Makeshiftwings out of costume

What’s your cosplay alias and why did you choose it?
My alias is Makeshiftwings. It’s the title of one of my favorite songs by AFI. It’s got a good message about not supporting people who are fake and always adhere to the latest trends.

How many years have you been cosplaying and what got you started?
I’ve been cosplaying for about 4 years now. I’ve always loved Halloween and made my own costumes. One year, I put an unusual amount of effort into a costume (it was Link, and it was BAD) and it was around the time that I really got into conventions. I had heard of them before but had never gone to one. I went to Megacon for the first time out of costume and decided I had to dress up for my next one. It’s just not the same being out of costume!

Makeshiftwings as Anti Sora from Kingdom Hearts 2, photo by Morataya Photography

What has been some of your favorite things to work with when constructing costumes and why?
My most favorite part has always been the sewing. I love working with nice fabrics, especially suitings. In the end, most costumes make or break by the outfit itself so that’s why I really like working with fabric. Recently I’ve started working with leather and I really like it also. It’s fun to work with, but really expensive!

What are you excited to be working with in the future and why?
My next big project is a gijinka form of Okami Amaterasu. I’m going to be doing some heavy prop-work for that costume. I have this crazy dream of making Divine Retribution (the mirror on her back) actually spin, but I have no engineering experience so I don’t know if I can do it! Okami is one of my favorite games and I’m very excited to start her.

What are some of the traits you like to see in other costumes and who do you think does well in them?
I love cleanliness in a cosplay. Nothing impresses me more than a well-made costume, whether it is good sewing and tailoring or nice prop work. In overall cosplays, I think Pikminlink and Yaya have really nice construction skills. Prop-wise, Volpin and Fev are two of my favorites.

What is your view of the “cosplay scene”?
I personally got into cosplay because it combines all my loves into one: costuming, video games, anime, sewing, painting, etc. I love making my cosplays and wearing them because I also love and can relate to the character I’m portraying. However, I think a lot of people get into the “scene” for the wrong reasons. Cosplay shouldn’t be about attention, but that’s what it’s come down to. More and more people are cosplaying somebody just because they look like the character and thus would get more attention, but they haven’t even played/watched/read the source. Instead of being about fun, now it’s some kind of big competition on who can be the most “famous”.

Makeshiftwings as Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender, photo by Bella Voce

What are some of the things you want to see change in the scene?
I’d love to see the drama die down. I think it’s no secret that Florida has a ton of drama. I went to Dragon*Con for the first time last year and I LOVED it. It was hands down my favorite convention ever (and I couldn’t even cosplay 3/4 days because the Marta made me nauseous). The atmosphere is so different. Everyone is there to have FUN. If you see a nice cosplay, people are saying “WOW!” and not talking bad about it. My boyfriend and I spent so much time sitting in the lobby area of one hotel (out of 5, mind you) watching all the cosplayers. In many Florida conventions, you can just feel the drama just by standing in a room. At Dragon*con, it was non-existent. I would highly recommend anyone to go to D*Con, especially cosplayers/con-goers in Florida who are getting tired of the scene. It is a completely different experience. It restored my faith back in conventions, cosplay, and cosplayers. I would love for Florida conventions to be more like D*Con.

What is some advice you could give people starting to get into cosplay?
Have fun and keep working! When I got into cosplay, the only things I had sewn previously were some pillows and crappy plushies. I learned everything by practicing. Start with an easy costume with pieces you can buy. Make the rest. Try starting with something simple like a sleeveless shirt. If you can’t figure something out in a pattern, google it. You can learn anything on the internet. Also, making mock-ups out of muslin will save you from some expensive mistakes.

What are some of your favorite conventions you’ve attended and why?
I mentioned it earlier but Dragon*Con has been my favorite convention so far. I am so excited to go back. In Florida, Metrocon is my favorite. It actually has some good panels, a great costume contest, and an AWESOME artist’s alley. I bought so much stuff there last year.

Give a random fact about one of your costumes that you’re proud of!
Wander has been my most difficult costume yet for two reasons: one, the construction was really difficult. Two, I had to completely mess and tear it up in the end. My ultimate goal was to always do end of the game Wander (I won’t go any more specific due to spoilers), but I wanted to get pictures of it clean beforehand. So after I did my photoshoot with the clean outfit, I tore up the tabard with a razor blade and scissors and smothered the costume in fake blood and charcoal. It was heartbreaking to say in the least, but I’m really happy with how it came out.

Makeshiftwings as Wander from Shadow of the Colossus, photo by Instrumental Photography

Thanks for the interview, Makeshiftwings! You can see more of her work on her Deviantart, her Cosplay.com account, and her American Cosplay Paradise account!

San of Princess Mononoke's Mask Tutorial by Meanlilkitty

Click to enlarge! Hope this helps!

Jessica as Supergirl. Photo by OscarC Photography.

