Animania 2010 complete

So, I managed to finish my performance in Animania using the twin swords, the outfit, and a cool dance routine.

You can watch the dance at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqT8dJloSXI

Here are a few pictures from the Animania convention:

And here is a picture of me at the restaurant:

Animania is a really interesting event; if you guys get a chance you should definitely attend it.

I think the end result matches closely to the actual character:

I guess the hair is a bit off; and the character is slightly more beefy ... but yeah, not a bad effort :)

Story of my life

Emiya Shiro, AKA Archer

Hero of Justice whose ideals were repeatedly crushed by the very people he dedicated himself to protect. To save one person, he had to let another perish. To save thousands he had to kill hundreds; to save millions he had to kill thousands. 

Driven to despair, he resolved to enter the Holy Grail wars to travel back in time to kill himself and spare himself the pain of having his beliefs destroyed even at the cost of tearing apart the very fabrics of space-time.

And I get to cosplay him :D

Gān Jiàng completed, the swords are done!

The two falchions are completed, and look pretty good together. The paint is still a bit off; I'll have to fix that with some touch-up acrylic paint, but overall the two falchions are ready for some action :D

Have to be careful when swinging them though. While I did reinforce them with a metal frame the plastic sword base is still rather flimsy. I have to make sure that I do not let others touch my swords unless they are females that look exceptionally good :D (maybe I'll show my swords to Saber or Rider ~.o)

I'd have to say the hardest thing about making the swords was getting the paint consistent. If I did this again I would make sure to apply multiple coats of spray paint in a place clean from dirt. The biggest problem is having insects land on the paint before it dries. Overall the coating was pretty good, just spray 30 cm from the swords and keep the cans moving and you get a pretty consistent coating.

I used super-glue to stick the Yin and Yang symbols onto the swords, and decided to add the dots into the two opposing forces to represent harmony as oppose to the anime versions of the swords. 

Overall it was actually a fun experience, and I'm glad I embarked on it. The next step is to make the vest thing. This will be the toughest thing because I have to cut a nice jacket. Finally I will have to add silver lines to the black shirt and then my anime costume will be complete!!

Mò Yé Completed! Gān Jiàng crafted

Mo Ye finally completed! The Yin component of the dual swords represent the female essence. I don't fully agree with the interpretation of the symbols in the anime, because the actual Yin and Yang symbol have portions of darkness in the light and light in the darkness. It is used to describe how polar or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. But the swords in the anime have pure darkness and light only, which does not really represent a balance.

Anyway, I chose to stick to the anime interpretation of these symbols and the result is below.

Forgive the messy table. I am now working on Gān Jiàng. Need to add the symbols on both sides and the dual swords will be completed. The current progress is below.

The second sword looks exponentially better close up than the first. The lessons learnt in the first sword was applied to make the second so much more awesome. Firstly I used a single sheet of shiny paper (rather than two). Secondly I made sure that the two pieces were moulded together with minimum sticky tape. I think if I had another chance I would make sure use super glue or equivalent to hold the pieces. That would make the edges look much better.

Here is what the swords should look like. I think I've managed to capture the essence of the swords quite nicely. Important bits are the sword shape, colour, and the symbol.

On a lighter note I have decided to order the white wig rather than dye my hair white. Hopefully it comes in time for Animania ...

I did learn an important lesson crafting the white sword. Spray paint in enclosed areas is detrimental to human health. The fumes are very bad.

Cloak Created, Mò Yé Painted

Spray painting is a tough job. You end up inhaling a lot of the paint, its difficult to get a consistent colour, and paint gets everywhere.

That said, I think the sword is looking not too shabby. But I might have to redo the spray paint because the sticky tape is very distinct, and leaves an ugly, shiny colour on the sword. I think I'll just coat everything with sticky tape and then spray it again.

The first picture is the before shot of the sword. I reversed the sticky tape and applied it all over the sword. Then I carefully cut out the outline of the sword in paper and then added it to the sword. This allowed the sword to hold some form of structure as I stuck the paper on it. The handle is wrapped in plastic to avoid spray paint hitting it.

Grabbing a good old black spray can we (Lisa and I) went outside to spray the swords. To get a consistent layer, the trick is to keep the can moving. Make sure to hold your breath ...

As you can see the sword doesn't look too bad after the spray paint. You can probably make out the bright line across the middle of the sword ... that's the sticky tape holding the merged bits together. But it looks like if I wrap the entire thing in sticky tape and spray it, not only will it give a consistent feel, it will also be shiny. Killing two birds with one stone :D

The cloak was also finished. My dad helped sew the lining to prevent it from breaking. The belt works really well, its a shame I don't have a photo yet of the cloak.

