Sorry it's been so very long since I've even remotely posted anything up here, but that's what happens when life catches up with you sometimes!
So me and a good friend of mine have made ourselves home in our little corner of the Internet on FaceBook. Since we're both cosplayers and often we dress as characters from the same series, we decided 'Why not?' and made our own cosplay page!
Hey people of the world and readers of The Blog! Faith here!
So I dont often do a shameless plug for stuff, but the exception is tonight.
I just entered my gijinka Amaterasu cosplay to the Otaku House Cosplay Idol for the North America rounds. With that, votes are needed! The image I entered you can CLEARLY see to the right side, and I am still absolutely pleased and so very happy with how this costume came out in the end.
Amaterasu is from the game Okami. Okami is copyrighted to Capcom. The design is all my own.
I really do hope that I manage to get some more votes even though I doubt I have a chance of winning anything at all. Even just the small attention of a few people would make me happy, to know that my hard work payed off in bringing a character to life.
Hey, all you bloggers and fans on the great man-made invention known as the INTERNET!
Sorry for my large leave of absense but my laptop has been dead and I have need to use my actual home computer for my needs. Rest in peace, Vladmire, you have served me well.
Where do I begin with the updates?
1) I now have a steady enough income with a job! Yes, my friends and fans, a job! Currently employed at my local dollar store, greeting people as they walk into the store as well as ringing them up at the register and face painting kids at the Grand Opening. Being able to make children smile: its something I dont do quite often but when I do, its hard not to smile with them.
2) Cosplay
Anyone who is anyone knows already about my horrid costuming addiction. Well, the new cosplays are released!
First one up is Elizabeth, from Persona 3 and Persona 4 Arena.
She's my favorite character in P4A, albeit a good bit overpowered but she's my cosplay for next year. I already have her Arcana card deck completly done and hopefully I will have a Persona Compendium as well. My friends are being Margaret from the same game as well as Elizabeth's Persona, Thanatos (also known as THE GOD OF DEATH).
Second is the Changeling lady, Queen Chrysalis from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic but done up in the Steampunk style. I have always wanted to do an evil character but human ones dont lend much to the imagination. So why not try an evil non-human character!
Chrysalis will have a headband that has her horn on it, and I shall be having a- well, I'll post up progression on that pony's outfit well enough!
3) I am just happy it is summertime. I get to go to the beach and do stupid stuff all season long when not working. 4H work, cosplay, random outings to the beach and to places for no good reason. I have a feeling this summer is just going to be a good one in general, and leading into a good last semester at my current college.
Also that means I get to save up money (hopefully!) for a PlayStation 4. OH MY GOD KINGDOM HEARTS III Y U SO BEAUTIFUL GAAAAH!!!!
*ahem*
I apologize once more for my randomness but isnt that why you all read and keep up with the blog, anyway? Your normal programming will resume slowly.
Oh who am I kidding, nothing's normal here! Good evening, ladies and gentleman: and 'Always look on the bright side of life!".
Good evening to you all, ladies and gentleman! It's been a while since I posted up a Steampunk blog post but since it has been on a hiatus due to the unruley behavior of dragons, I think it's high time to get the ball rolling again.
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Talented artists and craftspeople have embraced Steampunk aesthetics as well, and incorporated them into their works and their wares. This is clearly visible through the use of deviantArt.com, a website where artists can post their works and receive feedback. If one searches it, using ‘Steampunk’ as the search term, the number of results is currently 185,488 and increases nearly every day.
Russian artist Vladimir Gvodev takes animals and transforms them into mechanical beasts, while still keeping them recognizable as creatures. He makes them look as if they were technical schematics as well as illustrations of animals from the Victorian times. He had this idea based on a story, dating back to the year of 1918: “Once, I was told about a German mechanic who lived in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. After Germany’s defeat in the First World War, the mechanic went mad and was held in a lunatic asylum for life. There he began inventing vergeltungswaffe, a German term for ‘vengeance weapons’. I never saw his blueprints, but I liked the story as much that I tried to make via my blueprints a sort of portrait of the inventor himself- to create a little museum of the mind of that German mechanic.”
