Saturday 6 April 2013

Hiyori Sarugaki Cosplay Test

I don't cosplay and I actually hate getting photographed, but about two years ago, my dear friend Alice gave me the challenge of pulling off Hiyori Sarugaki from Bleach. After a lot of procrastination, I've finally started to put things together and I realised that, well, I might not be able to pull it off as well as I would have wanted to. o_0 Or rather, I might have to tweak her look for Anime North convention purposes because of the wig.


The Problem

It's still a work in progress, so it's not completely styled, but I can already tell that it will never meet my standards for in-person cosplay. It doesn't look too bad in photographs because I can control the angles.  For example:


I'm very pleased with the colour (which is why I specifically bought this wig in the first place)...But the wig itself just isn't meant for a pigtail style. It was originally just a regular straight long-haired wig, so the cap didn't need to cover the area above the ears. When tied up, it therefore has a huge gap that's really noticeable in person.



I can't find a way around it because the cap of the wig is literally too small and wouldn't properly cover up those areas that would have otherwise been covered up when the hair is down. I already had to do this super tedious job of creating a middle part for the two tails because the hair was meant to hang down instead of sideways. There are still a few holes I need to patch up.


I found progress pics in my files just before last year's Anime North! It's not very clear, but you can kind of see a lot more of the middle patches that had to be covered up by glued-on strands. (btw, I got the strands from the excess hair that I chopped off-- the wig was really long!)




After all that work, one might think it's kind of a waste to not wear it at a con...but I guess I don't want to dress up, unless it's really nice.  I was a bit bummed about admitting defeat, especially after I had bought 3meters of red fabric for her jumpsuit, yellow flipflops, and the wig... AND I feel like it would be really fun to cosplay as this character because I can give people the stinkeye without feeling guilty (gotta stay in character, ne?) ;D

The sword was from a Kenshin halloween costume!
Anyways, not all hope is lost because Kubo-sensei has a way of inspiring me...


The Solution



In the new arc, this is Hiyori's only appearance in the manga so far! AND HER HAIR IS COVERED, LOL! Okay, so I'm not going to wear a towel turban over my head all day, but I thought that it could be an option to wear her hair down and have the towel hanging over a shoulder or neck (and maybe balance my bath stuff on my head too). XD

It would also solve part of my transportation problem because I have tons of stuff to bring to the con, and if I gotta bus it, the pigtail wig just might end up getting really deformed from the travels whereas one with an simpler hairstyle would be easier to fix up.

I dunno. It would have been nice to have a perfectly accurate Hiyori, maybe even with the Vizard mask... but it just doesn't seem feasible at the moment. I much rather have a nice original look, rather than a shoddy canon one.  I shall await Alice's verdict! I can't even judge whether I look okay because I already have an image of Hiyori that I'd never be able to match-- for some reason, I always imagined her as caucasian, Irish in particular!

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