Ready to take over Midgard!

My Loki cosplay is done! At least, as done as it's gonna get for Halloween! (I might make a helmet at some point.

Wow this was crazy and actually kinda fun. Pretty much everything is Goodwill finds except for the boots and one of the belts.

Layers are as follows:

Under layer:

- Long-sleeved green shirt. Parts of the sleeves and the collar of a gold sweater are added on for the vambraces and the pectoral piece.

- Tights. Heavy-duty black tights with the silver plates painted on (which sadly you can't see in this shot). These were painted while I was wearing the tights to prevent stretching issues.

- Boots. Good insoles are a must.

Middle Layer:

- Tunic. This was where I took the most liberty- this is a black waistcoat-style vest with a textured black skirt sewn to the bottom. The fabric of the skirt actually looks a bit like Celtic or Nordic knotwork, which was why I grabbed it even though it's like two or three sizes too small. It originally had a front panel edged by two zippers- removing one of the zippers was easy enough to open up the skirt and give it that slit sort of thing. Another important reason for the heavy duty tights- since the skirt doesn't go all the way around, it's open clear up to my hip.

Top Layer:

- Coat. This was a weird long vest/robe thing I found. It was a bit big, so I took in the sides to make the lines flow better. Then I slit and lined a hole in the back for the cross-chest belt, then painted the lapels and gold detailing.

Armor:

- Vambraces: these were stitched right onto the sleeves of the shirt. I will probably do proper ones at some point, this will do for Halloween. 

- Chest and shoulder piece- I accidentally stumbled upon a gold pleather placemat at Goodwill. A bit of sewing and trimming later, and ta-da! Easy armor. These got slid right onto the belt that loops over my chest and shoulder. 

Scepter:

I used to make boffers when I was with the SCA. It's amazing what you can do with foam, pipe, and duct tape. The base of the scepter is actually a Grim Reaper scythe prop- again from Goodwill (and I had a hilarious time toting it all around downtown Seattle on my way home XD) with the blade taken off the pole and rotated 90 degrees to stick straight out rather than to the side and hot-glued in place. I used mat board (which I had lying around because I'm an artist) to block out the general silhouette of the blade and the shaft of the scepter, then layered on craft foam. Silver and gold duct tape hold the entire thing together. The Mind Stone is actually crumpled aluminum foil wadded up as tight as it will go and then burnished by rubbing it with a spoon, then painted with iridescent blue and white acrylic paint. Simple and effective!

Not seen:

-Belt purse: This costume had no pockets, so I made a simple envelope-folded belt purse from a black pleather placemat. I have more of these placemats that may get added to the armor on the coat.

Actually a lot of fun in spite of the swearing and only took a couple of weeks to put together once I had all my bits and pieces.

My roommates think we need to hang the scepter up on the wall like a trophy. I like this idea.

Some dark elves

Found a really cool post musing on the biology of Tolkein elves and what they would need to, say, identify hair color at a distance of five leagues. The poster suggested some cool ideas and I decided to run with them.

Svartelf with big shiny peregrine-falcon eyes and twitchy ears <3

And Alberich, half svartelf and half human, with a few fun details and studies. Twitchy ears for him too, and very large pupils.

Just some fun doodles.

Light me!

One of my classes this quarter is Materials and Lighting.  First assignment: three point lighting.

Pretty simple stuff, but I'm pleased with it. I'm back doing battle with my old enemy Maya for this class. So far, I'm winning.

Amethyst

I will fight for the world I was made in, the Earth is everything I've ever known!

Okay I really love Steven Universe. It's bright and colorful and clever and funny and will about murder you with feelings. You will get emotional about silly space rocks, I promise you. 

Here's Amethyst. She's loud and obnoxious and funny and self-doubting and enthusiastic and stubborn and kinda crazy and all around wonderful. Her preferred method of dealing with a threat is 'throw me at it!'.

She's is needlefelted, stands about four or five inches tall and made all out of wool except for a bit of glitter fiber on her gem. I finally got my needlefelting stuff again and this project has been itching at me for a few days.

She is a cutie patootie and I am not entirely sure one of my roommates won't try to steal her.

That's okay. I know Amethyst isn't any of their favorite Gems. (Mine is Pearl, incidentally). And I have a lot more wool. 

Posting on a Wednesday

Forgot to take pics of the drawings I did in class today before I went to Dad's so I could pick up clay and stuff. Will do that tomorrow.

In the meantime, how about something completely different?

Half of my roommates are cosplayers. And incidentally, Halloween is coming up. I've assembled most of the bits I need for a Loki costume. Still need to figure out horns and maybe a scepter/spear. Not entirely sure about that latter part, but I feel like I'll want a prop when I wear this.

