Blog no. 547236512953

noooooooope:

If someone wants to read the LP of the first Dangan Ronpa game, I saved it as an archive. The links in the pages that lead to Something Awful obviously don’t work (the music and video ones are fine), and the archive only contains posts by orenronen (18 pages is easier to archive than 720). You’ll have to drag the [number].htm files into your browser. The text in these pages is also uncensored so you won’t have any “poo poo” or “gently caress”.

Here’s a link to a torrent

And here’s each page as a direct download because MediaFire has a 200mb file size limit. 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12_1 12_2 13 14 15 16 17 18

12 was big so I split it into two archives, just copy the contents of “12_files” from “12_2” into the “12_files” in “12_1”.

Please use the torrent if at all possible, more people using the torrent means faster downloads for everyone if you keep it seeding.

All credit for this game’s content goes to Spike, and all credit for this Let’s Play goes to Something Awful user orenronen. If you like Dangan Ronpa you might want to consider signing up for a Something Awful account, not only will you have no swear filter (these pages DO have the swear filter removed) but you’ll be able to read the updates for Super Dangan Ronpa 2 as they come out.

cyansonata:

1. You need it.
   I don’t care if you’re cosplaying a guy or if you are a guy, being in cosplay is akin to being on stage. Even if it’s just foundation and mascara, you’ll be thankful for it when you see pictures of yourself later on.

2. Wear some form of base.
   I personally use Clean & Clear Finishes Mattifying Moisturizer. You only need a rather small amount and it works extremely well. Your makeup will last longer and it controls nasty shineface. You also need eyeshadow base to keep your eye makeup from creasing or smudging. I use Sephora Perfecting Eye Primer.

3. Don’t overdo it.
   While being in cosplay is like being on stage, you are not actually on stage and everyone can see you up close. So dial it back a little. Tone down bright eyeshadow with neutrals, and go easy on the blush. And never, ever, ever, ever wear bright lipstick if you’re wearing a lot of eye makeup. A basic rule of makeup is balance. If you’re going big on the eyes, go easy on the lips, and vice versa. I cannot begin to tell you how many people do not know this, though.
   In cosplay makeup, you really should play up your eyes, in which case you want to be wearing a nude or a pastel on your lips. You’ll look really tacky otherwise. This claim is backed up wholeheartedly by my mother, who is a former cosmetologist and model.

4. Wear decent mascara or false eyelashes.
   Seriously, you really need to play up your eyes in cosplay makeup. And if you’re wearing a lot of eyeshadow, it’s easy for your eyes to get ‘lost’ in your face. Having long eyelashes counteracts this by making your eyes look bigger. I wear false eyelashes even for male characters.

5. Wear the right colors.
   If your foundation doesn’t exactly match your skin tone, it’s going to show in pictures and look really silly.

6. Use some kind of sealer/finisher.
   Chances are, you’re going to be at the con from early morning to very late at night. Makeup isn’t made to last that long. A finishing spray will keep it looking fresh all day long. I use The Style Art Designing Makeup Fix by Missha. That is a Korean product, so keep in mind that it’s coming from overseas. You can also use a body paint sealer.

7. Test your exact makeup plans before the con.
   Take pictures of yourself from different angles and in different lighting to make sure it actually looks the way you want it to.

8. Cover your eyebrows.
   This is so, so, so important. If your eyebrows do not match your wig, it’s going to ruin your entire look. There are dozens of tutorials online for effective ways of doing this if you’re clueless. I personally find acrylic paint mixed with a little powder to work well.
   
   Hope this is helpful!

mrbob0822:

I’ve had several people ask about how I’ve made my Alistair costume before(props to Darryn from Great Britain who’s made it off of this tutorial.  An Alistair cosplayer with a legitimate accent(and not my horrible excuse for one), is an exciting prospect to me, and all of you Alistair fans should be excited as well!  I figured since I’ve spent so much time typing this thing out, I may as well post it for the masses, as I’m not one to keep trade secrets.  The more Alistair love the better, right?

It’s also worth noting that I’m by no means a professional cosplayer/costume builder, and am just an amateur hobbyist.  This is merely a documentation of my process(much of it a learning process) throughout this project.  If you’re following along and have a better idea on how to do anything that differs from what I’ve done, by all means go for it!  That being said, follow alongside me on this costume journey, won’t you?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Materials and Reference

I had to create this costume on a shoestring budget in college. I had no money and no experience(or tools for that matter) for working with leather and aluminum, so I went to my fallback of cardboard, foam, and acrylic, since it’s worked for me in the past.