- Vladimir Gvodev, artist
Not only does he capture these images on paper, he also turns them into finely made sculptures and figurines. Using rough materials to capture their mechanical nature, Gvodev blends the realistic with the fantastic. Others have also taken real-life animals and turned them into something else. Mike Libby, an artist from Boston, MA, alters insects and makes them robotical with his company, the Insect Lab. He says: “I wanted to honor, revere, and play off of the minute, unique, beautiful details, shapes, textures and colors of each specimen. I want them not to look like bastardized, Frankensteined mutant freaks of nature but have a sense of whimsy and luxury, like they came out of a great sci-fi story.” - Mike Libby
Some Steampunk artists also take things which already exist and apply Steampunk onto them. Richard ‘Doc’ Nagy, known more commonly as ‘Datamancer’, is known for modifying electronic gadgets such as his famous Steampunk laptop. According to him, he began to do these things when “there were maybe four search results for ‘Steampunk’ on Google”. Now, he is extremly well known for his modification of everything from iPods to, more common, people's mundane-looking laptops.
And this is just the beginning of what can be done when Steampunk meshes with the craftiest of people on the planet. Just take a good look at some of these examples:
Mike Libby's Steampunk work.
Datamancer's Steampunk laptop. I'd love to get my hands on one.
An envisioning of a Steampunk mage. My kind of Steampunk, blending fantasy and scientific ideas (original belongs to ~khallix of deviantArt.com).
~Sercive of deviantArt shows off a Steampunk pendant. You have to love clock faces!
Of course, there's more to art then these. Costumes, even, could be considered an art form to an extent. Trust me on that one, a good costume could be as nerve-wracking to create as much as the perfect portrait of the president by his own personal commission. An amazing costume/cosplay that is a piece of art is something to be seen by one's own eyes and it's often hard to believe that someone made it, oftentimes by hand.
With that, Steampunk can delve into fantasy, science fiction, alternate history and alternate futures. Dystopian futures, comic books and fairy tale characters have been washed in a sepia hue and given the Steampunk treatment. A fairly common thing to see in Steampunk style is Alice in Wonderland. The quirky-ness of Alice's adventures down the Rabbit Hole make it a prime location and setting where anything, realistic or not, can happen. To the right you can see ~Cyv's (on deviantArt) take on a Steampunk White Rabbit, complete with goggles and a monocle as well. And of course, the myriad of original characters (or OC's for those who are in the know about character creation) who jump head-first into the subculture as we know it with the full intention of making them fit the Steampunk bill.
Personally, I like seeing both of these. On one hand, you have the imagination to transfer something that may or may not belong in such a world and make it work, but the other side has the sheer audacity to make something by scratch and purely original. I give credit to both of those types of people!
And like always, here comes a colorful photograph spam. Enjoy and oogle!
And if you have not seen this image floating around on the Internet, then I do not think you have looked too well for Steampunk. Abraham Lincoln, with a jet pack.
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Whew! Are your eyeballs tired yet from the colors and pictures? Next will be an all-out attack on your ears, with 'The Sound of Grinding Gears: The Sweet Steampunk Sound' where music (yes, music!) shall be receiving the specialty Steampunk touch.
Spurred by how I (surprisingly) have not written about this as well as the angry actions of such creatures in Game of Thrones in the last few episodes, I think it's time I write about a topic I know a fair good amount about.
Cue the giant wingbeats!
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Like always, I start this off with some music to fit the topic:
Long before The Elder Scrolls video game franchise and George R.R. Martin wrote about our favorite Targaryan who has claim to the last three of her house's signature beast, dragons were already the well-established lords of high fantasy when it comes to mythical creatures. Traditionally shown as fearsom fire-breathing monsters born of nightmares and the bane to most fictional lands, the dragon has come to be almost larger then it's own massive legend.
