the flip side of
other people taking jewish created symbols of anti-nazism (like
captain america) and making them…well even just not a symbol of
that rather than explicitly a symbol of the opposite, is what marvel
has been doing for ages (and what fandom does) which is taking the
things jewish creators were using to symbolise nazism itself and
making them not about that – diluting it down to some kind of
ambiguity or just flat out erasing it whichever. That also damages that important anti-nazi message in the work you’re doing it to.
Its part of the same
thing. Portraying explicitly nazi-symbolising characters as not nazis
should never be a thing you consider okay and to see people protest
cap being hydra and then also do this shows very clearly it is not
the antisemitism that bothers you in this situation and that you just
flat out dont get it.
Analemma. The sun’s position in the sky, photographed from the same location at the same time of day throughout a year, forms an analemma. This shows the sun’s apparent swinging from its northernmost position, at the analemma’s uppermost point, at summer solstice, to its southernmost position/lowest point, at winter solstice.
“Mako is defined by the grey colour and the blue colour. As we go through the movie we find out that she’s defined by those colours because in her childhood we have a blue memory.” “…The memory has left a stain on her hair that is blue, and she’s carrying that memory with her.”
“On the other hand, Raleigh is in a colour space made up of greens, browns and amber.”
“Mako and Raleigh complement each other, their colours are complementary. Their Jaeger cockpit, then, is mostly in blue and amber, their colours.”
“And finally, they recuperate the heart. There’s a scene where they’re watching the robot in a service station and for the first time, the technicians uncover the heart of the robot. Mako and Raleigh are becoming vulnerable.”
“And this is resolved, finally, by the reintroduction of the full red colour when they are together under the ocean.”
Well musketeers cosplay planning requires the uniform of course.
Honestly this is mostly for my own record of progress and in the hope it’ll encourage me to keep on track with this project. But also posting incase anyone wants to follow along and I’ll do a bit of leather working 101 while I’m at it. Which may interest people wanting to make other leather things (and ask box open so feel free)
Anyway these things are clearly a pain in the arse to make lets go
I was going to put design in this first post also but it’s been sitting in my drafts way to long so I’m posting this bit up and design post will follow shortly (and maybe someone can come prod me if I leave it too long)
some terminology might differ by place, or even just different people
(long post so under here)
I’m trying to add pictures of tools to this for other people’s reference but a lot of mine are in Nottingham and I’m at my parents so I’ve sourced some pictures from google.
Materials list
(also, for me to check if I have everything…)
Leather (surprisingly)
For tooling and shaping leather you need to use full grain vegetable tanned leather. Tandy leather has outlets in lots of countries but local suppliers will probably be cheaper, ebay can be good, if you’re in the uk I usually use leprevo – very helpful, based in newcastle (I think) and have decent postage charges. Theidentystore is also good, I’ve only shopped there in person as it’s near my aunt and uncles but they also have a website – if you can get somewhere physically you’ll be able to get reminants and quite a few pieces for this can be made from reminants.
Anyway it looks something like this usually
Advice on buying leather:
It comes in various thicknesses, measured in mm or ozs. As leather armour goes theirs looks reasonably thin and it’s a costume peice so something between 2.8-3.5mm (7-9oz ish) is probably good as that’s thick enough to hold shape but not too thick its difficult shape in the first place. You can go thicker (and part of my choice is cause that thickness also suits another project so I can do it from the same skin) and historically it would probably need to be to offer proper protection – I think it would have also been boiled? (I’m probably not going to do that)
Its usually priced by the square foot and will come in hides, sides, shoulders etc I’ve also seen it in cut sheets which might be more useful if you’re just doing one. I think you need about 2 sqf ish for this (including the elbow cop) but probably do a pattern and figure it out from there and obviously if you’re doing any more of the leather bits yourself it’ll make sense to get it in one go.
As you’re probably going for a more lived in look you don’t need to worry too much about getting grade A/1 leather but you do need something that’ll take a reasonably even dye.
