Final Fantasy Unlimited

       "  The soil charge triad to be used against you has been decided. "  You may hear this and see the stock transformation from one of the main characters \ deus ex machina, Kaze, quite a few times.  Final Fantasy Unlimited is an anime released in 2003 and as usual creates it's own world, but throws in all the usual FF elements. There are off course chocobos, cactaurs, a guy named Cid, a mog, an  airship etc.  It has a lot of weaknesses, like 2003 era CGI which looks frankly ancient, not close to the standards of those times let alone today.  Also there is a lot of stock footage used over and over, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
      FFU involves two kids who get separated from their scientist parents who get sucked into this other dimension known as wonderland.  Due to their own experiments I might add. So the kids travel to wonderland accompanied by Lisa a girl with Mugen weak ass martial arts powers. Requiring the mysterious Kaze, The Black Wind, to save them all every episode with his awesome gun arm thingy, called the magun. Kaze is saving them from the sundry agents of the Earl, who wants to kill them all, for it seems no particular reason.  So there is a short version of every episode.  Oh yeah there's this guy Makenshi, the white cloud, who seems connected to Kaze, but works for the Earl, kind of.
        I am a massive Final Fantasy fan and have been since the first one came out for the Nintendo in 1987.  I love all things FF, except for online FF games which can eat a bag of dicks.  So, I actually can sit through this mess and enjoy it for it's Final Fantasy-ness.  Oh look, cactaurs.  Squeeee, Chocobos.  If you are not a big fanboy-girl Unlimited is just a below average, dated, nonsensical anime that you should avoid.

Katsucon 18: Part 4

      Saturday afternoon's Steampunk panel went quite well, but now we are getting back to some  fighting game goodness.  There's a fighting game shoot in front of the fountains scheduled for when the crazy fountain show goes off.  It's very cool, but you may get a bit wet.  So we went Darkstalkers, as Morrigan and Donovan Baine.Here's a few pics of Kimi getting soaked,but looking great.

I love how it looks like a fountain of lava.

Taking advantage of when the fountain turns purple.

Now I would like to post a nice pic of myself, but I forgot my coconuts in the rush and the outfit just isn't the same.  Forgot my bracelets last time, cursed.  Here are a couple shots of VS pics from the fountain.

Now is the time when we meet up with EBK and Maki, and Luis.  Oh, and our friends Kat and Kitty.  Then we all headed down to the secret wall for a photo shoot.  But before that I took some pictures of Kitty, because her outfit was so adorable.

She is so cute.  Anyway,The theme of this photo shoot was Underworld vs Darkstalkers.  Representing Underworld was Crimson and Roses Cosplay as Selene.  The Darkstalkers girls are Kimi as Morrigan and Maki as Lilith.  Here we go.

Well there you go.  These pics are all by EBK and they are excellent.  Saturday was epic, but also insanely busy.  We cannot complain though.  This was the best con ever and it's due to all the great friends and family we got to hang out with.  Can't wait until next Katsu.

Katsucon 18: Part 3

Saturday was the busiest day yet , with lots of cosplay, and a panel to do with my sister, the doyen of the Steampunk Family.  But, first up is another One Piece shoot with our Boa and Luffy Wedding Dream outfits.  Which we totally fail to make it to.  There are , however, many photos to take including a shoot with our friend EBK.

Photo by EBK

 We took a few other pictures all over the Gaylord complex.

This is one I took at the gazebo.

And one I took at the fountain.

And Boa by the cannon, like a proper Empress of the Pirates.

While we were wandering we also caught some other good stuff, like our dear friend Regina and the " Cake Girls, " down by the gazebo.

Regina is second from the right.

 She looked sooo adorable.  We also ran into the excellent Jack Skellington.

While we were outside we ran into our fabulous cosplay daughter doing a shoot in her .hack Black Rose cosplay.  I say she looked incredible.  Nice sword.

Now it's time for  little Lulu and Auron. Headed up to the room after some victuals, and hung out with my  steampunk sister and family.  Once again Regina in her awesome cake girl outfit helped out Kimi with her make-up, while I got ready and made people eat more cheese and grapes.  So time for some FFX, before our panel.  Here we are.

Photo by Manny Hortas Bishop, a cool guy.

There you go, now time for the "Steampunk in Anime and Manga" panel.  This is where my sister, my brother in law and I totally wing it in front of a couple hundred people.  Luckily, for prep work I have consumed Anime and Manga  for 30 years plus. Helpful, cause people threw a lot of stuff at me during the extensive Q and A part of the panel.

This was really a great time, there was so much excellent feedback from the group and I think we started a good narrative that we can follow up on.  Soon,  I'm going to try to write a post or several about the subject. So on to our further adventures in part 4.

