The Dance Central series is one of my favorites. Not only did it get me off my ass and get some exercise, but it helped inspire me to try new techniques in costume building and it even helped me get out of a writer’s block. With the news yesterday about Microsoft halting production on the Kinect, it made me look back on the series and my love for it and I figured I’d repost the second part of this set since I already posted the first!

A few months ago we posted the first part to this crazy little project. Last weekend at our aptly named Basement Con (the 6th BC!), our Emilia (Bria of White Hot Room) from the first round joined us and we put together outfits for three more Dance Central characters. Well, two more – since I had already done a Jaryn outfit for Katsucon. I put together another outfit for her while Nate put an outfit together for Oblio and Bria looked fabulous as Miss Aubrey. We were originally going to do Frenchy and Marcos for this part, but one of Marcos’ outfit pieces has gone missing, SO OBLIO AND JARYN IT IS!

Many thanks to Roger for taking these photos!

Parts of Nate’s Oblio outfit are going to be modified into parts of his Murder of Crows/Crew Look. Mainly the jacket and the crow’s foot necklace. The jeans he wore will also be the jeans he’ll use for the MoC costume when he gets it all finished! And you know no Oblio look is complete without some sort of nail polish, so Nate went with a couple of fingernails the mint color that Oblio had in the first Dance Central. The shirt, well, that just really seemed like a spacey Oblio sort of thing. We tried to find another space cat shirt, but none out there could match the magical feel of the first Oblio space cat shirt. As for Nate’s facescruff, we just rolled with it for Oblio, figuring he might be too busy meditating for a week to shave or something. Come on, YOU KNOW WE LOVE OBLIO. ;D

For Jaryn, I cut the collar off of a Lady Gaga t-shirt, put a black sequined vest over it and wore them with a pair of black leggings. The giant rock I had on my finger had a number of colors in it – pink, silver, purple, green, yellow, which is why I went with purple bangles and green makeup (there was also the pink in the Gaga shirt). The wig is the one I cut and wore with our DC3 Haute Blooded Glitterati costumes. The shoes were a thrift store find! And they are heels so like the last Jaryn outfit, this is not a dancing one either!

To see Bria’s post on this second bit of Fashion Central madness and more photos of her sassy and gorgeous Miss Aubrey, check it out over at White Hot Room!

The Dance Central series is one of my favorites. Not only did it get me off my ass and get some exercise, but it helped inspire me to try new techniques in costume building and it even helped me get out of a writer’s block. With the news yesterday about Microsoft halting production on the Kinect, it made me look back on the series and my love for it and I figured I’d repost the first part of this set (the second will come soon!)~

Let’s get on with it!

A little while back, Nate & I threw together a few sets of photos featuring a couple of the characters from the Dance Central series we had done costumes for before in “casual” settings. Jaryn & Oblio questioning Oblio’s wardrobe choice at a “party” at Glitch’s place, Kerith & Aubrey having a sleepover — we just enjoyed joking around with what these characters might be doing and wearing when they weren’t out dancing up a storm and/or snarking at Dr. Tan (or snarking at everyone in the case of the Glitterati).

(Click the above images for descriptions!)

When talking with Bria of White Hot Room one day, we thought it might be fun to expand the idea and include other characters — figure out outfits for them to wear; accessories and clothes that would fit their style and personalities. Plus, we just apparently really like goofing off as these characters and Katsucon was the perfect opportunity to bring all of it together!

Together with Bria & Lin, the ladies of White Hot Room (who were Emilia and Dare, respectively), we were joined by our friend Denis (as Glitch) on the Thursday night of Katsucon for the start of this project. Later in the weekend, we’d all be dressing up as the same characters in some of their outfits from the games for costume shenanigans!

You know how we feel about the Glitterati (<3), so Nate and I thought we’d put something together for them. We knew they had to be similar enough to one another to work for Kerith & Jaryn and we wanted to stick with dark colors to balance out the light hair – also for the fact that we wanted Jaryn’s necklace and Kerith’s bracelet to pop more. The wigs we wore that night are actually the unstyled wigs we’ll be using for their DC3 outfits for PAX East! Everything for their outfits was black except for our gray shirts and my giant disco ball heels. It was nice to actually be somewhat within a foot of Nate’s height instead of a foot below and since these were “casual” outfits and not outfits to dance in, I could wear heels! GIANT. DISCO BALL. HEELS.

The other things that weren’t black and/or gray were Jaryn’s necklace and Kerith’s bracelet, which were both purple Firejewel necklaces and lit up – you know we can’t resist shiny things! We figured all of these items together would work as small callbacks to both of their outfits from Dance Central 2 without being too over the top. Just a casual outfit for a night of snarking at people and having a drink or two, not amazing the world with their uber-dance skills (HA, we wish we had those).

As for our dear friend Denis, he wanted to put Glitch in something classy and wore a suit with a color scheme that matched DCI’s colors. Basically, he got all fancy and as you can see, the Glitterati are questioning this quite heavily.

Below are a couple more shots we took that night. We had a lot of fun with this, as silly as it grew over the course of the evening (Emilia was singing a song from The Lion King to Kerith at one point – thank you to whoever was playing that in the Gaylord National atrium ;D) and we always look forward to working more with these awesome people (which spoiler alert: WE WILL BE *cue ominous music, etc.*)!

Many thanks to Nic & Bria for taking any of the shots that Nate and I are a part of! <3

For more photos and also info on our lovely Emilia & Dare, check out their post on Casual Central over at White Hot Room from earlier today and keep your eyes peeled for some more of this project – and other Dance Central projects – in the future (we’re already planning other characters/outfits)!

