Up-Keep

Well, I've been moved in at the dorms for a few days now, and have settled in nicely. I've had a lot of free time, but haven't really done much aside from sit around and watch anime. I have serious plans to work on Colonello, but funds are tightening unexpectedly, so I'm beginning to fret over whether or not I'll be able to manage what I need to manage before its too late.
Luckily, my cosplayer friends / cow prods will be arriving by Wednesday, so I'll have someone to work with soon!

A bit of an update for those who care, I've recently gotten into yet another new show. Well...new to me.

The last one I really fell head-over-heels for was Tegami Bachi.

For those who don't know, this show is a great watch! It is a bit depressing--especially if you're sensitive, or you get into the characters as much as I do--but its equally heart-warming.

My favorite part about the whole thing--aside from the plot, which I'm not gonna get into because every time I do I end up rambling for at least an hour, which would be quite a lot of typing...considering how many words-per-minute I actually type...--is the setting. Its a steampunk style set in a world split into cities across mostly barren territories. These territories are basically impossible for normal people to cross due to things called "Gaichuu," which basically look giant mechanical bugs.

Thus there are people called "letter bees" who deliver letters--and sometimes people!--across the danger-zones for the people who can't.

Currently, however, I've completed as much of Tegami Bachi as I can...which is the entire first season. The second season--which I am eagerly awaiting--will be out in the fall, supposedly.
Completing Tegami Bachi, however, meant running out of things to do in the long hours between working in which there is well....nothing for me to do.

The solution? FIND A NEW SHOW!

The result? DURARARA!

This show really made my day/week, guys. Its twenty-four episodes long, and it is probably the most fucked up show I've ever watched. Which is impressive, if you have the faintest idea of what I get up to.

Its unique, however, because while it introduces one of the main characters first, it actually stars several!
What I've decided, after watching it all the way through, though, is that it actually stars the city, Ikebukuro.

Some of the main characters, however, include:

Mikado Ryugamine, a young man just moving to Ikebukuro at the urges of a childhood friend!

Kida Masaomi is Mikado's best friend, and a total flirt who talks more than a parrot on steroids!

Heiwajima Shizuo is inhumanly strong...with a temper to match. Flying vending machines are his forte.

Orihara Izaya is the man with all the information in the world.

Celty Sturlson is Ikebukuro's "Black Rider," and is infamous for her black bike and...well...the fact she has no head!

Its hard to talk about Durarara without giving something away, so I'll be good and keep my mouth shut! Good descriptions and summaries are nearly impossible to find as well, simply because its such a complicated tale! I can only recommend going and watching it--its well worth the time!

Moving Pains

Okay, so I've been a bit quiet the last few days--not unusual, considering my schedule--and haven't even so much as looked at an anime or manga since I returned from my vacation. Packing them away doesn't count.

But that's what I've been doing. I'm moving back to college in...a day...so I've been packing up like a packrat on steroids, and almost all of my things-to-take lists have been wiped clean. Most impressive...is the fact that I've already forgotten how much manga I've packed. Hopefully I didn't store away more than what can fit on my two tiny shelves.....but I'll probably be having my leaning-towers-of-otakuness again this year.

Its an attraction that keeps the locals interested.

The constant changing of the Dynamic Tower is akin to the consistent migrating of my books.

Real-life-headaches aside, once I get to my school-year-home, I'll be back in the arms of the theatre world. Which is both wonderful and sad, because I've realized this will be the last year I'll be as intricately involved in the life of a theatre major...as I'll be changing my major in a whole new direction next year...and perhaps be taking some different classes this year.
Its a shocker...but even though I looove theatre and i love being around the costumes and the props and the 20'x20' Christmas Carol HOUSE that spins in the middle of the stage and actually took part of itself out on the cats.....I'm doing the right thing.

Zoology and Paleontology have always been my two greatest loves...and that's where I'm headed. Wish me luck along the way!
I'll need it...