Jade Staff and Razor Rang

      My lovely cosplay daughter Maki looked so great in he Jade MK outfit at Katsucon, but she looked a little light on weapons.  So I'm working up two cool weapons for her.  This is just a progress photo, so full tutorial to follow.

They don't look like much yet, but they will.

Katsucon 18: Part 2

      Friday morning and I still have projects to finish.  Kitana's fans need a cool symbol as well as the boots.  Luckily, the front of the Katsucon Program made a fine stencil when I cut it off and carved the Kitana symbol into it from this picture Kimi found and sized.  Next I painted the fans and boots, that would be 12 symbols, two coats each.  Quick zip out too the real world to pick up stuff for our party later and it's Cosplay time.  Yay, a One Piece photo shoot at the Gazebo.  Last year the One Piece gathering was by far our favorite.  This year is was nice although a bit more chaotic, there was a lot going on around the Gazebo.

Photo by Paul Karpey

That was fun, but now it's party time.  Lot's of our good friends came to our little soiree, like Maki and Luis, Regina, Kat and Bill, EBK, Cooking Dojo Justin, just to start.  It was really cool, thanks for the scotch Bill. Nothing like Cheese, grapes and booze for all. Others put in appearances, but Kimi had to start getting all Kitana like.  Super talented make up artist Regina helped her get ready, then it was time for some Cosplaying.

Kimi as Kitana, Cammy Bitches as Cammy, and Maki as Jade.

Kimi wore her Kitana from Mortal Combat and Maki was Jade.  We met up with EBK and went down to the Secret Wall to do some crossover pics with a super cool cosplayer whose badge read "Cammy Bitches."  Awesome.  Anyway me and Luis pulled up a couple of chairs and had a grand old time.

Just one more picture.

 A really nice set of pictures.  On to the after party.  We ran into Regina and another friend of ours Charlene on the way back to the room.  Since we had so much cheese grapes and booze, we invited them up.  EBK then brought his friend Athel Cosplay up and an epic time was had by all.  A great con so far, but much more to come.

Katsucon 18: Part 1

Generic Katsu from the week-end, Thursday was much quieter.

   
  Well, Katsucon this year was really amazing.  Very busy, but amazing.  This year we rolled in Thursday and that was very helpful.  We actually got to settle in and relax a bit, before the action began.  Thursday we only had one thing to do, a photo shoot with our friend EBK.  Kimi put together a lingerie ensemble for her Morrigan cosplay, and I thought it came out quite well.

Morrigan Lingerie Version

I'm sure the words Morrigan and lingerie have never appeared on the internet before.  I'm glad Thursday was low key, because Friday has a bit more to it.  Of course as usual when their taking pictures I'm working on my Cosplay daughter Maki's .hack Black Rose Sword.  Which came out pretty well considering.

She is so adorable.  Anyway it was a great way to open a great con.     

Otakon 2011 Friday

      Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans. We were planning to do FFX, but inexplicably left some crucial stuff at home. So we just checked in, so fast, and wandered about in disguise, as ourselves. Much easier to get around the dealers room this way. Some contacts and a Soul Eater shirt for the kid, then we go find a few friends like Maki and EBK. But first, we ran into and took pictures of our friend Tohma and didn't even know it. Because she was wearing this.

Tohma as Ravage

Can't believe we didn't recognize her, our bad. An amazing cosplay. Next we ran into our cosplay daughter Maki and her friend the Captain. 

Just then an awesome Bucky showed up and they looked great together.

Well done guys.One more thing before we have to get into our Darkstalkers stuff. I had to take this picture of Stein and Medusa from Soul Eater, cause our Brendan loves that show.

Now it's time to go back to the room and get all Darkstalkery. Here are the girls getting their Morrigan and Lilith on.

Maki, Kimi and my FFX chest on the left.

Now, we love group photo shoots, but an outdoor shoot at Otakon is not a sane idea.There was a reason people needed ice cold water it was 100 F-ing degrees. So this one was at the outdoor fountains, great. What a surprise it turned out to be a bit of a C.F. A tad disorganized. We took a pic or two and beat feet. We did get a few decent pictures inside near the fountains. The first couple from the awesomely cool Eurobeat King.

Two beautiful girls by EBK.

Morrigan, Donovan Baine and Lilith by EBK.

I must mention our dear friend Regena helped us out the whole time even going outside into the furnace. We also took a few with a talented photographer Paul Karpey.

Morrigan and Donovan by Paul.

I liked this one, and Kimi really liked this one.

Morrigan by Paul.

After all that picture taking we went to dinner at a really nice place. Right across Charles street from the Convention Center is the Kona Grill. It was pretty damn good. It's not that cheap, but they have great happy hour specials.

Kimi at the Kona Grill.

 Friday night consisted of lots more wandering with Regena, leading finally to our going to this fan parody video thing. Everyone seemed far more entertained than we were, but perhaps we were a bit tired. We retired.

