Melbourne Manifest 2010 - Report!

Yay~ Finally have some time to write about the amazing weekend that was Manifest

But before I start, I gotta say a big THANK YOU to akinofujiko for giving me the early bday present of a premium dA membership! Now I can make my journal all pretty and include pictures which is perfect for this wrap up, so thank you so much~ <3<3

*WARNING* Following entry is pic spam heavy coz I gotta abuse this new feature

Thursday Night - Amaranth
This was my second time attending Amaranth and I certainly enjoyed just as much as the previous
I actually made a cosplay just for this event this year around, so I was cosplaying Gilbert Nightray (Pandora Hearts), with as my Oz bocchan~ <3, and we shared a table with the smexy bunch of people that were , , , , , , and . It was great meeting ClamWings properly for the first time~ you were so pretty as Sheryl <3<3 I hope we get to see more of each other at events to come!

So the event started with us (predictably) arriving late...coz my class ran overtime and we took a while to get changed and ready...!
We met up with the others, whom all looked fantastic!


dewmelen as Ada from Pandora Hearts as well. You make such a pretty Ada~ <3<3


PumpkinWin as Alto Saotome of Macross Frontier. And you thought you wouldnt look good as Alto~ You sure surprised everyone! I thought you made a very classy Alto *pokepoke*


Astellecia as Sheryl Nome (Diamond Crevasse movie version). Skye and her epic raep faces XXD

And eightroses also looked adorable in her Alice (Heart no kuni no Alice) cos as well~~ I dont have a very clear picture from Amaranth tho DDX *fails*

After eating, much hilarity was to be had in our attempts at dancing. Most of the dancing we've ever done is at 4am in the morning while we're still in our studios and have gone insane from sleep deprivation, so naturally, it couldnt get any better than this XXDD


This pic is made of epic amounts of WIN!! 8D8D

We also went and abused the pretty lobby space and furniture, and had a mini photoshoot:


Doesnt this look like the final scene in LOTR where Frodo is about to throw the Ring into the fire?? XXD


It is debatable which one is more uke....

Interestingly disturbingly enough, from the mini shoot we did, I had uploaded a close up one of myself onto my fb, however, one of my friends whom didnt know what Pandora Hearts was, saw my curly hair and asked if I was cosplaying Michael Jackson........O.oasdfghjklasdfghjk,l.;?!?! I was so traumatised by the thought of myself cosplaying MJ that I deleted the pic....IM NEVER USING MY REAL HAIR IN COSPLAY AGAIN *runs thru ebay looking for a Gil wig....*

Anyways, the night wrapped up nicely, with us winning the table trivia! (Again! We won last year also XD). Tho not exactly by clean means, seeing as our table had like 4 iphones...lawl...but it was for the pocky...D: *twiddles thumbs*

Friday
Friday was originally meant to be our FFXIII photoshoot, but due to reasons out of our control, the shoot has been further postponed till around mid september, hopefully we wont all freeze to death by then ^^ll
At Friday night, as per manifest tradition, people started to come crash at my place for the weekend + last minute costume making.
This night was seriously the most hectic, but also the most miraculous night ever.....the very first obstacle we had, was meeelldango's unfinished Ciel cosplay...infact there was still quite alot to be done by friday night...she had also signed up to the anime idol competition, meaning she had to be at manifest at around 10am. I was already highly doubtful by then coz when have we ever made it to a convention before midday...? -_-lll
Nonetheless, we ordered a cab to pick us up at 9:30am the next day. And meeelldango, akinofujiko, subzerojo and I started the all nighter labour of last minute costume making and wig styling...
Admist the chaos of the Ciel cosplay, we also styled two wigs that night. subzerojo's undertaker wig, and Jess's Grell wig. And with both of them being such long wigs, we had no where else to put it but here:


It wards off evil....8D8D

After the wig styling, it was close to 3am already, so we all went back and started working on our own stuff. akinofujiko was perfecting her Finny and Maya cosplays, and subzerojo was painting his Undertaker jewellery. I spent the night helping my bocchan, and as the time went by, the work table got steadily messier...8D



I spent the whole night making the Ciel tophat...it was only the second tophat Ive ever made (first one being the Undertaker's one), so I was quite slow at it...DX But FRACKING DIAMANTES!!! DD< It took me almost 2 hours just to glue all the jewel details on with superglue and tweezers coz it was too small to hold on to OTL....

