Struck First gives you a first look at a cosplay just as it's been debuted/had its first photoshoot. Cosplayers have been kind enough to let me have a first crack at analyzing the cosplay by providing me with brand new pictures.
Getting to spend as much time as I did with my marvelous friend Mink the Satyr at Katsucon was a total treat you guys. Imagine the expression I had then, when asking about more potential cosplays to write about, and she gifts me with yet another collab breakdown post for you all. The outfit in question being her STUNNING Mimikyu from Pokemon Sun/Moon. This incredibly intricate gijinka involves one hell of a poofy dress and a bass guitar shaped JUST LIKE the Pokemon's tail. When fellow attendees at the con put it together, they appropriately fangirled in glee. The reason for the whole bass guitar was that Mink was in a group with fellow cosplayers Natalie Fuinha and Midge Scully in a mini Pokemon gijinka band. Watching them perform a mini music video was pretty fantastic! Much like the past collabs I've had with Mink, I'm gonna let her take over with info and pics she provided me. Enjoy guys :D!
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| Concept art |
Notes on the concept:
I was looking to create a costume that would fit the billing for “JPop Fairy Type Pokemon”. Of course Mimikyu is my favorite pokemon (and the patron saint of cosplay), so I simply had to cosplay that little bean. I couldn’t go with the traditional floofs and poofs of a sugary-sweet JPop outfit. Instead, I opted for Lolita fashion, as I was certain that is what Mimikyu would have worn as a real person. Mimikyu has that darkly cute personality and it fits the fashion genre well.
I most definitely didn’t want to do a hood. Every design I have seen out there has a hat or hood of some sort. Heck, I’ve already made a Mimikyu hoodie dress sporting the typical hooded floppy ears! No, I needed something different. A few years ago, when designing Sailor Moon/Eeveelution crossovers, I had designed Eevee with pigtails that featured different colors. I recycled that idea with Mimikyu’s pigtails to act as the “ears”.
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| Photography by CW Photography |
I also wanted to reinforce the idea that Mimikyu hide behind a fake face. A hair-clip mask fit the genre and the motif perfectly! The eyepatch with the lightning bolt was a two-fold thought. First, I wanted to lampoon the fact that Lolita fashion often includes eyepatches for what I can only guess is to confuse people looking at it. Second, I wanted to really underline that whole “this is not my real face” idea.
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| Photography by CW Photography |
Moving onto the dress, it’s really a simple rehash of Lolita dress standards: poofy skirt, fitted top with bows on EVERYTHING. Sleeves needed to be extra long and black like Mimikyu’s tentacle-arms. I have the tentacle-arms repeated with the trailing bow strands that cascade to the floor. The shawl was an homage to Mimikyu’s overall silhouette as well as a darkly-cute touch to remind us that hey, this pokemon isn’t always cute. She’s… dark.
Construction and implementation:
I refuse to make another petticoat from scratch less than a year after my last from-scratch petticoat. They take too long (5-7 mind-numbing hours for short ones) when I am already a fast seamstress. Instead, I bought a black hoop skirt and 2 black tutus from amazon. I cannibalized the highest ring of the hoopskirt and replaced it with the tie-cording through that channel instead, thus changing the shape of the bell made by the hoop skirt. Next, I lobbed off the bottom two tiers of the hoop skirt. When I wear Mimikyu, I put on one tutu first for interesting up-skirt texture (I hate being able to see peeks of raw hoopskirt boning). I put the modified hoop skirt over that. The second tutu goes over that to ensure that the fabric laying on top of the hoop skirt won’t show the boning channels of the hoop skirt when worn. Also, it fluffs things out and makes the skirt appear fuller.
I have a black circle-skirt on over all this. That skirt has yellow gathered trim sewn around it. It also has the train of tentacle-arms sewn to it as well.
