My obligatory MTAC post…

I spent most of Thursday night running around trying to finish up everything before Friday morning. I had decided that the boots I had purchased for my Celes costume were too tall and went on a fruitless 2.5 hour search through Opry Mills and Cool Springs for mid-calf white boots with a narrow heel. They don’t exist in April. However, Charlotte Russe was having a $4.99 boot sale and I did find some brown boots that I decided to cover with white fabric. So, then I had to make a trip to Joann’s for the fabric. I also went to Target for a few things, then went by the Marriott to pick up our passes for the con. After I got home, I had to cover the boots I had bought, finish painting Ben’s knife for Locke, do laundry, sew Ben’s belt for Locke, pack, and other various little things. I need to teach Ben to sew. I finally went to bed around 2:30 am.

I got up early Friday morning and drove to Clarksville to pick up Sabrina. Then we went back to the apartment, packed up both my car and Ben’s and then were off to Franklin. We arrived and checked into the hotel. The room was ready and on the third floor, right next to the elevator. Perfect. I went with Sabrina to pick up her pass and to get a schedule. Ben and I changed into our Wallmarket costumes and then went back downstairs. We ate lunch at the restaurant in the hotel, Lorraine’s. I had some very yummy chicken, pork roast, and cheesecake.

Wallmarket Aeris and Cloud were a big hit. Everyone seemed really surprised and happy to see cross-dressing Cloud, since it is so rarely done. At 2:00, we went to the Make Your Own Movie panel. We watched a short film on how to get rid of a dead body, which was pretty funny. They explained how to do some different camera angles. It was pretty interesting. After that, we changed costumes into Black Mage and Misa and walked around for a bit. Around 6:30, we decided to make a run to Kroger to get some snacks and soda, and also went to McDonald’s for a bite to eat.

Ben and I got in line to see the Protomen at 8:30. Sabrina didn’t think she could stand up for very long, so she decided to go back to the room. Which turned out to be a great idea, since we waited…..and waited…..and waited…..and waited. After 10:00 passed, we were so fed up with waiting that we left. I have no idea what time the concert actually started, but an hour and a half late is WAY too late.

On Saturday, Sabrina and I got up and went to the con suite for breakfast. I had a yummy egg, cheese, and sausage croissant and a banana. There was supposedly a Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy photoshoot at 1:00, so we went to get Ben up. We put on our Celes and Locke costumes and went downstairs. We found the photoshoot, but it seemed to be exclusively Kingdom Hearts, and we thought we would look a little out of place, so we decided to do something else. We went to the Build Your Own Mecha Workshop, in which four teams were competing to build a mecha out of random scraps of things, like keyboard parts, circuits, aluminum foil, and duct tape. It was pretty interesting to see what each of the teams created.

Then I drove Sabrina back to Clarksville while Ben hung out with Wayne. When I returned, we put our Wallmarket costumes back on and went downstairs to get in line for the cosplay competition. While we were walking past the people who were already in line, everyone broke out in applause for Ben’s costume, hehe.

The competition was pretty good, and the skits (ugggh) didn’t go on too long. At cosplay half-time, they announced the theme of next year’s MTAC: giant monsters (like Godzilla). They also announced that Kaiju Big Battel would be there next year. Ben and I freaked out about that. If you’ve never seen it (it comes on G4 in the mornings sometimes), it basically involves people in very weird costumes fighting. It’s hilarious.

After the cosplay, we hung out with some random people and ate Domino’s. Later, Ben and I went to check out the Random Battle Group. Ben got asked by one of the participants to be a summon (he was in his Black Mage costume again) and he agreed. I got this all on video (which will be up at a later date).

On Sunday, we didn’t do a whole lot. We ate breakfast in the con suite again (I had generic Froot Loops this time) and then packed. We were planning on going to watch the Ramen Eating Contest, but didn’t make it in time, so we went home after that, since Ben had to be at work and I had to go to Sabrina’s baby shower at 4:00.