In 2013 we did glowing black and green and 2014 was concept art inspired!

Someday we want to put together an original outfit set that’s all inspired by peacocks since they’re just right for the Glitterati, but for this year’s b-day outfit we settled for black with slight peacock touches here and there (plus we wanted everything to be a little grunge-tinged too – hence this fabric we found for the background + grain). Maybe this outfit is the preface to the peacock set later!

We did heavy makeup in blues/greens/purples on the main eye for each of us w/ silver & black on the other eye (the one under the hair, hehe). We also thought we’d only do half the lipstick too. Basically, one side of each of us is plain(ish) while the other has a glove with feathers at the end, dark eye makeup/dark lipstick, and the feathered ear cuff things. We added a splash of green with the green feather tank for Kerith and the green glitter-caked shoes for Jaryn.

We’ll always be crossing our fingers for a Dance Central 4 where Kerith & Jaryn cause the mischief they mentioned in Dance Central 3!

For more photos, you can check out the post on our tumblr!

In October 2012, as the release date for Dance Central 3 grew closer, Nate and I were worried our favorite snarky twins wouldn’t be making an appearance. Luckily, they did! It was a small one in story mode, but it’s there and it’s pretty saucy like The Glitterati pretty much always are. Their new outfits were absolutely fabulous and we had no idea how we would make them but we wanted to make them so bad. We told ourselves: SOMEHOW.

For the next couple months, we collected materials and brainstormed ideas, hoping to have them done for Katsucon 2013 in February (hahahaha, didn’t happen) but didn’t end up finishing them until PAX East 2013 in March. We were glad we pushed them off though because there were so many little details we wouldn’t have been able to add if we tried to rush them for Katsucon. So like we did with the DC2 Crew outfits & Street Style outfits, here is our post detailing the adventure we had putting these costumes together! We’ll go piece by piece like we did with the Crew outfits blog post.

SHIRT/BODYSUIT: Kerith’s shirt and Jaryn’s leotard came from a place that has saved us a good number of times when it comes to spandex costume pieces: River’s Edge Dancewear! The pattern for the leotard had to be modified with a higher neckline when they made it, but they had the two items that were closest to what we needed and could be made in a fabric that we could work with for these pieces. We got 12 different fabric samples from different places (you can see some of them below) – some weren’t the right color, some weren’t shiny enough, some could possibly work – because we thought we might have to try our hand at making the shirt & leotard ourselves. (I’ve never sewn a leotard before so I was veeeeery nervous.)

One of the fabric samples we got from R.E.D. was used in our dye test bath just in case the dye might take and it would turn out closer to the shade of their shirt/leotard (because none of the fabric samples were exactly right). Luckily, the dye did take and luckily it was closer to the color of their clothes! This meant we could order the shirt/leotard from R.E.D. and dye them, which is exactly what we ended up doing. They’re actually pretty comfy too and all the shiny we need! AND WE DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO SEW ANY SPANDEX, HUZZAH! Below is a shot of the leotard and shirt – Kerith’s shirt had been dyed but Jaryn’s leotard hadn’t yet.

VESTS/COLLARS: We looked long and hard for a fabric that was the right shade with a pattern similar to the one on their fabric. What we found that ended up working the best was a home decor fabric! It was the right weight and had a good pattern so we ended up buying numerous yards (waiting for a sale to hit before we purchased!) since we knew we would need it for the vests, collars, Jaryn’s shoes, and also her waistcape.

I took a pattern for a jacket from a historical costume, modified it, and sewed it without the sleeves for our vests (making mockups in muslin first to make sure we had the right fit for each of us). The lines were all handpainted on with a dark copper fabric paint and the GG logos on the backs were embroidered on a thicker fabric in a multi-colored metallic floss and then cut out and attached to the vest. We were going to embroider them straight onto the vests but we ran the risk of them messing up so we wanted to make sure they came out okay before they went onto the vests! The gems attached to the vest had to be color-matched to our rings so it was fun searching for those! The green ones on the front of our vests are Swarovski crystals whereas the others (the greens on the back and all the yellows) are all plastic. We wanted to put the fanciest ones in the front, haha!

The collars were measured, cut out, and pleated very carefully by Nate and then I sewed them onto the vests. It was hard making them work because they needed to stand up but they also needed to be pleated, so there was a lot of trial and error with scraps and different types of interfacing. More on how the collars came to be can be found in the next section!

JARYN’S BUTTCAPE: I LOVE BUTTCAPES. Nate was the saving grace with this as well as the collars. He took to figuring out the pleating like a champ and I’m extremely grateful for that because I was still sewing vests and working on painting the details on them. He made sure to measure the length out correctly so it would match my short fry self and not Jaryn’s fabulously tall frame and then drafted out a pattern and cut the pieces out of the fabric as well as Decor Bond, which would be what helped hold the pleats on both this and the collars (many thanks to Lin for the help discovering tutorials and such on this – LIFE SAVER <3). Nate ironed all the decor bond on and I hemmed all the pieces (4 sides on all 8 pieces), sewed the pieces together (to make 4 fans with 2 sides of pleats), and then sewed the 4 fans to a long piece of tulle so they all stayed together. I added some armholes to the tulle after that and slipped it on under my vest. I got lucky there cause I had no idea how I was going to attach it to myself or the vest without weighing down the vest.

P.S. Have I ever mentioned how much I love butt capes?

