Yes I Made that Dress: Regina from Once Upon a Time

Yes I Made that Dress time!  Today we have the Regina jacket I just finished from Once Upon A Time as a commission.  As usual this blog is to provide some insight for what it took to make the costume/commission and how it came out.  Any and all questions are welcome and feel free to comment if you want me to go into further detail about something either now or in the future!

Some History:

Once Upon a Time could be called the mother of all crossover Disney fanfictions.  Love it or hate it, you do have to give the show credit for how creatively it's been taken the well known Disney characters and incorporating them into the same universe and our world and retelling their stories for a new audience.

Regina is the Evil Queen from Snow White and now, in the town of Storybrooke, she is the major and waffles between her good and evil side.  Back when I watched the show Regina had the most fabulous wardrobe and I even considered cosplaying a couple of her outfits.  For this commission in particular, here's the jacket that was chosen. 

Making the Jacket:

Luckily, with the popularity of cosplay going around, finding a pattern for the jacket wasn't that hard at all.  I ended up choosing McCalls M6818 as my base with minor changes to make it fit what I wanted.  The pieces were easy to follow and created the billowing affect at the back of the jacket that I wanted to duplicate.  I also ironed out with the lovely lady who commissioned it exactly what she wanted and we settled on a single jacket matching the picture with feathers attached on the back and she'd be gathering the rest of the pieces on her own (mostly because corsets and pants are not something I tend to offer commission wise.)

Also I found this amazing houndstooth fabric that worked perfectly!

Making the jacket completely to the pattern, here's how it came out.  It came out about right, but as you can see from the pictures above, the front is all wrong for the specific jacket, so now it was time to do some pinning and editing.  Also, the collar that we wanted didn't really exist in the pattern, so I had to make my own.  Using a piece of orange scrap fabric, I created the extra piece I needed while it was on the dress form.  

Also, put an extra thick layer of interfacing in the collar so that it could stand up like this if needed and retained it's shape for future wear.

 

And we have the finished jacket- almost!  Now, time to put in all my pins for where the feathers will go and so I know how many pieces to create. 

The little feathers were created with thread, individual feathers and a feather boa.  I dissected it with scissors as needed and hand sewed each feather onto the back to create the desired effect.  I also threw in a few extra with the order, just in case there's wear and tear in the future. (The most fun was letting the cats play with the scraps, lol!)  Why a feather boa?  It meant that several of the feathers were already attached and it actually cut my work in half so I didn't need to sew together little bundles of feathers - I only needed to add the red ones.

Finished Product

And finally the jacket and is finished and mailed out!  Awesome part?  Immortal Spark Cosplay informed me that she has a forest behind her house she was already planning to take pictures in.  The below images are shared with her permission and are some of the test shots for how the jacket would look with the pieces she'd already assembled.  Please take the time to check out her page as well!

An AWESOME evil queen is born!!
Check out Immortal Spark's Cosplay page!!

If you'd like to commission me for a dress or have any questions on how I make these pieces, please send me an email or message me through my etsy store. 

Backseat Gamer: Lego Jurassic World

I'm back from my hiatus!  Sorry about that!  I had to finish editing Beneath The Chapter - the sequel to Seeking the Storyteller, which will be out in April. Now, since it's Wednesday, back to our regularly scheduled entries.

Intro:
The Lego series of games has quickly become my favorite over the years, watching it grow through glitches to perfectly capture the immensely enjoyable time sucker it now is.  More then playing with the little inter-connective blocks as a kid, these types of video games are perfect and I'm not kidding when I say that when a new one enters our house, there's nothing else we want to do but get every single gold brick there is.  Oh, and all the red ones too. 

Summary:
Everyone knows the story of Jurassic Park.  The old series of movies (and books) about a billionaire dreamer who creates a theme park full of dinosaurs cloned from prehistoric mosquito blood.  What could possibly go wrong mixing humans and dinosaurs together in a Disneyland setting?  More over, why wouldn't be still keep going to such a park, even if there were so many deaths the first time? Oh, and now it's completely kid friendly because they're made of Lego blocks!

Thoughts:
Back in 6th grade, I have an especially vivid memory of my dad telling me I could invite two of my friends to a new movie coming out that we all wanted to see.  Jurassic Park was coming to the theaters and we were all hyped - I mean I'd read the book multiple times and practically had it memorized.  From the trailers we got glimpses of the dinosaurs and I couldn't wait to see it in the theater.  I remember sitting through the movie with my friend Nate - who was completely engrossed - and Anne - who was terrified and squeezing my hand the whole time.  I loved the movie and watched it too many times to count, especially since my dad loved using the T-Rex scene to show off his new theater room sound system.

