Corset Pattern Tutorial!
The full tutorial is under the cut but be warned that it is long. Grab a snack and get ready to learn how to draft some corsets!
a really good tutorial on corset drafting!
Helpful Cosplay links:
Wigs: (I highly recommend always wearing a wig while cosplaying)
epiccosplay wigs (my favorite wig sellers. Great customer service)
Makeup:
Cream makeup, body paint and sfx makeup
http://www.stagemakeuponline.com/
http://www.motionpicturefx.com/
http://www.bobbibrowncosmetics.com/landing/makeup/index.tmpl
For the question “which character should I cosplay?”
http://www.animecharactersdatabase.com/
(just enter in character details at the top of the page)
Finding conventions:
http://www.animecons.com/events/state.shtml/002800799
Other:
(numbers represent different parts or methods)
Tutorials:
Binding 1 (do not use ace bandages invest in a binder or buy sports bras)
packing for a convention boot covers fangs wings gems
armor: 1 2 video fiber glass or alternative
shields (you can alter it to be any shape you want and you can use something besides a dish)
Basic Hem kigurumi tunic mermaid tail gloves sailor collar pleated skirt circle skirt fabric dyeing
Wig dyeing pigtails 1 fixing a wig spikes 1 bangs (It may be better to cut a strand of the bangs for reference while you have it on and then cut the rest when its pinned to a wig head) Wearing a wig with long hair
If you have any other questions feel free to ask here or here
So here’s….part two…which is the bloody nose….I still talk a lot but this video is a lot shorter!!
Again, let me know if you want a tutorial on anything else! This helps me as much as it (hopefully) helps you….
part 2 of the previous tutorial
Um so…
A couple of people asked for a tutorial on bruises and nosebleeds, and I ramble a lot so this had to be split into two parts. The second part is still downloading on youtube…
Yeaahhh sorry I talk so much guys, I hope this is helpful even though I made a bunch of mistakes and stuff. Bruises aren’t that hard, I promise! Let me know if there’s anything else you’re curious about and I can try to do a tutorial for that as well.
THE ENTIRE FIRST HALF IS RAMBLING…..FEEL FREE TO SKIP THAT….
not necessarily cosplay related, but still cool costuming stuff!
How to put on a wigcap/wig when you have A LOT of hair. (With pictures!)
Ok so I’ve actually had quite a few people ask me how I get all my hair under a wig (some of my friends have even made me show them because they didn’t believe me.) It’s really not that hard! Even if you have a lot of hair/a lot of volume.
This will probably be fairly long, so click read more to hear the secrets :o
Ok so before I even start I need to talk about two things.
1) The wig cap: First off, I don’t care how short your hair is, or even if your bald! If you’re going to be wearing a wig, then wear a wig cap. I personally prefer to use netted wig caps over nylon ones. They tend to stay put better as well as help the wig stay in place and surprisingly (at least to me) they hold my hair down much better. They also often times come with wigs!*As a side note, if you want to use a nylon wig cap, then get an actual wig cap. Don’t just use nylons. Even if you stretch them out to fit your head they still feel like a boa constrictor is on your head. MAJOR headache.
2) The wig: Just make sure the wig actually fits your head. If it doesn’t fit your head, it’s very unlikely it’s going to work. I’ve had a few wigs that were just WAY too small even though they were “one size fits all” (these were all party wigs though so if you’re buying an actually nice quality wig you should be fine!)
OK! So now that that’s out of the way let’s get started.
So here we are before we start.
Wow! That’s a lot of hair. How will we ever get that under a wig cap? It’s really quite simple!
Step 1: Gather hair into a ponytail
Step two: With your other hand, gather the ends of the pony tail and bring them to your forehead
Step 3: Move a few fingers from the first hand over the ponytail so that you can hold it in this position with just one hand. Also grab your hair net with your newly freed second hand.
Step 4: Stretch out the wig cap and put it over the hair your first hand is holding (this is best done by putting the cap over the hair AND your first hand and then sliding your hand out.) You should now basically be holding it the same way as in step 3, but with the other hand a wig cap on it.
Step 5: Use both hands to pull down the wig cap in all directions so that it stays on by itself. If some hair isn’t covered, that’s fine. Leave it for now. If you see the picture I still have quite a bit of uncovered hair. In my eyes.
Step 6: Tuck the remaining hair under the cap, you can stick your hand under and move the hair around a bit if there’s a weird buldge.
And there you have it!
But the real key to keeping it all staying good is to bobby pin the wig cap to your hair. (I’m not taking pictures of this because I’m lazy, but you should get the idea.)