KERITH’S PANTS/BELTS: I have never made a pair of pants in my life so I was extremely nervous about making these, especially since they’re fairly tight on Kerith (of course, thanks Kerith XD). We were going to look for a pair we could possibly modify, but with how specific the color of his pants matches the rest of his outfit plus all the design work along the top hem of them, we knew we’d have to try to do the whole thing. I made a mockup with a similarly weighted fabric and made them fit Nate before cutting out and sewing the pattern in the brown fabric. The front closes with velcro because we didn’t want to put in anything crazier than that for fear of screwing it up when we started doing the hem work at the top of the pants (the two layers of fabric and the curved hem).

As for the belt, another hit in the home decor fabric section! We knew Kerith’s belt(s?) was/were brown with a faint pattern on it and when we saw this fabric it just screamed to us to use it for the beltpiece. It was very thick and frayed a lot, so we ended up lining the edge with brown bias tape, which actually worked out in the end because it kind of looks like there’s a brown trim on his belts. Since the belts sag on Kerith we had to make them sag on Nate, which meant there was a trusty safety pin or two holding them onto Nate’s pants.

G BUCKLES: My sister had gotten some InstaMorph moldable plastic for me for Christmas one year and for the longest time it sat on my worktable because I wanted to use it for JUST THE RIGHT THING. Basically, you heat up the little balls of plastic in hot water and then mold them – they dry in whatever shape you mold them and can be remolded with hot water. As Nate and I stared at the buckles on Jaryn’s vest and Kerith’s belt, my mind went to the InstaMorph. It would be lighter than certain types of clay, more heavy-duty than paperclay – it would be just what we needed! Nate fiddled around with shaping it and I tested out some paint on it and when we figured out that it would be perfect, Nate sculpted the G’s and added the pins to the back then I painted both of the buckles.

ARM/LEG PIECES: Nate measured our arms and my leg and patterned out these pieces out of Worbla. He attached thin flat strips of wire on the insides and then shaped the pieces so they would fit. I painted them with layers of bronze, gold, and a slight tinge of silver paint and then glued all the gems on each piece – I think this is probably the part that took the longest. I was still finishing up my leg piece the night before we wore these costumes at PAX East. SO MANY GEMS. I was worried about keeping the leg piece up on my leg while walking around, but I ended up sewing velcro to the tights I was going to wear and gluing the opposite pieces into the inside of the leg piece and it stayed up just fine! Phew.

SHOES: THEIR SHOES. HOW DO THEY DO ANYTHING IN THESE SHOES? Kerith’s shoes look like they’re a piece of his pants – like the tops just meld into his pants. So Nate had to cover a set of cheap slip-on shoes he got in the same fabric as his pants and build up the top so it reached over the pants. I took a pair of platform sandals – I used the fact that I had to cover them as an excuse to give myself a couple of inches since Nate is so tall! – and covered them in the same fabric we used for the vests/etc. Jaryn has these flaps on her shoes around her ankles in the front and back and I made those a separate piece from the shoes so I could slip those on and then put the shoes on under them. I added brown trim to those which was the same trim we glued around the bottoms of both pairs of shoes. The crystals that you can see on the bottom rims of the shoes are actually drops of different colored glitter glue. We were going to glue crystals to them, but we didn’t have time and figured glitter glue would be just as shiny (and cheaper :D)!

MISCELLANEOUS: The wigs are new/different wigs than the ones we use for the other two outfits – their hair is longer in this game and styled differently. Wigs are our enemies so these are one of the things we kept putting off because we were worried about them. They need to be poofier, but we are satisfied with the way they came out! The face makeup takes less time to do than the cheek lines from the other two outfits but we had a grand old time finding just the right shade for the eyes and ended up using an orange color with some gold-dusted over it. Also concerning makeup, white nail polish will always remind me of white out. The rings were made with pieces we found at the craft store!

Overall, we are extremely excited with the way these turned out! Usually, there are things we end up wanting to fix on our costumes but when we look back at photos of these we just end up going I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS IS US (maybe we need to redo the shoes) BUT STILL. We’re really happy we made these and look forward to wearing them again!

Below is a photo of us in the outfits! There are more photos of our Glitterati birthday outfits on Zhobot’s Facebook page!

We also recently got the costume pages done for our three in-game Glitterati costumes, so check those out in the costume section!

I’m sorry in advance for all the rambling about to come your way, dear reader. I still can’t wrap my head around PAX East. I wish it could’ve gone on forever. This post will include some highlights as well as costume photos! There aren’t as many costumers there as say… Katsucon or Dragon*Con, but there were a fair amount and every single one we saw was incredible. Right off the bat on Friday morning, I saw this Barret (Final Fantasy VII) in his Cargo-Ship-Trip-to-Junon sailor uniform and I squealed. Y’all know how much I love Barret, but BARRET IN HIS STOLEN SAILOR WHITES CURSING UP A STORM is even better!

We checked out the expo hall Friday morning before getting into our first costume and danced on the Dance Central 3 stage (cause we knew we wouldn’t be able to do it in any of our costumes). We danced to “You’re A Jerk” and the Kinect just flat out lost me near the end of the song cause Nate is such a giant and took over the stage. Gosh, Nate, I will forever be in your shadow (XD).

After that (and after getting our awesome DC freebies for dancing! <3), we got into our costumes from The Cave – The Creepy Twins! We have a special place in our heart for creepy twins (hello Glitterati and now hello Luteces) so when we played The Cave, we knew this costume had to happen even though our heights are so wrong. We dropped by the Double Fine booth in them (I needed to stop by anyways because I needed this print so so so so so so bad :3) and were extremely grateful and humbled at how much they loved the costumes! I was getting a Double Fine Kickstarter print signed by Tim Schafer for my brother-in-law and he cackled at the costumes and took a couple of photos (we were both all, “HUR HUR HRUHREUHRURH THANKS HURRRR HIIIIII THANKS” — seriously, we don’t know how to interact with people ever).

