I made some costumes, I really did

Time the get off my ass and update a bit of the costumes I worked on for WCS! I'll write about the trip it self in some separate entries~

We ended up choosing to bring five costumes for the events. WCS only requires minimum of 3 costumes (finals + 2), but we felt more comfortable with several costumes in case one gets ruined or simply too gross&sweaty to wear. We chose one more intricate costume pair for the red carpet, and the rest based on what would be easy and comfortable to wear in the heat of Nagoya. One criteria was also that Yumi wasn't in a good position to make lots of new costumes, so we chose something she'd have at hand already. Those ended up being Mia Fey from Ace Attorney and Catherine from Catherine. To pair them I made Maya(Ace Attorney 6) and Trisha.

Lightning Returns was one of our options for the qualifiers last year, so it ended up being quite an easy thing to choose for the red carpet. Afterwards we also decided on Asuka's and Rei's school uniforms from Evangelion. They ended up being an excellent choice for the courtesy visits day.





Maya Fey - Ace Attorney 6

When we discussed me making an Ace Attorney costume so Yumi could bring Mia, Maya was probably the first character that caught my eye and fit the description of what to bring to Nagoya. I was planning to make her younger version, _until(!) AA6 was announced during the year with some concept art for an older Maya. That design was much more appealing to me.




The costume is fairly simple. The dress is a sleeveless kimono flared from the bottom so it opens a bit like in the concept art. Canonically it's probably meant to be a straight kimonodress, but I preferred the look of my reference, I'm pretty happy of the fabric I found for the purple jacket and how I managed to make it without sideseams. Also on the fact that I managed to match the two different whites like in the reference.
The shoes were some old flipflops I trimmed, painted and added the red ribbons. The pearls on the necklace and wig are just treated styrofoam balls, like the other hair trinkets.
Her golden mega-tama was probably my favorite thing to make in this costume. It's carved finnfoam with sanded airdryingclay on top.

Surprisingly this ended up being my hottest costume, with sweat running down my legs xD From the waist up I was pretty fine though.






Photo by Eetu Lampsijärvi

Lightning - Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning returns

I honestly have a love-hate relationship with Lightning. The game is ridiculous nonsense, and as a character she's just as interesting as a wet brick. But I've kinda liked her ridiculous outfit design (she's basically wearing a bra and a panty to battle hello) so at first I was kinda excited about making the costume. I have to mention right here that I'm not that happy with it though. With it or in it to be precise. One of the reasons might be though that I had to make quite a lot of material compromises for Nagoya. For example her pant-sleeve and arm-sleevet hingies should've actually been leather(or fake leather in this case) but imagine that in the unforgiving temperatures of Japan? Yeah it wasn't going to happen. So a lot of compromises happened instead. 


Here's a rough 'n dirty run of the build for you though; the armor parts are foam so they'd survive in the heat, with fake leather for the texture and foam details. The chestplate bra is a bra with a felt attachment, then covered in a matte scuba fabric and fake leather. The cape and side curtains are from two different curtainfabrics. With working pockets(that solved my pocket problem on this costume lol). The silver emblem and sleeve armor pieces are cast in resin and painted with chrome spraypaint. Boots have bootcovers from fake leather. The sword is made from wood with details in PVC foam board and it's cut from the middle so I could fit it in a suitcase. Painted with acrylics. My reference was the simpler figure sword, not the more intricate game model. Small details were made from Apoxie sculpt. 

This costume really isn't one I'd wear for fun, and I'm definitely not happy with it plus it gives me no feel of a characters so it probably won't see conventions that much... But funny enough, now that I have the wig, I had an idea of maybe making one her other costume designs in the game... xD We'll see.



a lot of fiber was cut off

resin castings






texturing the sword surface

Photo by Zweit


Trisha/Midnight Venus/Ishtar  -  Catherine

This was again chosen based on Yumi already having made the Catherine costume earlier. I definitely would've preferred the afro version of this character, but taking that afro to Japan in the luggage was an obvious no-no so I went with the sleek secret-ending version. This costume is mostly dumpster dived, for those interested x3 The jacket is an old mens jacket I customized to fit me(luckily it's supposed to have wider shoulders and bit of this odd pulling), the skirt needed a little bit sewing on the sides and the shoes were a tad too low and a bit too big for me BUT I threw them away in Japan so they served their purpose perfectly.


The collars are faced with felt and have iron wire to give them shape and support. They also have small hooks that clamp to the the u-plunge bra, under the empire-line so to say. I attached a rubberband belt to the button and buttonhole so the front of the jacket stays close to my waist.
The choker parts and cross are resincast, and the plate is PVC foamboard. I sprayed the texture on it with some tulle and primer. The gold 'lace' is made with iron-on gold vinyl on black satin with a fusible interfacing that gives it structure. I need to get a close up on the button because it's the cutest ramhead design.







photo by Eetu Lampsijärvi, extraedits by me

Asuka  -  Neon Genesis Evangelion

This was really just an extra costume, we felt like it would be nice to have one super simple and easy to wear costume with us. We though about some other options as well(like Pokemon) but in the end I was very happy to able to bring Asuka to WCS. My actual dream would've definitely been to bring her plugsuit but that would've been just crazy. Originally I though that I'd just bring Asuka's yellow dress on my own in hopes of getting couple of photos of it in Japan but in the end we agreed on the school uniforms as our extra light costumes. Like I mentioned they turned out to be an excellent choice for the courtesy visits being so easy and comfortable. 


Since she only had two costumes to make Yumi made the patterns for the dress and the shirt, and I used the same ones on mine. Nothing fancy here, just a skirt and a shirt. The shoes I found from the recycling center, socks from ebay and I added the stretchy red bands. The straps on the shoes are just fakeleather bands around my feet. The watch was painted red. I've been meaning to buy a new Asuka wig for ages so I finally got it for this purpose, but I'm so used to my old one I'm not sure if I like this wig on her x3.





Photo by Eetu Lampijärvi, some extraedits by me


That's roughly it! All my costumes have pockets like always. Next more editing and then I'll start with the actual trip report~

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