(Semi) Finished Avatar Cosplay 2013

It's been a while unfortunately. However, without further ado, I would like to present the fruits of our crafty labour for Anime Revolution 2013.

Hubby and I in cosplay. Yes. we did Katara and Sokka. Little awkward yes, but more suiting to our body types.

I'm actually quite pleased with myself on how it turned out. I got a lot of compliments, when I got recognized that is. Since this costume is from one particular piece of exclusive art work, it's no surprise that it wasn't identified of often as an Avatar character should have been. I even got called Korra a couple of times. Oh well.

I'm glad we went with real leather and the upholstery fabrics, despite being a pain in the ass to sew with. If I had known ahead of time that I could have easily purchased a few rabbits pelts in the area, I would have used real fur instead of the fake fur. Ty and I both agree that translating a concept into costume with an emphasis of realness and practicality adds a special touch, a touch that doesn't show through easy with cheap broadcloth and shiny fabric for leather.

Court's costume never made it to the spot light though. Apparently, it was too painful to wear, and my bro had already pulled it apart by the time I met up with the group on the very first day of the convention. More time was needed to properly pad the leather armour. Perhaps it will be ready for next year.

And now for some more photos:

~Water tribe!!~

Ty faithfully executed the ritualistic water tribe greeting with every photo.

For next time, Ty is fired up to create an even bigger, better, badder, Sokka than ever before, equipped with genuine hand crafted weapons and everything. In conjunction, I plan to create a water tribe inspired belly dancing costume. Firstly, to combine my efforts in learning to dance with my geekiness, and secondly, for Ty to glean in the majestic skin showing display of a woman that is his wife in public. First I'll have to sketch out a design.

- Fillasawfickle

Cosplay Day Nightmare Tales

So I rolled outa bed around 1030am and Court got up an hour or two later.  Slowly started pulling shit out to start the day of cosplay crap.  A buddy of mine named Chris was on his way over to provide much needed assistance with the Amon cosplay stuff.  Plus, I had given him some coin to pick me up some needed supplies from Tandy Leather way the hell out from Surrey.

The original pattern I made a few days ago for the Amon greaves and knee cop.  I was originally proud of this.

And then Chris just farted this out in like two minutes.  Fak.  Irritated.  

This is the earlier picture of his unfinished pattern.  We later added those stirrup things from Amon's greaves.

Court working on the Sokka robe thing.  Also called a "klappenrock" if you read books.   

Got the leatherbending master at work here.  All honesty, I've been trying to keep watch on what that guy is doing so I can try to pick some of it up.  He just blasts through all of this like it's nothing.

We managed to get all the main pieces cut out for the greaves, including the knee cop and those little square pieces on top.  Most of the vambrace is prepped as well.

I decided to take charge of the dying since it's pretty hard to screw that stage up.  The gloves here are for Christina's Tifa cosplay.

We bought some leather gloves from Wal-Mart, and Christina cut the fingers off and sewed the edges up to help stop it from fraying.  

Methinks after the cosplay stuff is done, I'll do the same thing except I'll dye mine a dark brown (likely "British tan") for SCA combat to wear with my demi-gauntlets.  







The last dying project of mine had my hands look all wonky for a few days.  Gloves be a good idea.









The Tifa gloves all finished being dyed and being left to dry for a bit.  On the upper right we have the Amon greaves with the edges dyed.  

After the greaves are done drying, I'll be taping the edges up and then using the British-tan dye to color the rest of it.  

I got similar work done on the Amon gauntlets as well.

Aaaaaaaaaand Courtney with my 90% finished Sokka robe, minus the trim and all those other accessory do-dads.  After she got this far, she stated she had to stop or she would have to murder someone.  Verily this seemed fair.








We got a fair amount of crap done today.  Chris will be coming over again on Sunday to help out.  We will be assembling the Amon greaves (with cops), finishing the vambrace, and hopefully getting around to cutting out and assembling the spaulders.  Spaulders miiiiiiiiiight be a bit of a push but I think we can get it done.

Throughout the week I'll be finishing the rest of the big chunks of dye work before Chris comes over.  If I feel confident enough, I might take a crack at the Katara belt, though, methinks I will have to defer to his experience for that one.  I don't want to screw up a big chunk of leather like that.  

As for the Tifa gloves, Christina wants to sew two big buttons on the gloves to serve as "materia."  I never actually noticed that before until Christina pointed it out to me.  

Huh.  Makes sense.

