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AG

@ag-cosplay-photography / ag-cosplay-photography.tumblr.com

She/Her/Hän | 32 | 🇫🇮
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elsmaster

“Even when you’re trying to kill each other, you can tell there’s a real bond there!”

We made a skit with Scorpia, Catra and She-Ra for the Finnish ECG selections and placed second. The stage photos are glorious. 

@biitti as Scorpia @aagee as Catra @elsmaster as She-Ra Characters from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Photos by @jesmoth

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elinacosplay

How to Give Credit: The Cosplay Edition

How would you, as a cosplayer, feel if someone posted a picture of your cosplay somewhere and didn’t bother to mention who the cosplayer is? You’d be pretty bummed, right? And rightfully so! You’ve worked hard on that costume, and definitely deserve credit for your hard work. Plus, it’s only polite to at least mention whose work it is that’s being shared on the interwebs, am I right. 

Now that we’ve got you in a decently empathetic state of mind, allow me to give you a brief list of the occasions, when you should give credit to other people. 

1. Always

Allow me to elaborate in a Q&A format. 

Do you want to share a picture someone has taken of your costume? Credit the photographer. 

Do you want to share a picture someone took of you and your friend(s) in costume? Credit the photographer, and your friend(s) who pose(s) in the picture with you. 

Do you want to share a picture of yourself, wearing a costume someone else has made either partially or completely? Credit whoever made/helped make the costume (unless they have explicitly stated you don’t have to do it, in which case you should still give credit, because it’s a nice thing to do), and credit the photographer. 

In short: unless you, yourself, are personally responsible for everything that made a picture of your costume happen, give credit. If you don’t, you look like an asshat, and no one wants to look like an asshat. Trust me. 

- Elina

#good read#good to remember
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Esmeralda - skirt

This is the second progress post of my Esmeralda costume made 2015 for Finland Cosplay Championship group category. Me and Biitti participate in competition with Esmeralda and Phoebus. I competed and won solo category with the improved costume in European Cosplay Gathering Finnish Preliminaries 2016.

Searching for skirt fabric was painful because of the shade of Esmeralda’s skirt was impossible to find. Luckily, I came across of light violet fabric which was ideal for dyeing. I didn’t have any experience of fabric dyeing before this, so exploring the unknown was both scary and exciting. Luckily, Majo helped me to find right path because she is awesome and like that. Testing the dyeing to find the right combination of water, dye and time was first thing to do. Here is a chart how test pieces above were accomplished: O Original colour of fabric

I water: 200 ml salt: 0,5 teaspoon dye: 0,5 teaspoon time: 15 minutes blend: 1 time

II water: 200 ml salt: 0,5 teaspoon dye: 0,25 teaspoon time: 15 minutes blend: 3 times  

III water: 400 ml salt: 0,5 teaspoon dye: 0,5 teaspoon time: 15 minutes blend: 1 time

IV Same as 1st but fabric wasn’t wet. This is a good example what happens if you don’t remember to use wet fabric for dyeing. First test piece was wet and the color is even. The fourth wasn’t wet and you can see how there is lighter and darker spots around the piece. I got lucky because the first test piece had the colour which I was looking for. The change wasn’t that radical compared to original colour but it improved the look a lot. Second and third tests were merely for my own curiosity because I wanted to check if by decreasing colour amount with half or by increasing water amount with half, would create the same colour.  As you can see in the picture, the shade is very similar. This can be useful information in the future.

Dylon intense violet fabric dye has nice pigment. Pretty thing is pretty.

So after my tests I could depend on water-colour amount calculations and then I needed to calculate how much colour and water I needed for my 8 meters long fabric. I needed a great amount of dye and I tried to reduce the dye usage by decreasing water amount but the same time I needed to keep the amount of water high enough or otherwise my huge fabric wouldn’t have enough space in a bucket to move freely or stay under the surface of water. In the image above is showing actually half of the dye I used in the end. That amount of dye which can be seen in cups is amount of one package of Dylon textile dye. (Minus small portions (2-4 teaspoons) which I used for testing.)

So here is my setup after calculating right amount of water and dye. There was about 12 liters of water. The stick was for blending dye and moving fabric inside of the bucket in order to get the color everywhere on fabric.

After required amount of time, Majo helped me to wash the whole fabric and get rid of the spare dye. It was a lot of work and without Majo’s help and the laundry room of our workplace this would have been painful to do. If you own a bathtub, this can be less time consuming but we worked with the bucket and two sinks. So it’s possible to dye almost 8 meter of fabric with small area!

Here is a comparison of the original fabric, test dyed fabric and the final dyed fabric.

And here is the original fabric, the dyed fabric and my scarf for Esmeralda. The fabric turned out a little bit darker than the test piece and I was worried about this first but I compared the color to other fabrics which I used for Esmeralda and the darker color was even better.

After sewing a skirt and a petticoat I sewed the hem by hand using only 4-5 strings of fabric. This way I tried to avoid thread showing to the other side of fabric. It kinda worked out but I need to be more diligent sewer in the future because my stitches should be more dense. This was one thing which I got feedback after ECG.

I’m pretty proud of the petticoat and I really like the look which my skirt has inside of it. By using bias tape in the hem of the waistband I got the waist fit more nicely too and noticing this gave me a lot of motivational boost because something clicked in my head then. I still can’t describe what it was but after that I have tried out more structural things with sewing.

When we were last time visiting Casualty Cosplay, I asked Maija to give me feedback of my costume and she taught me how to sew invisible zipper without invisible zipper foot. The trick is to move the needle of sewing machine a little bit closer to zipper teeth. (Normally used for controlling the width of zigzag stitch.) I felt so stupid when I did this and saw the difference because afterwards it felt so obvious. (Note: I added some tulle between the petticoat and the skirt before ECG Preliminaries.)

So that’s all for this time. Next time I’ll write about progress of props. Thank you for reading! If you have any questions you can send me a message or come to talk to me in my facebook page: AG photography & cosplay

#Esmeralda#cosplay#wip#The Hunchback of Notre Dame#casualtycosplay#majocosplay#skirt#sewing#fabric dyeing
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