Basically, I put one bobby pin in the front center, one one on each side of my head, and two in the back. If I want to be extra careful I might even put one some where on the top of my head.
Your wig cap shouldn’t be going anywhere now, so put on your wig and get going! (after bobby pinning the wig in the same fashion/places as the wig cap of course! (Yes I do bobby pin them both. And then I can basically do anything short of hanging upside down and feel safe)
I’m serious guys, I can’t tell you enough how AWESOME BOBBY PINS ARE! USE THEM!!! (you can never use too many unless you’re head is entirely covered in them…)
Anyways, that’s my little tutorial! Hope this helps someone out there…
seer hood tutorial (also modifiable for other god tier hoods)
hi-res here. this file is huge.
continuing on from the seer robe guide i posted a couple of days ago, here is a hood tutorial for the many of you that asked! this is written as though you are making a hood for the seer class, but it is easily modifiable for other classes like maid, thief, and heir with a few changes to the shape of the hood.
please be aware that this tutorial assumes that you already know the basics of sewing and have some experience with it, along with the ability to understand basic patterns and sewing terms. this is not a tutorial designed with beginners in mind; if you are new to sewing and you want to make a god tier hood, i don’t recommend my tutorial. it will probably just confuse you! ε-(´・｀) ﾌ
but if you do know your way around a sewing machine and you want a clean, professional-looking hood with no visible topstitching or hemming on the outside and a tail that stands up on its own, then this tutorial is for you, and i hope you find it to your liking.
if i’m asked to, i may eventually make an addition to this tutorial detailing how to add buttoned flaps for troll horns or jade’s dog ears, but it probably won’t happen for a little while, as i’m going to be pretty busy for a bit.
i hope this helps! as always, my ask box is open to any questions you may have. good luck on your cosplays!
Gabby, you are a saint.
check it! we’ve had some questions about god tier hoods again, so here’s a sweet tutorial for a seer one!
(Source: damaramegido)
Makeupless Homestuck Troll Cosplay Arms And Hands
So I’ve been a homestuck cosplayer for a little while, and spent some time around other homestuck cosplayers. Now I love trolls and I love troll cosplayers, but one of my pet peeves is how their makeup just seems to get EVERYWHERE. At Soycon 2011, after only a few hours of being at the meetup, I already had gray makeup all over my skirt AND I WAS COSPLAYING ROSE. Not Grimdark Rose. Just Rose. And I’m not blaming anybody. That’s just what happens when you put makeup on your arms and hands, and it’s 95 degrees outside. Or any degrees outside at all. It gets places. The same thing happened to anyone who came in contact with me this past halloween when I was cosplaying as Marceline from Adventure Time. (I have worn stiletto boots for cosplay, I have shoved contacts in my eyes for cosplay, and I have cosplayed as Suigintou from Rozen Maiden on an 85 degree day and believe me when I say being gray from the nipples up is the most uncomfortable thing I have ever done for cosplay. It just feels GROSS.)
So I finally figured out an alternative that I will be using for Acen 2011 as I attend as Vriska Serket, and I hope it’ll catch on.
The following is a tutorial I found from a Doctor Who Weeping Angel cosplayer, copied word for word. It’s not specifically for troll cosplay, but it’s the same concept and it’ll work for basically any of the trolls except Feferi. (as feferi wears a tank top and you can’t really cover this up with a tank top) You can see a little bit of minor seamage up close, but that’s a small price to pay for the nastiness it saves you from. So here it is! An alternative for troll cosplayers that want to hug people, touch things, pick things up, ride in someone’s car without getting makeup all over their seats, and just generally be not repulsive.
~
“Arms, neck, feet
Materials: Opaque tights, acrylic paint/fabric-medium, nail polish, artificial nails, toe-socks, thrift-store sandals
I know I don’t have any makeup skills, so I wanted some sort of gloves for the arms. I bought two different pairs of gloves before giving up and making my own.
First, I took a pair of ladies’ opaque tights and cut out the crotch. This became the neck-hole. I pulled them on, one arm down each sleeve, then used pins to mark the divisions between my fingers.”
“I cut along the pins, then sewed the fingers together by hand using a whipstitch. After that, I took a little tuck in the wrist area of the gloves to smooth out some wrinkles.”
“As soon as you pull the gloves on after this, dab some nail polish along the seams - this will stabilize them and prevent the tights from running. Then turn the gloves inside-out so that the seams are on the inside (at this point, the right glove will become the left glove and vice-versa).
To increase the illusion of fingers, I glued artificial nails to the gloves. You have to do this while the gloves are on to get the correct placement - to prevent the glue from sticking to you, rub some oil or lotion into your fingertips/nails before you pull the gloves on.
