イベントレポ : AniMaCo 2012

Today's entry finally features my last cosplay event of 2012: AniMaCo in Berlin. Once this is finished, I'll move on to two more entries about more recent events from 2013.

 

I am a regular at AniMaCo. The convention hall (part theatre, part school) is pretty ugly, but the nearby park has some pretty spots. Plus, AniMaCo is easily one of the most cosplayer-friendly cons I've ever attended: They have big changing booths and also maps that show good locations for photo shoots. They also have a different theme each time. As 2012 the world was supposedly facing it's bitter end according to the Mayan calendar, last year's theme was "concalypse". And truly, when I arrived on Friday and saw the hall was almost completely hidden behind huge scaffolds (ongoing construction work), it looked quite apocalyptic, indeed.
AniMaCo also had one of the most epic con promotional trailers, I've ever seen:

Concerning my costume lineup: There wasn't much time between Connichi, our Idolm@ster shoot and AniMaCo. Additionally, I was still in the final stages of writing my thesis, so I had originally decided not to sew any new costumes for this con.

HOWEVER. When I was watching some episodes of Adventure Time, my sister jokingly said we would make an awesome Finn and Fionna. The idea stuck and you can see the results below.

Friday

Frog Queen (Original Design) As usual, Friday was old-costume-day. I decided to re-wear my Frog Queen costume, as I had only worn it once at Connichi and because I knew there's a pretty lake close to the con site. The day was pretty short and cold, but my sister took a few very pretty shots of my costume. Sadly, she couldn't wear her princess costume, because she felt so tired that day. For more information on this costume, please read my WIP post. Pictures below taken by my sister, edited by me.

Saturday

Fionna the Human (Adventure Time) Thanks to my sister sewing the backpacks (out of felt), all I had left to do was sewing the hats, shirts and Finn's pants - I already had a fitting skirt in my closet. I guess I could've purchased fitting shirts, too, but it seemed so much easier to simply sew them myself, since I had found a nice 4-way stretch fabric earlier. I also love how our hats came out. I used a very helpful pattern I found at Instructables. I only had to do some minor adjustments (like the general size of the hats or Fionna’s ears), but apart from that, the tutorial saved me a lot of time. A note on our swords: Due to our time restraint I didn't prepare any props, but Andy, who wanted to take our pictures, kind of insisted on swords. So what did we do? We went to the nearby shopping mall, bought little wooden signs, coloured duct tape and  plastic gemstones and created these beauties in about 5mins. They're worth a whole 1€ each! Ehem. Well, considering what we managed to fabricate out of such ridiculously cheap items in such a short amount of time, I'm actually quite fond of them! For more information on this costume, please read my WIP post on tumblr. Myself as Fionna, Patalord as Finn 1st picture below taken by my Maddi, edited by me. 2nd row pictures taken by Andy-K.

   

Sunday

Azusa Miura (The Idolm@ster) On Sunday, our Idolm@ster group had a reunion. Not all of the girls could make it though, so we were "only" 11 girls instead of 13. I had fixed some minor things, but I was still not really happy with it. I like my shoe covers, though! It was my first time sewing such things and I think they look very close to the original. I am quite pleased with the silhouette of my skirt, as well. It's mostly the wig (centre parting...) I don't like on me and the proportions look a bit strange, too. But I was so happy to see my girls again! Acorea, who had coordinated our whole group, also took some pretty solo shots of each member. For our full cast, please read my report on our photoshoot. WIP pictures here. 1st row pictures below taken acophoto 2nd row picture taken by Diesel.

We also had shot a video with Diesel that day, which was a lot of fun, too: 

(Don't be fooled by the sunny weather. It was bitterly cold that day!) 

Like many years before, AniMaCo was a nice way to end the cosplay season.

The weather was rainy on Friday and Saturday and freezing on Sunday, but I had the chance to chat with wonderful people and to see beautiful cosplays. I'm already looking foward to next AniMaCo (which will be in 2014, as it's taking turns with Mega Manga Con each year)!

撮影会 : ペルソナ・アイマス

Hey guys! Long time no see... haha... Seriously, I'm terribly sorry for having neglected my blog for half a year now. But the good news is: I finished my thesis, passed all my exams and graduated! Yay! I don't know yet how busy my new job will keep me, but I'll try my best to give more regular updates from now on.