But, what most don't realize or fail to remember for that matter, is that there's more then one type of dragon. And it's pretty surprising the number of types there are.
What the general public who doesn't know any better likes to think of a "dragon" is actually the Western version of it. This is your everyday, garden-variety description of what we see today: a winged creature covered in diamond hard scales, four legs, a tail, horns and belching smoke and fire. He normally guards a stockpile of gold and other valuables, plagues villages and in some cases, likes to partake in riddles. Your archetype idea of a dragon can be seen in Smaug the Magnificent from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit as well as Malificent's dragon form in the Disney film Sleeping Beauty. He's big, imposing, and unless you are rather good with a sword or manage to sneak away out of his view, there is a slim chance you are going to be getting away from him alive. The addition of a skilled wizard is a great help, though.
However, one has to tred carefully in the shadow of a Western dragon. In this type there are even sub-types of dragons. Let's go exploring for the cousins, shall we?
Wyvern A wyvern is not so different from the common image, save for that he has only two legs and, perhaps his most striking feature, his barbed scorpion-like tail ending which delivers a lethal poison. Large enough to kill elephants with either it's claws, tail or powerful bite, the Wyvern is something Western explorers in Africa claimed to have seen. Marco Polo on one of his expeditions, writes that he encountered Wyverns for himself but who knows if these beasts were real or not. They are even harder to kill then normal dragons, due to the enviroment in which they live in. These have appeared in the popular Kingdom Hearts video games as an enemy.
Lindworms Not as glorious as the Wyvern or the Dragon, the Lindworm lacks wings. At times he even lacks legs as well, and generally does not have a fiery breath. In replacement of this, it's bite is lethally poisonous. Think on the level of the modern-day Komodo Dragon, who's reputation is as fierce as it's mythical namesake. In mythology, the World Serpent Niddhoggr in Norse stories could be seen as a Lindworm, for he was large enough to circle the world and it often shown with no legs or wings.
Niddhoggr was also supposed to be one of the beasts unleashed during the End of the World but perhaps I shall write on that myth another time....
Hydra Now I don't know about you but the Hydra in Disney's take on Hercules scared me out of my mind the first time I saw that thing in theaters. I'm pretty sure it was the unsettling CGI in an animated feature. The Hydra in itself is already pretty scary: it's specific to Greek mythology and is a dragon or dragon-like beast who has the ability to regrow two heads for each one cut off. Slain by the hero Hercules (duh!), it was one of his many tasks in order to become a god.
And those are just the ones off the top of my head.
You can find dragons everywhere though, in their Western format. Game of Thrones features three by the names of Drogon, Viserion and Rhaegal as well as the sigil of House Targaryan (specifically a Hydra), the classic epic Beowulf (terrible movie though, trust me) and everywhere in between. The books of the Inheritance series use dragons as companions for their Riders, but they're still dangerous to begin with. Even Falkor the Luck Dragon, in The Neverending Story is by all means a Western-based dragons. Video games like The Elder Scrolls, Oblivion and Dragon's Dogma have them and HOW can I not mention everyone's dice-based tabletop game Dungeons and Dragons? I'd have to role a d20 to save myself from the damage I'd take!
Dragons seem to pop up everywhere, though, and not just in Europe. The Celts also had dragons in the usage and designing of their intricate knotwork and art, which often depicted dragons. The Vikings as well drew them quite often. While they are more commonplace in the lore of that continent, they also from time to time appear in the Americas as well.
In North America, the legends of the Dragon are few and far between. It's not generally known if the Native Americans of the country had legends of a dragon-like creature but there is one story which does lead to a small belief that they may: the beast is known as the Piasa Bird.
""The Piasa bird is said to have flown over the "Great Father of Waters" thousands of moons before the white man came, when magolonyn and mastodon were still living." The Piasa, or Piusa, means "the bird that devours men" or "bird of the evil spirit". Early drawings depict it as part bird, reptile, mammal, and fish. The colors used in early paintings symbolize war and vengeance (red), death and despair (black), and hope and triumph over death (green)."