Costume consists of the following:

- Long-sleeved green shirt

- Black leggings

- Black waistcoat

- Black skirt with cool knotwork design woven in and double-zippered panel on front (one zipper removed)

- Black boots

- Black robe

- Gold sweater (which is hard to see on the beige carpet, sorry.)

All of these were Goodwill finds except the boots (Target, not bought for this cosplay but the cosplay was conceived as a result of it) and the overcoat (TJ Maxx). 

The skirt has had one of the zippers removed, as I said. It's actually too small for me by like three inches, but it works fine since the skirt of Loki's tunic is open/sort of wraparound anyway. It's going to be stitched to the bottom of the waistcoat to make a sort of... overdress kinda thing? that I can button up the front for easy donning and removal. The points of the waistcoat are going to be turned up as well so it's a straight seam all the way around.

If I have time, I'll get one of the roommates to help me take in the sides of the robe so it isn't so huge and shapeless. Paint will be applied for detail work.

The gold sweater is going to be cut up for details as well- the horizontally-ribbed neckline is going to become that weird pectoral thing on the tunic, and the sleeves will be converted to bracers.

The whole thing is hopefully going to be fairly soft and comfortable and not so hot I will be unable to wear it. 

Black Widow Socks

Finished the gusset and the first bit of the ankles.

Was gonna start the leg chart today but turns out I had to redesign it. The hourglass motif was too big and I had to redo all the math.

I am really glad I design socks in modules so it was reasonably easy to rework... 

Finishing: Counters a Multitude of Knitterly Flaws

Finished the kitty paw poncho! 

It's a bit late in the evening and I'm tired, but you can't post photos of knitwear without showing it on a person, so have a selfie!

Man, I was really worried with this one. I only had three balls of yarn for it, one of the variegated and two of the denim, and I got these ages ago so yeah, not gonna be able to match the dye lots. I was holding my breath there towards the end, I gotta say. Second-guessing whether I had enough yarn to do the second repeat of the bottom edging, whether I would have enough for a bind-off...

And naturally, when I bound off and tried it on, it WASN'T BIG ENOUGH. Too short, too narrow through the blue part, neckline all huge and wonky...

So I dumped it in the tub for a soak and prayed to the gods of wool that the magic of blocking would salvage it. If it wouldn't, I planned to find a smaller person to gift it too. 

Thankfully, blocking turned out to be a really good idea and the poncho grew probably a size or so as a result, as well as looking a lot tidier once the stitches settled into place.

Always block your wool, kiddos.

The neckline was still a problem, but I did have a bit of yarn left over. Six strands and a half hour of muttering darkly under my breath later, and I had a nice braided drawstring that I wove through the base of the ribbed neckline. This turned out to be another really good idea because as a result  the neckline was no longer sliding off my shoulders. And the rest of the shoulder shaping turned out really nice after being cinched up!

Moral of the story: Always block your wool, and attention to finishing details can salvage an otherwise flawed project.

Can, not always. But don't write off a project until it's actually done unless it's obviously a trainwreck.

Here's a nice look at the lace details:

And here's a better look at the colors:

I'm gonna need to tweak the pattern a little when I find my notes. The edging at the bottom was a bit of improv (repeats of K1, YO, S1K2TogPSSO, YO, more or less what I used on the shoulder seams after I finished the increases) that I'm quite pleased with. It looks pretty and decorative and doesn't seem to be curling too badly, which is nice.  I would have liked just a bit more yarn so I could do another repeat of it, but this works. I used a very stretchy bind off, which has the benefit of actually looking a little decorative too!

8/10 would knit again after pattern modifications.

Little more catching up

I made this super pretty thing:

At the Kitsap Mosaic Studio in Poulsbo. This was fun- knocked it out while Mom was finishing one of her own pieces. It got dark grey grout- I'll post a finished pic later.

And progress on the kitty paw poncho and the Black Widow socks continues. Almost done with the gusset on one of the socks, then I'll switch to the other and work on it for a while. Hint: this technique reduces the incidence of Second Sock Syndrome and basically assures that both socks will get knit up.

I started the last ball of yarn for the poncho, so that's going well. I'll probably get two more repeats of the paws, then switch to an edging. I'm quite pleased with this. 

More catching up

Some stuff from Character and Object Design- Apollo, a companion to Civet Brisa.

Some knitting progress will be posted later.

Really, I haven't disappeared.

My laptop, affectionately known as Shiny Mark II, is in the shop. And has been for a few weeks now. I may be needing a Shiny Mark III here soon. *shudder*

So I've been lax in getting my stuff posted. Gonna do some catching up in this next series of posts.

From 2D animation:

And from 3D animation:

More bouncy bouncy

Fixed some timing.

Bouncy bouncy bouncy

2D bouncing ball animation + asshole cat. Photoshop.

Video window is very small so you may need to fullscreen it.