Paint the gloves while you are wearing them and let them
dry on you, otherwise they will shrink. I used the same old acrylic paint/fabric medium mix. Before painting the gloves, I gave the nails several coats of silver nailpolish so that they wouldn’t show pink if the paint scratched.
They look really freaky when you aren’t wearing them.”
“But once on, the illusion is very convincing.”
this is an excerpt from a tutorial we posted a link to a while back, but it’s a good way to apply it to a different costume!
(Source: thediagonallie)
themaraudernumber5 asked: Hi,Looking at your jade hood tutorial and im confused as to where my measurements are going on each line. so far ive got the front of my hood as being 29 inches with seam allowances - i got this by measuring from my shoulders and over my head to make sure that it went over ok! i then had the measurement as the centre front to centre back of the collar as 5 inches - i got this by laying out my mock up flat and measuring this gap :/ the bit i am confused on is what length line 2 is meant to be
I’m sorry, I don’t really understand what you’re asking for….
Are you basing it entirely on this post? Because that’s the only post with numbered lines. That’s just me explaining something that someone didn’t get…this post is the actual tutorial.
When you say “front of the hood,” do you mean the entire front of the hood, or just the part I have labeled as “front of the hood” on my tutorial diagram? Because that part should be HALF of the total front length (since it’s only half of the hood). I.e., if the total length is 29 inches, the part I have labeled on the diagram should be 14.5 inches.
I’m not sure why you’re measuring the distance from the center front to the center back. What it SOUNDS like you’re measuring is literally the distance THROUGH your neck. That isn’t important. The distance from the center front to the center back should be AROUND your neck, approximately where a t-shirt collar lays. If you already have the collar pattern made, you’re measuring around the curved edge of the pattern, not in a straight line between the two pattern pieces.
Line two is literally half the length of the back of your head…it’s an arbitrary measurement depending on how big you want your hood to be.
sighs this is why internet tutorials are difficult…I try to avoid using sewing terminology as much as I can, but sometimes I assume people understand things that are intuitive to me but clearly aren’t intuitive to other people. Falling back on a bunch of diagrams and numbers is tricky too, because the way I use math in pattern making may not be the way someone else thinks about the problem…….
leifal asked: ok soooo i've been trying to follow this jade god tier hood tutorial along with using the john one but.... i dont understand the measurements on the hood at all O.o... i mean where theres a reference to the pink line... it says minus the length of the pink line... but how long is the pink line... how long is the back of the hood? idk... maybe its just me but im getting really confused. :/ but you're tutorial is the best one out there... so idk.. help?
It’s all based on geometry! I explained it sort of in reverse to this in the tutorial, but you can also start out by drawing an isoceles triangle, which is based on how big your head is and how long you want the tails to be. Like I said, for each tail:
This is ONE HALF of the hood, i.e. one of the tails. You’ll have to cut 2. The front of the hood should be half as wide as you would make the John hood.
So if you want the total width of the front of your hood to be 36 inches (that’s really wide though), then the shortest side of your triangle for the Jade hood should be 18 inches wide.
You then have to cut out the quadrangle that’s missing from the triangle in my diagrams. The reason I did it this way is so the tails separate on the back of the head (as Jade’s actually do), rather than below the head like I’ve seen many people do.
I drew in the rest of the triangle, the part you have to cut out. Pretend everything I marked as a right angle is actually a right angle…See that the pink lines are the same length?
Lines 1 and 5 are the same length and parallel. Lines 2 and 4 are the same length. Line 3 is the midpoint of lines 2 and 4, and is at a right angle to them (parallel to lines 1 and 5). See that lines 2 + 4 are the same length as the front of the hood minus the slope of the triangle (the two pink lines)?
You have to actually figure out how long all of these lines are yourself, based on the size of your head and how big you want the hood to be. I didn’t put in specific measurements because everybody is a different size, so I tried to make the tutorials as general as possible. Unfortunately that comes at the expense of you having to measure and calculate things yourself! I tried my best to explain what parts of your body correspond to what parts of the pattern - if you have questions about a specific measurement, feel free to ask.
HOW TO PUT ON A SUCCESSFUL MASQUERADE SKIT (FOR THE AUDIENCE)
This is not a topic I claim to be a total expert on, but I was just sitting at work being bored and thinking about all the skits I’ve been in - too many - and what worked and what didn’t and then I kind of wanted to talk about what I’ve learned.
I specifically mention ‘for the audience’ because skits always have two groups to cater to: the judges, and the audience. The judges will take into account how the audience reacts to your skit, but what they’re looking for is more technical than the audience generally is.
