Tracon, trolls and toddlers

Maybe it’s about time to write something about last weekend, which we successfully spent at Tracon with a party of seven. Seven! We overcame all obstacles and were victorious!

Tracon is an annual convention held traditionally at Tampere. This year’s convention was the seventh of its kind and the third one held at Tampere Hall, conference and concert hall near the center of the city. So alongside shops and grocery stores, accommodation is near. We literally had to take only few steps and we were at the convention area. We liked it, with the troll feet especially. Tracon’s program covers pretty much everything from role-playing games to anime and manga, with huge amount of cosplay from various sources. The quests of honor this year were Sandy Petersen (Cthulhu!) and Yasuhiro Nakura(Moomin!). For us, Tracon 7 was our fifth Tracon on a row, if I remember correctly.

This Tracon was bit different compared to the previous ones. We didn’t cosplay from the same series with Yoki, we had three generations attending to the convention; including me, Yoki, Thalla, his wife and two children and the Mom/Grandmom and I acted as a judge for the costume competition on Saturday. Also, Yoki participated on a demonstration for original costume designs on Sunday, for which I give two thumbs up! I hope that this kind of show will continue as a part of the cosplay program, so that those creative people, who give a form to their imagination by constructing a costume, usually sparing no effort, can have some well earned stage time. I don’t know if alternative or unofficial forms of characters could be integrated to this class somehow. Or would there be too many participants… Pre-selection maybe?

Over all the whole convention was a great experience. Loads of cosplay, great competitions and polite people, which really was nice since we had younglings with us. I have to admit that I was bit worried that a convention might be overwhelming with pram and lively two year old, but I was so wrong! Our two year old was so exited from all the life-sized stuffed toys that she wanted to hug each and every one. So big thank you to all the furries around! I bet you will not be forgotten.

Since I started to thank people, next big thank you goes to Iris, the person charge of the Tracon’s cosplay competitions and competitors and judges and… well, cosplay-everything. Thank you! For a first timer, the judging was a positive and a memorable experience. Also I could not have better mates to judge with. I, Lilian and Kizzy had weirdly enough really similar perspective to cosplay and I hope that we made the judging situation pleasant to the contestants, which was one of our goals. And if anyone wishes feedback from their costumes, just sent me e-mail on our address and I will reply from my personal account.

Part of the gratitude goes to the participants and everyone at the cosplay backstage. The competitions held at Tracon from the costume and show competition to the World Cosplay Summit preliminaries have been praised a lot, but not for nothing. Congratulations for all the ranked cosplayers!

I almost forgot our costumes! On Saturday we were troll siblings from World of Warcraft with Thalla. 

Yoki wore a costume from her original story, portraying Sio Imano both Saturday and Sunday. On Sunday I strolled as Saya Otonashi from Blood+.

On Saturday, the kids were introduced to the world of cosplay in form of cute animal over-alls. I don’t know what kind of presents can be expected from the costume crazy auntie. Sadly, I don’t have a good photo of us all in costumes. We were standing in a rather dark corridor when we had the opportunity for group photos.

I’ll write a post about our troll costumes in more detail later on and spam some photos from the costumes. Also Yoki promised to write about her adventures in the field of costume construction.

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Show me your teeth, mon!

I continued on the path of prosthetics and happened to solve our teeth problem sooner than I expected. Again I learned that talking to someone about your construction problems might actually help you, offer you ideas or even solutions. I casually started pondering to our mom that I had no clue how to make the teeth to our trolls, so that they would be reasonably priced, fairly safe and durable. I don’t actually remember what she said to me, but it lead to creative frenzy, which gave birth to a set of teeth with teeny-tiny, pretty tusks.

I’m currently making set for Yoki and trying to take photos so that I can make a construction post about them. From my set I can only show you the final result.

Materials used: modeling clay, latex and drop of acrylic paint.

 Smile!

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Loose facial features

Our troll project is slowly making progress. Next to the wigs, I have sketched out the outfits for all three of us and some I have already started sewing. The weapons are on Yoki’s drawing table and the performance has also been somewhat decided. The prosthetics were the only big costume section I had left aside. I kind of avoided it a bit too, since it was something I wasn’t familiar with. But yesterday I grabbed the bull from its horns… or troll from its tusks! However you like to put it.

I started from taking a cast from our third party member’s nose and sculpting the master molds for our ears. I’m going to make the nose by casting latex on a negative mold and the ears by brushing or dipping the positive molds on latex. Or that is at least what I have planned. I’m not sure which method is the best, since this is my first time working with latex.

Today I finished the positive sculpt for the nose and made the first “casting” test for the ears. The male tusks I'm going to solve with ready-made product, but the female teeth issue is still wide open. I'm still looking for a right solution with them.

I want to thank my good costumer friend Batsy for providing us with the latex! You can be sure that I will shortly have a pile of questions prepared.

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Wig making from scratch

Since midsummer celebration provided few extra days off work, I decided to start one of the bigger projects concerning our troll costumes. That is one more wig in crazy color scheme and wild styling. I styled two previous wigs from ones I've bought to make sure we have enough of them in case of urgent need… not like I’m a hoarder or anything. But this third one I decided to build from scratch, since it’s something that I haven’t ever done before. And I happened to find really cheap jumbo fiber, which might have affected the decision.

I started from the cap. I bought lining that is used on sportswear, pretty similar to fabric in hockey shirts. I used a wig head as a model when deciding where to make seams, keeping in mind that the Styrofoam head is smaller than normal human head. 

