Moogle Pom Pom - A Quick and Dirty Tutorial

 We here at...wherever we are...(you ever do that where you start a sentence with no clear idea how you intend to finish it?)

Anyway, we here at here are nothing if not notable for our supreme ability to take typically small costume accessories and make them larger than life, not to mention feathery. We seem to have a thing for feathers, don't ask me, I guess it's just not costuming if it doesn't get everywhere (and I mean it, I still have feathers lurking around my shop from three years ago not to mention the red feathers still clinging to the roof of Cassi's Eurovan after last year's comicon)

I've also wanted to make tutorials to some of the things that we've made over the years and since my collection of progress photos is starting to clog my laptop, it's time to do it! So here you go:

 

The Moogle Pom-Pom

I don't suppose if you've noticed but we have a sort of signature moogle ball that has repeatedly featured in over three years of convention wear. Moogles are small, teddy-bear-like creatures that help populate the world of Final Fantasy. They serve as save points, merchants and other useful purposes...but mostly their just there to be cute. Kupo!

Now, of course, most people when they cosplay moogles, they have a reasonably sized pompom to match the relative size of their head. Of course, when have you ever heard of a member of MY group of friends ever doing anything reasonably?
(You can't hear it but I'm chortling). Clearly to be so...normal would be beneath us.

He's sad because he's inadequate

Actually in all reality, if we wore something that small we'd never be able to pick each other out of the crowd. A serious concern with "The Group".

You think I'm joking.

 

No, in all seriousness, we (specifically Cassi, I believe) have a flair for making things bigger, better, flouncier. So when she opted to make a Moogle costume way back in 2008, it was simply not an option to have a small, standard Moogle ball. I'm not sure what all inspiration went into making the original design, but since then I have helped make tens of Moogle balls, and they are cheap, easy, relatively lightweight, versatile, and a great way to keep track of you're companions in a crowd!



Step 1: Materials

Not to mention stylish and classy

Seriously, this is really the easiest, cheapest thing to make. Really. Start with:

- A Styrofoam ball. You probably think that you need a big one but in reality, for the extra large pompoms you only need a ball maybe about the size of a very small fist i.e. mine (If anyone wants to give me exact measurements on what size ball that is go ahead). The majority of the size will be made up by the mass of feathers.

- A mass of feathers (speaking of which). We tend to buy maybe three or four bags of cheap red feathers, the kind you can get at any craft store. having a nice variety of sizes, like a cheapy bag will get you, is ideal.

- Hot glue. But I feel like this is a given in any type of crafty/costuming project really.

- Sturdy STURDY construction wire. I'm not sure where this is actually readily available as I got my massive horde of the stuff from a leftover construction project. It's thick, raw bendable wire, and kind of tough on the hands. I imagine you could probably get something similar at a home depot or other home construction store.

- Headbands. You'll definitely want good, sturdy, preferably covered in leather or some other none smooth material, headbands. The girls pick up a ton of them and cache them away every time they find some that are usable. Not all headbands are equal and you'll want to splurge a bit to get the good ones for this. After all, this is what is going to keep this thing on your head, a bad headband will make for a difficult convention. The girls also swear by having one or two soft, stretchy headbands to go over it and stabilize the whole ensemble.

Most of these things you can pick up at a Michaels, or even just a Dollar store on the cheap.

Step 2: Essentially Everything Else

I feel like these steps are fairly irrelevant but, lets move along shall we?

Generally you'll want to start by painting the Styrofoam red, I would recommend using acrylic paints, as they won't melt the Styrofoam underneath. I don't care how many moogle balls you're making, under NO circumstances do you ever want to spray paint Styrofoam. If it's paint, and it comes out of a aerosol container, it will melt the foam. I feel like most of your probably already know this, but it's worth a shout out regardless. Acrylic works best for me because I'm a sensitive ninny and hate the feeling of dried paint. Acrylic is nice and smooth.

I named this one Gertrude McFuzz

Generally you'll want the paint to be roughly the same colour as the feathers, but this is really just a measure to cover your bases (literally, cover your base...*rimshot*)

After that, just start shoving in feathers.

Seriously. That's it.

