It's been about 5 1/2 months since 2022 FanX and around January, I started feeling the itch to get working on cosplay stuff again. I don't know. I thrive on that surge of focus and drive I get while working on a project. My brain needs the challenge of putting bits and pieces together until they grow into a real-life version of a familiar character. I need to try the new techniques I've picked up through research and experience and improve my skills. Most of all, my hands need to make things. And as I hope to someday turn my love of creating and cosplay into a career, I need the practice.
I've been on one of my How To Train Your Dragon streaks lately. They're pretty common, and honestly, I don't think I'll ever get sick of HTTYD--it's my favorite--but sometimes I'm more into it than others. This is one of those times and I very much need to update and/or rebuild most of my Astrid cosplays so I can get back to doing events. I've started remaking Astrid 2 and upgrading Astrid 3 and they're going well so far (I'll post more about them later), but I've really been looking forward to Astrid's dragon armor version 3.0.
It's veeeeery early spring, and this year we seem to be stuck in some kind of more-enthusiastic-than-usual eternal Winter, so I can't do as much as I want right now foam-wise. Utah very much needs the water from this year's snowpack, but I wish it would warm up and dry out a bit so I can Dremel and prime outside. In the meantime, I've been busy with wigs and patterning basic pieces using the armor I made last summer. I'm not sure if I'll reuse parts of it or just remake the whole thing yet, but I'm leaning towards a total remake.
While I feel like the armor I made for the competition was good, it was definitely lacking in some areas. It was rushed near the end and came out not quite as put-together as I'd have liked and it showed. Admittedly, the morning of the competition was the first time I'd put on the full costume, which was when I realized how badly it fit and exactly what not to do to keep it from falling apart with every move. I was stressed and tired from the crunch, I didn't get to finish some of the details I wanted, and since I'd spent all my time and energy on the costume itself I hadn't even thought about what I would do for the onstage round. In short, I was not prepared. But now that I know what I need to work on and (mostly) how to do it, I aim to fix all that.
(This is me, but I don't know who took the pic, I just found it.)
And when I say "fix", I mean I'm taking this thing to the next level. I plan to enter again this year, and if I make it in, I've decided that I'm gonna kick some serious trash this time around, if not for the sake of the contest, than to prove to myself that I can. I'll be bumping up a category from Novice to Intermediate, which means much stiffer competition and tougher judging. If you've ever seen or been in the Salt Lake FanX competitions, you've seen just how cutthroat it can be. That's why I'm starting early, getting a jump on it so I'm not scrambling to finish it the morning of the competition. That was just...no. I don't want to do that again. It wasn't fun and it wasn't exactly healthy either considering I ended up messing up my wrist pretty badly. (Don't worry, it's completely healed now.) I want to take my time, get all the details, have fun with it and avoid the panicked last-second crunch, make sure everything is the best it can be and go into it knowing it's my best possible work. I feel like I did fairly well last year, even if it was a bit sloppy, and I'm proud of myself for pushing through despite how terrified and unprepared I was, but I'm really excited about the future of this cosplay and confident that I can and absolutely will do better.