- Illinois Department of Natural Resources
A Native American creation, the Piasa Bird has little information on the whereabouts of it's mythology. A picture of this hideous and ferocious beast was found on the cliff bluffs in Alton, Illinoise by explorers. The legend of the Piasa says that it "swooped across the beach and carried one away. From that moment on, the Illini were terrorized by this incredible and blood-thirsty monster." . He's still there on the bluffs, preserved for everyone to see: personally I don't think I'd like to encounter him for myself.
More often then North American dragons are the ones seen in South American and Mezo-American cultures, like the Aztecs and Mayans. Here, dragons were not just feared but often worshipped and put on the status of gods and deities as well. Probably the most well-known god who shares his fame with dragons is Quetzocoatl, a god who is often represented as a shimmering and shining serpentine dragon.
You aren't going to see four-legged fire spitting monsters here. Dragons in this region have no legs, no fire powers and are covered in feathers. They moreso resemble giant carnivorous birds, for that matter. With how they are surrounded by birds like the Harpy Eagle, one of the larger birds of prey in the world, perhaps it is only natural they thought of their dragons to resemble these flying predators.
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You'd think I'm done with the subject of dragons, don't you.
Wrong! Next time in the blog, we cross the lands far and wide and head to Asia and other ports unknown for their own interpretations of the popular dragon myth and legend.
* Caution: there is a large number of photos in this entry.*
Hey, all you people out on the Internet through your homes, iPhones, etc.! Faith here, for another random update on what we like to call LIFE.
So, not much else going on here save for the usual Steampunk blog entries. Hope I am not boring all of you yet with them and that you are learning some new, interesting things with their updates. I am actually in the process of starting up a 4H Steampunk club, and that's consuming much of time as well as planning out a 21st birthday party with the same theme in mind (goodness I take on too many projects at once).
Finals for me are done, very happy with that! So far my final grades for the sememster are all A's, so I'm hoping that the good grade streak is perfect. With the ending of classes, I can get back to doing crafting, enjoying life and being a general derp.
And of course, there's costuming.
Amaterasu is coming along spectacularily! She's almost done, with the sleeves having to be painted and that's it.
Really, I couldn't be any happier with her results so far. I first debut the unfinished work at the Sakura Matsuri at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens this May, and much to my surprise, our small group of Celestial Brush Gods were actually recognized a good bit. We were constantly stopped to have pictures taken of us, with people freaking out a bit after they realized what game we were from and the individual characters we represented.
The sleeves in the photo weren't painted, but the finished result will have them decked out with clouds and sakura petals, and I will be toting around a large sumi brush.
I definetly need to get different shoes for AnimeNEXT though: the ones I wore killed my feet, and while they had me tall enough to not get the dress dragging along in the dirt, I dont want to come home with huge blisters. Anybody have ideas for that part?
For anyone else attending AnimeNEXT, my cosplays being worn will consist of Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Kusuriuri or NyanCat on Friday and Sunday, and Amaterasu will be bought out all day Saturday morning and afternoon.
Major Projects Numbers 2 and 3 are for my Steampunk 'Technomage' costume, which is still in the start process of. The character, or 'Steamsona' I am working on has a vast knowledge of sciences so advanced, that to the untrained eye they seem supernatural. Those who understand these scientific ways are known as Technomages. What you see here are my two main props for the costume, a book box and a modded Nerf gun. The book I have named The Cosmic Machine and the book, Chrysoprase. The book will have shelves in it so I can stock it with potion bottles and curiosities that a Technomage may need in her life.
Chrysoprase is named after a mineral which resembles jade: the Nerf gun is actually a SharpShot, with the ugly Nerf logos and caution logos pain-stakingly sanded off by hand. Spray painted with Krylon 'Satin' brown, it resembled a chocolate gun but with the 4 and the bulls-eye designs painted green, it no longer looks like something made by the Hershey company (at least as much). You can tell that a key color is going to be green but others which will be present include gold, black, and a lighter brown. The green bits will all glow in the dark as well.
