"I don't wanna be a real boy"

The end of the year is closing in with rabid speed, so I thought it would be good to look back in time and see what has been done. However, my pendulum faced a critical malfunction and tossed me all the way back to the year 2007 and our second pair cosplay.
The first armour, or more likely body, we ever made, belonged to a redheaded puppet master, whose peculiar frame has raised many questions. My new mission was to retrieve the armor from the depths of a wardrobe and make a short briefing about it, answering the scattered questions.

Where it all began

Three years ago I suggested to Yoki that we should make an account on Youtube. About cosplay, I stated and we started to think a fitting name for us. We are slightly more cautious with our costumes now, but back then were bit clumsy for time to time. That gave birth to the first part of the channel’s name.

We wanted to have an opening video, but because it was winter we couldn’t have a proper photosession. Our first video was a slideshow and consisted material from the previous summer in form of casual Sasori and Deidara. The next spring we made our first video. It literally took hours to film; we didn’t have any particular plan, we only knew how it should end. But we had fun time wandering around Aulanko’s beautiful park confusing people with uniforms and Finnfoam swords. Nowadays we make shoot scripts and pretty much stick to them. And more importantly we demand from ourselves to have an idea worth executing.

What originally got me to ask Yoki about this whole Youtube-thing? I had bumped to other groups who made cosplay videos; Fighting Dreamers Pro, Koi Cosplay and one group, who had made video about Axel and Roxas. I have played Kingdom Hearts once or twice, but next to that I really don’t have knowledge of the games or characters aside from fanart and Wikipedia, but still the Axel-Roxas one had the biggest influence on me.

Now after nearly twenty different videos and handful of new ideas we are quite sure of what we are doing. Comedy seems to be our thing, even if we have few “serious” plans for upcoming summertime.

Oh yeah, last Friday Yoki uploaded some silliness to celebrate our account’s third anniversary!

Doom and sparkles!

Years ago summer was very dry and two young women decided to do something that changed their lives completely. Their first cosplay together, featured in Yoki transmission - The kaksi

How we afford cosplay

We have been cosplaying as a duo from 2006. At the beginning we tried to keep cost of the costumes minimum. Because of that, we do not look at the photos of our first cosplay willingly. We look at them if we would like to have a good laugh. But to put it short, we had horrible wigs, cheap fabrics and well… the make-up collection wasn’t something we could be proud of. We even tried to make Yoki’s eyebrows white with potato flour! And the second round with Hitsugaya's eyebrows wasn’t that much better, even if we used white eyeliner. Yoki looked like Santa Claus without a beard in photos! Yoki promised to take our first cosplay as the next topic on her transmission videos on Youtube... which makes me rather scared. If interested in the horrorful first time, keep an eye on Yoki transmissions!

Now we do pay attention to all the things we lacked with out first cosplay. Of course we try to make wise purchases, hunt for discounts and pay attention how much we can spend. Quality is usually expensive, but generally well worth it. I also try to sew our costumes so that there isn’t “something like that” solutions in structures. This hasn’t yet affected to us affording cosplay, but we might someday sell our old costumes and I wouldn’t ask money from them if I didn’t know that they are worth it.

Yoki is a university student and I’m working in clothing industry. Because Yoki obviously has smaller income, I put bit more into cosplay from my own pocket. But not everything, because we have afforded almost half of our costumes with bottle money! I must admit that we have gotten bit lazy with picking up bottles these days, but in the beginning of our cosplay career we did costumes purely on bottle deposits. Now we have about 70 euros left from last summer to be used in the current projects.

To feel like I’m not using only my paychecks on cosplay, I take commissions every now and then. I’ve done normal clothes next to ball gowns and things that you can’t find from stores, like a custom cow bathrobe. Currently I’m making an outfit for “feminine Kakashi”. It’s going to be a masquerade costume for the celebration of last day in upper secondary school.

Then we have our parents. Usually they steal material or hotel bills secretly and pay them or offer some “lunch money” for conventions. They sometimes even come along to photoshoots to act as drivers or assistants. They usually have no idea what we are doing, but turning the camera to right direction or patting your shoulder when you are going berserk, is more than enought. Who wouldn’t love supporting folks?

Every year we try to make a plan for our costumes based on how much time and money they need. Last year we did only one duo, because we had Snowtrooper still in the making and our summer was full of other activities. Next year we are going to break a record; we have planned three duos. One of them is nearly finished. For Snowtroopers we have nearly purchased all we need. We only need to construct few components, put the whole set together and debute the bastards (warm feelings, no?) . For Luminara and Barriss we have also bought almost half of the fabrics already. I almost wanted to put up a party, when I realized that we only need to buy one wig! It’s a blessing money-wise.

When we plan our cosplays we also take in consideration the wigs, contact lenses and supplies we already have. It can bring down the cost significantly. One way for me to think that I use less money is to buy stuff in a whim, like glues, clays and tools. I always try to have all the basic stuff needed in some point of the costume making process in stock.

And sometimes to afford cosplay, it's wise not to think about how much money you have spent on it already.