If I told you that I finished my cosplay minutes before a Lyft picked us up to attend an Overwatch meetup, would you believe me? That in itself perfectly encapsulates my Anime Expo experience. Despite battling the heat, running on fumes, and eating overpriced chicken nuggets- this past weekend completely reinvigorated my love for cosplay.

While I'm still recovering from exhaustion and avoiding the con plague, I'll keep this recap relatively short and sweet. Scriptgiant and I stayed at a local Airbnb (which was interesting to say the least), and were able to attend all four long days of AX. While out Fallout 3 cosplays always generate a neat response, particularly the 'missing eye' white mesh contact effect, I was especially nervous to debut my newest cosplay, scrawny Australian Jamison Fawkes/Junkrat from Overwatch!

This was my first time embarking into the world of armor building, and making things perfect and wearable was certainly a learning experience. I can confidently say that I loved my costume, and I am even more excited to be able to continue building upon it and improving my skills as a cosplayer. This weekend, above all else, inspired me- that very special flame was reignited in me, and I felt excited to create again.

Photo: Martin Wong

The past year was especially rough for me, mainly dealing with the surprising quarter-life crisis. Creating web content like this little blog and making elaborate costumes- those are things that bring me such a pure joy, they push me to bring out some good out of any situation. Crafting allows me to release a creative energy so needed when times are tough, and I am so grateful that it's been able to bring smiles to people's faces, too.

Anime Expo, although you were extremely crowded, you yet again managed to provide that little spark sometimes needed to keep moving forward. I absolutely love cosplaying, and I hope that I can continue to do so indefinitely. Thank you to everyone that I met, you all really gave me the validation I sometimes need when debuting a new costume. I hope that you all had a great time- until next year!

Stay tuned for a Junkrat build write-up including materials used and how I created the peg leg, as well as the importance of understanding the magic of posing with props!

Photo: James Rulison

Photos: James Rulison

Photo: Zatzai

This year's Comikaze Expo was definitely one for the books. Like many other con-goers, I am especially exhausted from a fun and tiring weekend of taking pictures, meeting new friends, and geeking out with my fellow nerd-o's. Our line-up this year was:

Friday // Nick and Ellis, Left 4 Dead 2
Saturday // Manolo Sanchez and Maria Posada, The Book of Life

Not debuting a new cosplay certainly adds a noticeable amount of sleep to your con schedule, as we only added one modification to our cosplays this con. In honor of Dia de los Muertos overlapping with Comikaze, we decided a perfect addition to our Book of Life cosplays were sugar skull makeup and beautiful, marigold flower crowns (very fitting given the theme of the movie)! Showcasing our heritage while looking awesome? Perf. We chose marigolds because of their significance on the Day of the Dead, as their strong scent is thought to help guide our loved ones from the afterlife back home to their respective alters and family members.

I used the Mehron Paradise Paints palate to create a simple sugar skull look, and used a black eyeshadow to create contours throughout the face. Emphasizing depth is especially important, keeping in mind that cameras tend to flatten the plane of the face. Using a luminizing primer (to add additional depth and highlight) and baby powder as a translucent finishing powder also helped keep the makeup completely crease-free throughout the entirety of the day! The red and yellow eye-accents were chosen according to each of our character's color palettes, and then swapped to compliment each other. I really enjoyed how it made our costumes seem more like a complete pair.

In all, I think myself and scriptgiant were pleasantly surprised with the reactions we got from most of the con-goers! The Valve gathering was fun and dorky as usual, but I was especially grateful for the positive response we received for our Dia de los Muertos-inspired additions.

Photo: Ron Z Photography

Cosplays aside, the true highlight of this weekend was how our entire group of six people got trapped inside a parking garage.

I wish I was kidding, folks- but it's possible. Long story short- we come back from eating a wonderful meal at Manichi ramen and drinking Coco's milk tea and boba at around 11:30pm, find that the garage doors have been closed, and we proceeded to freak out. After the reality of the situation finally sunk in, I called a representative of Joe's Parking Garage in Little Tokyo, the rep (Lily) said that no one would be able to get out cars out, we called the police, they said they could do literally nothing (wow thanks for that). We then realized that one of the doors were open, so we ran inside, debated calling for Domino's pizza as we now had to wait until 6:30am for someone to open the garage doors, and then decided to take an Uber to the nearest Denny's.

