Finally uploading some photos of the costume I made for AX07. I have many, many stories to go with this (including me wandering around downtown Long Beach barefoot for over an hour), but I won't tell them all here. This is the most elaborate cosplay I've done, and I learned a lot from working on it.

Short history: I decided immediately after Anime Expo 06 that I wanted to do a Kingdom Hearts-related cosplay. I wanted to try Sora lion, but I felt that a fursuit would get too hot for July, and decided to try something more unusual: Sora lion, in Lion King on Broadway style. I did several designs, and some of the finalizations kind of showed up while working on the costume. I meant to start it at the time but ended up starting this only three weeks before AX07! Needless to say, this costume consumed my soul for three weeks straight, not to mention my checking account. I was trying a lot of things I'd never done before, and the pressure of the deadline was so bad that I was having many depressive fits towards the end. The mask I finished at 5 AM the day I was supposed to premiere the costume. Good times.

There are a lot of things I'd like to fix or add; for instance, I meant to make a "Circle of Life" Keyblade to go with this, but ran out of both time and funds (I'm completely broke and in debt, actually) to get it done... so it looks like I'll be taking this to Comic-Con as-is.

Details of the pieces:
- The beaded corset is made to look similar to those worn in the play. The beads are made of wood and threaded onto leather cord, which I sewed onto strips of fabric and put eyelets in to lace-up in the back. There are a little over 1200 beads in the corset, and it took about three days to make. Close-up: [link]
- The mask is a design based on Simba's from the Broadway musical. It is designed to sit on top of the head rather like half of a helmet. Without the technical expertise of the Broadway staff, my helmet is significantly heavier, made of copper wire and paper mache. This was the source of many cuts and much emotional agony. The dried mache was sprayed with several coats of spray paint, then painted with a mixture of tempura and acrylic paints. The "mane" was added on last; I glued rows of a type of grass to fabric, then glued it to the mask and bent it into shape. The mask is held onto my head rather poorly with nylon straps held together with safety pins, and thick foam near the muzzle keeps it from tipping off my head (did I mention it's heavy?). Despite it all, I never had any problems with it falling off, and it never gave me a headache.
- The fabric portions of this are muslin that I hand dyed. The skirt is based loosely off of Nala's design; it's a long piece of fabric with a "loin cloth" in front for the "underbelly". I thought the rather simple design would be more typical of a "cub". The sleeves I made individually and attached to a spaghetti-strap shirt. The designs were hand-painted with a stencil I made myself, and fabric paint. The tail is the same fabric with a painted design, with the same grass from the mask glued to a piece of fabric, sewn to the end.
- The necklace is two strands of beads. The pendant is a piece of balsa wood I fashioned into a crown shape, with leather and suede glued on top.

I think that's about it... sadly I didn't take any of these photos, and I'm not sure who took the one in the middle... if it's yours, please let me know. I'm also not sure who the nice Hercules was that lent me that Scar to pose with... which was amazingly well-made, by the way. I was really impressed with a lot of the cosplayers at the Kingdom Hearts gathering at AX07, which was easily the most fun I had at the convention. I'm really bummed out this won't be fixed up for Comic-Con, but... I hope people enjoyed this, anyway. embarrassed as I am for people to be seeing my ugly mug.