Before I get into everything, I need to warn you that this will eat up hours, and hours, and hours of your time. The general rule of thumb is that the cheaper the material you work with, the more time you spend trying to achieve a likeness to something constructed with a better material.  That’s at least what I’ve seen.  I spend next-to-nothing on materials for my projects, but if I ever kept track of the hours I spend getting something to look the way I do, I’m pretty sure I’d cry a little.

Here are some of the screenshots I took from the game and referenced to keep it as close to the in-game model as I possibly could:

  

Cuirass(breastplate and backplate)

The armor was crafted by taking a sheet of cardboard and cutting it to the proper shape of my body, with respect to each piece of armor.  A word of warning: a single sheet of cardboard isn’t such a good idea.  I did that for the backplate of my cuirass(torso armor), and it wound up bowing(example), so either layer it up with several sheets of cardboard and hot glue, or use a more durable material, such as sintra(essentially a sheet form of PVC).  However, the cardboard will always be cheaper(story of my life in crafting), and I’ll admit when I added the belts around the midsection, it helped reduce the amount of bowing on the back.  Once I had the base of my cuirass built out of cardboard, I hot glued sheets of black craft foam over the top of it, making sure to sandwich the cardboard(ie: front and back) between it. (example)

Now, if I were to do this project again(and I’ve actually re-done the pauldrons(shoulder armor) since), when I’d sandwich the cardboard between the sheets of foam, I’d first glue the straps to the cardboard, and run some nuts and bolts through them as well, as this is going to be the weakest part of the armor, in order to keep everything more secure and clean. And, from experience, use buckles; not Velcro.  Trust me.  Those pauldrons were a royal pain in the butt with that Velcro.  For the rounded edges of the armor, I snipped the edges and glued them down to the underside of each piece of armor in order to keep a contiguous form.

Here’s an example without the buckles:

Here’s an example with the buckles:

Shoulder Straps and Pauldrons

When I remade the pauldrons, I actually used pleather to coat the outsides, and painted them with brown acrylic, so it works fairly well. However, the glaring problem with it is that pleather doesn’t bond with hot glue as well as foam, the finish on the pleather needs to be sanded down thoroughly wherever the splints are getting glued down.  One can get around this, for the most part, by using a stronger glue(Hobbytown makes a cyanoacrylate that is fantastic for this(a shout out to Bill Doran of Punished Props for bringing this glue to my attention)), which is what I’m currently using on my armor.

My straps were, if I recall correctly, cardboard and foam, which I bolted two leather straps through on either end after having threaded through the larger metal rings, and covered in scrap leather.

I did a really quick sketch of a diagram for it:

If the diagram needs clearing up in any way, let me know, and I’d be happy to elaborate.

One would, of course, bolt more leather straps to the front and back plates of the cuirass(torso armor) and loop those ends through the rings.

Once all of that is done, I painted all of the armor with a dark brown acrylic(honestly, I use the cheapest acrylic I can buy from my local craft store). Once that’s dry, I lightly sponged on a lighter brown acrylic to give it a mottled leather texture. After that was finished, I thinned out some cheap, white school glue(as if making papier-mâché), and paint it onto the surface.  An alternative to this would be to use Mod Podge or some similar decoupage.  When that dried, I was left with the proper dull sheen to simulate leather. Be advised that this will crack if the glue is too thick, and/or it’s bent too far, hence why it’s thinned with water.  Since I posted this, I’ve come to realize that this step isn’t wholly necessary, and one can use a can of clear coat enamel(gloss for the metal, matte for the leather) to coat the armor when it’s done.  The clear coat gives it a slightly glossy shine, and with the glue/decoupage on there, it almost seems a little too shiny.  An added bonus of the clear coat is that it’ll help to protect your gear a bit, making it resistant to rain, or if you want to go Dragon Age authentic, blood, allowing you to wash it off with no ill effects.

Splints

I cut the splints out of cardboard, sealed all the edges with hot glue, added the rivets with hot glue, painted them with metallic silver acrylic, and antiqued them by sponging on gold, brown, a little olive drab, and some black acrylic. With cardboard, bends and creases in the splints becomes hard to avoid. I used an inking pen and acrylic to grunge up these dents to simulate sword cuts and other miscellaneous damage Alistair would likely incur by wearing his armor into battle over time(he is a tad clumsy). These freaking things will took up the bulk of time on this armor.  If you’re doing this for yourself, do yourself a favor and get a friend or two to help you out in order to speed up the process. You won’t regret it.