The entire place reeked of urine, the paper-towel covered restroom had a mailbox for a trashcan, the sink was just completely broken as the faucet quite literally was not attached. We return to the table only to find out that a man one booth over proceeded to touch himself, to which I visibly saw one of my friends snap. We quickly left the restaurant, and spent the next two hours in a nearby hotel lobby until about 15 minutes before the garage was supposed to 'open',

Not only was the garage door on a timer and opened at exactly 6:30am, but we were unable to get past the gate that would only lift up with a valid ticket given by the attendant, who -of course- was not present. Just a complete lack of human sympathy here, people. We had to literally risk the lives of our new friends (all of which we had just spent a full 24 hours in half cosplay with) and get them to pile onto the censor, which lifted the gate, and allowed our cars to roar past and into sweet, sweet freedom. We had survived.

So, was Comikaze still and incredibly fun time? Of course it was! I had an awesome time and loved getting to wear some of my favorite cosplays and spending time with my beloved con friends. If we happened to run into one another, let me know in the comments section below! Stay tuned for another very belated Recap post!

Photo: DTJAAAM

Photo: Jae | Form of Therapy

First con of the year, Anime Los Angeles! New convention + new cosplay make for extreme intimidation levels.
To properly recap ALA, I must mention that fact that both of our cosplays were nowhere near done the night before. Thus, an all-nighter cosplay workshop was had, where cups of coffee were abundant as were countless sewing needle pricks. If you've ever cosplayed, you'll experience true self-hatred when attempting to finish a costume after months of procrastination. Why do we do this to ourselves?! Well...

We were cosplaying as Manolo Sanchez and Maria Posada from The Book of Life, and were initially drawn to the characters because for once, they were Mexican- just like us! The movie itself is fantastic, and I highly recommend it for it's cute storyline, beautiful animation, and festive portrayal of our culture. We even had the pleasure of meeting Sarah Marino, a character development artist for the movie (that we met at Anime Expo last summer), who later helped us with the finer details of our costumes.


Once we arrived in Los Angeles for a photoshoot in La Placita Olvera, we were immediately approached by the cutest, tiniest, chubbiest little Mexican children! In Spanish they exclaimed, "Mom, mom, it's Manolo!" and we turned around and were greeted with the happiest faces. All of the hours of stabbing myself with sewing needles, burning my flesh off with a hot glue gun, not getting any sleep the night before the con and being up for 48 hours straight. it’s all worth it if a chubby little nerd runs up to you.

The photoshoot went well, albeit it was a bit rushed since we (apparently) needed a permit and basically got kicked out. Around noon we decided to drive over to the convention, where we were immediately recognized. The fear of people not realizing who you're dressed up as is always scary. so having people not only know who were were, but also completely freak out when they saw us, was so validating. I had never been to a hotel-con before, but I really liked the closeness of it all- how people there were all in the same cosplay community, no one was judgey, and really just wanted to have a nice time with their friends. The artist's alley and dealer's rooms, although small, had your typical array of con-items (think buttons, prints, keychains, shirts, etc.), without the astronomical prices you'd find at Comic-Con.

Photo: Manny Llanura

After saying a sad goodbye to our one day at ALA, we grabbed some yummy ramen at Shin-Sen-Gumi and took the nicest stroll around rainy Little Tokyo at night. A few days later, we posted some photos onto tumblr were they accumulated ~20k+ notes (a huge shock for both of us), were posted by the director Jorge R. Guiterrez's tumblr, twitter, and facebook, the official Book of Life tumblr reblogged us, man it was just insane. I think we both felt so happy, surprised, and grateful by the response our dorky little costumes elicited.

This movie, and character, meant so much to me. For years, I had loathed being Mexican- all I ever heard in school were horrible stereotypes that made me want as little to do with my culture as possible. Then comes along an innocent little film that is 100% un-apologetically Mexican, that not only lets me know that it's okay to embrace your culture, but that I can and should be so, so proud of it. To me, that was the best part of this cosplay, as silly as it may sound. Maria is by far my most favorite cosplay, and I wear her with so much pride in my heart!

To view the rest of the photos, please visit my tumblr!