PERFECT ROBOT

'SUP, NERDS! I'm hoping you're not sick of my Space Dandy obsession already... if you don't know how crazy I'm about the series, go back a few entries. Let's take a look at another character I dressed up as!

Hunk O' Junk

My second homemade cosplay is the robot, QT. You must be thinking "Huh?! A robot? It's not remotely human looking!" I'm also guessing you're curious as to how I pulled this off. My creativity was at full blast as I spent a good portion of my life looking on Google to see if if there were any spectacular QT cosplay to draw some inspiration. In my opinion, none were super cool, so I made it my job to make the best QT the world would see.

A perfect view of little ol' QT at different angles.

A little about QT: He is an outdated robot, who is a victim of innovation. He's so old that he can't even update to the latest operating system and he sometimes has issues with his battery. Poor thing. QT's punchlines usually revolve around smart phones and how quickly computer technology advances.

 

Looking past his antiquities, QT is actually very smart. He usually plays the straight man and scoffs at how thick Dandy and Meow are. This hunk of metal is also very anal about keeping things clean. His arms double as a vacuum cleaner as for he is the only crew member to keep the ship in shape.

QT is actually quite human. He has the capacity to love and is a mouthy little smart-ass. He's basically a person in a tiny metal body.

Out of the Box

I somehow cut my elbow.
Literal blood, sweat and tears.

Bear in mind, I went 200 percent on this project. I wish to describe the process in detail. To start, the basic concept of the cosplay is based off of  Japanese maid-styled dresses, considering QT is a glorified vacuum cleaner.

I made a simple yellow dress that goes slightly past my knees and a white apron. The apron wasn't difficult to sew, but making yards of ruffles tested my patience. It looks easy, but I had to pull and bunch heavy fabric, relying only on a few strands of thread to keep it all together. Whenever a string broke, I had to start over again. I'm not going to tell you how many times it took me, but I can certainly say that I'm now a professional "ruffler."

In order to capture the essence of a robot, I bought a silly Chinese cooking mask to make my face appear as if it were behind a monitor. The next step was to go to Home Depot to buy a few yards of dryer duct. I cut it accordingly and managed to slip my arms through to achieve a metallic look.

Found my crew.

Lots of machines have wheels and well, I don't have any naturally installed. I made an adult purchase: I got myself a pair of Heelys, not only for cosplay, but to fulfill a forgotten childhood dream. Plus, my buddy Dan had been bullying me into buying some for a while so we could skate around Meijer or Walmart in the middle of the night. The Heelys were expensive, but are a long-term, fun investment.

This cosplay also gave me a good
excuse to wear some crazy
gold lipstick.

You can hear that QT's voice is a little funny... It's entirely auto-tuned and this is one of his most distinguishable characteristics. It was a challenge and took me about a month to put together. I, ironically, had a crappy Droid smartphone at the time that constantly failed me... but then I discovered the wonders of the Apple App Store.

I found an app called I Am T-Pain. It's basically a karaoke program that auto-tunes your voice. I borrowed a friend's defunct, shattered iPhone and bought this program. Then I went to my best friend, Amazon, again and ordered a cheap lavalier to tape to my face and a powerful miniature speaker. If you're the market for one, it is very loud, has good battery life and won't cost you more than $15.

Dreams came true when I met Joel McDonald.
10/10: Would meet again.

The rest of the cosplay consists of simple accessories that I altered. Luckily I happened to buy a gold and blue wig the year before just because I thought it was pretty. It happened to perfectly fit QT's color-scheme. If my friends didn't lend me some pieces for QT, it also would have been much more expensive to make. Thanks, guys.

Rocking the Con

So yeah. I went all out. Convention-goers did double-takes and frequently asked who I was. Once they made the connection, I had people freaking out all weekend every time we passed during the event, showing me off to their friends. I even met the English director of Space Dandy, who also voiced Meow. He was impressed and commented that there aren't many QT's out there.

Now you know how insane I am about my cosplay projects. I still have one more ridiculous outfit I made in 2015... But that's gonna wait. Next time I'm going to show you how I get in-shape for the summer convention scene!

LATER, DWEEBS!

-Loverly Liz