The basic shape contains three pieces, sides and the top. Forehead piece is double as well as the small pieces on the back of the neck, the temples and piece on forehead marking the hairline.

Then I started sewing wefts. Whole lot of them, from the three packages of fiber I had purchased. I used iron-on interfacing as the “root”. In my experience the weft is rather solid after ironing and doesn’t suffer from hair loss as much as tulle weft would. I even brushed the wefts quite heavily and only few strands came off from each.

The jumbo fiber is creped since it’s usually used in braids or dreadlocks, which actually works with my intentions. But still I wanted the top layer of the fiber to be smoother. I’ve scorched some wigs in the past, so I was extra careful when choosing the straightening method. I decided to give the iron a go, because I’m inpatient person when it comes to costume making. Waiting the wig to dry would have been a torture for me, if I had used the method of pouring hot water on the wig. 

I sprayed the weft with the iron and gave it few presses of steam to pre-heat it, not letting the iron’s bottom plate to touch the fibers. Then I placed the weft between layers of pattern paper; two layers under and two on top. Holding the weft from the root I pressed down the iron and at the same time pulled the weft under it. The trick is to keep the weft moving. If you only press the iron on the weft it will most likely start to melt. Been there, done that.

Then I repeated as many times as needed, spraying the wefts with water if they seemed too dry. And the iron was quite hot, between two and three dots.

I sew the wefts on the cap by hand. It seemed the easiest solution and didn’t mess the fibers too much. To prevent creating a tangled mess, I sprayed the wig with balsamspray from Gliss. It works with the synthetic hair almost as well as real hair. I highly recommend spraying the wig either outside or covering the floor under your working area. The spray makes the floor quite slippery and adds to the risk of cosplay casualties.

After I had sewn all the wefts, both straightened and untreated ones, I took a blow dryer, sprayed the wig again with the balsam and went through the fibers with a wig brush. This relaxed the creped fibers a bit and made the wig look bit more tamed.

Then I tried with some braiding techniques. I think I found the right one to use, but before I actually manage to fit the wig on the person who will wear it, I will keep the regular braids on it. I will report in when I have finished the green goblin. 

Making a wig from scratch isn’t actually that hard if you have styled wigs before and don’t bother sewing a whole lot of wefts. I might even give wig making a go in the future with straight fibers. The most crucial part might be making the cap, especially if you are making it to someone else. Thank goodness the head sizes don’t vary that much. I say and cross my fingers.

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Troll toes trial no. 1

Since I don’t have anything under construction right now (except for few fancy dresses for summer and a quilt works), I thought to continue our troll project with experimentations on the foot-side. It’s weird that WOW troll has three fingers but only two toes! The asymmetry is rather weird, but I will roll with it. The fingers I’m going to solve by sewing custom gloves, but the toe matter is bit trickier. I’ve seen costumers making the feet over boots, but I wanted the toes to look like they bend and act rather naturally. And I really want to make the feet look good, since people seems to loath them so much.

I’m pretty sure that I’m going to make the toes out of foam. The “how” is the thing I’m still pondering, but my first trial gave a good base to the future construction.

First I kindly asked Yoki to lend her foot so that I could draw the outline on a piece of foam. After that I sketched out how the fake toes would look like and how they are placed compared to the real toes. Then I cut away the inner section and the excess around the troll toes.

When I had the first piece ready, I copied it on another piece of foam and cut the top part of the foot. I rounded the edges and carved the inside of the top part hollow so that it would sit nicely on Yoki’s foot.

Then I trimmed the pieces until they looked fairly nice. I also added creases to where the toes might bend naturally.

Then I had a problem. These two photos show how I try to find a solution to how to wear the damn think and how to fade out the angularity of the cut edges. I ended up using the stockings for the trial.

I’ve bought a pile of blue stockings to be used as pieces of bodysuit for the trolls, but for the trial I used regular lycra to act as skin. After sewing a tight fitted sock I stuffed the toe part inside. I screwed up the pattern, but the idea worked quite nicely. Yay, for troll feet!

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Redesigning a wig

I haven’t styled too many wigs during my cosplay career. Years ago I somehow came to a conclusion that it was difficult, messy and altogether a long process. It became something I consciously avoided…until recently. After styling two wigs in one week with major style change, I can finally trash my prejudices. It’s not hard and it doesn’t take hours after hours. All that is required is some clean table space and patience. Maybe that is the trick; I might have become more patient. 

First thing was to raid our closet, which somehow has been invaded by costumes and other supplies. I grabbed one of my many second-hand wigs. (Greetings to all the Finnish cosplayers who kindly pass on their old wigs at Aniki!) The wig is nice quality, but pretty thin on the back like some long wigs tend to be. In my case it wasn’t a problem since I was making a short one. I tied the fibers on a ponytail and cut it off to be used as thickening wefts. Since I had still some burgundy fibers left, I mixed them in as highlights.
 

The wefts I made by sewing the fibers on black iron-on interfacing. I hand stitched the wefts on the wig; five rows on the back and four overlapping ones on the front. With that amount I was able to hide the base web, which was ivory. I repeat, ivory on dark purple wig. Someone’s brain has seriously farted.

The back flips and the small top crest I shaped using hairspray and a blow dryer. Following is the process in pictures. I apologize about the varying quality of the photos. I only had my old digital camera with me. But then again you can follow the day turn to night and to the next morning.

Wig in its original length.

Roughtly cut and wefts added on the back.

More wefts and styling started with feathering the ends.

First back flip in making.

Back done.

Shaping the top crest.

Styling complete.

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