Alice in Avalon

Today's update concerns an upcoming cosplay skit project that I've been developing for some time now! I usually post after the skit about my design concepts and inspirations, but I'm really excited to share my thought process, research, and goals towards this project! Since I was inspired by a particular piece of media, our project is currently named the T-1000 (I'm sorry, James Cameron), and will ideally be completed later this year.  While picking the series, I knew at once the kind of tone and atmosphere that we wanted, and it just so happened that a certain scene featuring the two characters we wanted to cosplay had the exact style based on our inspirations. Beyond the video background, our skit's themes are of teamwork, the dynamics of a student and mentor, and the courage it takes to become a hero in the face of the unknown. As storytellers, we want to create a skit that will put on a show, but also share our message, and invoke strong emotions to our ...

It's been a little while, but I've definitely been busy! The last leg of the 2018 year went by really quickly, but I enjoyed quite a bit of cosplay experiences along the way! Since my last update, I've had the pleasure of working on some wonderful skits, and focusing on the core of storytelling again by adding details to both my costume and our set work to develop each concept. At Anime California, I took the challenge of creating a storytelling skit from Majestic Majolical, which was more difficult than I thought. There's a lot I took from the experience that helped me go into my next project for PMX 2018. I had a wonderful masquerade partner for PMX,  and we won Best in Show with our Tanabata Madoka and Homura from Madoka Magica! Shortly afterwards, we began developing our next skit for ALA 2019, which had initially been a duo skit from a totally different series, but while revisiting the project, we began to notice some issues with the storytelling aspect of ...

If I don't post, it's because I'm at my busiest. It's true. At least, I hope so. I've actually been quite active with cosplaying and more skits over the past year! Honestly, I try to post often, but I'm terrible at it, so I'm going to go ahead and admit that now with the hopes that I'll actually improve on it for the rest of the year. Maybe that should be my next New Year's Resolution. I'm going to get ahead on it though by finally attempting to use this blog once more to chronicle my upcoming progress on several new cosplays, along with one special one that I've been itching to finally make. In a lot of ways, I've done more than I've had with cosplay throughout this year, although it's also been a bit of a time-out in some ways. I've competed less for numerous reasons, but it's mostly been because I'm working on some more intricate skits for the next year. We also unfortunately had to drop out from one last ...

I'm here, I promise! And with lots more good news and lots of hope for 2017. I know that everyone's probably heard the phrase, "Please let 2016 be over already", and while it's pretty true, it's hard to also not look back and realize that with lots of difficulties comes some of the best moments. 2016 was a difficult year for most people, and was quite the rollercoaster for myself. I feel saddened by the loss of great celebrities and heroes, but I also mourn greatly the loss of the real people in my life and changes which, with some transitioning, will hopefully bear better news and promise as the new year begins. It's important to remember, as I often have to remind myself personally, that happiness is oftentimes the byproduct of living, which means for as much difficulties and pain we hate going through, happiness is usually the small, twinkling moments we have to live for. So in light of this and given that it's the end of the year, I wanted to...

A happy way to kick off the cosplay season! It was a total surprise, but I'm so happy to say that Lyric and I won Best in Show at Anime California 2016 this year! I think I'm even more over the moon by the fact that it is my first Best in Show and it had to be with Utena. It's so picture perfect. I promise to put up better pictures soon! Shoutout to Shii's Peter Pan for letting me be part of the "No Grown Ups Allowed" Crew.

I'm both humored and gutted with nostalgia when I think how about ten years ago, I was watching Onegai Twins and buying kotoko, Mizuki Nana, and angela singles, daydreaming about Utena and calling myself a prince, wearing a Nadia shirt until it mysteriously vanished, probably back into the seas, and had just gone to ALA cosplaying Sohma Kagura with my friends. Now fast-foward to now, I got through Owari no Seraph: Battle in Nagoya and started up the winter anime season, buying Utapri, Lovelive, angela, and Faylan CDs, giggling about Fushigi Yuugi musicals, wearing a Sailormoon print shirt, and just came from ALA having cosplayed Utena, who I still daydream a lot about. 2006 is kind of a cool year to look back in some ways, and I think personally it was around that frame of time when I was having fun getting to watch more anime and be in on new titles that I could find online and not have to wait just for cons or select video stores and places to have them. It used to t...

