CosBlog #42: Azure Flame Kite By Piobaireachd

Brazilian cosplayer Piobaireachd deserves accolades for his hard work on this .hack// costume, especially for creatively piecing together Azure’s signature weapons from Popsicle sticks and paper. Read on for his impressive write-up detailing every step of creating the ensemble, in addition to a gallery from various events. 

Who: The Character

The character is Azure Flame Kite, from the .hack// series. He's also called Tri-edge sometimes in the game, but I won't tell very much about that because I don't want to tell any spoilers! I chose the .hack//G.U. vol. 1//Rebirth artwork version basically because his weapons didn't look too "mechanical". Yeah, I know, it makes no sense.

Why: The Decision

Well, first of all, I'm a great fan of eastern RPGs and general MMORPG games. When I found out about the .hack// games, which are basically eastern RPGs with a story that happens inside a MMORPG, I just fell in love with the games. When I saw Azure Kite on the first game, I knew I had to cosplay him. He was a character from an awesome game, was a villain, had cool clothes and looked like a zombie. What more could I ask!?

Another thing that made me cosplay him was the difficulty factor. I really wanted to make something hard and try new techniques. Also, Azure Kite's clothes weren't too revealing, so I would be comfortable wearing it, as I'm a chubby little guy.

What: The Process

I started making this cosplay on December 2009 and finished it on February 2010. It looks like a short period of time, but I was on vacation and worked a lot on it with the help of my mom, who supports every cosplay I make.

The clothes have the greatest amount of details on the whole costume. There are dozens of leather belts everywhere and hundreds of eyelets on them. All those "patches" were a pain to cut, as they had to me made on the right shapes. The stitches where initially made of many strings sewn together, all of them by hand. In June 2010, however, I participated in a fund raising TV program making a small appearance with other cosplayers and the TV network costumes team replaced the strings with shoelaces to make them more noticeable. The "W" on the beret was initially painted, but was remade using fabric for that same TV show.

The shoes are regular ones that you buy at regular stores, but it was painted to look like Azure Kite's shoes.

The wig was the first thing I got while making the cosplay. I actually won it on a raffle…

Now, the weapons... oh, the weapons... wherever I go, people ask about that weapon and never believe when I tell them they're made of... Popsicle sticks ._. First of all I made 3 basic shapes out of hard paper, one for each blade on his weapon, then made four copies for each one (I used two on each weapon). Then I started gluing the two layers of Popsicle sticks on the shapes, placing them in order to make the structure as similar as possible to a brick wall in order to make it stronger. To make the structure even stronger, I wrapped each "Popsicle stick sandwich" (paper - sticks - paper) with tape and then glued each set of the 3 blade-like things together, making the basic shape of the weapons. The volume of the weapon was made using paper maché covered with spackling paste in order to make the surface smoother. However, I only sanded the blade area, as I wanted to make the other parts to have an organic and rough look (like a tree's trunk). The red beads were made using glass marbles painted with red varnish then super glued to the weapons. The painting was done with regular acrylic paints, using brown and green to make it look even more like a tree's trunk.

Where and When: The Debut

This cosplay was debuted on the 2010 edition of Cosplay Brazil's party, which is a small con held every year to celebrate Cosplay Brazil's (a Brazilian cosplay website) birthday.

One weird thing about this cosplay is that I wore it on a "real" con only once. I used it a lot for that charity TV show I mentioned (I had to wear it for the rehearsals), on a traditional Japanese festival held on a small town on the countryside that invited cosplayers this year and for a photoshoot.

As for the photoshoots...the first of them was taken at that Japanese festival, called Garça's Cherry Blossom Festival. I couldn't imagine a better place for taking pictures of a cosplay based on a Japanese game then a beautiful lake full of sakura trees. The second photoshoot was done at a university that has some cool old buildings. I went there to make photos for a news article about cosplay on a local magazine and we decided to make good use of those nice backgrounds.

One thing I like about this cosplay is the great number of possibilities I have. As the story is held in a MMORPG and Kite is a character that is almost "everywhere, every time", I'm able to use every location that is likely to appear on a online game for photoshoots, so I can take pictures almost everywhere and still be at least slightly on character :D

Links: The Cosplayer

Twitter (I usually talk in Portuguese there, but feel free to message me in English ^^)
DeviantArt
Cosplay.com

The Gallery

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