I don’t have any goddamned clue what judges are looking for. I’ve been in skits I thought were fantastic but didn’t win any awards, and skits that I thought were dumbass as possible and won Best In Show, so … let’s talk about what will make the audience love you.
There are three major types of skits that you’ll see at any anime convention.
1) The Musical Number/Talent Show. This skit is generally wordless except for maybe an introduction, and then the rest of the skit is put on in the form of dance or some other expression of self. The bad ones are just people in costumes dancing because they can, having little to do with the costumes/series themselves. The good ones usually tell a story in the form of the talent or performance. The skit linked above is a Musical Number skit, the Talent being Color Guard.
1b) The Summary Skit. You have NO IDEA how rare it is to see one of these done well. Usually done set to music or some such, a skit that retells an entire series/game/etc in 3 minutes or less. IT CAN BE DONE but it’s hard to make clear what’s happening. This is often a subset of (1).
2) The Funny Skit. Loaded with inside jokes, this skit appeals to the audience with anything and everything lolzy. It’s hard to make this one fly unless you can make the jokes very broad and fit the characters well. A bad one has too many series-specific inside jokes or pokes the audience where it hurts too hard. A good one - well, makes you laugh!
3) The Yaoi/Random Skit. This is the skit where nobody knows what just happened but two girls dressed as boys just kissed onstage and now you’re deaf because the fanperson next to you in the audience screamed so loud. ….. you can tell how much I like these skits.
You can read most of these from people who will say it better probably but I’m still gonna throw this out there: how to make a skit that doesn’t totally suck.
- Keep it simple. You have 3 minutes, generally speaking, to get across whatever it is that you want to say/show/do, whatever. Keep the concept extremely simple. Stick with ONE concept, don’t try to fit in more than that - tell a story in a linear fashion, make sure the joke(s) are clear and streamlined and broad in subject, keep the dialogue at a minimum.
- Keep it short. Do you need 3 minutes to do your skit? No, seriously, do you? Can you cut it shorter? Can you cut a minute off your song and keep the message? Does the joke really last for three minutes? Generally speaking, the shorter you go the better. You want to go in and out with a bang; your simple concept often won’t stand up for more than a minute, so unless you have some really elaborate pyrotechnics to wow the audience, don’t stretch the idea any longer than you have to.
- Make sure your jokes are actually funny. Audience-test them! Tell the jokes to people who don’t know your favorite series. How much setup do they need to be actually amusing? Do they still make you laugh six months after you first came up with the idea?
- Pre-record your audio. Chances are extremely low that you’ll be performing in a venue small enough to allow you to just belt out your lines at the top of your lungs and still be understandable, even at the smallest of cons. Take a lot of care pre-recording your audio as well. Make sure the background noise is minimal or doesn’t exist. You want your words to be clearly enunciated so you can be understood. Put in pauses for places where you expect the audience to laugh (and bloc actions to do in the meantime if the audience doesn’t oblige, unlikely though that is).
- Practice forever. There is always one person in every dance number who is looking at the rest of the stage members instead of at the audience because they don’t know their steps as well as they ought to. No seriously, go watch a few skits and tell me it isn’t true. Practice with one another, on Skype if you have to!
- Related: Block your skit well. Make sure that you get ample chances to block your skit - that is, know where everyone is standing in relation to one another at any given time during the performance. Know how much space you’ll actually have on stage versus how much you have in your practice space. Make sure everyone is clearly visible to the audience at all times that they are supposed to be visible.
- Act Big, Act Well. You can be very exaggerated on stage. Make all gestures and expressions grand and big so everyone can see. Also this can be totally hilarious if overdone, so use that too. XD;
- Don’t compete: do the skit for the audience. You’re automatically entered into the competition if you sign up for a skit, but trust me - forget the prizes. Don’t do the skit for the sake of the competition aspect. For one thing, the prizes are inevitably kind of dumb. You might get a really cool plaque, along with a lot of sewing supplies, or maybe some DVDs. The only people who will notice if you actually won are on /cgl/, and they only care because of the resulting dramallama. The biggest reward you will likely get is Youtube Famous, which is because people liked your skit, not because you won an award.
- Related: have fun. OH HERP DERP the rule everybody says, but seriously, the audience will be able to tell if you’re NOT having fun. Work hard to do a good job, but then go up there and have a good time! Even serious skits are better if the performers are confident and enjoying themselves. You’re a nerd who put on an animu costume, pre-recorded your favorite song, and spent a month preparing a performance because you like your hobby so much. JUST ROLL WITH IT.
And that’s all I have to say about that, I guess.