I started by changing my header and background. Above you see my current personal favourites among my cosplays: Frog Prince and Wonder Woman. I also slightly changed the layout. I think the main texts are easier to read and the different blog entries easier to navigate. At least I hope so.

This post is the first of four that I will write in the next two or three weeks. I figured I should tackle the cons and photo shoots I left uncovered in chronological order, so I'll start with telling you about the two big photo shoots I had in 2012: Persona and The Idolm@ster.

In lovely May 2012 (yes, one year ago), Niklas Liebig, whom I've had the pleasure to work with a couple of times now, asked if he could take pictures of our Velvet Room trio. We, that is Videros, my sister and myself, readily agreed, happy that we got the chance to get more beautiful pictures of these costume we'd only just debuted at Leipzig Bookfair two months earlier. I don't exactly recall how we managed it, but we also found a date we were all free on just as quickly. Finding a location to shoot in, however, was tricky. Of course, a fancy hotel lobby or a limousine would've been awesome, but decidedly outside our financial comfort zone. Niklas suggested the

Federal Ministry of the Interior, with its glass architecture. None of us had ever been there before, so we were quite surprised when we arrived there and found these huge buildings with a lovely little park and playground nearby. You'd think a federal ministry was heavily guarded with tons of security and whatnot, but the whole site is actually quite open and we saw many families with children taking a walk on that sunny day. It encouraged us to get a bit closer to the actual buildings for our pictures. We found out that there was security personnel, after all, but they didn't seem to think of us as a threat, apparently.

All the things we were afraid would go wrong (curious bystanders, strict security, too much/too little sunlight, that is) went smoothly, but we forgot to factor in the wind. It wasn't much of a windy day to speak of, but close to these tall buildings the wind was quite strong. Thus, the difficult part on our (i.e. the cosplayers' side) was to keep our eyes open, our wigs and costumes straight and on Niklas's side to keep the strobe lights from falling.
Here are some of the results:

And an outtake, as well, because everyone loves outtakes, right?

Cosplayers: Videros as Theodore | Patalord as Elizabeth | Y-o-s-s-i as Margaret Photography & editing: Niklas Liebig (Homepage | deviantArt)

Click here to see the full gallery.






On to the second shoot, which took place about 6 months later:

This photo shoot was different from the first one in many ways:
It was a group photo shoot with 13 cosplayers and 3 photographers.
Months of planning went into it.
It took place in a studio.
Each cosplayer sewed her costume for this primarily photo shoot and none of us had debuted her costume on a convention before.

Let's tackle it chronologically:
Somewhen in autumn 2011, acorea published a weblog searching for cosplayers willing to participate in a quite ambitious group project: She wanted to have a full cast of The Idolm@ster cosplayers with matching costumes. I didn't know much about Idolmaster back then, but I liked the designs and as I usually only cosplay with one, sometimes two partners, I wanted to take part in a big group at least once. Hence, I volunteered. (And watched the anime later that year to get to know the character of Azusa, whom I was assigned to.)
It didn't take long until we had a full cast (although it underwent a lot of changes in the following months), so planning started. Most of it was done by acorea, who did a great job in coordinating everything. It was clear we probably would not managed to set up a photo shoot at a con, so we settled for a studio shoot in September 2012 in Berlin instead.
Mismatching groups are a big pet peeve of mine, so I was thrilled when we agreed on purchasing the same fabrics for everyone. We even matched our eye shadow! We had to cut corners when it came to the boots, though. Most of us were working on a budget and it's pretty much impossible to purchase 13 pairs (minus two for the twins, who wear different shoes) of cheap white boots and not everyone felt fit to sew bootcovers.
It goes without saying that we underwent some troubles and a some point in July 2012, I couldn't even see the whole thing happening anymore. Frankly, I was still expecting someone not showing up or without a full costume when we met up at the day of the shoot. But everyone did! And everything worked! Our top priority, of course, were group pictures, but we also did some solo or pair shots.
The shoot took almost all day and it was quite exhausting. All the girls were awesome, though! It was most interesting to learn how the other girls had tackled their costumes. Everyone has a different way of sewing, after all. I think I learned some new sewing magic tricks that day. Same goes for posing, which I'm really not good at, but watching some of the others act in front of the camera was really inspiring. Most of them I'd only met briefly before at cons, so I was afraid that my social awkwardness would ruin the day for me, but they were all so nice (and funny!). I was even sad when the day was over. (Most of us were able to attend AniMaCo in November, though, so we had some sort of reunion)
As I said, three photographers  were present, but as of now (May 2013), only one has uploaded his pictures, as the other two are still busy with other things. I'm not sure if we'll ever get to see the other pictures, but I hope so. Here are Hasengott's pictures:

Cosplayers: aco-rea as Iori | flakes as Miki | Y-o-s-s-i as Azusa | kojiu-infinity as Hibiki | Patalord as Takane | SG09 as Mami | ladydeadpooly as Ami | elsch as Chihaya | neni-chan as Yayoi | Amapolchen as Ritsuko | co-xx as Makoto | fuwishi as Yukiho | Konzertjunky as Haruka Photography & editing: Dominik Haas (deviantArt)

Click here to see the full gallery.
I will post a full rundown of my Azusa costume in my blog on AniMaCo 2012, which will should follow next week.

イベントレポ : Connichi 2012

Hello everyone! Those of you who followed my previous LJ blog know that my con reports are always terribly late. And who am I to break this tradition? So, with a three-week delay, here's my report on this year's Connichi in Kassel.

This year's Connichi was different in a lot of ways:
For one thing, we didn't get to stay at our usual hotel close to the convention site, because they had -much to our ... dismay- cancelled our reservation due to construction works. Let me tell you that getting an affordable room in Kassel for the Connichi weekend isn't an easy task - not even when you search as early as January, which is eight months in advance. Luckily, our friend Sarah managed to find a nice guesthouse which was quite cheap and big enough for the five of us. The catch: It was very far from the convention site and almost impossible to reach by public transport. So this year, for the first time, we went to Kassel by car. It's a 5 hour trip from where I live and quite exhausting (even though I only served as co-driver for my sister), but it went considerably well. The road network in Kassel is pretty insane, though. The crossroads and roundabouts are huge and confusing and caused quite some frustration. The guesthouse was really, really nice. Very spacious, nice kitchen (only one bathroom, though), comfortable beds. If everything works out well, we'll propably be there again next year. After all, our hotel is already fully booked, anyway. Yes: 12 months in advance.
Another difference to the prevoius years was that Maddi and I had decided not to take part in the German World Cosplay Summit preliminaries. I can only speak for myself, but it didn't regret that decision for even one second. Apart from all the money and time we saved before the con, it was also wonderful to be able to really appreciate the con itself without having to worry about meetings with the organisers, additional rehearsals and all the emotional stress that comes with taking part in a competition. Even though a lot of people came up to Maddi and me expressing their dissapointment over our not entering I don't think I will take part in the WCS prelims ever again. This year made me realise that I'm not much of a competitive cosplayer anyway and I much more enjoy watching other people's skits than to worry about mine.


Thanks to these changes, Connichi 2012 was a very unique experience for me. Never had I had so much time to chat with other cosplayers, never had I enjoyed a con so much.

That's for the general valuation, let's proceed to the costumes and some more in-depth information about each con day.

My costume lineup shouldn't be a surprise, I already announced it in my previous post.

