Finished it a couple months ago at least, but I just took it to MegaCon in Dublin last week. Everyone there was really nice ^^
I can see through it by the way since a ton of people have asked me before, it's just a little difficult because of the LEDs reflecting off the plexiglass lol
I would jokingly say that I got a revue pin buuut. I'm distraught over not finding any merch of them..... (also dont ask why I have two nozomi keychains shhhhhhh)
Oh yes it's so exciting to have all Lovelive main characters' team 【μ's🎶】+【Aqours🌊】+【Nijigasaki High School Idol Club🌈】+【Liella!🌟】 here!!
It's quite challenging to have full teammates (9+9+13+9=40 ppl) tgt due to epidemic of covid-19, but finally we did it!!! So happy to have Lovelive in my life💕💕
This time I cosplay as Yuu Takasaki from Nijigasaki, I really love her hearty, yes and especially the scene she catch Setsuna lol.
We put quite some effort to make this dream cosplay team become true, pls like and share if u love it💕
In case anyone else is wondering how i made my Rina cosplay, here's an explanation!
The clothes were mostly just clothes I bought online and modified - planning to sew mostly from scratch for future cosplays though. Got a blue hoodie, replaced the drawstrings to be white and sewed the white stripes on. The skirt was too big so I took some fabric off to make it fit and used the extra to make into a purse. The shoes were just regular red hi-tops and I replaced the laces with light blue ones.
Now the part people are probably actually interested in, the Rina-chan Board!
Most of the Rina-chan Board was from PorzellanProps on Etsy - they sell either a fully printed version they ship to you, or the 3d model files for much less. I live in Ireland so getting a local service to print it was much faster and less expensive than buying the version they printed from the U.S.. It usually comes with swappable faceplates which seem to work really well from what I've seen other cosplayers do with them, but I wanted to make it work like Rina's!
Doing what I did with the LEDs it involved a lot more DIY and improvisation that I can't really get in get into without writing for far longer than I want to the day after an English exam, so I'll give the short version.
I ordered a perforated LED matrix from online, where holes are punched in the unused space between each LED so you can see through it from the other side. Unfortunately something like that was so obscure I had to email the company directly to get an invoice for it since they'd stopped listing it online, but if anyone wants to know where they can get one lmk and I'll see if I can find a link!
I needed a way to keep it in place, so I modelled a custom slot to glue between the faceplates, so the matrix would rest in it without sliding around. I also glued a plexiglass panel cut to shape between the front faceplate and the matrix holder.
To get it to actually work, I hooked the matrix up to an Arduino and installed all the plugins I need for it to run. To control the faces and brightness while actually wearing it (especially at cons), I also connected the Arduino to a small 12-key number pad and coded it so each button corresponded to a face. One fun fact about the default smile face is that it actually blinks randomly every 5-7 seconds!
As a last minute addition just before going to MegaCon with it, I wrapped the faceplates with duct tape and coloured it with an acrylic marker, then cut holes in the tape so the panel would still slide in. Both for aesthetics and structural integrity.
So yeah it's kinda scuffed and a lot went wrong in the process of making it, definitely wouldn't recommend mine as the best way of going about this But it worked well and held up for 3+ hours in a crowded con, so I consider that a win!