Thursday, March 7, 2013

One more for the bucket list: Cosplay!

Hello again!

I once more have something crafty to share with y'all, and I'm actually super proud of it. This is my first cosplay! I have always wanted to do it, and now I can finally say that I have!

Now cosplay is essentially dressing up as a character or even things from books, TV shows, movies, etc. It's pretty popular at anime and other types of conventions. However, when my friends and I decided to cosplay, we did it for school.

Sort of. You may be surprised to learn that medical school isn't always "study study study". We have time for fun things, like our belated Lunar New Year Festival that just happened last Saturday. It consists of acts performed by medical students, undergrad students, and some of the other schools on our campus (PT, OT, audiology, etc) putting together acts to perform for fellow students, faculty, and really anyone else we care to invite.

One of these acts that I participated in was a dance inspired by Avatar: the Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra (I talked about them in the post about my favorite TV shows). Any fans here?

Quick introduction for those who are not familiar with the Avatar universe: in this world, some people are born with the ability to manipulate ("bend") one of the four elements: air, water, earth, and fire. The Avatar is the lone person in the world who can bend all four. Bending is commonly used in combat, so in the TV show, the animation of each type of bending is based off of a martial art.

In this dance, we correlated each of the elements with a dance style. Water was more lyrical, earthbending was step, fire was hip-hop-ish, and air was breakdancing. Two of my friends (and fellow Avatar fans) who were in the dance with me decided, "What the hey, we're gonna cosplay this!" Water, fire, and earth all have one major female character associated with them, so we went as Katara, Azula, and Toph, plus an Aang!

BUT! I'm the only one of us three (four, if you included our airbender, who we roped into cosplaying with us) who can sew. I have made from scratch a grand total of three real garments for myself: this shirt and two pairs of PJ pants. This was my first time using darts, an invisible zipper, interfacing, and inset sleeves.

But hey! Two weeks, four costumes, almost no experience? On top of rehearsals for three different acts for the Lunar New Year Festival and schoolwork? Totally doable!

That sounds sarcastic. And you know what? It was hard...but I did it! And we looked fantastic!


Sadly, our airbender had to leave the performance early, so no group picture with him. :(

Some of my preliminary doodles (with the measurements blanked out, for obvious reasons):





See more photos of the costumes after the cut!