Well, here it is! The complete costume, and me in it. This was taken on the second day of the convention by my friend Master Zero.

It took roughly two hours to get into costume, with most of it spent on the body makeup. I swear, I will be cleaning pale blue body paint out of my ears for weeks. The costume was fairly well received, and only a few people had to ask who I was supposed to be. Most everybody recognized the character, and I even had small groups occasionally tagging along behind me chanting "EMBER! EMBER!".

The only remark I could consider negative about the costume was some snarky little kid in the dealer's hall remarked "Nice costume, but I think you're at the wrong convention." My sister was more angry about it than I was. She says she would have shot back "And yours is SOOOOO original.", given there were probably at least a hundred or so different Naruto cosplayers running around.

All in all, a good time was had with this costume (despite my feet and legs hating me for days for walking around in those high heels!), and I plan to use the costume again at MikomiCon and hopefully Animagic.

Ember Mclain (c) Butch Hartman
Costume design (c) Firefury Amahira
Photograph (c) Master Zero