Jack's Favorite Dinosaur. Kudos to anyone who knows what it is!

Anyways, things will be settling down soon...sorta. Settling to the school-year drive, anyways, and I'll be getting back to work soon. AnimeFest is on Labor Day weekend...which means I'll have to have everything done by the....fourth of September or earlier. The more I think about it...the more I don't think its gonna happen. xD;
But I'll do my best! My biggest fears, obviously, are the wig and the gun. The wig has a long road to get here, and I haven't even gotten around to ordering it...(badjackbad!!)...and the gun....I have no idea even if I'll get around to ordering it this time.
Especially since after watching the episode of Reborn practically starring our handsome blond shooting at Tsuna and Gokudera....I've been drooling n that gun so hard I've just wanted to make it myself out of wood. -dreamylook- Itwouldbesogorgeous...

Unfortunately...time's a bitch.
So we'll see what happens!

No matter what, though, I will get to work on my costume. After most of my things are packed(I drive a truck, so about 60-70% of my load has to be loaded the day I leave to avoid possible night rain), and most of Tobikuma's water is taken care of(he's my betta and he's HANDSOME DAGUMIT.), I'll probably get online and start searching some of the patterns available from some of the more big-time(cheap) pattern companies on the hunt for a military jacket.

Then it'll be a hunt to find the right pants...and maybe the right color dye...and the right color fabric.... -twitch-
That'll be work.

But its okay.
I'll enjoy every minute of it.
Even when I'm cursing the gods for making needles that stab me and get eaten by couches.
I'll still enjoy it.

Bit of Irrelevancy...BeachStyle!

So I got to go to the beach in Galveston, Texas, for the first time yesterday. It was a shell-searching escapade, as I'm not big on swimming period, and you'd be hard pressed to get me into water I can't see the bottom to. That's a big no-no in the Jack world.

But the shell search was a fabulous endeaver, and while one of my hip-bags now smells like ocean, I found some fabulous things. The thing that stood out the most was my Whatamajig--something my mom found! Here are some pictures of it.

My mom's holding it here--pay no attention to the pelican behind the curta..in the back ground--and is it weird or what?

The structure itself isn't too strange, there was a lot of strange "strung together" shells on the beach made by something under the sand that was spitting something out. I'm not really sure what it was or how it was being caused, but tiny holes that covered the beach were almost continuously shoving sand out, and some of them shoved this sticky substance holding shells together out.

While this is a lot bigger than those--even if we found one that was almost six inches long!--its made the same way...just...sturdier and older. The "sticky stuff" on this one was looong solidified, and almost black.

Here you can see a bit more what really confused me about this thing. See the black structure? We think its some sort of fossil! The material itself is natural, and you can see an almost spongey texture to it where the lines have been worn away. Its cool to the touch and while its impossible to tell how much it weighs with the rocklike thing attached to the bottom, its still fascinating.

I've been researching it since we got home last night--somewhere around 12am, and I stayed up for a while afterwards--but I still can't find any photographs or even sketches of a fossil like it. The closest thing I can find are the section of bone that connects a stingray's body to its fins and crinoids(sea lilies).

However, after a closer look into some other alleys, I've found an astonishing similarity to some species of fish gills...sorta.

Its not exact, and as much as I looove fossils, I'm no paleontologist and no expert, but that's what it resembles most.

Check out these tuna gills. See the white part? Looks an awful lot like my little mystery structure, doesn't it?

I'm going to try and get an expert to at least take a quick look of a picture of this thing, and maybe later be able to get someone to tell me if it really is a fossil or is something else completely.

Its awful close to that though. -stare- Too bad I can't find any images of "fossilized gill plates". For some reason, the most I can find is from a basking shark. Go figure.

No matter what it turns out to be, I'm still really fond of it. Its absolutely fascinating, and really fun to look at! Oh, and that bottom "rock"? Turns out its actually a black shell covered in what I think is coral! And the big mollusk has tiny barnacles.