So that be it for now.  Kempo class tomorrow night, so might be able to get some dying work done on Wednesday or maybe Thursday evening.  Anime convention is coming up fast, so gotta get this bullshit done asap.  

I know my robe is going to be an expensive pain in the ass.  That costume in the movie had SOOOOO much detailing on it.  There is no way I can get that done before the convention, so I'll have to wing some of it.  Hopefully it will turn out fine.

That be it for now, since it be bedtime now.  Hugs and kisses, mwa mwa mwa, and thanks for reading.  Rawk.

--The Captain Himself

Manly Chris

Sokka Style p.2 and Other Stuff

Rawk.  Well, got some new toys in the mail.  Stoked about that.  Lemme show you guys.

That is my absolute pride and joy there.  My buddy from Foggy Mountain Forge cooked that up for me.  I've been waiting for that one for a bit now.  It's heavily based off the war club Sokka had in ATLA.  

Obviously, both myself and Justin from Foggy Mountain Forge took some liberties in the design.  The club from the cartoon was made from a whale bone or something.  I don't have easy access to whale bones, and even if I did it wouldn't be really good for the long term.  Hence, this bad boy is made from steel with a steel ball welded on with a wooden pinned handle.  A leather wrap WOULD NOT do, and would be very uncomfortable as well.  

Just has one more up on his Etsy sight if you want it.  Check it out.
http://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/157014771/replica-sokka-war-club-from-avatar-the?ref=shop_home_active

Just in case you where wondering, that is what the club looked like in the cartoon.  Rawk.





Me and Court also worked on our cosplays today.  I worked on the leather armor patterns for the greaves for the Amon cosplay, and also gathered a WHOLE BUNCH of ref pictures for the spaulders and arm harness too.  I'll post my findings on that later.

While I was putting the patterns and picture ref's together, Court was working on my Sokka jacket.  Even though everybody hated the shitty ass live action movie, I absolutely loved the costumes Katara and Sokka had for the movie.  Counter-culture non-conformist Captain Himself here is going for the movie Sokka look and NOT the "Old Friends" picture ref from Legend of Korra. 

I expect some people to bitch about it or simply not recognize, but I really don't give a rats ass.  I don't think a lot of people recognize the historical influences they put into the water tribe outfits. From what I can tell, they are heavily influenced by the "Rus" people, who are basically Vikings that settled along the Rus River.  Okay, Varangians.  Basically the same thing.  Read a book.

Get it.  Rus River.  Russian.  Stupid.

I also think there where influences from those Russian-ish people who are kinda like the Inuit who are waaaaaaaaaaay the fuck up there that follow the reindeer around.  I can't recall the name of them right now.  Uhmm.  Lemme take a look.

The Sami?  Yeah.  I think that's them.  I haven't read much about them, so I might be completely wrong, but I really don't give a damn right now.  I'll read about them later.

So here is that asshat Jackson Rathbone from the "Last Airbender" movie.  

Huh.  There is no way this guy is related to Basil Rathbone.  Basil Rathbone was the man.  The dude could actually swordfight.  This Jackson Rathbone joker can barely act his way out of a paper bag.  It was like the crew made some sort of weird archaic animatronic paper mache debauchery marionette on shit strings and just fed it really bad wooden dialogue.  Fak.

Plaaaaaaaaaaaaah.  Never even finished watching that stupid movie.  I felt like it was DB:Evolution all over again.  Like throwing up in the wind and it coming back at you.  The costume looks awesome though.  And on that note of the costume, check this out----

This is a picture I stole somewhere from deviantart.  This guy put alot of work into his garb there.  See the similarities?  The robe/jacket he's wearing is called a "klappenrock."  

So Court took my Kempo gi top (NOT KARATE), and sketched out a pattern based on that, since they are effectively the same thing.  Seemed simple enough and straightforward   

Now, the fabric I bought for the Sokka jacket is this REALLY expensive upholstery fabric.  That stuff was damn near 30 clams a meter.  HOLY FAK.  That kinda intimidated Court, so she wanted some different fabric so she could do a practice run.  

When she first did this, I thought she was going to be making a full sized jacket to fit my full sized tubby ass.  Instead, she made this--

Huh.  That isn't going to fit.  Worked though.  The doll (not my doll, that's Court's, named "Soraya") is sitting on top the fancy expensive fabric in the photo.  

I wonder if this garment is mighty enough for the God of Thunder?

Forsooth!

Verily.  By Odin's beard, it fits!