(Thanks to Tim Schafer for the above photos!)

(Thanks to Erin for the above photos!)

We checked out more of the expo hall and then changed into Matt Miller and Kinzie Kensington (Saints Row: The Third) costumes! WE HAD TO SEE THE SAINTS ROW IV PREVIEW. I cannot stress enough how excited we are because (I know this isn’t a popular opinion) but we both loved the ridiculousness of Saints Row: The Third even after playing the first two and we were both glad to see they’re raising the BAR OF RIDICULOUSNESS. We were planning on bringing Matt & Kinzie costumes no matter what, but once the Saints Row Twitter started saying that SR costumers would be able to skip the line, we slammed those babies into the suitcase so fast– okay, I take that back. The Matt jacket can’t fit into a suitcase because it is huge and can’t fold. So we put that beside the suitcase.

We talked to the Deep Silver employee letting people into the theater and he was extremely cool and excited for us to see the preview. He also snapped the shot to the left and sent it to the people taking care of the Saints Row Twitter – they were posting photos of costumers all weekend. (I wish we saw them all in person!) I also poked around and asked if that person in the SR4 promo shot with the gang-colored lipstick was, in fact, Matt Miller, and I got a lot of, “HEEEHEHEHEEEHEHE, YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO WAIT”s, which I took as a very good sign.

The preview– I can’t even– OH MAN. Everything about it was ridiculous and as I said, we are fans of that. The DUBSTEP GUN looks like it will provide all sorts of entertainment and an interview we saw later from PAX East claiming we might sort of be going into the internal baggage of these characters in this game really makes me wish it was August already. ALIENS, SUPERPOWERS, DUBSTEP GUNS, PERSONAL BAGGAGE AHOY! For real, is it August yet?

While scoping the Dance Central stage, we met up with a darling friend Miscellaneon who I know from the worldwide interwebbs (thanks to Dance Central!) and as we stood there and nerded out, I saw a person up on stage dressed in Mo’s alternate outfit from the first Dance Central game. I waited until he was done dancing and stopped him for a photo which turned into all of us meeting the next morning for Dance Central costume shenanigans (which I will get to in a bit)!

The rest of Friday was spent loafing around. We went to the PC Free Play area and played the campaign in Left 4 Dead 2 that we hadn’t played yet (Cold Stream) – we ended up not beating it before our time was up that night, b’awww.

Saturday was mostly spent hanging out at the Dance Central 3 booth because we are nerds for that, okay. We – and by we I mean our new friend Chris as Mo, Miscellaneon as Taye, Nate and I in our new Glitterati outfits, and Denis as Glitch with the amazing light-up Boomy he made – creeped on the booth a little after noon and met all the super nice Harmonix employees who were there (my goodness they were so polite and funny and a joy to be around I can’t get over it sjdkfjaskfd). One of Harmonix’s community managers, Annette, told us we were free to hang out at the booth so we did! We also cheered for people dancing (well, Nate and I golf clapped because the Glitterati are mean, y’all) and talked to other fans about the game. It was a lot of fun and it got even better when a Lil’ T costumer (a fabulous girl by the name of Daniela) came up! We had three full crews! Another hurrah moment was when Annette said Nate and I were the perfect height for the Glitterati – even though Jaryn also looks like a giant in the game, Kerith is a frickin’ monster and she said this is what it would look like in real life. I AM STILL EXTREMELY GRATEFUL FOR THAT COMMENT because our height difference of roughly a foot works so well for costumes like Luke Triton and Professor Layton but it always worried me with other costumes – especially the Glitterati. SO THANK YOU, ANNETTE! XD

The other highlight in these outfits was when we wandered off to take some photos…

That last group shot was taken by someone who had a certain attachment to our outfits! We were about to ask someone hanging around where we taking photos if they could take a quick group shot of all six of us, but we were suddenly approached by a girl in a Dance Central shirt. Now, this was a shirt only Harmonix employees have, so we were all admiring it because we will never have one: “HI YOUR SHIRT IS AMAZING HUR HUR” (you know, how we usually sound) – she pointed to our Glitterati outfits and said, “I designed those!” She said the same of Daniela’s Lil’ T outfit and pointed to other bits and bobs on everyone’s outfits too! Turns out it was Jamie McKiernan – an artist from Harmonix! She said she was one floor up, spotted us from above, and rushed downstairs to get a photo! She took a couple with my camera as well, which we are very thankful for! I ALSO THANKED HER PROFUSELY FOR GIVING JARYN A FABULOUS BUTT CAPE BECAUSE I. LOVE. BUTT. CAPES. Seriously, there is a post sitting in the drafts of this blog right now about how much I love butt capes. The extra bonus moment of me rolling around on the ground crying in my head came when she said she thought she saw us online before and asked if we were the two who did the Glitterati costumes with the glowing logos on the backs of the crew outfits – Nate and I were both extremely honored that she liked the DC3 outfits we made as well as the crew ones (WEEKEND MADE ;-;) and it was so awesome to meet her AKA THE PERSON BEHIND THESE FABULOUSLY INSANE OUTFITS.

Those photos are a perfect transition into the next part of our day because it was taken by our BRO OF BROS Sonja of Soulfire Photography (I can’t count the number of reasons we love this girl, for real) who is always a joy to work with because you can’t not smile when you’re around her. She also puts up with my stupid made-up words and random costume problems I always seem to have! She was talking to Sheila and Sylar of Aicosu when we met up with her and it was really cool to meet them cause their costumes are always wonderful and look just as amazing in person (they were wearing their Dishonored costumes which looked perfect). Also, they’re both positively kind and funny which is THE BEST COMBO. We bugged Sonja and annoyed her camera for a bit with all this Lisa Frank bling then we hobbled back up to the room to de-shine ourselves!

