COSPLAY - SPIRITED AWAY post 01
So for the past 2 months, since Animania, I've been waiting for Alita to send me the rest of the pictures so I could do a post to show people how we made Haku Dragon. And finally, FINALLY, she decided to get her arse into gear and GIMME!
So without further adieu, I give you HAKU :D
So... backstory. Sometime around last year, after our Gundam Wing cosplay ( if I recall correctly we were sitting in Maccas directly after Animania when we came up with this ridiculously awesome idea) we decided we'd go a step up from that and - with our spiffy new $100 Lincraft voucher - endeavour to REACH THE HORIZON OF AWESOMENESS. BY MAKING A DRAGON.
Oh but not just any dragon, no. A LION DANCING DRAGON. AND WHO BETTER THAN HAKU :D
But it doesn't stop there. While we were munching on our greasy burgers of doom we suddenly had the most awesome, eKsellent, totally rad idea... why don't we pop out of dragon!Haku as Chihiro and boy!Haku????
...and around this time I think we pretty much thought we were FULL OF WIN.
And then came the GRANDE PLAN OF EXECUTING SUCH AN AWESOME FEAT OF AWESOME (you can toally tell I'm holding back on the amount of awesome praise I could be showering us with. But I think everything is awesome, and I think everyone should be full of self praise for themselves. so. ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR OWN BRAND OF AWESOMENESS, PEOPLES!!!!)
A selection of materials that we were going oooooohhhh over...
...AND THEN THIS. THIS FULL OF WIN MATERIAL :D
...WITH THIS NOT-SO-FULL-OF-WIN PRICE TAG DDDDDDDDD:
Awesome sequins that were bought but somehow mysteriously never actually made it onto Haku. I wonder where they are.....
Fringing for Haku's mane. Also expensive but I could hack it. Alas Alita could not. So we only bought 1.5m, with me SEKRITLY BUYING MOAR LATER >:D
LIKE THIS.
According to Alita the whole thing was my stupid idea... so she made me responsible for the whole design and artistic direction of Haku, which meant in the event of an EPIC FAIL, I would also fully be responsible. Supposedly payback for all the times I have caused her grief in last-minute cosplays. Anyway this meant that I had total say in what went on him and what didn't, which meant, despite hefty price, MANE GOES ONNNNN :D because for a second there she was totally thinking of ditching it and going with just the wool we bought. Thats why I'm the creative department and she's the marketing department :P
TEH FABRICS. Well, some of them anyway. The rest we bought as we went along. The 5m of fur was not cheap.... I have no idea how much we spent together. I'm sure Alita added the whole thing up somewhere... probably near the 500 dollar mark, maybe less actually...
AND STARTO. The little green round hoop-thing we actually bought from Bunnings, and was the base for the head. The rest was just wire that we attached and tied together with bits of string. I have the blueprint of the head somewhere, but its not that interesting so I wont bother posting it...
Me, looking decidedly SKINNIER last year in summer. I put on some weight over the winter so when I actually dressed up as Haku I felt like a less awesome, pudgier version of him.
At this point we were just laughing over how much of a duck Haku looked like, and not wolf-like at all. And yes, the wind changed, but only for 5 minutes so I wasn't stuck with that face. Believe it or not I look like that half the time anyway.
Fully wired Head of DOOOOM + Alita looking as enthusiastic as the bunion on my left foot. Just joking. I don't have a bunion Even my bunion's got more excitement than her.
So now time for the muslin. We actually studied videos on how to make Chinese Lions so we knew the proper way to do it. Because yes, WE ARE JUST THAT AWESOME :D
SO ANWAY we ripped the muslin into strips of various sizes and then used a strange concoction of corn flour, PVA craft glue and water and mached our way to happiness...
LIKE THIS. NICE CENTREFOLD POSE ALITA :DDDDDD
Next step came the furring of Mr. Haku. We didn't glue it to the muslin or anything, we just sewed it on in strategic places.
After the white fur Alita did the horns while I sewed a cute little pink nose for our baby. The silver crushed veltvetine Alita wasn't sure of putting on, but I just did it when she wasn't around and then went OH HAY HOW DID THAT GET THERE LULZ. Luckily she liked it.
Ok that concludes post 1. Now... ONTO POST 2!!!!