I think its the greatest find since the pencil. Srsly.

Beach discoveries aside, I've actually been being good and working away at finding pieces for my Colonello cosplay as well.

After a long search through several toy guns stores, I actually found an assault rifle that was pretty much perfect!

Unfortunately, they were sold out of the model, which with only a few modifications--taking out the trigger and the "loader"...a bit of paint and some extensions--was ideal. So the hunt was on again...and this one was even harder. Having found something so good for the role, I was hard pressed to accept anything else. I did eventually find the closest thing to ideal at a completely different place.

While the coloring is really off, and the fact that it fires darts isn't ideal, the price is right at $11 and the shipping isn't bad either. The fact that I can't find it in stores seals the deal, and it'll be a top priority to get this and the wig ordered. 

CloseUp: Rifle Pommel

Okay, so I was on an online hunt to see if I could find the right sort of pommel for the assault rifle I'm building for Colonello...and I brought up some images as reference...only to realize that the back half of the gun--the pommel area--in one image, was brown. As in...wood.


This baffled me...so I started to sketch the gun from the images that I'd found...and I realized how gosh darn strange the gun was.

Here's a good example of what really took me by surprise.

The pommel is the part right beneath his elbow, and goes up into where the trigger should be placed near his hand. Closer inspection of all versions I could find of the gun...shows there's no trigger. At all. Nothing akin to a trigger, even. That little piece that he's holding? Logistically...that should be a place to store bullets, or it could be a handle...for the trigger...except there is no trigger. Instead, he looks more like he's pressing the safety...which I find really funny.

Look right in front of the block he was "holding". See that little square? that should be a safety or something...but it looked like he was using it as a trigger. 

I know, it seems a bit like "well what does it matter?" and it really doesn't. I love details, and I was trying to find the best match when I saw this. The gun, which looks fairly accurate and plausible from the first glance...makes absolutely no sense when you really get down to it.

Its funny how things work like this.

Anyways. My original plan will still work...but I think I might just get a machine gun as a fall back, that way if I don't manage to finish the weird-totally-doesn't-make-sense gun, I'll still have something for AnimeFest. ;3

But no matter what, I'm not displeased with my "discovery". It will make the gun all the more fun to figure out!

PriceCheck: Colonello

Okay, so when I first started this blog, I started believing that--while I planned to get as many of my cosplays done long before the con--I wouldn't absolutely need anything done until May, as A-kon is in June.

But then my bestest buddy / nightmare instigator threw a wrench into my plans, encouraging me to join her to an early trip to Dallas for AnimeFest.
At first...I was smart. I said "nah...I shouldn't...I can't afford it..."
But it started to wear on me(I personally believe she was using mindcontrol), and next thing I knew I was actually upset that I wouldn't be able to go! So what'd I do? I started planning to go. And now where am I? Cosplay-less and only a month before I'd need one!

So my plans to get to work on my cosplays--especially Colonello, I was looking forward to working slowly away at my giant rifle and taking forever to hand sew my jacket in the comfort of my dorm lobby--lazily, has just been kicked out the window. That means I've got to get the ball rolling a little bit--at least push it up the hill!

That's what inspired the epic-wig-hunt.

Now I call it an epic-wig-hunt because I never imagined how long it would take me to find something I really liked!

I started out by googling 'Colonello Wig' the same way I'd done when scoping out the Gokudera wigs. To my surprise, there actually wasn't a very wide range of different places that sold one specifically like that, but I was good! I took it in striiide.

So after the failed attempt at finding a "Colonello" wig--which had actually resulted in two sites that screamed 'scam', a cosplayhouse wig that had no actual image of the wig, several "where can I find?" threads in about six different cosplay sites, and a few colonel wigs, which were white with rather fabulous mustaches--I tried looking for a blond spiky wig in some of the more famous sites.