This Lego game was honestly like taking that piece of my childhood and playing it all over again with a Playstation controller.  Rather then recording new lines, you can tell they lifted them right from the movies (which mostly works).  The story changes only slightly to make it very kid friendly (no one dies) and it's just a lot of fun playing as the different characters and the dinosaurs as you relive the movie plots you grew up with.

The game is blocked out into four parts, one for each movie, and as you complete a movie you unlock the next and corresponding characters.  Like I said the dialog is lifted right from the movie, so Lost World and Jurassic Park 3 become almost a game of witty one liners spouted at the right times rather then a full on story.  But it doesn't really hurt the game too much - just causes it to seem a little bare bones at the time.

The most interesting thing about this game - I found - was the characters' powers.  In the Marvel, Star Wars and even Indiana Jones ones, it made since for the characters to have certain abilities and they fit really well.  I'll admit I was concerned about how this game would handle that as the characters don't seem to have natural powers, but they did it quite well.  I actually found it quite amusing that Dr Ellie Saddler's power is the ability to dig in piles of poop - because she does it in the movie and she can also grow plants.  Dr Alan Grant has the ability to unearth bone piles and cut vines with his raptor claw.  Honestly their powers often made me laugh because they fit so well, and yet it was comical to see them put to real world game uses.

Playing with the dinosaurs was also awesome.  Not only do they act like cars - so you can just run into items and get the studs from them - but they come in different forms and even the dinosaurs had different abilities.  To the point that you had to create your own hybrids to do certain tasks in the game.

I honestly think my favorite part is how this game very much mastered the problem solving aspect.  It forced you to keep track of what characters could and couldn't do certain tasks and what dinosaurs fit as well.  So creating the perfect team to do something right took effort and in the end it felt like you'd solved a huge math problem - without all the stress and calculations you would expect to be involved. The game is complicated, but it's a complicated kind of fun that is easily learned as you play.

How Much I Played:

The whole game.  OK, with a few teeny exceptions where the water and flying dinosaur parts were completed by my partner, but we played (almost) the whole game together until 100%. I am not kidding when I say we couldn't put it down and I'm seriously hoping that future Lego games are just as good.  (I'm looking at you Lego The Force Awakens.)

Grade:

Absolutely loved it.  It was a great dose of childhood nostalgia with all the mechanics I love of the Lego games. And I can totally see myself throwing this in in the future if I ever need brainless block destroying after a hard day at work.

Cosplay?
I sadly don't have any pictures of this.  But back in 7th grade, after I saw the first movie, I went to school on Halloween as a park worker from the first film.  I remember I had a Jurassic Park shirt and a matching hat and we found a plastic action figure of a raptor looking dinosaur that I locked in blue cage to carry with me.  My dad made me an official looking badge proclaiming that I was a Park Worker with a little bite taken out of the corner and I was all set.  I remember loving the costume at the time and I still think that - for a 7th grader - it was pretty awesome.

Small Hiatus

I apologize for the small hiatus.  I'm currently in the process of editing the sequel to Seeking the Storyteller and since we're in a bit of a time crunch, didn't have a chance to write up any blog entries until it's done.  Don't worry, I'm still around.  You should hopefully see more from me in mid February.

See you then!

Yes I Made That Jacket: Nocturne

It's 2016 and I'm realizing that I don't have as much cosplay material on this blog as I want.  So I'm going to start keeping up with costumes that I've made and make "Yes I Made That Dress" a more regular thing.  So with each cosplay I finish I'll have a new one!  And in the meantime, since I'm still working on my latest commission, here's the last commission I finished.

Some History:

Nocturne is one of the many games in the Shin Megami Tensei series that has a small but seriously loyal following.  Along with the Naoto and Marie hats I usually make, requests for commissioned items from this game are pretty common - because sadly there isn't much in the way of merchandise out there.  I was asked to recreate the main character's Track Jacket for a friend and their upcoming cosplay.  

Making the Jacket:

My not so secret is out!  I don't make my own patterns.  Honestly, it's really not a secret.  I never learned how to do this and I don't see the point when I've gotten so good at 'frankensteining' existing ones together.  Instead I have a HUGE collection of patterns from many different companies in my sewing room basement.  Simplicity 2208 is the one I used for this commission, with very few alterations.  You can also see the fabric I picked up for the jacket.  Comfy sweatshirt material and knit cotton.

Piping was something new I got to try for this jacket, and it's actually a lot easier then I thought it would be.  Just a couple pieces of yarn, braided together to get the correct shape and sewn into place and it duplicated the look quite well.  Definitely something I'm going to keep in mind for my own future designs, because I love it as a small detail. 

Next up, the detail on the sleeves...

