I'm Elle, and I've been interested in kigu for around seven years. I've had a couple of masks before but they either didn't fit very well or weren't very well made. After waiting for a good amount of time, I managed to get my hands on a pre-painted Nukopan kit. I decided to go for a kit for several reasons. First, the simple factor of cost. Finished kig masks can be very expensive, and rightfully so. But at the time of payment I wasn't able to order a finished mask. Nor could I choose a single character to kig as! Which leads me on to my second point; variety of characters. As I've been waiting for around seven years to get my hands on a mask, I couldn't possibly contain my excitement and choose one character to have a finished mask made of. I chose a kit so that I could install interchangeable features and get as many characters out of the kit as I could think of, simply by swapping the hair, eyes and features around each time. And the cosplay of course! I went for a pre-painted kit as I don't have an airbrush nor the experience to properly paint it to a high standard. I had Nuko paint my mask to match the colour of my hadatai as closely as possible. I got a really lovely, well fitting hadatai from Ayame Store. I just chose one of their general sizes and it still fit me perfectly. If you're looking to order one, follow their guide and you should be fine. I've got a con coming up next week. I leave on Thursday. It's my goal to kig there for my first time ever, and have a blast doing it! I'm going to be kigging as Maki Nishkino from Love Live, as I already have the full cosplay, and I can finish the mask on a budget. So what do I need to do to finish the mask? I need to do the following. Install interior padding, install eyes and vision holes, create a wig and attach it, add lashes and brows. Now I have a wig that I used to cosplay Maki regularly that I'm willing to use, and my friend has a Maki wig of the same colour that she's willing to give me. Friends who I have made through the kig community have assured me that two wigs will be enough, especially for a Nuko mask! And I can confirm this! Well, I can make an educated guess at the VERY least. I stretched one of the wigs out over the front to see how it lined up, and amazingly, it fit pretty well. So considering that I'm working on a short time-scale here and a super-limited budget, I'm going to be cutting the wigs appropriately and and attaching with velcro. I'm going to heavily glue one side to the wig net, and then simply stick the velcro on the other side to the mask. I plan to stress test this first, so that my wig doesn't just fall apart whilst wearing it! I'm thinking I should probably also connect the two wig halves in some way rather than keeping them individually. Even if this is done in a crude fashion such as using duct tape. I'm going to print the eyes out on to photo paper and then duct tape them to the inside. Perhaps not the best method but certainly an effective one on my budget. The lashes and brows I'm still a little confused about, so any extra advice would really help!
That was a super heavy wall of text so let's slow down a little bit and talk about my plans for the future. As lovely as my Ayame hadatai is, I'm going to be investing in a suit with individual toes and specific pockets that allow for cleavage (aka individual boobs). I'm also going to get a latex hadatai in case I ever want to take photos in the water, and also just to look super cute and shiny! I'm pallning on tackling a few more characters after Maki, including but not limited to: lots of Love Live girls, Asuna (SAO), Shimikaze (Kancolle), Inori (Guilty Crown) and very possibly Ryuko Matoi! I'll add a few pictures to demonstrate my findings and progress so far. I'll hopefully be back with progress soon!
Addendum: I tried adding the image as an attachment but it didn't seem to want to show up so I've attached it as a link to a facebook version.
That was a super heavy wall of text so let's slow down a little bit and talk about my plans for the future. As lovely as my Ayame hadatai is, I'm going to be investing in a suit with individual toes and specific pockets that allow for cleavage (aka individual boobs). I'm also going to get a latex hadatai in case I ever want to take photos in the water, and also just to look super cute and shiny! I'm pallning on tackling a few more characters after Maki, including but not limited to: lots of Love Live girls, Asuna (SAO), Shimikaze (Kancolle), Inori (Guilty Crown) and very possibly Ryuko Matoi! I'll add a few pictures to demonstrate my findings and progress so far. I'll hopefully be back with progress soon!
Addendum: I tried adding the image as an attachment but it didn't seem to want to show up so I've attached it as a link to a facebook version.