Milanoo.com turned out to have a couple fairly nice wigs. One in particular--a styled wig for a character from Tales of Symphonia, strangely enough--actually kept my attention for a while. In the end, however, I decided that I would prefer to get a wig from a site that has a bigger reputation in the cosplay world, just for security. I will probably test out Milanoo in the future, but when I need a wig as soon as it turns out I'll be needing this one, I'd rather not risk it so much.

Next place I found myself was cosworx.com.

For those of you who don't stalk the cosplay sites, cosworx.com is one of the most highly mentioned out of all of them. Amphigory.com is another one that's constantly in the cosplay radar, but after a check there, I found nothing akin to what I needed and left it behind.
While it took me a while to learn how to navigate the site--I ended up going from cosworx to a shop based off of cosplay.com, which gave me many more options--I found a pretty wide variety of wigs and colors. Unfortunately, the right shade of blond was not as heavily populated...and most of its population was Squalo-length.

However, after an extended search--and a brief encounter with a wig I immediately labeled the "blond Rukia"--I came face to face with a near perfect wig.

"Blond Rukia"

Now, this wig isn't a cheap, nice little thing. Almost sixty-buckaroos, its a wallet puncher. However, it is made of a heat-resistant material, which from what I can read allows it to be curled, flat ironed, dried, and gives it more durability. I don't think I'll be curling it, but the ability to do so would make it useful for the future, and the extra durability is a plus.

Of course, I came into this knowing I'd be spending a pretty penny...and knowing that I wouldn't find a perfect wig. However, the one I've chosen--zephyr's short shaggy straight in yellow gold--is gonna be pretty damn good.

My plan is to go ahead and order it within the next week. It comes from Japan, so its got an extra week of travel to get here, and in the mean time I'll be working on other things.

By the time it gets here, I should have the bandana completed, which will allow me to work on styling it. My friend has offered to introduce me to her stylist day-before-AnimeFest if I can't finish or can't figure out how to style the damn thing.

Unfortunately, Jack is not a stylist. xD 

But I'm pleased with the results of my 4-hour hunt(I went everywhere except ebay, seriously. Ebay was my Last Resort), and I know that I'll have a good quality wig coming my why soon. ;3 

So the price check/list for this purchase is going to be the blond wig and a wig cap.

Zephyr Heat-Resistant Short Shaggy Straight - $57

Beige Wig-Cap - $1.79

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Total:  (rounded; without tax/shipping) $60

BreakingDown: the Assault Rifle

I've been doing my best to help find characters for my good buddy / minion's blog today, and all of my searches have lead to a thousand different routes of distraction--a good chunk of with were paused by drooling over awesome cosplayers!
The thing is, when I see incredible cosplayers, and look at fantastic outfits, all while the sound of HGTV drones on in the background...I get an excessive amount of inspiration. I'm a designer at heart, and while I'm not near the stage of design skill that my head would like me to be, I definitely get itchy fingers when my muse kicks in.

Unfortunately, I'm about six hours away from my stalking grounds on vacation in Houston, Texas with my mother. So while I lurk about the apartment she rented for the summer, watching tv...eating super-market sushi and hotfries...andmarshmellows'causethey'regood....while chugging mountain dew like the bum I am, I'm stuck with very little to do.

Which makes my itchy finger syndrome even worse.

Without my sewing machine, access to a pattern or my "you did it wrong fix it" grandparent, making anything cloth-related is out the window. That means that several of my would-be projects are doomed.
However, there are a very select few things that I can get a hold of the materials to make.

I have polymer clay, so I can make my little figurines...but that just makes me want to work on cosplays.
I could get ahold of the stuff to make Gokudera's dynamite...but I'm not really inspired to...and it would be easier to store an elephant than twenty-four sticks of "dynamite" in my house. Strangely enough, I have room for large objects, but not small boxed ones. xD; Talk about fail.
So that leaves...Colonello's rifle.

...and I like that idea.

So here we go! BreakingDown the Assault Rifle.

