My time at the Frolicon

After writing about my time during the past Anime convention, I realized after a good deal of time that perhaps I should write a follow up post about my time at Frolicon. For those of you not into the lifestyle or have read "50 shades of Grey," look up fetish on wikipedia. Frolicon is a convention in Atlanta, Georgia for those interested in the fetish lifestyle as well as Steampunk and Otherkin. I had the opportunity to attend this event. Awhile back, let us say for the sake of this post 2 years ago, a friend who is in the lifestyle looked at my design work and told me I should look into fetish clothing.And after doing research and talking with a good deal of my friends, Yes as a matter of fact, I should go into fetish clothing. So, part of my "Research," (you can picture that word with finger quotations if you wish) I traveled with two friends to spend my weekend at Frolicon, out amongst the riggers and latex, the furries and the ponies.

I learned knot work and rope corsetry, I learned suspension and how to make people fly. The furries got to me a bit, but I think that has to do with the one who had a vibrator in his nose. But, unlike my time at the Anime convention, the clothing and costuming was pretty good. If a man was crossdressing, he attempted to look as damn good as possible. one woman wore only body paint and it was amazing. I have seen bad body paint before and hers was very good. They even had a Steampunk section. We went to what was coined the Sky Captain's Ball. It was an entire Steampunk themed ball with waitress dressed in corsets and bussells serving martinis and mixed drinks. Everyone's clothing was amazing. I wore my suit jacket and was told I looked like a homeless mob boss by my friend. This will be a project for next year. My clothing and costumes sucked. The event had everything from a full market area to a bouncy castle. Lots of nude people and those involved in various acts. A large Burlesque show and a variety show to a kin to coney island freak show.

My mind is teeming with possibilities (both costume and prop) and the pages of my sketchbook are flowing with ideas. Its like Salma Hayek from Dogma is standing next to me in that cute schoolgirl outfit and is urging me to draw, draw like the wind.

Clothing with rope instructions, handles for floggers and paddles, steampunk clothing, kilts (which seemed to be the male uniform at the event), dresses and skirts of latex. The idea of making such interesting, diverse, and unique clothing and props calls to me and screams build me damn it. This event will be one I will attend again with an eye to a potential market.

The beginners costumers guide to frolicon (for those interested):

Link of interest:

1. Illano clothing (the site is closed, but has a lot of fun ideas.)
2. Making latex clothing (an amazing blog with lots of instructions) 
3. Kink engineering ( a good site for latex. They are very polite and offer great service.)
4. UtiliKilt Construction: because they are awesome

Have fun. This is the time to experiment with fabric you normally would not use or try something a bit more revealing. It is hard to talk about everything in the fetish community and not make this a 30 page document. Books have been written on this topic alone. But do not be afraid to experiment and have a lot of fun.

The New design and Next big Project

The Next Big Project. With the new move finally coming to a close and the little one soon to be here, the shop is in design mode. With this next project, I descided it was time to tackle the ever popular corset. Corsets to sew are a pain in the (insert expletive) and I have made them before. It makes most women look amazing, but I have had issues with almost all corsets looking the same. Flat and form fitting and made of fabric. Do not get me wrong, I enjoy working in fabric, but I love the organic nature of clay too much to pass up a chance to sculpt something around a persons torso and throw in some faery flare. This idea of a ridged corset has been done before with ceramics.

Ceramic corsets by Nichole Moan 

Her work is absolutely gorgeous and I love that she caters to both men and women. If you search for ceramic corsets, her name is the only one that pops up.

But there are a few issues I have with ceramic corsets.
Issues:
~Kilns are expensive and large.
~Ceramics break too easy and I am far too clumsy.
~The ideas I have would be too heavy to be done in ceramics.
~Plus it has been done in ceramics before. We experiment and I do not want to take away from    Nichole Moan's amazing work.

The piece shown will be a combination of Apoxie Clay and liquid latex. This is actually the simplest of all the designs I have had for a ridged corset based around natural forms. The drift wood concept will be very complex and hopefully very beautiful. The piece above laces in the front using latex bands that wrap around the back and move to the front. 

The third picture is the first attempt made a few years ago out of oil based clay. This attempt was to be sculpted and then cast in liquid latex. Sadly, there was a strong winter and the clay froze and fell off the form. The clay is still in a bag, but my method is being refined. 

I think this idea of sculpted ridged corsetry can really redefine this business. Maybe I will try a design for a ridged posture collar as well.

Why the Brown Paper Motif? Or the new look on Branding.

When you come to my new site, you will see things in a brownish tone. Well it’s brownish to me. Give me a break I’m color blind. The site has been changed for now because I bought a book on branding myself. No, not in the whole cattle hot iron type, but as in I need to set myself up as a brand. Brands are something I have not thought about as a way to display my wares, but I have thought about in terms of my portfolio and my business cards. I chose the brown paper because it is what I cover my tables in before I work. Well, I cover them now because of the wife. It is hard to pull liquid latex out of carpet. And I work very messy. I draw on the closest thing to me when I get an idea. This could be a napkin, a sketch book, my work table.

