Into the Geek Realm: Fanime 2014, pt. 6: Sunday Morning… Ouch, it Hurts

My start for Sunday was a rocky one. That’s not entirely surprising as I went drink for drink with someone drinking beer. I woke up at about 5 or 6 in the morning and eased my way back in to being human, one sip of water at a time. I wrapped myself in my blanket and sat in my chair and sipped a

Ryu fighting in the light of day

glass of water while occasionally dosing in my chair.

I decided to take it easy dressing wise, after all, I was nursing an initially brutal hangover that managed to tune down to a headache.

We had to get an early start on the day as I wanted to hit a panel at 9 AM. So, its bright and early back down to San José for another fun-filled day at Fanime. Of course, I was still feeling a bit dehydrated and had a headache from drinking too much.

But I managed to make it there a little late to see a panel on how to make your own props.

I must say, the panel on how to fabricate your own props was incredibly enlightening. They talk about the time it takes to create something entirely from scratch, largely using MDF.

The props they made had an amazing amount of detail. It was interesting to finally have some idea on how to make props. It’s something that everyone who cosplays will need to do more than likely.

After that, I headed over to a panel called Sewing Lolita. I was hoping that the panel could give me more information on how to do tailoring as a lot of Lolita clothing, while designed for multiple body types, still requires a bit of tailoring in design.

Zelda, Groose and Ganon from Skyward Sword

Boy, did it give me a lot of information. I learned a lot of places to go and find patterns for Lolita clothing that I had never thought of. It even talked about tips with taking care of finer details and trims which can be more complicated if you’re not used to sewing.

They also covered things that I had never thought of… like irons. They also talked about something that I’ve always wanted to do, drafting your own patterns. I’ve always wanted to draft my own patterns for designs that I have thought about making. It was a great class to go to and I kind of wish it was longer than the period it was. That’s OK, because I truly enjoyed it.

After the sewing panel, I met up with Craig and we headed out for brunch. The goal of brunch was to try to get rid of the headache that I had leftover from drinking the night before. We hit a local café that has some amazing gluten-free baguettes. I had a great breakfast sandwich. La Lune Sucre is a very good café that has gluten-free options for those of us who can not eat it. They have gluten-free quiches and a wonderful gluten-free baguette that rivals Mariposa Bakery’s baguette. They also make a fabulous hollandaise sauce.

After a wonderful brunch on a warm Sunday morning/afternoon we headed back to con. We wandered

Everybody was Gundam fighting…
Picture by Jeanie Butera

around Artists’ Alley and picked up some awesome art pieces. A large piece that shows the seven sages from Ocarina of Time, a Persona 3 piece and a piece that puts Winry Rockbell from Fullmetal Alchemist as Rosie the Riveter. There was another piece that I saw that had Mikasa as Rosie and said I can do it. There was also a picture in the same scheme as the Obama Hope poster, but it had Shibe Doge and it said Wow. We also ran in to someone who does commissions of Final Fantasy XIV pictures. I e-mailed them, but I have yet to hear back.

After Artists’ Alley, I made my way to my next panel. It was also a sewing panel. This time it was a panel about reading patterns. I was hoping to get some more enlightenment about patterns that I hadn’t learned about before, but alas it was largely everything that I had known from having sewn. It was a great panel and addressed a lot of questions that people had. It was nice to see patterns torn down to the nuts and bolts explained like my grandmother had taught me.

Right after that panel, there was another panel that was about Japanese history. This one was called the Badasses of Japanese History, It was an interesting panel that talked about some amazing people in

Morrigan from Darkstalkers
Picture by Brit Cossel

Japanese history. Many of them were shoguns. Some of them did other things. All of them were considered incredibly badass. Some of the badasses were Oda Nobunaga, Miyamoto Musashi, Fukuda Keiko, Uesugi Kenshin and more. It was a thoroughly entertaining panel.