Wow! It's been a really long time... Oops? Sorry!
*sheepish smile*

So, since my last post, I have been to two anime conventions, the first being Animix. The quaint little local Animix just celebrated it's second year, and consequently it was the one year ShinkaStudios anniversary!!! Yay! Well, we didn't form Shinka there, but it is where we all met. Aww! *group hug*

Anyway, Animix was fun for the most part. Our group helped staff it this time, as we were volunteers last go-around. There was a bit of dissension between some of the workers, but by the end of the con everything seemed to have been smoothed over, and there were a couple hotel issues. Well, all the girl staff and volunteers were assigned to the same room *gasp* and when an old pizza box attracted the hundreds of ants the hotel supplied, we were blamed for the ant infestation. Grr! Then we were moved to a new ant-free room with no air conditioner in the Texas summer. *whimpers*

Still, I had fun, and none of us let anything get to us for too long; after all, we were at a con; the happiest place on earth!!! Sorry, Disney. Being such a tiny gathering, we met a lot of great new people, and Nezumi-chan was able to make it! She took some great shots of me and Waltz a while back, and it was great having her there.

The other convention I attended was AnimeFest, and it's what Shinka considers our first official con attended together. It was fantastic! We met some really cool people here too, including a really nice girl- whose name I won't mention on the internet for privacy reasons- who actually knew us. I was so surprised, but it was really cool! *waves to girl whose name starts with an E*

So, AnimeFest is where we debuted our group Naruto cosplays. Thanks for humoring me, everyone! *sends out sparkles of love* I'm definitely the most Narutarded, but I think/hope everyone had fun. Waltz, Kataroo , and I sported Wa-lolita versions of Gaara, Kakashi, and Naruto respectively. YOSH!!! I finally cosplayed Naruto! *dance, dance* We might have been still working on them at the con (oops *blush*), but I think they turned out really well. Moon made the most fantastic Sai, and some of the pictures she deigned to take... Thank, you Moon. Then Zukazan brought out his fangirl-satisfying Naruto. Overall, I had a great time with it.

Uh... I should probably mention my Gaara cosplay. I was really doing this one last minute, too. Stupid illness!
(Side note: I had been planning on doing my last minute details that week before the con, but I ended up in the hospital a few days from a stupid virus, and didn't get out until Wednesday morning. We left Thursday night! Noooo. There goes my perfect plan of procrastination!)
Anyway, some aspects of my Gaara cosplay turned out, and some didn't. With the time crunch, my mother actually took on the bulk of the sewing. Thanks, Mom. Unfortunately, with no time, it ended up with this weird pouch in the butt area, which we had to pin down, but still looked awkward. The zipper was white and showed a bit, too. *hangs head* Oh well- overall, the body was good.

Then I think I did a decent job on the vest. The problem came in adding the heavy buckles. They did not like staying in place. Yep, that's going to need to be fixed, too.

The pants were good- I bought some at GoodWill, and the boots were ones I had purchased at a thrift store and cut the toes out of. They worked very nicely.

That just leaves the cloth bands and gourd. *facepalm* Well the cloth bands would have been fine, if I had been able to hem the ends; instead they just had to unravel and slip down my legs and fall off randomnly. Not a big deal. But the gourd... That was a BIG deal. Literally. It turned out really nice to look at, but, well, who knew plaster could weigh so much? I had merely added a few layers of plaster and some weird dry-wall joint compound stuff! Yeah, I didn't wear it for more than 20 minutes. I was still experiencing balancing issues due to my illness, and... Bye, bye, Gourdy-kun! *cries* Binding my chest didn't help either, and unfortunately I ended up having to remove that as well. I ended up being really insecure in that cosplay, but I plan to fix it up, and wear it again at some point.

Positive Gaara things: The contacts were really cool (Zombie Blue) and the wig turned out well, I think. We were able to make my eyebrows disappear with some scar putty, but we're going to need to do a bit more experimenting, so that the wax lasts longer.

Wow. I didn't realize my Gaara cosplay would take up so much journal space! Moving on...

Shinka entered our first group cosplay contest. We did a comedic skit in our Naruto garb. We didn't win anything, but the competition was stiff, and our skit was well-received. Yay! If you came up and told us you enjoyed it, thank you so much! It really made us happy to hear that. We were soooo nervous. Ooh, and shoutout to that amazing sheriff we spent practically the whole intermission talking with!

In the end I just really enjoyed being with the rest of Shinka and our roomies Robbie-Kun, flavorjames , and Shirakiku. Oh gosh! There were some epic times in that room.

Okay! So I have written a nice little mini novel. *blush*

*huggles*
~Kuno