Tooling equipment
(the tooling on these is actually not ridiculously complicated – although fiddly and time consuming in places, you’ll be pleased to hear, I’ll get to that in a bit)
you’ll deffinitly need as a minimum:
A swivel knife
Stylus for transfering designs
Stamping tools: bevels, backgrounders. exist in a variety of sizes and patterns (other common tools you’ll see that I don’t think I’m going to use on this are pear shaders, vieners, seeders and camaflage tools. the last three are almost certainly unesseccery looking at it now a pear shader might be useful in very small amounts. Also, d’Artagnan’s doesn’t have any background work)
(reccomended but you can probably do without: carving spoon)
a mallet
tracing film or equivilent
water and a sponge
a block to go under where you’re working
Rivets/Studs
Rivets fix leather to other bits of leather. To set them you need the imagintively named rivet setting tool you can see in the middle
You’ll also need a hole punch set (this is the one I have I think, though I didn’t buy it here they just have good pictures)
(you can also use one of these, they apparently require a bit of strength so if that’s not a strong point probably use a punch). They come in a few different designs and shapes but these are the most common. Studs sometimes look the same but are more for decoration, again lots of different types. How many you need depends on which uniform you’re making – for example Porthos is very big on decorative bits of metal
Snaps/Clasps
Snaps are similar things but can come appart again, come in bigger sizes with patterned snap caps available for the bits at the top on athos, porthos and aramis’ guards (we don’t actually need them to come appart but I was hard pressed to find things the right shape that didn’t). You need the (equally imaginitivly named) snap setting tool -in the right size for your snaps and a snap setting anvil as well as the hole punch again.
Buckles
Three per guard one at the shoulder one under the arm and one at the back of the elbow. Get the buckles first then do the sizing of the straps to fit through them
Dyes and Finishes
I’m going to get on to types of dyes and finishes when I start using them because I don’t actually know what I’m going to use yet and don’t have anything to show you. So I’ll go through them in more detail a bit later
But self explanitary: dyes make the leather a different colour finishes do a variety of things but more or less all of them keep the dye on as a start point.
Leather glue
useful but probably not particularly period accurate
Design post to follow which will include more detail on what you need and techniques you might want to research for each specific character. After that tooling, dyeing, shaping etc and anything else people want to know if anyones read this far and carrys on reading these posts
(Vegtan leather is toolable and shapable because of the celuous structure and cause it can absorbe water (and probably some other stuff). Unfortunately this means there is no real alternative material that’ll work in the same way, that means you pretty much have to use an animal product. Pleathers/vinyls/etc are usually made from oil or similar so wont work (and are also worse for the environment). You an buy leather from naturally deceased animals, but expect to pay a lot more, otherwise leather is a by-product of the meat industry. If that’s a problem you might want to look into cork fabric -which’ll take pyrography type tooling bt I’m not sure about dye, worbla -never used it, might work for some of the designs? or clay perhaps? craft foam will shape (sort of, and become toxic when you heat it) but wont take tooling, it can take leather stamps (badly) and fluer de lys stamps do exist?, in thoery felt might work as if you wet it compress bits and leave it to dry it’ll keep its shape? but you’d need to not use synthetic stuff and we’re back to an animal product)
If you ever feel like you’ve fucked up just remember that a whole TEAM of people designed this cash machine to be 15 inches off the ground and no one along the way thought ‘maybe this has a design flaw’
“Cash machine”
Yes. Here in the UK people call them cash machines, I know that’s an odd concept to get your head around but I think together we can do it
actually thats really handy for folk like me, just saying
yea, i just love how something that inconveniences abled people is considered a flaw, but something that is literally exclusive of disabled people, to the point where it renders us unable to do these things without help [if at all], is just considered the norm; there’s no pictures of ATM’s that are way too tall or made without braille, broken elevators, completely inaccessible entrances, &etc. floating around on this site, referring to them as flawed [or, lets call it what it really is: morally reprehensible], because abled people have the world so tailored to their needs, they don’t even see that shit – and when they do, they just shrug their shoulders and think, ”eh, oh well”.
i’d love to line up all the people who used that and ask them ”gee, isn’t it extremely hard – not to mention, humiliating – to use something that is so obviously made for everyone not like you, that they didn’t even care how it would affect you? now take the 15 seconds you spent at that machine and apply to the whole fucking world.”
(this is in nottingham I think, apparently it’s ending up this height because it’s on a hill – they should deffinitly have considered this though)
I remember my lecturer telling us last year that cash machines in this country had had to be lowered when disability acts came in (and I suppose in theory this is meant to have happened country wide, but likely hasn’t)
however, 380 mm (15inchs) is considered the minimum confortable height reach from a wheelchair for design purposes (useful for plug sockets and such) the max reach is 1220mm (48’’) going forwards and I think cash machines are meant to be at about 40’’? but that be where the screen is supposed to be/supposed to be visible from (arm rests on a wheel chair are about 30’’ for reference). So I think this particular cash machine is going to be more of a problem than a help, though wheel chair users are obviously not the only consideration with disability accessability am I missing a group where 15’’ is needed? but for wheelchair users, people on crutches and elderly people for example I think this is equally, if not more, unusable to one that’s too high (this one contrivenes the part of the building regs that deals with disability access just as much as one that’s too high – not that people don’t keep building stuff that doesn’t follow the bear minimum contained in the regs even though they shouldn’t be ><)
fearlessstateofmind backup 