Catching up on some stuff (big post!)

Yeah as you may have noticed, this blog has not been posting stuff daily since... a while. >_>

Time to remedy a bit of that.

Hi my name is McKenna and I'm an animation student at the Art Institute of Seattle.

And this quarter is bloody nuts. I'm doing this in the wake of losing all my homework files from the last few quarters.

Incoming stuff ahoy!

3D animated pendulum, first 3D animation evar! (Second, actually. The first iteration was lost in the Great Thumb Drive Catastrophe).

Short animation from back in Media Production. Hand-drawn cells, digital backgrounds, coloring, and compositing done in Photoshop, music and effects in After Effects. Music is Norwegian Pirate by Two Steps From Hell. 

Selection of animal drawings from Animal Anatomy and Locomotion. Super fun class! But then, any class that involves a zoo trip is a good class.

Digital speedpaint of a feathery Blue from Jurassic World. I loved this movie, just wish the raptors had feathers. 

Photo time!

And while we're on the subject of Blue... whoops, my brush slipped. Agate, about 3" across, sterling bail, acrylic paint. This is going to become a necklace as soon as I can get hold of some proper findings.

MCU Lady Loki. Somehow I forgot the horns. Whoops. 

Original character Daria Noclaf. She's taken up residence in the Avengers universe, so here she is in her SHIELD uniform. Why yes, those are Captain America-esque stripes, he's the character she's most closely associated with.

Thor, Loki, and an Avengers-verse variation on Alberich Sunshadow who wound up getting raised as a ward of the House of Odin. Thor loves group hugs, Alberich's happy to go along with it, and Loki's having none of it. 

Doodles of cartoon Anubis and Ammuanet from Art History I. I was bored and fidgety during one of our Ancient Egypt lectures and these happened. Ammuanet is such a cutie!

These two got developed for later use in the final project for that class, a look at Tutankhamen's mummy and the treasures found on it. Sadly, those images were also victim of the Great Thumb Drive Catastrophe.

Marwoleath Cave Wyrm, from the Created Creature assignment for Animal Anatomy and Locomotion. Got to bust out my acrylic paints for this one! I loved doing this sooooo much! This was from part 1 of the assignment, which involved doing a skeleton, a close-up of a significant feature, a gesture drawing, and a full-color image. Part 2 was to depict either a first date or a battle between your critter and another student's. I'll see if I can get a good photo of mine.

Feathers for the Goddess art show at Gargoyles Statuary! Sekhmet fan on turkey feathers with pheasant feathers and agate handle,  Hathor on turkey feather, Isis on blue-and-gold macaw feather. All are still for sale at the shop.

Knitting stuff!

The rainbow socks from the Attack of the Startitis post are all finished!  They have little pyramids up the front and lace panels up the back. These were originally called the Pyramid Socks, but have since been renamed the Mom Socks as part of a new project.

And here we have the first steps towards said project. A hunt for a birthday present for a friend resulted in me digging through Mom's yarn stash and coming up with black and red sock yarn and an idea: to design a pattern for Black Widow-themed socks (said best friend's favorite female character is Natasha Romanov. With good reason, she's awesome.) No big deal, right? I can design socks no problem.

My mother, bless her heart, innocently suggested that I do other heroine socks. This idea promptly took root in my brain and now I'm working on developing a series of sock patterns based off of awesome female characters/heroines. The Black Widow socks will be one of them, the renamed (because my mother fell in love with them) Mom Socks will be another. I've plans for Samantha Carter from Stargate SG1, Beka Cooper from Tamora Pierce's Tortall series, Peggy Carter, probably Uhura, and a number of others.

There may or may not be a second book of female villains bouncing around my brain as well. 

I'm going to write the patterns and do the alpha testing, then I'll start looking for people willing to beta-test them. 

Second picture there is the chart for the leg of the Black Widow socks, and the third shows the progress on them. They were originally going to have a plain foot, but I decided knitting 5 inches of plain stockinette on mostly-black (the black yarn has a few tinges of navy blue to it, it's absolutely lovely, the red has a bit of gradiation and a few bits of charcoal. Both are Barefoot sock yarns) was something I Did Not Want To Do. So a subtle little hourglass lace pattern got slipped in there.

There has been progress on the Kitty Poncho from the Startitis post. I've finished the varigated yarn and am about 3/4ths through the first ball of blue, but the project has been set aside while I knit socks.

And that's all for now. This is by no means all of what I've done since February, but I don't have photos of everything and some has been lost to the Great Thumb Drive Catastrophe. But I'm alive and am trying to stay on top of things.

Character Development work

Midterm work for Character and Object Design.

Assignment was to do 10 hands, 5 faces, 5 iterations of poses and costume variations, and a hero pose.

So here is Civet Elizabeth Brisa, Adept of Air and consulting detective for a fantasy steampunk setting!