Otakon 2011

      First of all, here is our Flickr of all our good Otakon pics.
                               http://www.flickr.com/photos/52656279@N02/sets/72157627208961199/
      Full report to follow.

Webcomics We Like: Dr. McNinja

      Dr. Mc Ninja is truly an insane webcomic.  But for some strange reason it all seems to make sense.  McNinja is from a long line of Irish Ninja's, and his parents are very disappointed with his choice to become a doctor.  Even though he is actually still one of the greatest ninja.  From this premise things get much, much weirder.  His side kick is a 12 year old bandito who rides a velociraptor, and grew a mustache through sheer force of will.  This all still makes sense.  If you don't already, you should read Dr. McNinja.

Project: Basic Cosplay Weapons: Mai's Daggers

      Mai from Avatar has quite an array of weapons.  I already made a set of her simple stillettos, now I'm making the more difficult, but still relatively simple daggers.  I do a lot of work like this out of cedar, but for this project I'm using poplar.  This is because I want these to be pretty thin and half inch poplar is readily available at hardware stores.  So I started out with a 4' x 1/2" x 3 1/2 " piece of poplar.  I cut it into 4 pieces of about a foot each.  Ah, but wait, I need a pattern.  I took the Mai's weapons schematic, and blew up the picture to make the dagger the size I wanted.

Great Mai weapons schematic.

The 4 blocks with the pattern on top.

I printed out the picture and used spray contact cement, a really useful product, to stick it to a file folder, then cut it out.  To make it easier to cut I took two of the blocks and used contact cement again to glue them together. That way I only have to cut twice to get four pieces. Of course I took my pattern and traced it on to the wood, then cut it out with a jig saw.

And here's 4 blanks ready to carve and sand.

If your'e ever making blades it is very handy to mark the center of the blade all the way down the piece. I do this with my center marking gauge which is very useful if you'll be doing this sort of thing a number of times.  Of course, if you don't have one, and who does, I made a simple substitute with two popsicle  sticks, a pencil and tape. I cut a notch out of one of the sticks, marked the center and taped a pencil on the center line, see picture.

At right a center marking gauge, at left my makeshift one and in back the blanks with the center line marked.

Now it's time to start carving.  You don't need to carve the whole blade, your'e just removing some stock to make your sanding easier.  With wood there is a definite direction to carve in.  Generally with these you want to carve from the tip down to the middle of the curve and then stop and start from the other tip to the middle.

Carve to the middle then stop and start again from the other tip. Keep your hand behind the blade.

As I said you don't need to take a lot off, just enough to establish an edge, most of the work is with a sander. About that, if you are going to do more than one project like this, you will want to get a Random Orbit Sander. Not a 1/4 sheet sander, not a belt sander a Random Orbit Sander. I saw a ton on eBay for 25 to 50 dollars brand new and used ones from 10 bucks. This sander will open up a lot of cosplay possibilities for you. O.K, you need to work your way around the whole piece with a knife. Now it's time to sand.

This is how little I carved the edges.

So know I hit the edges with the sander working all the way around. The sander really works fast. Use maybe an 80 grit or 100 grit at first then change to a 120 to150 grit. you can experiment and use what works best for you.

Working with the sander.

I kept going until I get pretty good edges. Fro there I finish up with sandpaper. I really like sanding sponges, you can get them at any hardware store and they are great for edges and detail.

After some good sanding.

So after a bit of hand sanding I finally like the overall look. Time to think paint. I did some tests on a piece of scrap wood with a bunch of colors and I could not find one I really liked. So I'm going to mix some. If you do this you need to stick to a formula, hopefully 50/50 cause that is easy to replicate. So I mix 1/2 golden brown with 1/2 brown and I think that's about right.

The sample is brown on right, Golden in middle, and custom on left.

When you have a good blade edge it's pretty easy to see what you need to paint what color. Start with the brown mix and paint the inside. I found a few chips on the edge so before I paint I will fill them with spackle and sand it before I paint.

A couple nicks get repaired.

Now to paint the edge with some metallic silver craft paint. Metallic paint seems to cover other paints a little better, so this is best used last.

I like to paint on a new paper towel cause it's such a clean surface.

Here's the lot of them.

Now we have to wrap the handles with leather like Mai's daggers are. At the fabric store it is pretty easy to find a fake leather 1/2 inch trim. This project requires one yard, $3 a yard. I cut one end straight and hot glued it to the edge like so.

Hot glued to the top of the wrap.

 Next you wrap it around a few times, this requires some experimentation. You are going from the top bend to the lower bend. At the bottom I made a slightly angled cut and glued it down.

Wrapping

Cutting the end at an angle and gluing it down.

So after a bit of work here's how it ended up.

Not bad

The wrap is a bit tricky you have to play with it. I think it came out very well though.