Shinju's Workshop

I wanted to write about HoldfenyCon from the moment I stepped out the convention center, but I felt so tired that I feared no one would understand what I write.

So now, with a rather fresh mind I am trying to tell the world how HoldfenyCon was for me.

I will skip the adventures we had to go through to get to Budapest (we must always have some sort of adventures, and not the pleasant kind) and go straight to the con.

When the convention started I was surprised to see chairs for a small  orchestra on the stage. And, indeed, a small orchestra came and played for us. Unfortunately I was rather busy when that happened, but my boyfriend (Gabi) managed to film them a bit, while they were playing some songs from Star Wars.

I was really looking forward to the cosplay competition, although my costume was no-win material.I knew I’d get to see interesting cosplay costumes and I was looking forward to meeting some cosplayers I have befriended at Mondocon and afterwards.

I was very proud of how my shoes turned out, but I managed to ruin them before the competition by walking among the sharp plastic boxes I had around my table/booth. I managed somehow to save them in the last moment, but I will need to fix them in order to wear them again.

My boyfriend managed to film some of the performances (unfortunately not all of them, because he didn’t have much space on the memory card), and I will post them in another article.

We didn’t take too many photos, though, and I am really frustrated about it, but apparently our 8GB memory card in the camera was not enough for films and photos… We DID manage though to take a few photos of the Yoko Nakajima cosplay, so that I can compare them to the old ones in 2008.

this is the 2008 cosplay

And the Holdfeny Con cosplay (click on the photos to view them larger):

First of all, this time my shoes were complete and similar to the ones in the anime, which made me really happy. I changed the green collar (I made it more comfortable to wear), I sewed it to the main “vest”. I took out the sleeves (both the grey ones and the frilled ones) and made a separate “kimono” to put them on. I cut the lower part of  the dark grey “vest” and made out of it a separate part to put on top of the purple skirt.

I totally remade the striped circles under the belt, I changed the velcro tape on the belt because I lost weight in the last 2 months and apparently I am thinner now than I was in 2008. I totally remade the purple belt, which was way too big and uncomfortable. It used to be put together with velcro tape, but I finally decided on a corset-like system, with thread and holes to make it less thick. I also remade the edges of the frilled sleeves and skirt. As I said in a previous post about my old cosplay, I am happy I have a serger to help me with my work! And I also did a big petticoat underneath the two skirts to keep my frilled skirt fluffy, because it’s very heavy (around 4 kg). I repainted a bit the crown and the earings and I changed the gemstone on the crown (actually it used to be a green piece of paper I cut from a magazine). I bought a gemstone, I used the dremel tool to give it the needed shape and glued it there. I will post a more detailed article about it in the next few days. I also used superglue to stiffen the shape of the knot underneath the green and white beads tied to the dress.

I was also happy to meet one of my favourite characters, the 10th Doctor from Doctor Who, and even got to use one of his Sonic Screwdrivers! Yey!

After working again so much, going to a convention felt genuinely like a holiday. I was happy to see people I wanted to meet and talk to them about cosplay plans and techniques. There were lots of people who recognized me and I was a bit surprised, but sometimes I was frustrated that the language barrier stopped us from communicating more. There were people who couldn’t speak English and since I can’t speak Hungarian, we would just look at each other, wanting to speak, but not being able to.

I went to see how the guys from the Star Wars team showed everybody how they made their storm trooper armors and I appreciated the fact that they were patient enough to explain to me in English how things are done. I was really interested in this because this is how I want to make my Athena armor!

I appreciate a lot the help we got from the organising team who gave us volunteers to translate for us at the table. That helped a lot and made things a lot easier for us! Although there were far fewer people than I expected to see, I really had a good time and went to sleep with a smile on my face.

It was interesting to see for sale things I haven’t seen before, like candy  – lots of shapes and sizes!, steam punk accessories, polymer clay sweet lolita accessories (which reminded me of the time when I used to play with polymer clay) or some very unusual jewelry. I drooled over the miniatures/figures that were exhibited right in the middle of the hall and wanted the Japanese-pattern umbrellas on the first floor.

Oh, let me not forget the 2 statues (Halo on the ground floor and a very cute Alien on the first floor). I only took a photo of the second one, unfortunately, but we have the Halo statue filmed:

Towards the end of the day they held the Soul Calibur 4 competiton on stage and even Darth Vader came to fight and pleased us with a dance at the end!

I liked the fact that towards the end the atmosphere was really friendly, they put some music, people would go up the stage and dance together, there was a lot of para-para involved and everybody seemed to be having a good time.

They announced the winners to all the competitions at the end of the day, so people gathered to see it and they even had the chances to win something (there was a raffle with gifts for the public).

And although I enjoyed myself so much in the first day, the second day was my favourite! No more thick costumes and complicated hair-dues, the weather was cooler and the pressure was lower. I can’t say I cosplayed on the second day, although I was wearing part of a cosplay costume (Saya from Blood C). Consequently, nobody recognized me and I didn’t even want them to.

I just wanted to spend time doing the things I enjoyed. I even had a greater time with the Star Wars guys, I joined the dark side, because Darth Vader was such a sweetie (and no, he had no cookies)

I just joined the dark side!

and Boba Fett and I chased each other with the cameras around the convention.

Boba Fett escaped in an elevator!

Oh, yes, and Gabi got pawned badly by Vader

Was he aiming for some soft parts?

and you’re down!

We were even surprised to see Rei (who delighted us the day before dancing in the storm trooper costume) play the harmonica on stage (he even played the Star Wars theme song, but we failed to film it)

The performance cosplay competition was fun, although I didn’t understand much, since it was in Hungarian, but even the language barrier didn’t stop me from seeing the hilarious parts in the skits.

Anyway,more opinions on the competition will be found in the post especially dedicated entirely to cosplay.