I am SO happy with her hair. And that lightning. 

In which I've been inactive for two months

Whoops.

I'll fix that when I get back to my apartment and can scan stuff.

Attack of the Startitis!

Startitis: n. A condition that affects crafters and artisans, especially knitters, that spurs them to impulsively start several projects at approximately the same time. This condition is far more common than its counterpart, finishitis, which makes the afflicted crafter impulsively finish several projects. These two conditions were originally described by Toronto knitter Stephanie Pearl-McPhee several years ago.

I finished knitting my last project and wound up at Knit Night this week with no on-hand knitting project (not that I didn't have something on the needles, I was just silly and packed it already.) When I got home, I decided to dig out a skein of sock yarn and cast on some socks. With no pattern, just loose understanding of How To Construct Socks.

That would be the rainbow project on the left. The actual yarn is a lot more saturated- it's rainbow, shifted to the red/pink/magenta end of the spectrum. I'm knitting them at the same time and toe-up, so I can be assured I won't run out of yarn for them. When I locate my (already packed) reference books) I'll finalize the pattern for them. The yarn is $10k for MSF, colorway 'Care', 75% merino/25% nylon, 420 yards.

Note to self: Winding 420 yards of sockweight yarn on a nostepinne is not a good idea.

The other yarns...

Yeah I made the mistake of browsing my yarn stash before packing it for the move. The ball of blue-cream-brown sockweight second from the left is Socks that Rock, colorway Lucy and based on WendyKnits's kitty of the same name (superwash Merino, 360 yards). Lucy was a seal point Ragdoll, so naturally this yarn demands to be knit into socks with a kitty theme. I'm going to do little lace cat paws running up these socks. They'll also be toe-up and knit at the same time. Haven't cast them on yet because I don't have enough sets of size 0 circulars.

The other three balls are Manos de Uruguay (30% silk/70% merino, one of my favorite blends, 150yards each) that coordinate almost perfectly with the Lucy yarn. The blue is more denim than sky blue, but close enough to make me happy. This pile demanded to become a poncho that will match the Lucy socks. It's knit top-down, so I had to figure out how to do the cat paws upside down so they look right. But I've got the ribbed collar done and I've started the lace panels. Progress!
I'm going to have a friend beta test the patterns for the Kitty Socks done with the Lucy and the Kitty Poncho when I finish them. May even start selling them on Ravelry if they come out nice!  

Naroko

There's a group on Facebook that hosts monthly challenges for character designs. This month's theme is Jedi and Sith. So I tossed this together, mostly for my own amusement.

From the old character files, Naroko Chiston:

STAR WARS COSTUMES

The Star Wars costume exhibit was at the EMP, and sis wanted to visit it for her birthday.

The sketches proceeded to commence- in part because of homework requirements (this week's assignment was five pages of wrinkled and folded and draped fabric. HOW CONVENIENT) and in part because I am a giant nerd who loves Star Wars and character design and costumes and Star Wars.

Emphasis on the giant nerd part.

I took about 200 photos from the Star Wars exhibit and the fantasy exhibit also there and drew from both the live displays and the photos.

Luke Skywalker's Jedi Knight robes, Obi-wan Kenobi's Tatooine robes from the original trilogy, Queen Amidala's light-up throne room gown from Phantom Menace.

Had to get the twins on the same page here. Princess Leia Organa's iconic white hooded gown (of 'help me Obi-wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!' fame) and the front of Luke's Jedi uniform.

Naboo royal handmaiden gown. Don't remember which of the prequels this one is from, honestly it could be any of them, the handmaidens show up in all three.

One of Padme's gowns from her stay on Naboo in Attack of the Clones. The one designed 'to look like it would fall off if she sneezed'. This one is so pretty- in color it fades from a peachy-yellow to lavender.

And finally, Emperor Palpatine in his 'I just declared myself Emperor and murdered three Jedi Masters come to take me prisoner' robes. Palps, why are you doing that thing with your arms, you look ridiculous.

Weekend Catchup

Buuuuuuusy busy weekend. Didn't get to post anything, but I did work on stuff!

More Sooj and Betsy concert sketches, because I got to see them perform again! Betsy had whales on the brain.

And I bound off and blocked my Estelle wrap! OMG, this thing is huge- it's longer than the twin beds in housing!

The wrap is Estelle, made from my own handspun faux cashmere. Pattern can be found here.

I know the blocking job is kinda shoddy, but this thing is going to get dyed blue anyway so it doesn't really matter. I just wanted to see how it looked.

We went to the Star Wars costume exhibit at the EMP for little sister's birthday. I got some sketches from there, and about 200 photos that I'm going to work from because this week's drawing homework just happens to be draped and wrinkled fabric ;)  I'll scan those when they're finished.