You don't even need to glue them in, just shove and go. The joy of working with a Styrofoam base is that you can generally just stick things in and they'll stay there. You'll want to be a little gentle about how you put them in, so that you don't break the Styrofoam or make a giant hole, but for the most part just putting the stem of the feather in about a half inch or so (deep enough that it feels stable) will keep the majority of your feathers attached. Granted, there's always going to be a bit of "molting" it's pretty non-severe, and you won't be leaving a trail of feathers in your wake, baring some sort of horrible wind.

Step 3: Literally Everything Else

Ignore the angry dog and look at the wire!

Alright, we have a ball. Now (and hopefully you're not making this as you read this the first time) leave a small hole in your feathers, I tend to be overly cautious and leave a hole about the size of a wineglass opening or so, but a whole big enough that you're not going to be worried about getting glue all over your feathers. Now grab a handful of those thick wires. I think my Pompom has three or four wires but I've seen them made with 5 or so. Take enough that you feel like they're going to be nice and sturdy, Ours are long enough that we can make them go around the headband and up into the Styrofoam ball with both raw ends, which is ideal for attaching them, but you'll have to work with what you have. Because ours can double back, I tend to take half as many as I think I'll need, typically two or three.

Now, braid them together. It doesn't need to be a nice, your-grandmother-did-your-hair-for-the-piano-recital braid, but just quick and dirty. Yes, people are going to see this part of the costume, but believe me, it's going to be overshadowed by the giant feathery ball-of-death.

Once the wires are all braided, and any uneven ends are clipped away, loop the middle (or where ever you feel is long enough). I tend to find that a wig maker's look around the stiff headband works best but experiment see what works for you. If you can't loop it, wrap it around the headband and make sure it's on there securely. I've never had to glue it on if I can wind the wire tight enough. Do be aware! Be careful when handling thick wire, I've been cut enough times to know that the ends are sharp. Make sure that if you're winding the ends of the wire around the headband, to leave the ends a little space to wind them back into the main stem so they aren't anywhere near your scalp.

Finally, take the long end of the wire, once you're sure it's long enough and well attached to the headband, and dig them nice and deeply into the Styrofoam. You'll want to get them almost as far as you can without creating a big gigantic concave hole. I'd say at least halfway into the foam. After it's firmly in there, seal the hole with hot glue, and build a nice solid hot-glue-barrier around the wire's stem to keep it from moving around in the Styrofoam.

After the wire is very firmly attached, and bent to a nice s-curve for maximum height and bouncability, fill in the remaining hole with feathers until the pompom is sufficiently fluffy!

Final Steps: Attaching and wearing!

 

See? That wasn't so hard. Making Pompoms is one of my favorite chores since it's simple, straight-forward and a great relaxer after the hurly-burly of last minute costume details.

 

There are many ways to modify a pompom, just as there are many different ways to dress as a moogle, depending on if you want to be a classic moogle, or a whole moogle society like we did back in 2010. You don't just have to wear it on a headband either! For my Wankstamoogle, I put the stiff headband inside a hat (the headband still was used as a base purely for the sake of stability). Not only was this totally effective, easy to wear and easy to take off for panels, but I think we can all agree it was extremely stylish.

For the basic headband though, I would, as discussed earlier, use a soft, stretchy headband over the stiff one to help maintain head-stability, (remember though folks, put the soft headband around your neck before putting on the moogle ball to save yourself a struggle) you can use this soft headband to attach your ears.

After that it's all downhill! Experience suggests that you find something soft (I use a small wad of cotton) to put between your scalp and where the wire wraps around the headband. I've never had any problems with headaches or irritation caused by this, but Cassi strongly recommends having ibuprofen on hand for just this reason, (though I would recommend ibuprofen as a standard part of any Con-goers kit).

The Moogle Pompom is a standard costume accessory around here, (wherever that is), and I highly recommend "Moogle" as a great basic costume for anyone looking to just go to a con, have a good time, and/or for those easily lost in a crowd. Also, be wary of low hanging ceilings

Moogle away!





