Felocity

Cosplay is a wonderful thing. It is meant to be shared, and so here are ALL the details about how I did my costume for Captain Kuro from One Piece. All the stitches, all the fabrications, and all the messy stuff I did to make his claws is in here. I've also included pictures which should make things a lot easier. I liked showing people how I made these claws last year at Anime Expo, and I'll enjoy sharing with you now how I did the improved version. If you want to use these pictures as reference and build your own claws, more power to you! See the little CC in the lower right though? The creative commons license means you are more than welcome to take this, repost it, etc, but you must attribute (a link to this mayhaps?) and release under similar terms. In other words: just share, damnit! That being said, let's get started.

The Kurotorial (as I liked to call it) has three major pieces. The claws, the outfit, and the Jango. While you may have no control over the last one, the first two you most certainly do. Kuro only looks cool with his 2-3 foot claws, so we are going to dedicate this segment to that topic. Eventually, I will also write up the fabric part, but that is truthfully the easier of the two. Before we get too far in though, I need to establish some ground rules for my cosplay: I don't sew, I can't sew, and any sewing is going to look fucking ugly and so I hide it as best I can. I call this "Structural Sewing" and anyone can do it. It revolves around the idea of using more thread than is ever going to be necessary. Yes, even I can do "Structural Sewing". The second thing is, I like super glue. Actually, I like glue period. I believe the right glue or epoxy can bond ANYTHING, and I have been proven right again and again. The third thing is, I like to buy as much pre-made stuff as possible, and modify from there. This directly relates to point 1 called I can't sew at all. This costume could never happen if I couldn't buy dowels, gloves, precut fake black fur trim, etc. Thankfully, cosplay encourages innovation. I like to abuse that. Just to recap, avoid sewing, love glue, pre-bought items. Good, let's start on part one, the blades.…

This blog lets me organize things so much better, so I can actually track my cosplay developments for my second revision of Kuro from the anime One Piece. The biggest task this time around is to redo the claws. The ones I had last year were adequate, but were not nearly the caliber I wanted them to be. The laminate didn't set right, there were a few bubbles, and the gloves were a task and a half all on their own. The undershirt wasn't quite right, but the shoes and coat were spot on. The main thing though were his claws.

I don't want dainty only foot long claws, as they lack the amazing effect my two and a half foot claws did. I could move them about seamlessly, and they were light enough that I could pose just like Kuro. This time, in the spirit of helping everyone do better cosplay (we all learn from each other) I am going to blog and post photos of the entire costume process. This way, when all is said and done, you can see a step by step journal for the creation of Kuro.…

The 4:30 am super cosplay (holy crap) extravaganza!

Done: wristbands pants glasses (cheated, just using own)…

Phew, today was long. On the plus side, I am making great progress on my AX costume and have most everything I need for my Fanime one too. Wait, what was that? Jakob doing costumes?

I had to change what costumes, and how to do them, but things are looking up. However, I have learned yet again 10 hard lessons about costumes.…