So you can see the fancy blue fabric behind the Thunderer there.  Court will be getting on that damn soon in the next few days.  She says she needs something called "bias tape" before she can get on the job there.  By Mjolnir,  it will be done!  I'll be sending out either Court tomorrow or Anika after work to pick up a wackload so the jacket can get officially started.  We have a birthday party to go to on the Saturday, so might not get started for a few more days.

About to crash out for the evening.  Next entry will be the Amon cosplay and maybe I'll post some pictures of my other new toys.  That's it for now.  Hugs and kisses, mwa mwa mwa.  Peace out!  Rawk.

--The Captain Himself

----(Me)

Tifa Cosplay

Here we have the beginnings of my Tifa cosplay.
I still need a belt, the proper gloves and such, but so far, I find that it's coming along well.
I'm also hoping to be in a little bit better shape by the time the convention comes around.

It'll be kind of amusing, once I learn a proper fighting stance.

Since I intend to learn some Shorinji Kempo, I imagine it would be quite a blast to put a 100% into this cosplay after that.

For now though, it's probably not going to go too much further than these pictures right here.

-Christina Jules

Sokka Style p.1

Here be my Sokka boomerang and machete.  This awesome guy named Justin from Foggy Mountain Forge made these for me.  Check him out on Etsy!

http://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/FoggyMountainForge

So, here be the boomerang in the sheath that a friend of mine and I made.  I have dyed the leather (first time dying leather, btw), and my buddy cut out the pieces from a big roll of leather I bought a few months ago from Tandy Leather.  

I'm not done yet, since I still wanna dye the top of it with that black triangle pattern that Sokka has on his sheath.  I'll likely be purchasing a wood burning kit to help out with that.



Here is the boomerang unsheathed   Justin, the guy from Foggy Mountain Forge, did some awesome work on it.  

Obviously, it's not a returning boomerang.  If it was, methinks I'd be in some trouble when it came zipping back to me.  I have given it a couple of good throws, and it does throw REALLY good.  Rawk.






Here be a better closeup of the boomerang in the sheath.  I really like the work my buddy Chris did with the lacing.













Here be what the sheath looks like being worn.  Chris and I did our best.  We reaaaaaaaaaally tried to get it to sit like Sokka's, but just couldn't get it to work.  Instead, we just loosened up the straps so I can just pull it forward when I want to draw it out.  

Still works, just can't do the uber fast draw like in the cartoon.

Rawk.  Sokka's machete.  Other when he used it to shave when he was living in Ba Sing  Se, I really don't remember him using it much. Again, cooked up by Justin from Foggy Mountain Forge, the thing is awesome.  

In the cartoon, the machete had a wrapped handle.  Anybody who has ever handled a weapon before and swung something around knows a simple wrapped handle can be very uncomfortable, hence the wood pinned grip we have on here.  I got the best toys.  Rawk.



So, obviously I can't bring this stuff into AR with me, which is a bummer.  Still, I like collecting swords and sharp smashy stuff, and the two items above easily fit that criteria.  More updates as them come.  Rawk.

--The Captain Himself

Adult Katara cosplay preview!

So, I'm sure when wifey gets around to it she will do a much longer spiel about her adult Katara cosplay from the "Old Friends" promo picture from "Avatar: The Legend of Korra."  She has done a fantastic job of it so far.  

• 
  
• "This is the under dress I've started. Havn't finished putting the ribbon and faux fur on the back flap yet. I've also finished the pants." - Anika

We will be starting my adult Sokka cosplay next weekend.  Well, hopefully.  Actually, we damn well better, since Anime Revultion is coming up pretty fast.  I'll be posting pictures of my other "Sokka gear" soon.  Rawk.

-The Captain Himself

Welcome to Swords and Jules

So, originally me and wifey (pictured below) made a blogg called "Going Vikingr" which was supposed to chronicle our exploits in the SCA.  Well, we have to deal with this horrible dilapidating thing called "Real Life" and have had little time to be INVOLVED in the SCA.  Crappit.  Even though we haven't had time for SCA stuff, we have been working on other projects, some of which IS involved with the SCA, albeit indirectly.  

So, instead of simply going straight on with SCA specific stuff, I have made this more 'generic' blog to cover basically whatever we want.  SCA stuff, my armor and weapons, cosplay stuff (lots of cosplay stuff!) and, basically, whatever the hell I wanna babble about!  So here it is and welcome, and there will be plenty of rambling updates.  Rawk.

(Wifee poo looking "impressed")

--Tyrell Jules

----The Captain Himself