Emerald City Comicon 2012 Con Report

Whoo! It's that time of year again! ECCC '12 was a great success in a lot of ways, though I do have to admit I was exhausted by the end of it. I'm usually the one who's ready and raring for a whole 'nother three or four days extra, but by the end of comicon I was really ready for some sleep-time. Part of that may have to do with last minute work and being so busy but I'm gonna blame it all on these puppies.

Holy God what was I thinking???

There are a few reasons why I thought it was acceptable to wear heels to Comicon. Firstly, there's a lot less walking and a lot more panel-sitting at ECCC, versus anime cons. The day prior I had done almost nothing but sit, of course I had bound my boobs down and sitting was tortuously painful on my ribs; "No worries" I thought, tomorrow this will be so blissful. Of course, the day I wore this costume was the day that I decided it was a bright idea to stand in a line for three hours. Luckily comicon's law regarding the wearing of shoes is far more lax than other conventions I've been to in the past, and I spent most of that line standing around in my muppet socks (which, weirdly got the most compliments out of anything I did that weekend. I think this might be a tad depressing).

SO. Comicon this year was great. There were great guests (most of whose panels I missed) and we were accompanied by Chase and Cassi, which was fun. Tobi and I were extremely busy and I was forced to break my cardinal costuming rule of not repeating costumes at the same convention, particularly two years in a row. It was still a great time though. The new costume that we debuted were very very fun, and, perhaps most notably, Wil Wheaton signed our stuffed rabbit.

Friday

Nothing much was scheduled for Friday this year. There were no celebrity guest panels, or anything we were real desperate to see. Nobody was really dressed up and attendance was pretty low. Con was only open for a couple of hours, but Cassi and Chase were excited to experience their first Comicon and had everything scheduled to the nines.

We all went as Princess peaches, Toad duo, and Moogle. Since they were all slightly interpretive I choose to believe that it's "Nintendo Mascot's go to High School".

Cassi was the cute girl that you find in the library

Chase was the pretty girl

Tobi and I were....well...we need no explanation.

TOAD. The princess is not in your castle.

These costumes have all been discussed before on this blog and aren't really new. We wore them to Kumoricon '10 I believe and they were fun. We all got a fair amount of attention, mostly due to Tobi's huge head. The best response was definitely from this one guy, who came running up, asked us to pose and snapped a picture. I had been excusing myself from some pictures, since I was a different universe, but I hopped in on this one, just for fun.
Me (grinning at Tobi): I photobombed.
Guy (very excited): AWESOME! I work for Nintendo, they're gonna love this at the office.
Me: ...
Me: Whoops. I really did photobomb...

I can't help but imagine the great expressions back the Nintendo office.
"Wow, these are great!"
"What a minute..."
"DAMN YOU SQUARE ENIX"

After we farted around for a while, we went into a Stand-up Nerd Comedy panel that was great. The first comic was hilarious, but I'm gonna put money down that the best part was the movie that was playing when we were let into the panel room. ECCC was the proud premiere of Scy-fy's "Seattle Storm" movie, which was playing when we were let into the panel room half an hour early. The movie was supposed to be emotional and thrilling, but the whole piece was so cliche (Tornadoes attack the city, actors fail to realize there are green screen special effects going on behind them, and the scientist who can save the world has a German accent) and the timing so unintentionally hilarious, that the crowd was roaring with laughter. It was fantastic.

The best part of the whole night though was the voice actor's panel. Various famous voice actors such as Tara strong of My Little Ponies, and Teen Titans; Maurice LeMarche and Rob Paulson of Pinky and the Brain; and so on; doing various famous movie scenes as their characters. It was fantastically hilarious and very cool to get to see the voice actors actually "doing" the voices. I'm a terrible voice actor, though I'd like to learn, and it was very cool to watch professionals at work.

Weirdly enough, even though this was the shortest day, it was probably the longest we stayed out, because we were all still awake. We had to park in some odd parking area, due to the garages being full, but it afforded some cool photo opportunities.

 Saturday

Saturday, again, regarded as the "Big Day" of conventions, was, well, it was insane. The convention sold out capacity and was, consequently, absolutely packed to the rafters with nerds. Seriously.
The problem with this was that, Emerald City Comicon, a normally quiet and relaxed convention, was not prepared for such madness and there was gridlock in all regions normally reserved for picture taking.