Anyway, the next step is to retape the black sword and then spray it again. After that I move on to the white sword and finally the jacket. Still reluctant to cut up the jacket; but seeing myself in the mirror with the skirt cloak and the jacket I look too much like a girl. Plus its too much red, which doesn't work. Once that's done, I plan on working on the white sword as well. And then finally the jacket.

I should have plenty of time to finish this

Raw materials gathered

Finally gathered the necessary mats to craft my epic dual wielded swords [Gàn Jiàng] and [Mò Yé] 
Bought the necessary spray paints and masking tape. (Dang forgot to get some pictures). Now I just have to find a [Blacksmithing] to build me these ^_^

On another note, I have bought the necessary equipment to build my Jacket and Cloak

I just need to make some adjustments to the jacket so that it looks like the one in the picture. Basically it involves removing the lower portion and splitting the jacket in half; and then reattaching them with string in the front

and some metal thing in the back

The cloak will be made from a dress I found as well; which matches the jacket colour quite well. Kudos to Greg for his exceptional abilities at clothes matching and incredible knowledge of places to buy clothes.

I'm going to cut the dress down the front side, leaving enough to form a cloak. At the top is elastic which I'll replace with a shiny silvery belt. It doesn't exactly match Archer's metal thing that holds his cloak on; but it is close enough; and serves a practical purpose of holding the cloak in position while I move around.

So a very productive night last night in terms of shopping; but not so much in terms of crafting the swords.

On a lighter note; Rin's costume is starting to take shape really quickly. Lisa has already found her skirt, and is just looking for a red sweater.

Archer ~ Fate Stay Night

Forgot to include the Character model that I am trying to dress up as. He is referred to as Archer in the anime Fate Stay Night. He is actually a Counter-Spirit; a noble spirit who has made a pact with the world so that he can continue after death to serve as a guardian spirit to help mankind during disasters.

His story is quite a sad one. He realised that to save one person, he had to kill another, to save a thousand people he had to kill hundreds, and the save millions he had to kill thousands. Innocent and guilty; many died by his sword.

He is a complex character. He had his ideals of becoming a Hero of Justice shattered before his eyes. To prevent or stop disasters, he realised that he had to murder many, since most disasters are man made.

I'll have to remember to write more about this guy, because he is quite awesome. I'm looking for materials to make this costume and a model jacket which I can use as a base.

Gàn Jiàng and Mò Yé

The making of the two legendary Falchion dual wielded by Archer from Fate Stay Night. Please bear in mind that I am a complete novice in sword making and modeling; fingers crossed that they turn out awesome...

The dual falchions are comprised of Yin and Yang (Black and White). There is an interesting story about the blades which I should cover at a later time. Basically they represent Male and Female; hence the swords are a pair which work together to Triumph Over Evil.

This will be part of my costume for the Animania 2010 event in Sydney.

We start with two ordinary pirate swords that actually make awesome noises when you press a button on the handle. These are made of plastic and are rather flimsy. I got them from one of those bargain stores in Cabramatta (I think the name was New World or something like that).

Using this as the base, we do a 'trace' of the sword onto cardboard. My sister did this part; using her Engineering skills to super-impose the image of the swords onto cardboard to fit the size of the swords.

Here we can see the original image where we obtained the rough model from. Next we took some cardboard boxes that were lying around; ones big enough to super-impose the sword with the Falchion model. The results are as follows:

So the cardboard will form the outline of our Falchions. At this point everything was ok, and the swords looked pretty good with the cardboard outline. Then I decided to make a cutout of the cardboard to slide them in around the blade (you can see the outline of the blade above). The result was as follows:

Here I thought I screwed up the project ... Problem is that cutting out the cardboard to fit the sword severely weakened its structural integrity. But I persisted. After adding backing masking tape to the blade to attach the cardboard the sword actually turned out quite sturdy.

The rubber bands are merely for show... I was intending to use them to hold the sword in place but it was completely unnecessary. The next part was to actually 'reinforce' the blade by analysing its internal structure and applying a wire frame around it to strengthen it. This was the most boring bit and most time consuming.

As you can see I basically created a reinforced wire mesh around the sword to strengthen its shape.

It looks a bit wonky, but the shape actually holds quite well. The important bit is to ensure that the edge bits and general shape are reinforced by the wire mesh.

That's sword 1 almost complete. Its general structure has formed and it is looking quite nice. The next step is to apply shiny aluminum foil over the entire sword and then paint it. I want to make the Yin blade first because personally I think the dark blade looks the most awesome.

Hopefully it turns out awesome; stay tuned ~.o