First thing we notice....is that the assault rifle is large. Very large. If you're familiar with weaponry at all--and let's face it, I came from a family of southern hunters and the only subject I flew through in highschool was the "gun safety" course in my Agriculture class--you know the difference between a rifle and any other gun. Rifles are sleek, with longer barrels, and fire bullets. Bullets, as in the cone-like ones you most likely think of when you think of bullets.

Make a note!

Shotguns are not rifles.

Shotguns are not Jack's friend.

Jack does not like shotguns.

Or shotgun shells.

Here's a great example. The gun on top is most likely a shot gun, and the red cylinders attached to it are shot gun shells. The one below is a rifle, and those are rifle rounds. A fair sized caliber too, from the size of the buggers. Remember! The bigger the gun, the bigger the caliber of bullet, the bigger hole it usually makes.

Seems a bit irrelevent, doesn't it? Sort of. Its less irrelevant if you plan on making round for the rifle...and I kinda like the idea of being able to pull out a pile of fake rounds and pretend to load them. Of course, you gotta be careful to make sure they look kinda fake. The more realistic you weapon or tool is, the more likely you'll have an issue with authorities.

Try explaining a 3' sniper rifle in the back seat and 200 rounds to the traffic cop if they look and feel real.

Past the obvious "Its a gun" and the less-obvious "Its a rifle" stage, let's look a little closer at Colonello's beautiful shoot-em-dead toy.

The very long barrel means its made for distance, which isn't unusual for assault rifles. The longer the barrel, the further the bullet can go is the basic idea. It also makes the gun infinitely heavier--believe me. I've had to carry around my grandfathers "long john" as he calls it. It can shoot twice the distance of my baby rifle...and weigh three times as much.

What I find interesting is the stand about midway down the barrel. That means its meant to be propped up on things, which is actually more of a sniper weapon style. A rifle you take into battle, for instance, would have a shorter barrel--most likely be an automatic weapon--and would not have a stand. There would be no need.
Of course...my attempts to figure out what the hell it is are shortlived...as I am not military personel and am not about to try and figure out the exact make and model of the bloody gun.

However, knowing the use of a weapon helps design it, and my design teacher always encourages me to find every little nit and pick to toy with before I start work. But all that aside, knowing its a long-range weapon used from a distance is enough.

This is one of my favorite images.

Being able to get a good look at the gun really helps, and it gives me a good idea of where I can start with this guy.

From lookin' at it, I know I'm going to need two long tubes. I can either use wooden dowels--which because of the width could get a little heavy--or even very narrow pipe. It would have to be spray painted, and if its wood, sanded to a smooth feel.

Personally, if i can find pipe, pipe's what I'll go with, simply because of the weight.

I could easily use some sort of clay to form the circular "notches" on the weapon, which in actual use would be to hold on the various pieces of the gun, as well as hold the top and bottom parts together. Plastic or thin sheets of wood could  be used for the twin square pieces at the bottom, and the same material could be used for the main part of the gun. If I could find a suitable toy gun, however, it might be easier to chop parts of it to shreds and use the base of the toy with the long tubes for my barrel. 

.

The stand, as I just discovered, I can purchase from a toy store. Go figure, ay?

Now, after a bit more research, I'm actually 90% certain that  can find the perfect base for my rifle. The fact that children get to play with these sort of toys these days makes me jealous...and kind of disturbed.

Of the three, the green camo and the black are the most ideal. The one in the middle was kinda just because...yeah just 'cause. 

I think a nice trip to Toys R Us'll seal the deal, and make my plan for the gun pretty much underway! The fact that the toys are fairly inexpensive is also a plus. ;3

So all in all, I've got my plan. I need the following;

Narrow PVC Pipe

Thin wood or plastic(preferably the sort I can cut without powertools)

A Toy Rifle to dismantle

Clay or something like it for detail work

Black or dark green spray paint

LOTS of glue. ;D Hot glue or cement glue most likely. ;3

Nylon(for the straps)

and Plastic buckles(for the straps)

A trip to Toys R Us, a home improvement store, and maybe a Hancock'sll do the trick! ;D

And now I have a project to get me through the long hours of nothing before school starts!