You may think I’m even more crazy when I tell you all the disadvantages of RAW when shooting cosplay:

• RAW files are big – sometimes 3 or 4 times as big. That means signficiantly fewer photos will fit on your memory card, fewer photos will fit on your computer’s hard drive, and opening each photo will take longer. If you have a very old computer, you may need to upgrade it before it can handle RAW.
•  You can’t do much with RAW files directly. You can’t post them to Facebook or other websites, you can’t send them to be printed, and very few programs know how to open them. You will need to convert them into JPEG first, using special RAW processing software that you may or may not already have.
•  RAW files are specific to your brand and model of camera. Canon RAW and Nikon RAW are completely different, and every model of Canon or Nikon generates a slightly diferent type of file. However, most third-party software that processes RAW can handle most of the variations.

First, though, you may be wondering what RAW is. To explain that, you have to understand what happens when you shoot JPEG. When your camera takes a photo in JPEG mode, it reads the light sensor inside your camera, runs a small program to decide the best way to process the photo, and then writes the results as a JPEG file on your memory card. Because of the way JPEG works, some of the information that was initially read from the light sensor is discarded as unneeded in the process. This makes JPEG like a scrambled egg — you can’t unscramble (unprocess) it, and then rescramble (reprocess) it a different way. You’re stuck with the decisions the in-camera processing program decided to use the moment you took the photo.

Carladawn as Black Canary. Winken Goodfellow as Green Arrow. Photo by OscarC Photography.

When you shoot RAW, the camera reads the light sensor and runs the small internal processing program, same as JPEG, but instead of actually doing the processing, it saves the raw light sensor readings along with what processing it would have done into the RAW file. To extend the analogy above, it saves the unscrambled egg along with its recipe for how to scramble it. When you process the photo, you can use the same recipe (and end up with the same JPEG you would have gotten in JPEG mode), or you can modify/replace it with something else.

Because RAW preserves the most information from the moment you took the photo, it gives you the most room to fix mistakes (yours and the camera’s) when processing your photos. In addition to saving the processing recipe and sensor information seperately (and thereby letting you change the recipe when the camera makes a mistake), it also saves more information about the brightest and darkest areas in your photo. You can use this information when processing your RAW photos to fix under- or over-exposed photos that would have been unfixable had you shot JPEG. You can even use one RAW photo to generate an HDR image. (I’ll discuss HDR more in a future post.)

For example, here’s one shot of bekalou at Fanime 2011. On the left is the way the camera’s built-in processing program would have processed it had I shot JPEG. On the right is the corrected image as processed by using different, better settings.

This would not have been possible had I shot JPEG, because the additonal light sensor information would have been lost in the in-camera processing.

As I mentioned above, RAW photos do require processing and conversion to JPEG before you can post/share/print them. The most popular programs for doing that are Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture. Adobe Photoshop and many other higher-end photo processing apps will also handle RAW. If you’re on a limited budget, Canon cameras come with a free RAW app named Digital Photo Professional. (I believe Nikon charges money for their equivalent app, unfortunately.)

All DSLRs and many high-end point-and-shoot cameras will shoot RAW. If you’re using a low-end point-and-shoot or a camera phone, RAW is not an option for you. If you’re unsure, check your camera’s manual.

Shooting RAW does have the downsides I mentioned at the beginning, and processing RAW does take practice. However, in the end, shooting RAW makes producing amazing photos much easier, and therefore, I definitely think it’s worth the effort.

Oscar has been a convention and cosplay photographer since 2001. You can follow him on Facebook as OscarC Photography, and on deviantArt as ocwajbaum.

I’ll be back as soon as I can. <3

First and foremost, if you don’t realize it’s not a true “contest”, then you’re just lying to yourself. If you decide to compete in it, do so for the fun aspects, not for the competition. By fun aspects, I mean the trip to Japan, the people you’ll meet, and what you’ll end up creating. I know when/if I ever compete, my plans are to just have fun with it.

You also need to realize, everyone will have different experiences. Some will be awesome, and some will be horrible. It’s good to take the experiences of others into mind, but remember that things are different for everyone.

Lastly, while it’s not a true competition, you are still being representatives for your community. Do your best work that you can, both in craftsmanship and performance. The girls chosen this year, Coconut Bubble Sex Cosplay, have gorgeous costumes and their performance in the preliminaries was very well done. Everyone that were in the preliminaries this year were amazing. It’ll be cool to see what’s created and done in the Summit itself.

Overall, do your best and have fun with it. The World Cosplay Summit should be seen as a neat travel experience to use your best skills and be a dork amidst dorks. Anything else is silly.

The store today is, again, Yunie’s Designs, which is owned by yours truly. I make necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and jewelry sets for everyone. I’ve added some specialty cosplay items, including an old costume of mine and some lolita chokers, and plan on adding more soon!

I am also now taking commissions, costumes and otherwise, which you can see my work on my part of the Engi no Shouzoku! cosplay site. Just send me an email at unicorn986@aol.com and ask about what you’d like.

Rolled Hem Tutorial by Koumori-no-hime

Click to enlarge! Hope this helps!

Currently, I’m working on emailing and contacting suggested people to bring some more interviews to the blog. I’ve had a few companies that have contacted me to post information about them and perma-link them, but I’m still debating on it as I’m a firm believer that I should be paid to advertise you permanently. That and I’ve never used their product.. and can’t, lol. I also had a company I was working with currently be associated with some severely negative commentary via a slideshow, and that has made me a little wary at this point as well. So, we’ll see what happens.

But I’m still around, and I’m still working on this brainchild. Promise.