Only Spidy was given leeway, but then...wouldn't you?

No merch for you Mummy...

Tobi and I revisited our Empty Children costumes from last year, which was good fun, though not as gratifying as no large men cried at the sight of us. Though we did inadvertently chase a group of panicked teenage girls through the very crowded dealers hall.One of the only downsides was that the intricate wax hand wounds I made that morning fell apart before the day had hardly even started. But they actually came across pretty good in pictures regardless, so, hey, live and learn. For the most part I think the cheap costume wax, which I used last minute out of my make up box, was too soft and I needed to finish it with some latex to hold it on, but I ran out of time. The next time I do these guys, I'd like to get some nice wounds that will hold up to the constant motion of hand movements without leaving a trail of gore on the convention floor.

It was all still great fun though. We were followed almost continuously by a chorus of "mummy"s as we passed by groups of nerds. We also were hounded by several groups of (mostly girl) whovians for pictures.

Hey wait a minute there....

The most important thing though was that there were hundreds of awesome costumes all over the place and more panels and celebrity talks to go to than I could shake a stick at. We attended voice acting panels, George Takei, and Wil Wheaton to name a few and we spotted power rangers, weeping angels and, of course, the obligatory:

Adam WEEEEESSSTTTT

Empty children are always fun costumes to wear, easy to put on, and most of all, typically comfortable. I ran into problems this year though in that I decided to bind. I've bound before (binding being the act of flattening one's boobs with binder shirts, or, my preferred method, ace bandages), and I've gotten rather good at it. I got my chest flat, decide being a rather well endowed lady, and for most of the day I was actually pretty comfortable. It's a real art to get boobs bound flat without inhibiting your ability to breath. However this time, for some reason, the strain on my ribs made my back extremely sore. I had trouble sitting for long periods, which spelled trouble for all the panels we were planning to attend. Luckily I discovered that I could stand sitting so long as my arms were spread out; so I employed the yawn-and-stretch method and managed to keep my boobs flat without snapping a vertebra. But, man oh man, I must say, there is nothing like tearing off those ace bandages at the end of a long day.
BOOBS BE FREEEEE!!!

Sunday

Sunday was "Harvey Day" for us. Harvey, for those of you who don't read my my other blog; Tobi and I have a very special stuffed rabbit named Harvey, who travels with us whenever we go any place interesting or worth noting. This year we decided it was time to take Harvey to ECCC. However, low on time, and at a loss for costumes; Tobi came up with a great plan. Harvey, already appropriately named, would take on the role of Two-Face whom I had played in previous convention appearances, and Tobi and I would play his Sugar and Spice (a la Batman Forever).

Making Harvey's costume was great fun. I did it in much the same way that I made my own, and (obviously) with mostly the same styling. The orange shirt fabric was different from the stuff I used, which I had specially dyed and I was out of; but I had just enough of the other two materials, and managed to pick up some really cool orange tiger stripe at Walmart of all places.

fear me.

Luckily Harvey is roughly the size of an average infant, so I got some nice suit clothes from the value village and built the Big Bad Harv' half off of generalized approximations of the fabric. Likewise, with his facial covering I used his face to make a pattern (similarly to how I made the cthulu plush) and made a simple face shape that I could lightly stitch on without damaging Harvey's stunningly good looks. The fabric for his face was probably the hardest part, as for some reason (I can't imagine why) purple fur isn't a popular fabric in most shops. However, Walmart to the rescue again! Walmart was selling a variety of horrible dorm accessories in a variety of "oh-god-my-eyes" colour; including a bright purple bathmat. Cheaply made, the bathmat rubberize bottom was easy to tear off and, win! Purple fur fabric acquired.

Tobi opted to dress up as Sugar, the 'good' side of two-faces floozy minions. I got to be Spice. Tobi utilized Cassi's old moogle dress plus some feathers and a literal butt-ton of glitter and made a very beautiful, and classy Sugar to sit by Harvey's side. I, as spice, picked up an old jail-bait style dress, along with a red frilly shirt I had discarded from my original Two-face design and a corset that we re-purposed, to make a pretty fun Spice costume. It was very, very fun. We weren't super recognizable, but we got photographed several times even without people knowing who we were, and when they did...oh man, there was some excitement.

