatures I started feeling reeeaaally unwell... If it wasn't for Anni, who would be staying at my place, I would have returned home immediatley. But she has been looking forward to the after-show party ever since I invited her, so I just could not possibly ask her to go home with me. Plus, I wanted to meet some people at the after-show party, as well... I ended up going to the party... and I owe my deepest gratitude to Anni for persuading me, because: *drummroll*


*insert fanqirly squee here* I got my picture with Budi!!!oneone!!11!! He and Simon are so funny and nice... and I was like the stupidest fangirl EVAR *headdesk*

Retropectively it was a fun night. I feel deeply honored to have shared the stage with awesome people.

Here you can see all cosplayers who took part. Sorry for the crappiness of this collage, but I just had to XD
You guys rock, I hope I'll see you again some time!!


ON AIR
The show aired first on Friday 21st and had about 3 or 4 reruns during the last week. I guess most Germans on my FL watched it (?).
If you didn't: You didn't miss anything. The show was quite fun when you were there in person, but that's propably only thanks to the people who were with me. On TV it was just plain boring. My sister watched it for some minutes and then switched the channel because she couldn't stand it XD

Well, it was the first show of its kind, so I guess it'll be better next year. Getting Simon and Budi as hosts will be a big improvement. And maybe laudators who care to pronounce the name of the game producers correctly...

As for us cosplayers it was really dissappointing to see that we had barely any screen time at all. I mean, FFVII CC won an award (best handheld game) , why wouldn't they show Mystery-Zelda (Zack) and Videros (Sepiroth)? Their costumes were absolutely stunning! I really don't know anymore why they wanted us to be there in the first place... One of the few people who actually seemed to acknowledge the pain we went through for this (standing the heat that is XD), was Lucien Kings (development manager for GTA 4), who prompted some applause for us in his acceptance speech XD

This is what it looked like on TV↓ (photographed from screen hence the poor quality)


Here you can see us standing on the galleries on both sides of the main stage.


My 1 second of fame. YAY XD


RANDOM
Anni stayed at my place for the weekend. I felt like commenting on that as well, so I spent like 1000hours in PS and here's the result:

Dedicated to Anni XD
Faces edited for your safety.  And for mine. Anni would kill me.


Note: Most of the pictures in this entry were taken by Vinny-Vieh and Anni. Thanks for providing me with pictures!!

イベントレポ:AniMaCo

Finally I got my hands on all the pictures I wanted, so let's have another terribly belated event report.

The convention


AniMaco is a small convention held in Berlin every two years. It's really tiny and the location is horrible, but since it is my local convention I fell kind of obliged to go every time...
It's thanks to all the wonderful people that I can enjoy this convention. At bigger events, like Connichi, I feel rushed all the time and hardly get the chance to talk to everyone, but at AniMaCo everything I do is basically sitting and chatting with friends and other people.
Plus, Pictoplasma held a booth where he took professional photos of anyone who liked. I know this is quite common at American conventions, but you almost never have these at German conventions!
So I took the chance to have some proper pictures taken of Euphemia and Nakajerine... and I deeply regret that I didn't ask Picto to take pictures of Rao as well il|li(;-＿-;)il|li


The costumes

	Rao (Ôkami) This year definitely was my "busty babes" year... But I love Ôkami to pieces and Rao was just perfect for me to do. I had a hard time deciding on the fabric, because Rao's dress looks lilac on some pictures and bright purple on others... Also, the hood (?) - I hate it! I drafted the pattern for this dress almost entirely from scratch. I did not want to sew it as a kimono because it just doesn't really look like one in the first place, even though it's propably supposed to be one. I was part of a wonderful group: Krone as Amaterasu, Tellurian as Demon Merchant, Feder as Waka and me as Rao. I love you guys ♥ ↓ 1st picture taken by Usagi_Moon, but I edited the hell out of it because the background was anything but pretty ↓ 2nd and 3rd picture taken by Krone
	Euphemia Li Britannia - DVD-Box Ver. (Code Geass) I wore Euphemia rather spontaneously and I kind of regret it because Maddi (C.C.) coudn't be there and so Euphie was all by herself...(･´Д｀･) But then again Picto took these wonderful pictures ~ ♥ This time I messed up the wig pretty badly. The buns are too small and the bangs just wouldn't stay up (>_>) Four pictures this time - I just couldn't decide which one to pick （≧ｗ≦；） ↓ All pictures taken by pictoplasma
	Queen Nakajerine 29th (MiniMoni. The Movie) I wore Nakajerine on Sunday only to have some photos taken by Picto (*｀ 艸 ´) One of my wings broke during the shoot---again! (ノ・｀ω´・)ノ :･'.::･ I really like how the pictures came out, though. I had one of them printed out so I can give it to my grandpa who helped me a lot with constructing the staff and wings. PS: I swear I did iron the costume! ↓All pictures taken by Pictoplasma

My next con... will propably be Book Fair Leipzig next spring, but before that I will be at the MTV Game Awards next week wearing Rao. ｨｪ━━v(o´∀｀o)v━━ｨｯ★

