Category: Anime

Inspiration: I like his outfit. Heihachi is my favorite character from the show, but Katsushiro (at least early on) was up there too. So I started planning this in fall 2004, but it got pushed over in favor of Claus from Last Exile. Now I'm revisiting it, mostly because it will work will for a sort of practice before two other costumes that I'm considering that will require some similar techniques and materials..

Photo Credit: Bryce (Evangelion Xgouki)

Favorite Aspect: The pocket in the front of the jacket. At first I wasn't going to make it a real pocket, but then I did. It's really handy for stuffing things (camera, glasses, etc.) into when someone wants to take my picture. Oh, and I changed the design to have a canteen. That really paid off for summer cons.

Least Favorite Aspect: Material choices. So close yet so far. For the pants, it's a bit too yellow relative to the jacket where I choose less saturated & darker colors. Also the material gets small wrinkes too easily. For the jacket, I got seemed to be nice faux lather - it feels less plasticy than most, and the weight seemed suitable for a heaver weight jacket. But it doesn't handle concave curves (i.e. bending at the arms) very well.

Easiest Task: The tekko (the hand/lower arm covers) and obi.

Hardest Task: The jacket. Getting the fit right didn't go so smoothly. Due to the obi, the jacket doesn't move as freely, so it restricts arm movement. So I made the sleeves a bit bigger & adjusted the sleeve cap's curve quite a bit, but only with minimal success. Then sewing it, where most seams are stitched 3x (along the seam, then top stitched on either side of the seam), took much longer than I had anticipated,

Awards:

First Place Saturday Hall Cosplay at Anime USA 2006