We got back into normal clothes (and shoes, hahahahahah) after that and wandered around some more. Expo hall, dinner with Chris & Miscellaneon at the food court, Dance Central free play area (Miscellaneon & Daniela danced Nicki Minaj’s “Massive Attack” with us and it was so much fun AGGH I MISS EVERYONE), PC free play area (played L4D2 – Cold Stream again, BEAT IT THIS TIME, AW YES) – it was all pretty much a giant blur of THIS IS SO COOL I LOVE EVERYONE AT THIS CONVENTION.

Sunday we saw a tweet on the magical land of Twitter about a Saints Row cosplay gathering in the con center lobby at 12:30 so we packed up everything and threw on the last minute Saints Row IV costumes we put together after this fabulous image was released the week before the con! I collected things for Kinzie that week and Nate had everything for Presi-Boss (Bossident?)! We went down to the Deep Silver booth and watched the trailer once because we were in Saints Row costumes again, then headed up to the gathering. We were really glad we did because everyone there was just like all the other people we had met over the weekend: AWESOME. XD I’m sorry, I know I’ve been overusing that word but I just can’t use it enough here, haha.

Everyone at the gathering was really nice and we had a lot of fun goofing off with in-character photo ideas (JOHNNY GAT GET ON THE GROUND AND BE DEAD) – it was a really entertaining time! Plus, we made a group trek to the Deep Silver booth and got to watch the preview all together! Thanks to the Saints Row Twitter for these photos!

We changed after that and meandered around the expo hall some more before piling into the car and driving back home. I said this on Twitter (a shorter version of it, though): I know there are some bad apples in the gaming community (as there are in every community) but I met so many polite, funny and marvelous people here – it made me love video games even more. We had a blast at PAX East 2013 and can’t wait to do it again!

In closing, here is a magnificent statue of one of the cat security guards from Battleblock Theater at The Behemoth booth (and me derping behind it)!

(Check out Glitterati costume page for more photos!)

When Nate and I realized we loved the Glitterati and their ridiculously amazing outfits, we knew we would definitely want to try our hand at the Street Style ones since we weren’t sure how we would tackle the crew outfits. We weren’t necessarily planning on even trying the crew ones but after finishing the SS ones we knew we wanted to try our hand at them. Our love for Kerith & Jaryn trumped the HOW DO WE MAKE THESE FRICKIN’ THINGS?!?! — we figured out that we would find a way somehow so we planned to have them ready for Dragon*Con 2012! We got them finished just in time (we actually finished a couple of things at the hotel at con haha) – there are a few minor adjustments we want to make (which we will get to in the post) but we’re really happy with how they turned out!

Since both outfits are very similar, we’ll go by outfit piece instead of by character like we did with the Street Style post!

PANTS:
These were the easy part. The only really easy part, hehe. We both bought leggings that were labeled “liquid latex” – we thought that looked close to the design of their pants without being made of vinyl or leather or something of the sort (you know how I feel about sewing vinyl – I made a second Jaryn street style jacket with something that wasn’t vinyl – check out the new photo in our recent post! XD). We cut the pants where they needed to be cut (mine on the thigh and his on the lower leg) and we took his in some since they were baggy on him. With the piece I cut off of Jaryn’s, I sewed some elastic into the top of it to see if it would stay up on its own on my thigh. It doesn’t – so there’s one thing that needs to be fixed! The spiral bits that stick out from her thigh and his lower leg, we’ll get to those in a bit!

BOOTS/SHOES:
Since they each wear one boot and one shoe, this required four pairs of shoes between us. I had an old pair of boots I wasn’t using for anything, so my boot was taken care of – I could glue anything to it and would be fine. Nate’s boots were boots he used for other costumes though, so for the additions to his boots (errr, boot), his had to be something he could add to the boot and then take off when needed. I found a pair of flats like Jaryn’s shoe at a thrift store and Nate found a pair of shoes like Kerith’s on ebay. We wanted the silver additions for the two shoes to be removable too since they were both shoes we could wear for other things. The silver additions were pieces of bent metal attached to elastic. The additions for the boots were strips of the same vinyl-type stuff we used on the vests with the same size grommets used in as the vest on the ends as well. The strips were glued to the side of my boot while we managed to cobble together a thing that looked the same except with a circle of black elastic so Nate could put it around his boot.

WIGS:
I realized we only briefly touched on the wigs in the Street Style entry! We both started out with Blue Steele wigs in ash blonde from Arda Wigs and we were planning on cutting them super angular in the front like Kerith & Jaryn’s haircuts. We realized, as we were working at the last minute before Katsucon (where we first wore the SS outfits), that whenever we moved and the hair moved and it didn’t look right anymore. So we ended up kind of blunting the edges on their haircuts a little to make it look more “normal” – we also tried spraying it so it would stay while it was angular but it made the wigs look hard and weird. We washed the spray out and tried to make them both look more natural.

The Kerith wig was easier than the Jaryn wig because it was mostly just cutting the bangs (which is how we managed to do it the first day we wore the costumes, haha). Jaryn’s needed the side pieces as well as all the tiny, shorter pieces of hair that go from her temples to the point in front. Her bangs/the main point sticks out farther and up a lot more in the game than this wig but trying to keep it that way meant spraying it so I just cut the point and then tease it up a little at the top whenever I wear it. Sometimes it cooperates and sometimes it doesn’t. But the wigs are comfortable and they work! XD

We’ve worn the wigs so much now since the Street Style costumes originally debuted that Nate’s Kerith wig has a small tear in the band. He’s been working so hard at being sassy that he busted his wig, y’all.