Personally, I think it looks so much better then the original SharpShot: look it up for yourself for the hideous yellow-orange-black Halloween-ish color scheme.
And you think I have all my projects listed here? Wrong! There's a sign for the upcoming 4H club, inventory for a convention to make (especially since it's on Sunday!). May be good to say what the convention is called: it's the wonderous event known as CloverCon 2013.
OH JEEZ, where do I begin about it? CloverCon is a small little convention run every year in May, a few weeks before AnimeNEXT. It's run by young people, for young people and their family and friends. Completly youth-friendly, it offers everything about that a larger 'con has: panels, games, a cosplay catwalk, and even a Silent Auction which serves as a fundraiser the club does.
This is the third time I will be selling things at the event, and boy, is making the last of inventory and setting everything up for it crazy! It will be a fun time regardless, though, and I look forward every year to it!
Probably the next update will have more photos of the adventures at the Sakura Matsuri, a CloverCon summary with pictures or another Steampunk entry. Or something completly different, even! Stay tuned, stay curious, and always look on the bright side of life!
Last time in 'Brass Cogs and Goggles', we covered a brief overview of the time that is the era of Queen Victoria, the basis of most Steampunk we know and love. This time around, we take a look at where the source of Steampunk during our years stemmed from.
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When one thinks about what Steampunk is, generally, it is seen as science fiction set in Victorian times. It can also be considered alternate history or fantasy, depending on how it is applied: the scientific portion of Steampunk, with its complex mechanical aspects and pieces, are used as magical apparatuses for wizards as well as auto mail arms for soldiers, airship pirates and a host of other characters. It is not limited to the era of Victorian England and Europe, however. It has been used hand-in-hand with the American Wild West, as well as World War I.
I personally love a dash of fantasy with my Steampunk but that is the brilliant thing about the genre: you can mostly combine it with anything well enough and possibly get away with it.
Steampunk dragons. Because why the heck not?
The actual term, however, was developed far after these times in history. Only as of late has the term ‘Steampunk’ been coined and created. The general time period the word was made is in the 1980’s. Three writers in California were discussing each other’s novels and a word to describe them was the result. These three individuals were Tim Powers, K.W. Jeter and James Blaylock. At this time, they all had books which they categorized as ‘Steampunk’: Power’s The Anubis Gates (1983), Jeter’s Morlock Nights and Infernal Devices, and Blaylock’s Lord Kelvin’s Machine. What they all shared in common was a Victorian setting as well as a sense of the sci-fi genre of writing.
Or, to say in layman's terms, it really started in literature.
Today it's been (no pun intended) gaining steam: re-emerging in the form of printed words with such authors like Ekaterina Sedia (The Alchemy of Stone), Cheri Priest (Boneshaker) and Scott Westerfeld (Leviathan).
“It’s partly a set of nostalgias- for handmade and human-scale technologies, baroque design, and elegant dress and manners- combined with the puerile pleasure of mussing up a very stuffy stage in history, bringing a flamethrower to a tea party, so to speak. And this flamethrower extends to the political and social as well as technological, because Steampunk creates a new set of Victorian stories that expand the role of the colonized and otherwise subjugated in that era (girl geniuses, for example).”
- Scott Westerfeld, The Steampunk Bible (pg. 66)
By the way, I really should read Leviathan at some point.
What's that? You want even more literature to check out?! You got it in the form of comics as well as graphic novels. From manga to Western versions, it can be seen in a myriad of series: Hellboy, Puppet Makers by Molly Crabapple (setting is an alternate Versailles, France), Phil and Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius, and Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua. Many are found in the form of web series that are free. And who doesn't love free stuff?
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And so ends another lesson into the corners of Steampunk, ladies and gentlemen. Coming up on the next installment: we go headfirst into the arts on "Tinkering Time: Steampunk and the Arts".