StalkMode: Hikaru

My group--or at least a nice chunk of my group--are considering a full-sized Ouran Highschool Host Club group cosplay. We have enough people who intend to come--although that number is probably going to change, knowing my gang--and we have someone to suite everyone...if the entire group actually comes.

Now, my position in this group is Hitachiin Hikaru. That's right. The instigator of the twins.
One of my roleplaying partners--and an overall amazing person--will be trying to join me with her Kaoru, but regardless, I want to try and make the Hikaru get up.

The original plan was for all of us to order matching uniforms from the same place--that way we guarantee the fabric and style of the Ouran uniforms would be the same, and if we were smart about where we buy, well-fitting to each of our body types.

The more I think about it, however, and the more I think about how few of our group will probably manage to come--just knowing them tells me the unlikelihood--the more I think that...if it were just me and my twin(I wouldn't make the costume if it was going to be just Hikaru, that wouldn't make sense! xD), that I would like to do a costume that isn't the uniform. Uniforms are ridiculously hard to make, after all, and there are some outfits I like better!
...that and I really don't want to wear a tie if I can get away with not.

So that brings a few more options into play. There are, of course, the numerous outfits the artist uses in filler pages and the mounds of get-ups that Tamaki encourages, but there are also a couple more well known. The cheshire cat, for instance.

This costume is very recognizable, which is something ideal when you're working outside of a character's normal attire if you ask me. Its easier to choose a fairly recognizable side-outfit and not deal with the "are you this?""..no.." "are you him?""no.." issues.
The chesire get-up is also very cute in my opinion, and purples are nice in my book. It wouldn't be difficult to manage, either, and I'm capable of making every inch of it--except the boots and wig--myself. Even the cloves would be manageable, even if I'd have to beg and plead my cosplay-goddesses of friends to assist me.

Another recognizable one is the waiter get-up.

But just as the recognizable is good, overdone looms. And both the Cheshire and waiter get ups for the twins are extremely popular.

Almost more so than the uniform itself!

So, that leaves some of my personal favorites to gander at.

This is one of them--a more unique version of the waiter outfit. Of course, its still recognizable, which is good, but less often done. That, and I really do love waist coats. They're so effin' sexy.






But its still not what I'd to do. If possible, I'd love to do one of the casual-wear outfits. There are two that show up in the anime for a long period of time--and I like them both. Of course, a useful thing about casual wear...is that its casual wear and can re-used. If you haven't caught on already, I really enjoy reusing things.

This is one--Hikaru's on the right if you didn't already know. Basically, a trio of tank tops is the most difficult part....which obviously isn't too hard. That, and I absolutely love tank tops! I might actually have two of those colors lurking about in my closet somewhere.

But! My absolute favorite is this get-up: 

...and I won't deny its partially because I have a headphone fetish.

Aside from that, I really like this outfit, which is used when Hikaru goes on his date with Haruhi, proving yet again that Kaoru really is the sneakier of the duo.

No more difficult than the tank-top set, the mixture of orange and cream colors is probably what attracts me to this one. I looove the color orange, after all!

But aside from that, this is actually a fairly recognizable set, coming from a memorable episode. Not that the bed & breakfast "trials" weren't memorable. That...and does anyone else notice that he's wearing the same hoodie-vest as Kaoru was the day before?

He totally stole it. 100%.

Don't let him fool you. 

He stole it.

-coughhack- Thieving twins aside, I'll be up in the air over this one for a while. It all depends on my Kaoru and the rest of the gang, of course. If I had my way, however, it'd be headphones all the way!

Or this;

The simplicity of the Victorian era outfit is very appealing, after all.