OTHER SMALL BITS:
Both pairs of earrings were made by Nate out of clay – mine were hooks and his were clip-ons. He also cut out the silver shapes that went on the front of the vests. He measured and cut them out of gray craft foam with an adhesive backing then I painted them silver. Finally, he stuck them onto a piece of a cheap thin clear vinyl shower liner we bought so they would have the spaces in between them and I added some hair clips to the back so we could clip them to our vests and remove them easily if we needed to.

The gloves were a single pair of black liquid latex gloves we purchased (since they wear theirs on opposite hands we only needed to buy one pair, wooo!) that we cut the fingers off of and added silver bits too. To give it the raised look we attached the same type of metal we used on the silver shoe additions to pieces of craft foam and then attached those to the gloves. Mine was cut shorter than his since I needed room for the spiral piece on her lower arm.

The black spiral bits were the parts that gave us the most trouble. It was one of those cases where you look at the illustration and you think THAT LOOKS SO AWESOME HOW DOES IT STAY LIKE THAT then you try to think of a bunch of ways to make them stay and none of them work. We finally settled on fabric with wire sewn into the edges. The fabric on the spiral pieces looks different than the fabric on their pants & vests so we used a shiny, black material that had sort of a raised pattern. We made them and didn’t bend them for the first time until we put the outfits on at Dragon*Con. The arm ones are fine but the leg ones give us trouble so there’s the other thing we need to fix!

Now for the big parts!

SHIRTS:
These shirts were a trip for us to make. Usually, we can find patterns to use and modify and we’re okay with that (we’re not the best with sewing machines, haha! XD), but we could not find a good pattern to modify for Jaryn’s shirt. For Kerith’s we used an old tank top Nate had. We cut the tank top apart and used it as a pattern, cutting the silver shirt fabric out longer and at an angle along the bottom. For Jaryn’s I ended up fiddling around with a mockup made out of another stretchy fabric we had and just kept modifying it until it worked! I used that as the pattern for Jaryn’s and then cut it out of the silver shirt fabric, then sewed them both to become actual shirts. I added clear straps to mine just in case it didn’t want to stay up.

For the white detailing down the front of their shirts and around the edges, we found a white horsehair braid that we thought might work. It’s normally used for other things like stiffening hemlines and such, but we thought we could use it as the detailing on the shirts. We didn’t want to get something too delicate or hard to see but we didn’t want to get something that would stand out too much, either. Luckily, this stuff worked out perfectly!

VESTS:
The vests are our favorite parts of these costumes because we took so much time making them and put some thought into how they would work so this paragraph might ramble a bit, our apologies!

We started out with muslin and a vest pattern (the same one we originated with for Nate’s Street Style Kerith outfit) and patterned out one that would fit him and one that would fit me. From there, we measured/took in/fiddled with the muslin mockups until we were satisfied with the fit and look. The first idea we had was to use a black vinyl (here we go with the vinyl again! although, these wouldn’t take much to sew – it wasn’t a whole jacket again, so I was fine with it!) we found and line it with a black lining. We were going to be putting something in between the vest and lining so we thought this might work out. The first vinyl fabric and the lining we had weren’t working out, so we had to go on a hunt for a different fabric!

I ended up at a fabric store I don’t normally go to because it’s farther away than our normal haunt, and I found a table full of tough, thin, outdoor vinyl for $5 a yard. I also found a roll of really swanky vinyl for about $18 a yard. I told the girl at the cutting counter when she said, “you know there’s cheaper vinyl on that table, right?” that I needed to line it in black somehow. She showed me black interfacing and told me to use it as lining, told me how to put it on the inside of the cheaper vinyl without melting the vinyl and I thanked her profusely for all the money we saved. I knew our original plan of putting something between the lining and vest wouldn’t work out then, but at that point, I wanted to just get the vests together!

So we used the muslin mockups to cut the vests and interfacing out of the newly purchased stuff and found the stencil of the Glitterati logo we had made for the back of the vests. Nate used his Xacto skills and cut the logos out of the backs of both of our vests. We ironed the interfacing to the vests (left the logo on the interfacing for now though, so that the vinyl middle parts of the GG’s wouldn’t flop around and get messed up while we sewed everything). I sewed all the seams of the vests together and sewed on the thin black trim around the edges and armholes of both. While I did that, Nate measured the thicker strip of vinyl we had, cutting out the pieces that would be attached to the bottom, along with all the pieces that would hold the bigger piece on. He also added the grommets to the tops of all of those pieces.

We put the vests on the dress form, one at a time, and measured the five pieces of vinyl, pinning them onto the vest so they were all the same distance apart and where they needed to be to hold the bigger piece on the bottom. Once all the pieces were pinned, I sewed each of the five pieces (ten in all for the two vests) at the top so they stayed on the vest and at the bottom so they stayed on the bigger strip of vinyl around the bottom. We looked at the picture of Kerith & Jaryn closer (again… we looked at it so many times) and discussed the small pieces of vinyl that seemed to hold the places I had just put together. So I took what we had left of the thin black trim and cut 20 small strips out.

I laid the vests out and glued each piece over the parts I had sewn, making it appear that the strips were being held up by these small loops of vinyl. It took a good amount of time to measure all of the bigger pieces, add the grommets, add them all to the vests and add the bottom strip of vinyl – not to mention adding all the 20 tiny pieces after that – but we really liked the way it looked in the end!

