Otakon 2004


This was the whole third convention I'd ever been to, the first anime convention, the first I'd costume in, and the first that was so darn /huge/. Something like 17,000 people attended this Otakon. :O

This was also the first time I made a costume based on someone designed by someone else. It was easier than I thought it would be in some ways, and harder in others.

Other Ota2004 pages:
* Rockman.EXE Online (Home of OtaRockman :D)
* Usagichan Company Search and Rescue (It also has links to several major cosplay sites.)


| Page 1 - Costume Creation | Page 2 - Friday | Page 3 - Saturday | Page 4 - Sunday |


Making the costume

First... I drew up a buncha plans; what would be made of what and how it would all be stuck together. You're not getting scans of those. :D
Once I got far enough that I figured I could start, I began to get some of the materials. Like the the gloves and the cushion foam for the armor:



The foam was something like $3 or $4(US)/yard at Jo-Ann Fabrics. I got 1x2 yards I believe (3 by 6 feet, in other words). The gloves were $3 at Wal-Mart. :P

Somewhere, I have a list of expenses, but I can't seem to find it. 9_9; But if I do find it, I'll update this page accordingly. /o/

Being the terrible procrastinator that I am, very little got done before July 2004 -- a month before the con. I did however finish cutting out the armor and even gluing yellow taffida (I double-layered 2 yards' worth, approx. $2/yard at Jo-Ann's) to it... Acquired the gloves, and 1 yard of yellow-tan cloth (my most expensive item yet, at $7/yard) that would cover the dark brown edge of the gloves and go halfway up my upper arm. My dad and I also started on the helmet!



For reference, I printed out a bunch of screenshots (found at Rockman EXE Online) and took them to my dad's primarily place of work -- a metal shop. :D

Wireframes are so much easier to work with when you have access to a welding torch. Not that I did any welding, my dad did it all. :P

After several hours' work, we didn't have much to write home about.



But we toiled on!



Top of the ears! The cotton padding was to simulate padding I would surely have under the helmet. Looks ridiculous now, but it was proven a good idea.



Our progress by the end of day. No one's getting a solid hit to the back of my head while I'm wearing this! XD

And then.. except for some sporadic work on my helmet... Nothing more got done. Until July rolled around...



Tacky Glue is my friend. I used it on everything. XD The styrofoam spikes (white pointy things) on the table were supposed to be used as the spikes on Elecman's dynamos, but I ended up not doing the dynamos at all, so they still sit in my room, collecting spiderwebs. :D;



My progress two days later. Once the yellow was all glued down, I trimmed 1 yard of navy blue taffeta ( my parents found it somewhere for $2/yard :O ) into shape and glued that down as well. (Maaaaan that was time-consuming..)

Three days after that (July 18th), the wireframe on my helmet was completed:



Woo for fuzzy photos.



The tinfoil is wrapped around crumpled up newspaper, so when it got paper machéd its form would stay intact.



The balloon is to provide a form for the paper maché to stick to. :D
The paper maché-ing got done in a mad dash at 6 AM July 29th -- and then I went to bed. :D When I got up (at about noon, pretty much usual for me!), Dad and I went off to the metalshop to spraypaint it. (We were so lucky the helmet was dry by then.. we'd have been screwed if it wasn't. ^^;;)



Dad sticks electrical tape over the stripe (already spraypainted), so that he can paint the whole helmet.

We had two spraypaint bottles, yellow and navy blue, which cost about $1.30 or $1.70 (I don't remember) each at Wal-Mart.



Done!

The body suit is in two pieces -- one is a navy-blue leotard that came from a dance supply store in Scranton, PA, and the other a pair of tights that say they're navy, but they're a lot darker than the leotard. ._. At least it wasn't very noticable.

My shoes were just regular shoes acquired from a random store for a modest price. They started as tan, but this didn't last through the day we left for the con. XD Woo spraypaint!

The light blue bands were a challenge, and didn't even get done until the night before we left. c.c Fortunately, I didn't have to do them on my own. =x My dad did quite a bit here as well, weilding the iron for great justice! And fabric glue, too. Wonderful stuff, that.
The upward-pointing points have copper wire (that I just so happened to have lying around my room. XD) supporting them so they don't fall over; the lower points don't have any support, they just have a hem to keep them from fraying. All the pieces have a general rectangle-shape and connect (with velcro) at the back of the leg. They also have pieces of velcro that stick to my tights that help keep 'em in place.




This photo is from Saturday, when I first put my whole costume on. :D (Click for a larger version!)

Well, I guess it's not really much of a progress report, but there it is. ^^; (I thought I took a lot more photos than that... I guess not, ah well.)

I actually had supplies for the remaining yellow stripes, but I didn't have the time to finish them. *cough* c.c I was also unsure as to how to connect them -- I don't know if taffeta dissolves in a washing machine or what. (If it did, I couldn't have it permanently attach to the suit.)


Onward to the first day of the con! /o/



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