This was the earliest photo of the splints I could find. I changed the entire breast plate for the cuirass since the picture was taken, but here are the splints before I textured them:

Before hot gluing the splints to the armor, I made sure, specifically for the cuirass, to secure it to a gambeson(the leather base that goes beneath the leather armor.  For this, I went to a thrift store, found a long, leather coat that was about the same shade of brown as my armor, basically made a tube top out of it by buttoning the coat and sewing it together where I could, and secured the armor over the top of it with nuts and bolts, just so I could be sure it wouldn’t move. Make SURE you’re careful if you use bolts, as you don’t want to have the ends jabbing into your skin. That’s just uncomfortable, but in some cases, it’s kind of unavoidable.  I’m sure there are far better methods of securing this armor that doesn’t involve this, but again, this was what I did.  Once all of the leather base armor is taken care of, THEN I started gluing on the plates. After that’s all taken care of, it’s essentially done. I just picked up a few belts long enough to wrap around the cuirass(it was tougher for me than expected, as I’m 6’4” and about 250lbs, and the armor’s thickness adds a few more inches on top of that).  Having experienced a fair number of splints popping loose when the hot glue bond loosens due to the armor flexing, I’ve noticed that using Hobbytown’s cyanoacrylate creates a much stronger bond, allowing a little bit more flex to the splints.  This would be my recommendation for adhering them to the cuirass.

NOTE: In the future, I hope to completely overhaul these cardboard and foam pieces, as well as the splints, with EVA foam.  EVA can be heat-formed using a heat gun, and bent into a more permanent shape, whereas cardboard will either crease, or just not bend at all.  The splints could be cut from a single sheet of thinner EVA and one would merely have to clean up the edge with a rotary tool, like a Dremel.  This would save so much time and frustration in dealing with all of that hot glue.  On top of that, the glue would have a greater effect on a foam-to-foam bond than a laquered-foam-to-cardboard bond, minimizing, or altogether preventing, a need to re-attach any detached splints between wearings. 

Boots

The boots I originally ordered were brown X-Element motorcycle boots that I purchased off of the internet for about $70(they’ve since been marked down to about $60). They’re a bit shorter than the ones Alistair uses, but I already had them for my Renaissance Faire costume, so I just carried them over.  HOWEVER, they’re motorcycle boots.  They’re meant for riding, not hiking through a convention hall over and over again all day for several days.  Since then, I’ve ordered myself a pair of these in brown.  They’re taller, and are a bit more comfortable than my X-Elements.  I popped some Dr. Scholl’s insoles into them, and they were decently comfortable throughout the weekend.  If you can swing the cost, know someone, or can build them well enough yourself, however, spend some money and get some custom boots that’ll provide comfort, especially if you’ll be doing a lot of walking at a con(Dragon*Con has a parade route on Saturday).

Bracers

My bracers were from my Renaissance Faire costume as well.  While they’re not exactly what Alistair’s look like, they’re fine quality leather, and I was determined to get the most out of them.  However, assuming you don’t already have a pair of brown leather bracers just layin’ around, this is a pair I would recommend, if you have some cash to spare, since they have the horizontal banding that Alistair’s has.  If you get those, make sure to specify “Dark Brown” under bracer color, “Antique” under studs, and either buckle finish should work.  With my costume, I’d probably go with the brass/gold finish to match the buckles and eyelets I chose throughout my costume, but the brass/nickel finish would also complement the silvery parts, like the splints, so it’s ultimately up to you.  Otherwise these are cheap enough and look like they could get the job done, too.  Just get ‘em in brown.  If you want to go the accuracy route, you could make the bracer out of EVA foam and just heat form it into place, then cut some slits into the EVA, slip the strapping through, glue it to the edges, and maybe put a strip of craft foam up and down the inside edges just to make sure the strapping pulls the outside down to your arm when you tighten the straps, otherwise the bracer’s going to stick out on the outsides.  Once that’s all in place, just decoupage the thing and hit it with some brown acrylic to give it the proper color.  After that dries, I’d go the extra step and mix a tiny bit of black with the same brown, and lightly sponge it on just to give it a little texture variation, but that might just be me.

Gauntlets

The gauntlets were cheap, $25 leather gauntlets that were originally black(they look brownish in the picture, don’t they?), but I just thinned some of the same dark brown acrylic that I used for the armor, and added about ten-or-so layers, making sure to let them dry(I sped up the process with a hair dryer), between each layer, or the paint will chip off when bent and scraped.