It was a pretty good weekend….I definitely can’t wait till next year.

Less than two weeks until MTAC! :O

Costumes are coming along. I shouldn’t have any problems finishing in time, with little to no last minute rush, so that’s good. I need to run out to Burlington Coat Factory (the only place that sells gloves when it’s not winter) and a few thrift stores to find some things. Does anyone happen to have knee-high white 2″ narrow heel boots in a size 7? Hehe.

Here’s what I have left to do (taken from this post):

Celes Chere - Amano - 100% done!

Locke Cole - 95% done
• Purchase shirt - plain white, forgot it on my Wal-mart run yesterday
• Paint knife

Misa Amane - 100% done!

Aeris Gainsborough - Wallmarket - 100% done!

Cloud Strife - Wallmarket - 100% done!

At least now the air is back on…

Edited to add: There’s also a couple things I need to update on my Terra costume. Mainly, I need to size the gloves properly, glue the claws back on, and get some better shoes. There’s always shoes….

And now for a real update…

Not a lot has really been going on lately.

The apartment complex is being renovated, and they have been working on it since sometime last fall. From what I understand, they fired the first group of people and then hired some new ones. In the meantime, my balcony was closed off for the entire winter, and supposedly they are adding new doors and windows this week. The biggest problem? They shut the air conditioning off.

It is regularly between 85-90 degrees in my apartment during the day, even with windows open. Now, I’m a naturally cold person and I like heat, so while that’s an annoyance, it’s not THAT big a deal to me. The thing that annoys me the most is that the humidity in my apartment is messing up my TiVo. It’s nearly impossible to watch because the audio constantly crackles. It only does it every now and then, but this afternoon it wasn’t letting up (I was able to watch “Splash” this morning without having any problems). I didn’t understand why this was going on at first, so I spent 20-30 minutes googling the problem. And finally I narrowed it down to: it’s too humid. Today is probably the hottest it’s been in here (at least while I’ve been home) so that would explain why it’s being so relentless today (since I’ve had the windows and sliding door open). As far as I can tell, it’s not recording the crackles, so as soon as the air conditioning comes back on (they say it will be on before April 1…still a week away) I should be able to watch the stuff I’ve recorded crackle-free. And I can usually watch stuff at night when it’s not so hot in here. But I was trying to get some sewing done, and wanted the TV on for background noise. And a staticky crackling sound is NOT good background noise.

As for everything else, I went to Michelle’s baby shower yesterday. I took a few pictures, which I’ll add in a little bit. I went and saw “300″ a couple weeks ago, which I recommend. Ben’s birthday is next weekend. MTAC is in three weeks. I’m doing good on costumes (I think). Right now, I’m at: Misa - 100% done, Celes - 50%, Aeris (Wallmarket) - 90%, Terra - 90% (I need to do some touch-ups), Locke - 5% (I’ve bought some fabric and that’s about it), and Cloud (Wallmarket) - 70%. It’s hard to get motivated with it being so hot in here.

I think that’s about all that’s been going on.

Following up on my last post about my cosplay schedule..

I updated the cosplay section with a couple new costumes that I plan on working on. Here’s my tentative schedule for the next few years:

2007:
Spring
Celes Chere - Amano (Final Fantasy VI)
Locke Cole (Final Fantasy VI) - Ben
Misa Amane (Death Note)
Aeris Gainsborough - Wallmarket (Final Fantasy VII)
Cloud Strife - Wallmarket (Final Fantasy VII) - Ben

Fall
Jessica Albert (Dragon Quest VIII)
Natalia Luzu Kimlasca Lanvaldear (Tales of the Abyss)

2008:
Spring
Presea Combatir (Tales of Symphonia)
Lloyd Irving (Tales of Symphonia) - Ben

Fall
Celes Chere - Opera (Final Fantasy VI)
Eirika (Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones)

2009:
Spring
Leanne (Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance)

Fall
Rosa Farrel (Final Fantasy IV)
Ariel (The Little Mermaid)

Of course, this will more than likely change as I find new costumes I would like to make and what costumes Ben would like.