Friday

	Margaret (Persona 4) Friday is usually the shortest con day, so I decided to rewear my Margaret costume. I had made this (and my sister's) costume back in March. For more information, see my report on Leipzig Bookfair. We had originally planned to come together again as our Velvet Room group, but René couldn't make it, so it was just my sister and me. It was nice to wear this costume once more, since I really want to sell it but couldn't say "good bye" just yet.  Pictures below taken by evaYabai (1), Gildartz (2) and Maddi (3&4, edited by me) My sister Patapata as Elizabeth and myself as Margaret.
As expected, Friday was really short. We didn't get to the convention site until 4:30pm, but we didn't have any plans for that day, anyway, so we just checked the dealer's room (lots of plush alpacas and Nekomimis this year), chatted with other cosplayers and did some grocery shopping. Saturday
	Saturday - Wonder Woman (Odyssey) I was so nervous to debut this costume on Connichi. First, because I'd be wearing a comic costume on a manga/anime con, second, because propably noone would recognise me (the Odyssey arc never got published in Germany, afaik). Wonder Woman turned out to be really popular with the photographers and congoers, though, which made me really happy. I'm also really glad that, contrary to my expections, my armour parts didn't fall apart and the costume survived the day nearly unblemished. I've never had a costume that included that much craft foam armour, so I had been quite worried. For more information read my WIP post. Pictures in the 1st row pictures taken by Andy K., 2nd row by Niklas Liebig, 3rd  row by EvaYabai.  Picture No. 10 taken by Rose, picture no.11 taken by En-Ki.
Saturday was a blast. And hot. But awesome. I was expecting to feel (and be treated) like a "commoner" with my leather jacket and pants, but quite a lot of people recognised me as Diana. One women in her late 50ies (I guess) came up to me telling me that she grew up watching the TV series and requested to take a couple of pictures with me in which she posed like a sidekick. I also managed to have some longer  conversations with Aigue-Marine, who wore her beautiful Daenerys costume that day and later changed to her Wonder Girl cosplay, in which she took some pictures together with me (for most of wich I am still eagerly waiting). Speaking of pictures: I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to have mini photoshoots of sorts with Andy K, Niklas Liebig, EvaYabai, Rose and En-Ki, who each took breathtakingly beautiful pictures of my cosplay. I was told that the red fabric I used for my top looks great in pictures, because it kind of reflects the light in an very interesting way. The more you know! The only drawback that day (next to the sun unceasingly beating down on my leather jacket ) was that we didn't get to see Yaya Han's panel, because it was full. I wasn't so much interested in the panel itself; But I'd have liked to see her in person at least once. But then again, I'm not too sad about that, either, because it was during that panel that I had 3 of the above mentioned mini photoshoots. Sunday
	Frog Queen (original design) I was quite surprised how many people recognised me as the frog prince (given, the golden ball might've been a good hint). I was kind of shocked, though, how little people know the actual story and were talking about kisses and stuff when there isn't even a single kiss in the original fairytale. That's German cultural heritage! General knowledge! It made my fairytale loving self kind of sad. My sister had agreed to be my princess, but because I didn't have much time, I simply altered my old Euphemia cosplay from 2008 instead of sewing a new costume. She had to change back quickly, though, so we hardly took any pictures together. For more information on this costume read my WIP post. ↓ 1st row pictures taken by Des-Henkers-Braut ↓ 2nd row pictures taken by EvaYabai (1&2) and myself (3)
As usual, Sunday was quite short as well, because we spent a lot of time in the main hall to watch the WCS prelims. My feet were thankful, though. It certainly wasn't the brightest idea to wear high heels three days in a row. It felt kind of strange to experience the prelims solely as part of the audience, but we highly enjoyed the show. The Rainbow Riders (Team Germany 2012) acted as anchors and they were hilarious. Seriously, those girls have a tremendous talent for comedy! The overall quality of the skits was a bit lower than in previous years. About half of the skits was very, very entertaining and inventive, the other half, however... wasn't. In the end, Cherry Sky won with an incredibly well choreographed, action packed skit to Kamikaze Kaitô Jeanne. They were among my favourites, as well, and I think they'll make a good Team Germany 2013. After the prelims, we spent some time in the nearby park, where I got to take some pictures with my dearly missed Krone, with whom I hardly get to take pictures anymore since she moved away. Eva took some really nice pictures, as well. The day went by really quickly, but I'm happy I got the chance to talk to some cosplayers I'd only known online before, such as Salyu. I also (very briefly) met Sumikins and Rynn (Team USA 2010), who were incredibly nice. I'm so sad I missed them on the other days, because their craftsmanship is truly superb and I would've loved to see them in costume. We watched the closing ceremony, changed back and drove back home, where we arrived around 11pm, completely exhausted - in a good way.

That was my Connichi 2012 experience. I'm already looking forward to next year!


Con season in Germany is slowly coming to an end. There's only one convention left I'll attend: AniMaCo in Berlin, my local con. This is my lineup:

Friday: Frog Queen (Original)	Saturday:  Fionna (Adventure Time)	Sunday: Azusa Miura (The Idolm@ster)

I also had two photoshoots (Persona and Idolm@ster), which I'll cover in another post. Bye!


PS: I just read through this post (spell-checking etc.) and felt it was horribly unpersonal and flat. So here are some outtakes. Yes, serious business, indeed:






Am I pretty yet?