For the logo, we wanted something fun. In the game, their logo on the backs of their vests look gray/silver. Before we even started the costumes we thought, they’re flashy, why not have it light up somehow? Nate had always wanted to do stuff with EL lighting, so we figured this might be a good chance. It took us a while to find panels that were white and that would be the right size for the logos, but we did after a lot of searching!

We hesitated on adding them because we were still afraid of the middles of the GG’s not being able to hold their own and ended up bringing them to con with us. While being lazy in the room one morning, Nate took the Xacto knife he brought and finally cut the logo out of the lining as well, adding the EL panels in with the only thing we had with us – duct tape!

We realized this was a good thing though because we didn’t want the panel in there permanently (with glue, etc.) in case we needed to replace it. We attached the battery pack to the inside of the vest under our arms and it worked out perfectly. Originally we were going to have the battery pack in between the vest and the lining, but since the lining was ironed on instead of sewn, we couldn’t. It’s alright though cause it’s not visible when it’s under our arm!

We ended up getting these on late Sunday night of Dragon*Con, putting on the makeup and trying to figure out how to keep those pesky spiral leg pieces on! Those are the things we need to fix the most, we think. We WERE planning on wearing these to Katsucon in February… but now we have Kerith and Jaryn’s Dance Central 3 outfits to make (woooo!) – so keep an eye out for those!

Now that Dragon*Con is over and Nate and I have time to breathe, I can finally make this post! We held off on posting these on our Zhobot Facebook page because we wanted to make a blog post about them first – mostly about the photographer. The very basics: her name is Sonja, she takes/posts her photos under the name Soulfire Studios and we just wanted to say how amazing she is. Not only does she take really bitchin’ photos, but she really loves what she does and she’s also extremely awesome to work with.

When we went to Otakon, I was having trouble with my foot and was in a wheelchair all weekend. We had a shoot scheduled with her for the Glitterati Street Style (Dance Central 2) costumes and I was worried – since Kerith and Jaryn are dancers and I pretty much couldn’t walk, I was worried about not being able to get any halfway decent photos. I was paranoid (if you know me, you know I am always paranoid about every single thing ever pretty much okay) that this would make me not easy to work with or there would be no good shots that we could get. Sonja said it was no problem and said it would be easy to work around. She had me up for a bit, leaning on stuff (or Nate, haha) and putting weight on my other foot then she would order me to sit in the wheelchair to rest up while she got some shots of Nate. Except for my foot causing things to go a little slower, everything about the shoot was smooth and easy and also very entertaining because besides taking awesome photos, she also has an awesome sense of humor.

She is also super-efficient when it comes to processing and we were pretty much sobbing with happiness and glee only a short time after Otakon. Serious props to Sonja! We adore her and look forward to shoots with her in the future!

Here are a few of the photos taken during the shoot (with the completely remade second version of Jaryn’s jacket! ;D). You can see more on the Glitterati costume page! And be sure to visit SoulFire Photography on Facebook!

Last Fall, Dance Central 2 was released for the Xbox 360/Kinect. Right off the bat, Nate and I were disappointed that one of our favorites (Oblio) wasn’t a returning character from the first game. After playing for a bit, we realized that there was a crew of two characters that were starting to fill the void we felt for Oblio. Those two were Kerith & Jaryn – The Glitterati. They had just the right amount of snark and a set of fun songs to make us pay more attention to them and then finally to make us realize that they were our favorites in DC2. THOSE QUIPS. THAT INHERENT CREEPINESS. We couldn’t not love them.

The costume ideas started brewing when we unlocked their Street Style outfits and we decided to try our hand at them for Katsucon 2012. We were going to start working on them earlier than we ended up starting, but due to getting everything together for the table at MAGFest and then a family emergency right after MAGFest, we didn’t have a chance and we ended up starting these costumes roughly three weeks before Katsucon. This was not good since Nate had that vest to create and I had to put a jacket together from scratch. XD There are a good number of things we’re planning to remake or fix up on these costumes, but for the amount of time we had to make them, we are proud of them and had a lot of fun wearing them!

We’ll go over the details by twin. ;D

KERITH:

The pants and shoes were easy enough. Nate already had a pair of black dress shoes and the pants he picked up from a thrift store where he also purchased a black button-up shirt. Since Kerith’s collar on his shirt is not like your everyday dress shirt, we took the sleeves we cut off of the shirt and used the fabric from them to make the bigger part of the collar (which stands up with interfacing). The two smaller parts of the collar are the pointy pieces of the original collar we had to cut off to make the top of the shirt more open/lower cut. We added a piece of the purple fabric I used for the lining in Jaryn’s jacket to the inside of the front of his shirt where Kerith has a hint of purple. It doesn’t stay flat correctly while Nate’s wearing it and that’s something we have to fix since it was one of the last things we added and we were in kind of a rush (no more starting costumes three weeks in advance!)…

 The vest was the big part of this outfit. He knew he wanted to make it out of something that wouldn’t fray when we cut all the holes in it – also something where we wouldn’t have to hem every hole we cut so again, it wouldn’t fray. We discussed vinyl first, which is kind of what the vest looks like in the game, but cutting circles in that would’ve been very time-consuming and they probably wouldn’t have come out as round. He finally settled on craft foam! He knew he would easily be able to cut the circles in the foam with an x-acto knife. I helped him make a muslin mockup of a vest pattern and I sewed most of the pieces together in the fabric so we could use that as one big pattern for the craft foam. We kept the shoulders of the mockup apart and cut out the whole vest in craft foam, then Nate used a cookie cutter to make all the circle patterns before going over them all with an x-acto knife to cut the pieces out.