Australian movies, here I come! Or rather, many movies in general. Things have been winding down since coming back from PMX! It's crazy to see that I'm finally working on my way to update and get things rolling. I think that in many ways, it was an eye-opening experience for me. I don't really need to begin with the same old story that work, school, and life had been so overwhelmingly busy that although I have been productive with cosplaying, I really haven't sat down to reflect upon how much I work at things. The benefit to that is really living without the necessity to blog, to simply live and keep on going forward, but another beauty of life is also looking back at posts and absorbing those good spirits and remembering all of the great things you can accomplish, even against all odds. PMX for me this year was probably one of the hardest conventions to get enough time to get things done for how I wanted them to be. For starters, I had great plans with my frien...

Today is a happy day! And brings a week of creativity (and a lot of work!) I got a job offer with better hours for school! Recently that had been taking a toll on me. My summertime was mostly working, which is great, but the school year brings a lot of demands. I got a job opportunity to have work while going to school, and it's closer to my interests in gaming. I'm definitely excited! Hopefully this will bring a realm of stability I have lacked a little over the year. Like I mentioned before, I am blessed to be able to fit a lot of my interests in with my priorities, and it's a constant evolution. It is difficult due to my school hours to factor in a really heavy workload, so I hope that it will allow me to be able to care for my health too! I celebrated a year of progress on my back, and I want to keep on going! I'm currently in progress to start my PMX cosplays just before I transition out of my old workplace. Most of my sewing will start this week, and I...

And as usual, it's 3am here and I'm completely elated to be journaling again. I honestly feel like I own my blog a personal apology for not keeping up with it, even though not keeping up with it feels like a good sign of actually living life, yet I like chronicling things, and it's one big paradox! And as usual, I have my portfolio site but I cannot abandon this blog at all. I won't. I decided, and it's final. If I could find an awesome way to integrate it, that would be amazing. I'm don't want to just let things go by without getting the chance to talk about them, because otherwise I feel like it just fades away in a sense. I spent today ruminating that my work situation, which I have mentioned here before, has been extremely busy and without sugarcoating it, difficult. It is severely understaffed and I spend fifteen hour workdays alone, and while I'm blessed to be able to motivate myself, I'm definitely suffering a little creatively on the in...

Oh goodness, I'm not gone! My online chronicling has been rather terrible lately, even on my main website. It's been a whirlwind of a year, and yes, cosplay has been involved, but it's been so crazy...but I intend to keep updating! I'm trying really hard to get my momentum going. So here's a recap of what's been going on: Bahaha the Slayers Return! Whenever life gets a little hectic, I recollect the memory of being about four or five years old and watching Pocahontas, particularly in the scene where Powhatan tells her to choose the smoothest and steadiest course. And of course, the ever-bamf Pocahontas realizes that the river isn't steady at all. It's a wild and crazy ride, with a few tranquil spots along the way, but it eventually leads to a whole new opportunity. Sometimes, it still might even have the same decisions to be made, only the experience adds a fresh perspective to it. And that...is my excuse for my delays in writing about...

So the verdict is in....and Yuuki Kuran was victorious! I won the Honorable Mention in Craftmanship at the Masquerade! While loading the new pictures, here's the current picture I have of the completed cosplay for Yuuki: I've been so exhausted since yesterday from all of the hectic amazingness that PMX was, and it was all quite worth it! So many experiences and all probably in less then 48 hours considering I missed nearly the whole Day 1 of the con unintentionally. Coming back to the reality, going back to work on a crowded day, everything hit me how these con experiences really add a break to the norm. I honestly don't think I ever had gone to PMX, I really couldn't remember before, but getting there, everything felt so foreign that the only reason why I probably questioned why if I had been there before was because of the local area. It's right by ALA's current home, and previously had also stayed at the Renaissance nearby for this past AX with th...