At around 6-7am, vandaraeron, juyn, Muto-Wonderland came over. It became apparent then, that we would not be ready by 9:30am...There was still far too much of Ciel to be completed DX, so I ended up cancelling the cab. Thankfully, everyone was extremely understanding of the situation, and the next few hours became the most amazing sight I've ever seen.

EVERYONE in the apartment, came together to hack away at finishing the Ciel cosplay.... akinofujiko and subzerojo helped to glue on the silver rope detailing and buttons, juyn found an ingenious way to make the ribbon on the hat by using hairspray and dryer to stiffen up the fabric, Muto-Wonderland and I started working on the tassles etc etc...And meeelldango was left to finish the big butt skirt part of the costume...


The Royale Blue Ciel Mess XXD


That hot glue gun was a bloody lifesaver...

If anything ever personified what teamwork was, it was this Ciel costume truly...It was amazing what we managed to acheive in such a short time span...


Manifest Saturday
By the time Ciel was finished and ready to go, we were all running epically late...it was about 1pm already, so everyone started getting dressed and getting their makeup on. Much kudos must be given for juyn here, for doing the Undertaker makeup, and making it so epic with experimenting with liquid latex to get the scars. It made our Undertaker truly terrifying!! lDb

However, things for me started going a little downhill from here....
In my rush, I did my binding far too tight, and it was too late when I realised it. The new cab we called came early, so I resorted to doing my makeup in the cab with meeelldango's help. However, the combination of lack of sleep, water, food, overly tight binding that was restricting my breathing, wig, and our cab driver being freaking crazy, I came close to being sick in the cab...that when we finally reached the showgrounds, I had to take my wig off and sit for a while just to catch my breath... DX I think I scared everyone as well, so sorry DX


In the cab, I died about 10mins after this shot was taken...

But after that episode, things started going back to normal, and we were FINALLY at manifest as the Kuroshitsuji group that we've been planning for so long!!



Our epic Kuroshitsuji group consisted of:

as Ciel Phantomhive
as Sebastian Michaelis
as The Undertaker
as Finny
as Drocell
Jess as Grell Sutcliffe
as Lizzy
and as Lau

Everyone did such an amazing job, despite the amount of trouble we had ran into overall, ILU ALL SO MUCH <3<3<3

We met up with many people on sat as well~
Harmony~~ It was so great to finally meet you in person! You were so pretty as Meiko~ Sorry if we freaked you out with our fangirling XXD

Bloody hell, why are you so cute ;A;~ *kidnaps* We ran thru the whole traders hall trying to find you ahaha XD Very glad we did, and thank you for taking those adorable pics with us! <3

After all this time, was finally able to talk to you irl as well XD Your Mio cos makes me wanna watch K-On~ D: We should talk more next time 8D I think I didnt say much coz I was rather dead lol

Your Ouran group was adorable~~ Hope it wasnt weird just randomly going up and talking to you like that ^^ll

You and your little brother made such a good pair~ And your sunday team was epic win as well 8D

Your Luka cos was so pretty~~ And you made me wish we had entered the sat competition instead of the sunday, coz you guys were such hilarious MCs XXD

If I missed anyone else, please clock me over the head very hard OTL

The only other eventful thing that happened that night, was when we were heading back, I was dozing on the train, and then literally snapped awake and screamed "OH SHIT WHERE'S ??!!" (coz she was supposed to go back with us and stay at my place also that night...turns out we had left her at the showgrounds...we're such fail guardians..OTL But after we got her, everything was all good ^^ll

On the way back to my apartment, we noticed that this flight of stairs that we usually take actually has some pretty epic lighting....so we kinda stuck around and did a quick random out of place photoshoot XXD But some of the shots were pretty awesome:


Love the angle in this one~


The 3 darkest characters...