Two-face and Big Bad Bunny; we asked for his picture before he had the chance to realize what we were, but then we handed him the bunny and he had to run off and show his girlfriend. Far too adorable.

Of course the problem this day was that we all, all of us decided that heels were a good idea; despite knowledge that heels and conventions don't make good bedfellows. I was bright enough to bring a nice pair of flats that I switched into partway through the day when my feet just couldn't take any more.

The irony of this was that today was the day when I would be doing the most standing. Tobi and I opted to try and get Harvey signed by Wil Wheaton, who, graciously, doesn't charge for signatures. However, everyone had this same idea, and the line was unbelievably crowded. We waited for some 3 hours before being some of the last people to make it all the way through. We both ended up taking off our heels and enjoyed the lax shoe rules present at ECCC.

Totally worth it.

Ultimately, these costumes where excellent fun, and I think they looked great. Even if they did get glitter all over my house, (it's still there), and even if they were mostly last minute and even a tad stressful at moments. I always appreciate seeing a good costume come together and that will always outweigh any stress that may or may not going into making them. Sometimes it's the last minute details that really bring a piece together. The jail bait dress I wore had the tendency to climb skyward, so I added in the side frill, and some poof on the sleeves to keep the outfit more comfortable; I added the long black sleeve to keep the cuff from biting into my arms, and frilly underpants to retain some dignity, and those were some of my favorite details. I have a feeling these costumes will come back in the future; they were just too fun.

LESSONS?

1. Always, always bring backups if you think some part of a costume is going to bug you. Thinking ahead and bringing flats saved my day on Sunday when my heels became unbearable. I could always change back into the heels for pictures.

2. Take advantage of the things Conventions offer you; if someone you really like is offering free signatures, go for it! Or don't. Conventions are supposed to be fun! There should never be anything you have to do or have to see. If the line looks unbelievable, try for it next year.

3. Always do things early if you know you want them. Don't wait for the last day when everyone is going to decide they want a signature or a piece of merchandise, or a souvenir of some kind. Most people wait until the last day to get stuff, and it can make the dealers hall and the signature/picture room unbearable. If you do wait to the last day, make sure you know exactly what you want and where it is. The crowds can be stifling and it's a lot better than trying to browse among the herd.

4. I don't have a lot of fun repeating costumes, they don't get the same reception, and they aren't as exciting for me. But sometimes circumstances necessitate that you repeat. However, I learned, that I really don't enjoy it much at all. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy Con, but costumes are very important to me. I'll never begrudge others who want to repeat, but I will always continue to try and get some new stuff out there. It's how I roll.

5. Accessories are everything.
6. Sometimes, particularly at Comic conventions more than Anime; people will give you cards when they take your picture and urge you to visit their site for the image. Digging through all the pictures can actually be really fun, but it's a great idea to write what costume the card is connected to so you know which of your costumes you are looking for when you visit the site.

7. Next year will be better!

...

8. BOOBS BE FREE


Extra feature
Winner of the 2012 Best Costume Award for this nonsense blog goes to...

The Extremely Dispassionate Borg Cube!

He's 3-dimensional! He lights up! He's extremely dispassionate! He has no arms!
HE'S THE BORG

The Project Wall

So I've decided to take the next few months (or longer, as the case may turn out to be) to really work on fleshing out my portfolio and learning some new costuming skills. So I've picked a variety of projects I've wanted to do that will hopefully stretch my limits! I'm not gonna put a deadline on any of these, or pick a convention to show them at, because more than likely they'll get repeatedly interupted by other ongoing and more pressing projects I have running, but the goal is to be consistantly working. Anywho, here's all the stuff I have lined up!

Cinderella Girl Genius - Both Cinderella Agatha and the Ugly Step-'Sisters'. Hopefully also the Fairy-GodZetha, which I've wanted to do for sometime. I'm probably, oh 9% done on this one, since I have most of the fabric and the absurdly huge hoopskirt. I've been talking about this one for a while but it's happening!

