Otakon 2015 - Kuritare

Starting on Thursday, I was in panic on how to finish my armor for Bell (Danmachi). My original ideas were not working as I was measuring things from a two dimensional standpoint. Even Risa Chan Cosplay's help didn't work for me considering my glue was just too weak. I ended up making all the armor out of one piece each and molding them the best I could. The paint turned out very well though, and Lilitare's detail really brought out the accents in the armor.

I worked very hard on the props for this con. I am especially proud of Ryuu's staff (Danmachi). It turned out very smooth and beautiful, a great improvement from Amon's sword (Magi) from last year. The small swords also came out okay,  as well as the knife collection for Shokugeki no Soma.

My works in progress

I really only got about 7 hours of sleep in 3 nights...I don't know what was taking me so long but I realized I missed a lot of pieces on the bottom half of my Bell armor. I had to make a make shift sash to cover up my manly parts.

Enough about the work, lets talk about the con! It was tons of fun. We got the most attention we've ever received at any con. Being stopped so often and by so many people was surreal.

Photo by MEL Photography

Friday:
I was Takumi Aldini from Shokugeki No Soma. The assumption was that the ladies of Tare³ were going to participate in the Love Live Mermaid group, but seems there were complications so they wore Natsuiro instead. I did feel left out when they got their pictures taken and at the love live
photoshoot which I have always been a part of. However that didn't take away from the attention I got when Shifty Studios showed up. Him being Soma really got a lot of people's attention and he used my props in the pictures I was alongside him. We even got our photos taken by Risa Chan Cosplay. The only unfortunate part was that my wig was super late and didn't arrive on time. I had to turn my Alibaba wig into a Takumi wig which was extremely difficult because it was absolutely tiny on my massive head. In a lot of the pictures you can see my hair in the back :(. Lilitare also forgot a wig cap so I gave mine to her. Later that night we went to a party on the terrace which honestly not that much fun. We ended up leaving early to head back and work on cosplay.

Saturday:
I wore my Bell from Danmachi and it actually was a lot better than expected. I actually prefer this armor color compared to the very common white armor. I saw maybe 2 other Bells with the armor cosplay (Looked very similar, perhaps bought? I haven't been able to find it). We got stopped for pictures pretty often and the photographers would pile on one after another. We seperated from Lilitare and her boyfriend for a couple hours in the dealers room, but Rintare and I still got a great amount of pictures. The majority of the day was spent in the dealers room and getting our photos taken. The most exciting part about this cosplay was being filmed by Shifty Studios for the cosplay video! We also managed to get a cute photoshoot going with Shifty. At night we went to the bars. This was the first time that Rintare and I have entered a bar and needless to say it was pretty fun.

Sunday:
This day Tare³ wore The Devil Is a Part Timer again. Since last time we didn't get many good photos. The costume itself is very comfortable so it was a good one to end on. I say this each time but we got way more photos than we anticipated. When we stood behind a registration booth we were suddenly swarmed. Such an amazing feeling!

Shifty was gathering last minute footage for his video when one of his favorite cosplayers was in the vicinity, Yashafluff! She was being photographed and some people were talking to her but, she didn't seem all too busy. Shifty isn't normally shy but he turns extremely beta when around Yasha. He had met her previously this con and he was afraid she had already forgotten him. I thought he sounded absurd so I went up to her and essentially told her this story. He was pretty embarrassed especially when she called him out for wearing the same shirt twice. He got his shot, and quickly left before checking if it was exactly what he wanted, as to not waste her time. Hopefully I get more opportunities to beat the little baby out of Shifty.

Overall, this con was amazing. I'm glad I went, as I was considering not going due to funds. Much more enjoyable than last year. I'm excited to see all the pictures people took of us!

In the meantime, please enjoy this amazing video Shifty Studios put together!

Shifty Studio's Cosplay Showcase of Otakon 2015

My First Cosplay: Shiro (No Game No Life) - Rintare

As you may or may not know, in taretaretare, I am the one with the least cosplay experience! I only started cosplaying in 2014 at Otakon. I decided to cosplay Shiro from No Game No Life because I was watching the series and I really loved her and I thought her outfit would be simple enough to do. I asked my aunt to help me because she's a wonderful seamstress. As I'm learning more about sewing, I look back at my Shiro costume in awe because of how beautiful her work is *0* She made the whole thing! I really wanted to help, but I didn't really know anything....

Here I am! I think this was taken by Kuri in the hotel hallway.

A hall shot in better lighting

Here's the whole outfit on the hanger

So I'll walk you guys through her process!

The outfit is a simple dress underneath of a jacket. She used Simplicity 2072 to help her with the sailor collar! All the stripes you see are just different ribbons. The yellow scarf is two separate pieces of fabric that are attached at the shoulders. The small clasp (with the white button) holds the scarf together. I think this is supposed to be just a band?? but mine is attached to the jacket to help keep structure as well.

I got the wig from aliexpress and it was pretty cheap. It got really tangled really quickly...I had to throw it away after the con because it was too crazy. I didn't really style this wig because I didn't think I needed to, oh well!

I had a lot of fun with makeup! I had never done cosplay makeup before so I had quite the adventure figuring out how to cover my eyebrows.

This was a really special cosplay! So many people took pictures of me and it was really overwhelming for a first con. It really makes you feel on top of the world and it's probably why I decided I wanted to cosplay again and again.

I redid this cosplay again for Katsucon 2015 where I bought black loafers, made a crown (my first cosplay project!), and bought a beautiful new wig! I really want to talk about how I made the crown, so I'll get to that in another post!

Let me know if you have any questions about this cosplay or if you have any advice on what else I could talk about!

Until next time!

The Origin of taretaretare

So you may be wondering how taretaretare got together or how we came up with our name...Well this post is dedicated to the origin of taretaretare! (Let's just say ttt for short!)

Where do we begin? The best place to start would probably be Otakon 2014 where we all came together for the first time. Kuritare and Lilitare were friends from school. They planned to cosplay together for the first time at Otakon as Rin and Hanayo from Love Live! Kuritare and Rintare were childhood friends and thought Rintare would like to come to Otakon so he invited her along (for her first con!). Rintare went as Shiro from No Game No Life. During this con, we stayed in Lilitare's tiny nearby dorm and every morning was a hectic struggle to get ready! Lilitare and Rintare became fast friends, it was love at first sight (= 3=) / ♥

"This is where Lili sucked me into the Love Live trash life." -Rintare

After Otakon, we became great friends who had a lot to talk about with each other because of our common interests like anime/manga, videogames, and cosplaying. So later that year, we decided to go to Anime USA together. At this time, we weren't too serious about our cosplaying and just decided to go as Rin, Hanayo, and Maki in practice clothes. We had a lot of fun at this small con and were excited when people recognized us!

A potato quality picture of us with cute paws!

This brings us to the strange picture of chicken nuggets at the top! So, while we were at AUSA we did lots of fun stuff like play all the arcade games, sing karaoke, meet Steve Blum, and go to panels (our favorite was Dansu To Pansu!). We also went to the host club to see what that was all about... We were really hungry so we wanted to order some food, but everything was really expensive so we just ordered some french fries. Turns out these fries came with some godly dipping sauces, so we asked for extra sauces and smuggled them out to use them at McDonald's across the street where we could afford food.

After this con, we decided to stick together and cosplay together so that we would always have each other as support in our cosplay endeavors! Our name comes from a loose translation of "sauce" in Japanese, which is "tare"! Since there's three of us, we went with taretaretare, with each of us being a "sauce". This was the official beginning of taretaretare.