Gambeson

The gambeson, doublet, arming jack, or whatever you want to call it(the clothing UNDERNEATH all the armor) was a pair of long underwear(also called thermal underwear) that had the wool texture Alistair’s clothing has(a lot of people confuse it with chain mail, but it isn’t if you use the higher resolution textures and pay close attention)

The long underwear was originally an eggshell color, so I just mixed a little black acrylic with a bucket of water, and made sure to mix it thoroughly(or you’ll get spotting on the material), and just let it sit in there and soak up the thinned black until it darkened to the proper gray color.

I was lucky and happened to have this already, but you can order the top and bottom from those according links.

Chaps

The lower-half is…depressing at best without the chaps.  TRUST ME.  In my defense, I told FedEx to hold the chaps at their facility because they couldn’t figure out how to call me to tell me that they couldn’t deliver them.  I apparently had to call THEM.  Of course, they didn’t hold them there either.  Anyway, I digress.  I just found some long, brown chaps for motorcycles and the like, that fit me, and that was that.  While helping Darryn find some chaps for his version, I came across this site, which has a very good deal on brown leather chaps similar to the ones I purchased, but at about half the cost of what I paid.  One thing worth noting is that you make sure you read the measuring instructions before you place the order, and double-check the measurements.  Nothing is worse than getting something that doesn’t fit properly, right?

Sword

Next up, the shield.  Here’s a screen grab I took to show what I was going for:

The sword was just a NERF Marauder.  I used a rotary tool, like a Dremel, to remove any logos or otherwise undesirable features, and hollow out the pommel(the round bottom chunk of the grip), which I filled with hot glue and carved in the little grooves to match his longsword.  I had originally rushed the hilt(the metal cross-piece that separates the blade from the grip), and just made a really chunky enclosure out of cardboard.  I recently took a day to tear that apart and Dremeled that baby into proper shape, then hot glued craft foam into place to make it slim and sexy(or as sexy as a hilt can be anyway).  When I saw how well that was working, I decided to re-work the pommel and grip as well.  The grip was literally all Dremel work.  I took a wide grinding bit and angled the edges in on the four corners, and then ground the channel down the center of either side.  Remember to go slow and steady, or you may wind up needing another NERF sword.  On to the pommel.  I rolled two balls of Sculpey that were roughly marble-sized, and used a sharp knife to cut them in half.  I made two just in case something happened to one of them.  While that was baking(250° for about fifteen minutes), I used a shot glass to get a circle that was roughly the size of the pommel, and made a gear pattern around the edges to emulate the pattern on Alistair’s pommel.  After pulling the Sculpey out and letting it cool, I cut circles into the center of the “gears” just big enough for the hemispheres to fit.  Hot glue everything into place, prime it in black, dry brush it in gold, and you’re set!  

Unfortunately I don’t have any real progress pictures on this whole process.  I essentially popped in my headphones and just…worked.  That, and I didn’t have a camera anyway, since I was doing it between loads of laundry at my parents’ house.  Oh well.  Message me if this needs any clarification, and I’d be happy to explain further or sketch out any diagrams!

Fun fact: Making the grip more accurate to the game actually made this sword easier for me to spin.

Embarrassing fact: I posted a video of said spinning…  HURR!

Shield

The shield was rushed to be finished in time for my local Renaissance Faire, so it’s not as great as it could be, but it still came out pretty nice considering that point. Here are some progress photos to look at: 

The first shows the rigid skeleton made from one chunk of cardboard for the back, a cross-piece that arcs in the center, and then a series of concentric pieces, each smaller than the last, that help to give it rigidity when the top is glued down. The second is a view of the straps, which are bolted into the back piece of the cardboard before anything is glued on(I believe I reinforced it with another piece of cardboard and a washer to keep it from pulling through and essentially ruining the piece). The third is after I’d glued down each triangular section meeting in the middle. The fourth is how I went to the Renaissance Faire. I didn’t have time to complete the Eternal Flame of Andraste on hide(or pleather as I later used), so I took a rabbit pelt I had in my room, and tacked it down after tacking the leather strips down. Eventually, I pulled that pelt off of there, cut out a chunk of pleather into the right shape(which is essentially rough anyway), and painted the symbol on with acrylic paint. Here’s the end result:

As far as I’m concerned, the costume is still a work in progress, as there are still plenty of tweaks I could make(I’d love to eventually make this costume out of real armor materials(or commission it if it wouldn’t be a gajillion dollars)), some of them I already mentioned, but for the most part, it is complete.

Sorry if that’s a lot to take in, but if you have any other inquiries, I would be more than happy to help you resolve them!

Go forth now, brothers and sisters in arms, and craft some sweet armor mostly out of what normal people throw away!

For Ferelden!

For the Grey Wardens!