Tardis Uniform and a complimenting Dalek Dress. - I might try and cram these in before ECCC but it's unlikely they'll both get done. But I'm gonna try. I'm abou 5% on these guys. I've got a really good idea of what I'm doing and a little bit of fabric. I got (hopefully) enough fabric for the Tardis Coat (The bolt was a little short and then I got overcharged for it! Curses!) and a literal butt-ton of copper organdy. It was super cheap and the lady talked me into buying the entire bold. I have enough copper organdy to cover my floor several times over and roll around it...not that I would do that...it's very staticy material...(nobody touch me for a few hours, kay?).

Chaotica and Arachnia:Queen of the Spider People - Cassi, this one's for you. Also I want to try my hand at the bulky Arachnia collar. I plan to both of these and Satan's Robot, which would be a bit of an adventure in armour/bulky costuming. I've only really just got the idea and no progress on this one. I've scoured the fabric shops for days for something resembling their really unique costume fabrics (Seriously, Arachnia is wearing like, a beaded weave? What??? Points to me for picking a project requiring me to hand bead a whole dress -__-) and I have nothing to show for it. But at least I have an idea for how to do the rest. I really want to stick to the monochrome, black and white feel (even so far as to do the face paint in monochrome), which makes the fabric hunt even harder. It needs to be strictly shades of grey, which is harder then one might think!!!

Wampa and Tauntaun - These will be interpretive, like the Dalek and Tardis, and I'd like to have them for ECCC if I can. They'll be sort of chibi'd cute versions, since It's me and Tobi wearing them. The Tauntaun is Tobi's and I'll help her as much (or little) as she wants me to, but I'm enjoying thinking about how to build her yet another prosthetic butt.

Anyway, thats the list as it stands. I'll try and update occasionally.

Oh Also...this.

Nole the Christmas Walrus!

Cthulu Plushie: Quick and Dirty Tutorial

Ah, the post-Christmas post. This'll be a short one, but I made a little Cthulhu plushie for a present and I thought I would do a quick rundown of how I made him. He's arguably one of the cuter things I've done in recent years.

I got the idea to make him from several sources. Firstly, the collective love of Cthulhus, and Michaele's style, and also the fact that I had just enough left over fabric from the Riddler Pajama's to pull together a plushie.

First I had to make the pattern, which is not something that I have done much of. For the most part the pattern was free handed, but I used Jamie, the GasMask Bear as size referance since he was about the size, and pot-belliedness that I was looking for.

I didn't have a whole ton of fabric, so I didn't give myself a ton of seam-space, particularly on the tenticals because they were a little dicy to begin with. This was a bit of a mystake. The Ultra-cuddle fabric I was using is extremely finnicky, and needs a decent seem for the stitch to hold at all. Most of the tenticals ended up needing hand stitching. Also, Pins are just about worthless, the fabric is slipper and they tend to either get lost or slip right out.

This is the prechanged head. Ideally stuffed animals should have more character in front, than in back. Thus having a spherical head is no good. Typically the back of the head should be flat, so the front can 'pooch'. But I, being inexperienced, wanted to make it spherical, and stuff it so I could judge how much I wanted to cut out of the back, instead of patterning it that way. I stuffed it, figured out the back, unstuffed and put a seam in the back, to pouch out the front. The trick is that you have to get it right the first time though, or this fabric will just fall apart when you try to rip the seams.

The body was pretty straight forward, but it took a little trying to get the angle I wanted on the head. In the end I handstitched the head on with a plus sign shaped seam. first I did a short front-to-back stitch, securing the head to the neck, and closing the body. Then I stitched slightly side to side under the tenticals to keep his head positioned just the way I wanted.

 The Cthulhu did go through a small rebellious phase, like all young ones do.
Original I was gonna give him little stubbly limbs, but there were little stumps where I planned to attach the legs and those were adorable enough that I decided to keep him as just a torso. I think he was cuter for it.

D'awww, isn't he adorable? I was very happy with how he came out. The eyes were a lucky find, I had two little black shoe buttons that were perfect. I dimpled them into his head by stitching them tightly and then looping a thich thread from one eye to another inside of his head. The wings were a last minute touch and light stuffed with wire framing in the top section.

Now you can rule the underworld and be adorable.