撮影会 : ぴあきゃろ

Back in my entry on Connichi I said that Maddi and me would be going to have a photoshoot with our Code Geass costumes on October 4th, but guess what? It never happened (´-ω-｀)
Maddi caught a cold and because of the bad weather we postponed the photoshoot to... next spring (´；д；｀)

Krone (who was supposed to be our photographer) agreed to do another photoshoot with me alone instead and so this time it is:

The shooting itself was quite fun, thanks to Krone, who is not only a skilled photographer, but was also very patient with me: For some reason several parts of my costume suddenly just started falling off during the shooting (I still don't know why, everything was fine when I wore it at Connichi), so before taking a new picture, she always had to check whether all ribbons, batches and carrots were where they're supposed to be.
Apart from my costume falling into pieces we had a lot of fun, even when it started raining in the afternoon.

The location was a tiny castle nearby. It was the perfect setting for Pia Carrot. Well, no. Actually, a perfect location would've been a café or an ice cream parlour, but there's NO WAY I would go to such a place wearing a costume... But the castle and it's park were just fine. It was Saturday around noon and it was quite windy, so there weren't hardly any people around
apart from some grannies who looked quite disturbed
.

As for the costume... It was done in a rush, so I'm not 100% satisfied with the outcome (but then again, I never am), but I like all the ribbons and laces and carrots and oh teh sweetness.
I still don't think the costume with all its ruffles and laces suits me at all, but Krone and her fabulous PS skills made me look good (≧ω≦ゞ). She's awesome, I can't wait for the Code Geass shooting.

So here are some of my favourites:


　 　 　 　


　 　 　


You can see the whole gallery at Animexx (German, no registration required)

コンニチ、ワン、ツー ♪

LJ hates me. Just when I was done with this entry, it vanished X/

So here's my short, belated entry on Connichi (Sep. 12th~14th).



The convention


Connichi is by far my favourite convention: Beautiful site, nice weather, relaxed athmosphere.
It's a big anual event for me, because it's one of the rare opportunities to meet all my cosplay friends.
This year was even more exciting, because MiRay, a Japanese cosplayer I met during my exchange year came to visit me. We spent about ten days seeing like every single museum, gallery, church and castle there is in Berlin and then we went to Connichi together ♪
MiRay doesn't know any German, so it was quite stressful acting as interpretor all the time, but it was a nice opportunity for me to practise Japanese, because I realised that I've forgotten a lot of vocabulary since I've come back ↓↓
Another reason for this year's Connichi being extraordinary is that Maddi and I decided to participate in the World Cosplay Summit preliminaries.
We had such a great time planning the costumes and the skit and even though we knew we didn't stand a chance we had a great time and met a lot of wonderful cosplayers in breathtaking costumes.
I'm totally rooting for Marino and Deval who will be representing Germany next year in Aichi!


The costumes

	Mimori Kugahara - Maid Ver. (Pia Carrot G.O.) Oh noez, I actually did a hentai game cosplay!! It's MiRay's fault, she talked me into it!! XD I had like 4 yrds of purple fabric laying around unused and when I asked her　about it she came up with Pia Carrot G.O.. I don't really like hentai games, but I fell in love with the different dresses the girls wear throughout the game so I ended up sewing this dress. I love all the carrots and ribbons ♥ ↓1st picture taken by Pictoplasma
	Euphemia Li Britannia - DVD-Box Ver. (Code Geass) This is the costume I wore for the WCS preliminaries. From the first moment I saw Euphie in Code Geass I wanted to cosplay as her. I was planning to do the pink/white dress she's wearing in the series but then I saw that wonderful artwork from CLAMP. The design is rather plain in real life, though (you know, with gravity and actual humans wearing it...), so we used different types of fabric and lace to make it look more fabulous, shiny and CLAMP-ish. I'm quite pleased with the results, even though you can't see all the details on the pictures. Because the skit I was working on with Maddi (who was a wonderful C.C.) involved some undressing, we decided not to sew it as a whole dress, but devided it into a top and a skirt, which can be worn (and stripped off XD) seperately. You can see the short, loli-ish version on the first picture below. ↓2nd picture taken by Sakura_b ↓3rd picture taken by Sakymiyu Himbeer will do a proper photo shoot with us next week. WOOT!
	Queen Nakajerine 29th (MiniMoni. The Movie) I started working on this costume in 2006 (when I did the staff) and now it's finally finished. My grandpa hepled me out a lot with the staff and the wings. I absolutely love my staff, and the wings were great as well before I messed up painting them X/ I guess no one even knows Nakajerine, but I adore her, so I wanted to do her justice. The lining, painting the tights and moulding the accessories gave me a hard time ~_~ BTW, she's a villain. ↓2nd picture taken by shinkohyo ↓3rd picture taken by AB_the_diablo

I heard a lot of people caught a cold on Sunday, when it suddenly turned cold. I hope everyone's all right now.