The dress itself is made from three kinds of linen, black sateen, and black chiffon. The bodice is made of a lightweight yellow linen cut on the bias so it stretches nicely, doesn’t need zippers/buttons to get into, and does not require seams to hug my curves other than the side seams. It very much behaves like a t-shirt. The sleeves are made of that black sateen with the black chiffon sewn over it. It creates a smoky effect that looks quite haunting.
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| Photography by Vander the Generalist |
The skirt is made of a mid-heavy weight linen base cut in a circle. Each tier of the ruffles were hand-cut and made using light-weight linen in yellow and black. The black ruffles are actually cut about 1.5 inches longer than the yellow. The ruffles are sewn at a 1:2 gather. Meaning that for every inch of distance covered, 2 inches of ruffles are sewn in. This is what gives ruffles their bounce and volume! It also meant a butt load of fabric was used in the making of this skirt.
All bows were made from a combination of sewing and hot gluing. Absolutely zero knots were made to create each bow. The pokeballs were made from Christmas ornament halves painted on the inside.
The stockings were a pair of yellow stockings that I ombre-dyed using liquid fabric dye.
The shoes were an amazon purchase, and a good one at that!
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| Photography by Amie E. |
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| Photography by Amie E. |
Bass Concept Notes:
So the concept of the bass was this: I needed an instrument for the look: JPop Fairy Type. Mimikyu struck me as a character that would fade into the background a bit. Someone who was lurking but always there. The tones of the bass came immediately to mind! Bassist with an attitude: what’s not to love? I didn’t want to have the bass be just a bass guitar: I could buy one cheaply and repaint it, if that was the case. No, I wanted the bass to have meaning in the concept design. So I did!
The bass is Mimikyu’s “tail”. Mimikyu holds up a fake wood tail to look like Pikachu’s tail. It is a janky piece of wood and I love it! So that’s what I wanted of the base. I wanted it to look like the janky piece of wood Mimikyu uses as a Pikachu tail when held upside down.
The graffiti on the guitar is all intentional. We have the phrase “I’m Mimikyu”, which is a nod to a Poke-rap released by Nintendo/Game Freak to promote Mimikyu when Pokemon Sun/Moon came out (full quote: “I’m not Pikachu, I’m Mimikyu”). There is a lightning bolt to wink at Mimikyu wanting to be Pikachu (and in fact, Mimikyu can learn electric type TMs). The two symbols near the top of the guitar are the trading card game symbol for fairy and the z crystal symbol for Mimikyu.
A “let’s snuggle forever” sticker lives on the head of the guitar and is in fact Mimikyu’s Z-Move.
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| Photography by Amie E. |
Bass construction:
The bass is made of 3 layers of EVA foam, a wood neck, and actual bass guitar parts. Those are real knobs, tuning heads, and plate for stringing. Things that aren’t real include the fret boards (painted zip-ties) and the strings (elastic cord). Please note, I did buy real bass guitar strings for this project but they were too short (I made the neck of the bass too long) AND they created tension on the foam when I installed the string. Which makes sense. That’s how bass guitars work.
The lightning bolt on the body of the guitar is not an accident. That thing is actually speaker mesh. The back of the guitar was hollowed out an a portable blue-tooth speaker was sunk in and is held in place by an elastic band and an acrylic plate. This bass will play whatever my phone’s speakers would play, which means I have to silence any app notifications when in use! :-P
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| Photography by Myratheon Photography |
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| Photography by Myratheon Photography |
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| Photography by Amie E. |
I feel so bouncy and fun in this costume! Altogether, the bass took about 50 hours of work across two weeks and the dress and accessories took about 25 hours of work across 3 days… because I was lazy the second day.
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With that, I do hope you all enjoyed this little take over from Mink the Satyr today <3. If you wish to follow more of her mythical adventures (HIGHLY SUGGEST YOU DO), you can find her at these links :D
https://www.facebook.com/minkthesatyr
https://www.patreon.com/MinktheSatyr/