(more…)

Back from Momocon!

It was a lot of fun. I’ll try to recap.

We got to Atlanta on Saturday around 11:30 am. We went to the hotel and put on our Aeris and Zack costumes. Except Ben’s hair didn’t want to spike and my wig wouldn’t stay on. I went ahead and dropped Ben off at the con so he wouldn’t be late for the Soul Calibur III tournament and then I went back to the hotel to mess with my wig some more. I finally got it tolerable and headed over to Georgia Tech.

It took me forever to get to where Ben was because I had to stop for a picture every 5 seconds, hehe. I just wish my wig looked better from the front (i.e., not showing the front of my hair and the bangs got flat from where I kept trying to pull it forward). I ran into another Aeris, from Kingdom Hearts II, while I was looking for him as well. I finally made it to the tournaments building, and we hung out there. Ben made a good showing in the competition, but ultimately did not win.

After that, we were tired of messing with our costumes (Ben’s shoulder pads kept falling down), so we went back and changed into our mage costumes. After we got back to the convention, we went to see the costume showcase. There were some really cool costumes, unfortunately I didn’t know what half of them were cause I couldn’t really hear. Belle, from Beauty and the Beast, won first place (you can see a picture in the gallery). We hung out for a little while longer, mainly wandering around, before going to the hotel and going to sleep.

The next morning, we donned our mage costumes again and headed back. We went to a panel on voice acting first thing. After that, I bought some Pocky (yummy!), and we went to eat at Arby’s. While we were there, a man came up to me and asked me if I was with the ritual. ???? I guess my white mage costume makes me look like the leader of a cult or something. That was pretty weird.

We hung out in the board game room after that, and learned how to play a game called Spooks. It was a very random card game. Then we went to a panel on prop making that was very interesting. It was led by people who mainly worked on Star Wars costume replicas. After that, we went and played a few more random games, and then decided we should head home.

All in all, it was pretty fun. I didn’t get a chance to get a whole lot of photos, cause it was a bit of a pain to get out my camera in my white mage costume, because it was so big and I didn’t even know where my hands were half the time. But I got a couple and they are in the gallery. I also posted some pictures of our mage costumes in the cosplay section.

With Momocon coming up this weekend, I need to make a list of things to do.

- Sew the sleeves on my white mage robe
- Applique triangles onto robe
- Dye hair
- Buy red and black gloves
- Finish altering Aeris dress
- Sew Velcro onto Aeris jacket
- Spray paint jacket cuffs
- Check staff for chipped paint and do touch-ups
- Help Ben make face mask
- Find green striped pants for Ben
- Style Aeris wig
- Pack!

I don’t get paid until Wednesday, so anything involving money (gloves, pants, hair dye, etc.) has to wait until then. I have hair extensions for my Aeris wig sitting at the DHL place, so as soon as they get delivered I can do that. I’ve already got the millions of triangles cut out (and a nice-sized cut on my finger from my rotary cutter to prove it), but I can’t put them on the robe until I get some Heat’n'Bond, which I need money for as well. So until Wednesday, I need to finish up any sewing (robe, dress, jacket), and I think I still have spraypaint left over, so I can do that stuff as well.

For anyone attending, we will be wearing Zack and Aeris on Saturday and our mage costumes on Sunday. Yeah, it’s apparently a Final Fantasy con for us.

I can’t believe it’s so close! Then as soon as we get back from Momocon, I’ve gotta start working on stuff for MTAC because it’s only about a month away. I’ve got to finish up my Fuu costume (finish painting flowers, style wig, and buy shoes) and make my entire Miwako costume! Luckily, after MTAC, I have a 5 month wait before the next convention (AWA or Dragon*Con if I’m not completely broke), so that will be plenty of time to get Lloyd and Presea done. Ah, the busy life of a cosplayer.