Sora - Rising Star

Sora Naegino:
Costume and styling by myself
Make up by ~warui-chan
Photo credit: @ [link]
Location: Royal Melbourne Showgrounds, Melbourne.
Won First Place in Madman National Cosplay Competition - Melbourne Round.

With the dates and contestents for Madman Nationals all sorted and fixed now, it's probably about time I put up a shot of my costume from prelims! D8 So here it is! What I was on about whenever I 'joked' about cosplaying Sora! I've always had a really intense love of circuses, and ever since discovereing Kuroshitsuji's circus arc, I've been on the hunt for other circus-based animangas, and that's where I found Kaleido Star and instantly fell in love with it. The rest is pretty much history!

Before going on a costume rant, I just want to give a big shout out and thank-you to the MelbNova crowd. I've often had a really bad case of stage fright when on stage by myself. But since seeing Lady Gaga in concert, I'd like to hope I've learnt a bit about performance, and am hopefully improving?

The 'variation' of this costume isn't exactly a true one, as much as a splicing of two very similar costumes. I had originally really wanted to do this version, but the downside was that it gave an incredibly limited view of the costume - and I tend to freak out about accuracy when I can't see what's going on. D8 So I called in the assistence of this version as it had incredibly similar design elements, and offered details for the other side, as well as the legs, of the costume. However, it also had wings which the first costume didn't. Though these later helped as stage dressing and a prop for my skit. Not to mention that after having made 3-4-ish pairs of wings for past costumes, I'd never made feathered wings before, so it was something really new and different to try!

The wings are based upon a wadded wire frame that was built up with extra wadding where extra thickness was needed, and then covered with white turkey flats. I really enjoyed the making and piecing together of the wings. It wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be, and was even strangely therapeutic! XD They were then finished with tufted bunches of dyed ostritch plumes and gold and white interfaced detailing as per the reference.

The main body suit is made up of three layers, and the main base was (luckily) mostly finished in between making three costumes for Japan and one for Mini!SydMania just a few weeks before the prelims. It was some hard core costuming! When back from Japan, it was straight into getting all of the details onto the suit. I experimented with a few methods, and of course the most time consuming one was the most effective option. After mapping out the shapes, patterns and locations of all of the gold detailing, I had to trace it off of the body suit, cut out corresponding pieces out of a gold sparkle dance fabric, hand sew down one side, stuff the shape, pin down the other side and hand sew it down. I never want to spend so much time hand sewing a costume ever again! D8 All up, it took 60+ hours. Also, all the gems on the costume were hand painted, and the smaller ones were attatched with sequins and seed beads for a bit of extra sparkle. The gems at the neck were probably the easiest, with just being cast out of tinted epoxy resin, and backed in foil so they reflected light.

Lastly, the wig was dyed using FW Ink...which I will never do the day before the con ever again. The first dye lot was far too weak and looked like a My Little Pony that'd been left in the rain. Cue mad dashes to craft stores before they close! But I'm very happy with how everything turned out in the end, and even happier to be representing Melbourne in Madman Nationals again.

Sora Naegino is from Kaleido Star which was created by Junichi Sato.