Undertaker: "so....tell me your best joke...8D"
Sebastian: "oh wouldnt you like to know >D"

That night, it was more sweat shopping to finish everything we needed for our Phoenix Wright team on sunday.

Manifest Sunday
This day didnt go off to a very good start....
Completely exhausted from the day before, everyone woke up late even tho technically no one should have slept lol...Ritsuka-shiina later told us that she tried to wake everyone up but to no avail....She even tried jumping on my bed while I was still sleeping, and I swear to god I didnt feel a thing at all....I think we were all really dead from sat ^^ll

So after everyone woke up and realised how much crap we're in, it became another frantic morning to finish everything off...
Except this time, we had entered for the cosplay compeition, meaning we had to be there at 1pm latest for the bump in.

We barely made it, like 5mins barely... Originally we considered dropping out of the competition entirely, due to our lack of practice, but in the end, we still gritted our teeth and went up there.

Our epic Ace Attorney team (TAKE THAT!) consisted of:



as Phoenix Wright
as Miles Edgeworth
as Maya Fey
as Pearl Fey
as Franziska von Karma
as Godot
as the Judge
Jess as Mia Fey
Heny as Ema Skye

I think our skit was really well recieved. I was certianly surprised by how ok we did, despite the fact that we only had one recording/dancing session before we went up on stage, and pretty much no one in the group has any skit experience. Im glad we went thru with it regardless, because we certainly learnt something and gave the auidence a good laugh with our randomness ^^ll

Team TAKE THAT!'s skit can be found here www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk65xz…
And a clearer version filmed by Neil Creek can be found here neilcreek.smugmug.com/Conventi… (such close up makes our mistakes so obvious XXD)

We didnt win anything for it, but we didnt need to, we had scarred our auidence's brains already 8D. But it doesnt matter ~ I love my epic team to bits anyway winning or not. Thank you all for finally making a AA fangirl's dream come true~ <3<3<3


Mah harem of Franziskas will help me beat Phoenix!! XD


Franziska van Sheryl XXD

However by the end of the competition when we left the Alternative worlds theatre, we realised that we lost one OBJECTION!sign.... and to this day, we still dunno where it went..I just hope it doesnt find itself in some public protest soon XXD

The rest of the day was denoted to meeting smexy people such as

Your team's skit was hilarious~ XXD And you made such a cute Chizuru too! We must cos together soon ~~ <3<3

Epic DW team was epic! 8D It must have taken you guys ages to organise everything~

Izaya FTW~~ Hope to talk to you more properly next time and actually recongnise you ^^ll

The rest of the day went by unscathed, until we were on the train, and then...."OH SHITE WHERE'S ??!!?!" DD:

Seriously...we fail man... Luckily we found her soon enough as she made her way back to the city, and we met up with Astellecia, eightroses, PumpkinWin, Intricatia and pryde4114 for some much needed dinner and churros <3 And we devoted the time into planning what we're gonna do next year! The discussion makes me really excited for what we have coming up, so keep an eye out for it too~

Phew, can't believe I wrote all that........ Sorry for such a long winded post, but so much happened and I wish I could write about it all!!

Thank you once again to the following amazing people:
(sorry forgot to add joo~ DX), and Jess and Heny.

Without you guys, this year's Amaranth and Manifest wouldnt have been half as fun ^^ And if I missed someone in the shoutout, please hit me really hard to remind me ^^ll

THANK YOU ALL FOR ANOTHER MEMORABLE MANIFEST!!