After finishing the circles, he sprayed the vest (interior and exterior) with a couple layers of purple spraypaint, then a layer of pinkish-purple, then finally a layer of glossy sealer. I sewed the vest collar for him, which was interfacing sandwiched between two layers of a silver fabric. The pieces were cut from a paper pattern of Kerith’s collar shapes that Nate freehanded. Since we didn’t have a lot of time, we didn’t really measure the pieces so he had drawn all three (five technically, lol) of Kerith’s collar pieces, but only the top two (on either side) ended up fitting on the vest – we were okay with leaving the third off because it looked fine without it, but it’s definitely something we want to fix when we have more time to fix up these costumes! The patterns on the vest collar were done with the sewing machine. We added the bias tape to those pieces and the vest and connected the collar to the vest the day we left for Katsucon. Again, we really want to have more time to fix these costumes up and we wish we hadn’t had to put this one off until we did!

Nate’s Kerith wig was cut as we were putting on the costumes Saturday at Katsucon (again with the rushing). Luckily, we had practiced the makeup once beforehand so we kind of had the hang of it. His watch was $12 at Wal-Mart! Kerith would be ashamed because he probably pays $93874920384 for one.

JARYN:

As far as my wig, I cut mine the night before the con so I was a little ahead of him – just a little, haha. At first, I didn’t really like it, especially how I rushed to style it at Katsucon (*shakes fist at hairspray*). But I realized if I don’t try to keep it in one place and fluff the bangs out a little, it looks much, much better and I have grown to like it a lot. I tried to get the little short hairs correct that she has between her temples and the point of her bangs, which is what drove me nuts and what I didn’t like once I was finished cutting it. I was going crazy the night before the con, I tell you. XD But looking at the later pictures we took, I really like it and will use this wig for all future Jaryn costuming — yayyyyy don’t have to redo that part! But onto the other parts I do want to fix!

The shorts and shoes were both purchased pieces (THANKS EBAY!) while the shirt and jacket I made myself. I had no prior experience sewing vinyl OR making a whole jacket, so there was that with three weeks before the convention. But we’ll get to the jacket in a bit – first, the shirt!

I had a pattern for a turtleneck that I used to make the shirt and I didn’t attach sleeves to it. I knew I would be in that jacket all day anyways and I knew the vinyl would get pretty hot so I just left them off and hemmed the armholes. The fabric I used was spandex and polyester and was a little lighter in color than I wanted it to be. The polyester dye I purchased to make it darker wouldn’t work (and I realized this after I bought it) because the heat of the water I would have to use for the dye to work would make the little plastic sequin things melt off. So I left the fabric the color it came as and it grew on me later. Once I sewed the shirt pieces all together I did all the cutouts. It wasn’t until I looked at the whole shirt when I was trying it on that I thought the cutouts I made were too big. This is something I want to fix when I remake the shirt. I was thinking about doing something to the inside edges of the cutouts as well (hemming, adding trim, something) – but luckily the fabric didn’t fray and I just ended up leaving them the way they were – even if they were too big!

The jacket, much like Nate’s Kerith vest, was my big hurdle. Like I said, I had never sewn with straight-up vinyl and had never made a jacket, so the whole thing was daunting to me! I cut all the pieces for the jacket out (as well as the purple jacket lining) and pinned some of them together (getting help pinning some other parts of it from bethiichan – who has made many amazing jackets :3) and then pretty much just went for it. I didn’t use any interfacing where the pattern told me to since all the pieces were vinyl. I kind of had to fudge the sleeves since the pattern had them ruffled/gathered at the top. I stared at it for a while and ending up just shoving the sleeves farther into the armholes before sewing them (I cut the pattern out bigger than I needed it) – it actually worked out, very much to my surprise and was definitely a relief! The lining is only sewn into the jacket at parts since the jacket was way too long before I hemmed it. I ended up cutting both the jacket and lining shorter while they were on my dress form, hemmed the bottoms of both separately and then sewing them together at a few places in the middle.

The crappy thing with the vinyl was that I couldn’t sew on it. I knew I didn’t have time to do all the tricks and magic stuff to help sew with vinyl and get it through the feeders on the machine (tissue paper, etc.) so a lot of the stuff I wanted to do to the jacket like add more of the white trim just never happened. I hot glued most of the white trim on (except for the edges on the front) and the thinner white details are fabric paint, which actually worked really well. I also made the belt for the jacket but didn’t have time to actually attach it. Since I couldn’t sew through it because of the vinyl surface and hot glue didn’t work very well for vinyl to vinyl, I ended up having to go without it for most of the time we wore the costumes. I also wanted to take the jacket in some so it wasn’t as baggy on me. But for being my first jacket and my first adventure of sewing with vinyl, I was very proud of myself. Woo!

Although, I do want to remake the jacket and as much as Jaryn’s jacket looks leather or vinyl in the game, I might try to find something that’s not vinyl but is still shiny and kind of has the appearance of it. That way I’ll be able to do all the detailing work that I want to do on it easier than messing with vinyl. And I’ll be able to add the belt! XD

Overall, we were very proud of these – especially with the timeframe we had. We love the Glitterati way too much and we were so happy to show that at Katsucon. Our favorite moment was the girl that asked us if she could get a photo of the Glitterati doing the clapping pose to show her friend because her friend would “totally pee her pants” – we laughed so hard at that.

Currently, we’re working on the Glitterati’s crew outfits and since we love them so much, we also might be making an original design Glitterati costume as well (you know how we love to do that all the time with characters, hehe)! So look for those soon as well as another Dance Central costume set which should be done very soon! ;D