Brown paper makes me think that something is about to happen or in the process of happening.. Brown paper is a good base for most forms of work. You can tell a lot about what happened in a location by the scraps that are left. Are there coffee stains and ink blots on it or is it covered in pure white paint? Is it covered in mathematical equations and designs from some cryptic grimoire? This could be the scraps of some very important work. Image what DaVinci’s palette looked like after painting the Mona Lisa. Was that palette simply thrown away afterwards? The palette can look more interesting then the final piece a lot of times. Packages also used to come wrapped in brown paper. Covering a package in brown paper makes me think someone took the time to wrap and care for whatever is inside.

I have large rolls of brown paper and I now keep scraps with me just in case an idea runs through my brain. I’ll post some of them from time to time.

Faerie flower pendants

My next upcoming project is a series of pendants. A new clay I have been working with works well for objects with not a lot of detail. To be truthful, it is like sculpting with marshmallows that I later discovered. These pictured are currently waiting to be dried so they can be painted and touched up.

These will be available for purchase at our annual SCA local event Arts and Armour. But after the event, more will be made and placed on ETSY.

The triangle issue

The Triangle Issue

In working out your costume or prop, there are three things to keep in mind when you are constructing.

• I want my item now.
• I want it cheap.
• I want it to be perfect.

You can only have two out of three. This is something people have issues with. Kinda like if you went to Walmart and bought your costume. It is cheap and you have it now, but be serious. It is not going to be perfect.
But I want it now and perfect. OK, but rush jobs are not cheap. Well then I want it perfect and cheap. Then I have to put this on hold until materials are found that are in my price range. Well....... Poo. I may have to resort to polyester. Just kidding, polyester is never the right answer unless the question is "What fabric should I not use?"

~Figment the Goblinsmith

Fabric Selection or my time at the Anime Convention

During a recent excursion to the university student center I was bombarded with the site of many female teens in short skirts, hair color not found in nature and more pokemon then I can shake a pokeball at. The convention was in town and we were overrun by a brand of dork I was just not used to. I can handle most awkward situations and consider myself a dork. Look I took the name of a faerie to write under. I am a dork, but I have not felt that uncomfortable in front of a large group of crossdressing males since I went to a three story gay club in New York that played porn at the coat check. I think the main issue I had was the sheer amount of polyester and bad costuming. There were visible facial twitches. I can handle lots of women in short skirt, I am male and I have seen anime before but.....damn. There are special places in hell where they hide bad polyester anime costumes.


Now for the reason I am writing about this. The biggest thing that each costume had wrong besides the obvious hot glue usage was the fabric selection. Let us take a fairly simple example. In the video game The Legend of Zelda there is a character named Link. He wears a green tunic. The tunic is a flat green only because it is a cartoon. It is ANIMATED. This is REAL LIFE. Now those are capitalized to show a very important point in the translation process. Just finding green material is not a very good option if you are trying to bring something from animation to real life. Doing some research before a project is constructed will help you sooooo much. This will bring the character to real life more then anything else. The tunic he is wearing is based on tunics from medieval England which looking on wikipedia shows that tunics wear made from wool or linen. Linen is a great material that hangs beautifully and gives a very period look. Wool will be too heavy and does not fit the images that a quick yahoo search can give. So Linen is the fabric choice for this costume. Look at Kingdom of Heaven, linen tunics look great over chainmail.

Here are some other basic do's and don'ts for a good anime cosplay:
1.If you do not want to be considered a joke, painted card board is not a good substitute for metal.
    Metal Substitutes:

• Cardboard covered in woodfiller from homedepot and then sanded to a smooth finish.
• Armor sculpted in clay and then cast in resin
• Vacuformed plastics
• Papermache covered in woodfiller and then sanded and painted
• Hammered brass kickplates
• Car parts

2. Do not buy a short skirted maid's outfit and add ears and call it an anime character. No fun notes to help this one. In a costume competition it is just sad. I saw it this weekend. It was sad and hurt my costuming soul.

3. Do not try a bodysuit unless you can make it out of something other then stretched lycra in primary colors. It looks like the old Power Ranger costumes. And you need to have the body as well. Sadly not everyone looks good in a unitard. I know I do not.
          Alternatives:

• Build a unitard.There are patterns out there for one. A quick yahoo search will show many pages of notes and patterns. Some are even free.  Try and find a stretch fabric with some texture. Solid primary colors looks like the already mentioned Power Rangers. Kwiksew # 3052 is just one example.
• Leather. Think about how cool the jumpsuits looked in X-Men 1.
• Latex. Yes just lik the fetish models. It works and looks amazing. Elastica Engineering is a great place with very helpful people and great service.

          Elastica Engineering

4. Plan ahead. Do your research and do not settle for the cheap way out. Cheaper is hardly ever better. Costuming is expensive and polyester is cheap. There is a reason it is cheap. Costuming also takes a fair amount of time and many great ideas have fallen prey to the fabric gremlin. The little creature that screws you over when you are in a hurry and need every seam to be done right. He will laugh his ass off when you are seamripping.

Damn that fabric gremlin.
I need to draw a picture of him someday. I think he will be a very snazy dresser.