The little dancing cats design doesn't exist that I can find, and I'm not really one for special ordering fabric because it's so expensive!  So instead I decided to see if a stamp would work.  I made the stamps out of extra thick craft foam and carefully stamped the figurines onto some test fabric first.  Then I went back in with a paint brush and filled in the thinner spots. Worked pretty well for a guess!  Paint used is a simple craft acrylic paint - if you put it on thin enough it just soaks into the fabric and won't crack at all, and it will survive normal washing.

(In the future I'll be correcting this method by adding felt on the stamps, so it holds more paint.  Keep an eye out for that on the Markiplier dress coming up.)

Next part I sewed on the patch piece over the seam of the sleeve.  I avoided making this panel it's own piece and put it on top so there wouldn't be an issue of stretching in the future.  I wanted to avoid cracking or stretching the design throughout wear on the outfit, so that detail lasts longer.  

Finished Product

And finally, with it all sewn together we have the track jacket!

If you'd like to commission me for a dress or have any questions on how I make these pieces, please send me an email or message me through my etsy store. 

Review: Young Black Jack

What's it about?

Black Jack is one of those classic anime characters you see with the old school stuff.  Astro Boy, Goku, Sailor Moon, Ranma, Vampire Hunter D... Black Jack is one of those pillar characters that I'd heard about back in college, even when I wasn't completely sure what anime exactly was. I never really got a chance to look at his anime and manga before and now with this new series coming out, I figured I'd give it a shot.

Young Black Jack is the prequel to the well known character, showing how he became the well known surgeon.  Set in the 1960's, Black Jack is a medical student who has a mysterious past and is the outcast genius with his fellow students.  During the middle of a strike with all the students, a horrible accident occurs and there's no one left to take care of the patients so Black Jack has to step up and perform his first surgery.

Thoughs?

I'll be honest, I'm not much into the medical drama category of shows.  With the exception of House, I've never really gotten into them.  I wanted to give this one a shot - based on the history of the character and pure curiosity, but I couldn't really get into it.  I gave this show a couple episodes, but had to let it go after that.

That isn't to say this is a bad series.  It's actually beautifully animated with all the same dramatic tension styles that one tends to see in sports and shonen (young male aimed) style anime.  We have a mysterious lead character, who we'll for sure learn more about, something he excels at and is needed for, and an interesting setting.  Black Jack himself reminds me a lot of Spike from Cowboy Bebop, that almost pirate type who can do the things you hire him for, charges a lot of money but in the end really has nothing to show for himself other then a good drunken story to tell.  That is a compliment to the series and if that's the type of character you love, then give this one a shot.

Me personally, I couldn't find anything to latch onto.  The show also has a large amount of almost 'pandering' to the audience.  They are clearly banking on the fact that this character is the attractive unique type, with his scars and frequent closeups of the animation of his eyes.  He feels the need to strip before a surgery, further driving home that the scars are everywhere on his body, and the opening to the anime is basically him being shirtless - the demographic for this new anime is clear and it's really not me.  I actually found the pandering distracting more then anything else.  But I can appreciate the other stylistic choices, such as the stunning animation bits of him lacing up wounds and mentally figuring out where to 'attack' next to make the surgery a success.

In the end, this is probably a pretty good anime, just not really my cup of tea.  But if you're in the crowd that likes medical drama and bishonen (attractive male) characters, give it a shot.  I'm sure there's quite a bit you'll enjoy.

Watched on?
Streaming on Hulu, subtitled.

2015 - A Year of Cosplay

2015 was an awesome year with us visiting several conventions and many states!  We also finished quite a bit of cosplay that year!  Below are the ones we finished and you can expect blog entries in the future going into details.  If you have any requests about how things were done, or things you want to hear about, please comment below.

You can also check out our Facebook cosplay pages for the most up to date photos and details on where we'll be next and what we're making next!  

Brichibi Cosplays & Snow Cosplays

And now in no particular order...

  

Dragon Ball Z Goku Dress - Designed by Brichibi, commissioned

 

Nautical Ballgown - Designed by Snow, commissioned

Rose Quartz from Steven Universe - commissioned

Track Jacket from Nocturne - commissioned

 

Captain America dress - designed by Snow, commissioned

 

Death the Kid from Soul Eater dress - designed by Snow, commissioned

 

Lady Tremaine from Cinderella pinup - designed by Snow

Dr Facilier from Princess and the Frog pinup - designed by Snow

 

Stevonnie from Steven Universe - t-shirts altered by Snow

 

Kingdom Hearts Wallscroll Dress - designed by Snow

 

Mario and Bowser dresses - Mario designed by Brichibi, Bowser designed by Snow

 

Winter Soldier Dress - designed by Snow, commissioned

Baymax dress from Big Hero Six - designed by Snow, commissioned

Scorpion from Mortal Kombat - closet cosplay

Princess Godzilla - commissioned

 

Sailor Moon Wallscroll dress - designed by Brichibi

Looking forward to all the cosplay we'll have and make in 2016!  See you then!