Get your cosplay on! This week is mainly directed at cosplayers who tell me that there is no need to wear makeup when you cosplay a character that doesn’t appear to be wearing makeup. Wrong, so very very wrong. You always need makeup when you cosplay!

Don’t tell me you are magically born with perfect even skin, softly flushed cheeks, big bright eyes, long lashes and glossy lips All of which are standards for any animated character, so consider this look highly versatile beyond the limitation that are Mint Buramanshu. This look can be used for any character that doesn’t appear to be wearing any makeup.

Ingredients
MAC Prep and Prime
Bobbi Brown Skin Foundation SPF 15 PA+ – Sand
Bobbi Brown Creamy Concealer – Beige
MAC Mineralise Skinfinish Natural – Light
NARS Powder Blush – Orgasm
Canmake Highlighter – 01

NARS Smudge Proof Eyeshadow Base
NP Set New Neutrals Palette
MAC Fluidline – Blacktrack
L’Oreal Extra-Volume Collagene – Black
Chanel Sculpte Sourcils – Noir

NYX Lip Pencil – Natural
Maybelline Color Sensational – Pink Please
L’Oreal Glam Shine Volumizer Gloss Repulpant – Forever Sweet

Instructions
Face
Prime, Foundation, Powder and Conceal! All standards that should be followed for 95% of looks Using a medium brown powder, contour your nose so it appears smaller.

Cheeks
Use a natural pink blush on the apples of your cheeks, and a highlight your cheek bones, nose, forehead and jawline with a highlighter.

Eyes
Prime your lids, then taking 3 neutral colours (very light brown, medium brown and dark brown). Apply the light brown to your brow bone, inner corner of your eye and all over your lid. Use the medium brown to your crease, then line your upper lash line with the dark brown. Don’t be afraid to make the line thick, this is the colour that will “open” your eyes.

With a black eyeliner, line your upper lash line enough so the dark brown is still visible. If you want you can line your lower lash line with a white liner, but don’t use black or it will make your eyes look smaller and give you a harsher look (and it will be even more obvious that you are wearing makeup)

Curl lashes and apply two coats of mascara. Apply false lashes (choose these wisely, you can’t just randomly pick up any false lashes, I’ll try and do a post on this one day!). Bottom lashes are optional, but only if you can keep them subtle. We aren’t going for a gyaru look here, we want to look as natural as possible for photography.

Shape your eyebrows with a brow pencil.

Lips

Line and fill in lips with a lip pencil, cover with lip stick then apply a generous layer of gloss.

Tips:

• Be careful not to apply anything too heavily, whilst this is a cosplay look, the idea is to enhance our features NOT “draw” them on.
• You know you’re on the right track if in real life, your makeup looks a tad heavy, but appears very subtle in photographs.

I’ve got a bunch more posts to make regarding natural makeup for cosplayers, so let me know if you have any questions in particular you’d like answered and stay tuned

So remember that Studio Shoot I talked about for Lookbook #24? Here are a couple more photos from that day taken by the very talented Sam Ee! This girl has got serious skillz, and she’s a blast to work with too

She’s also a ninja and a stylist lol, she captured a couple of candid shots of me and the guys without me even noticing. And stylist because the pearls were completely her idea, Annie brought them along to wear and Sam managed to conjure up this idea

Finished my shoot, and crashing Siera’s! Isn’t her wig awesome!? And that checked background is also made by Siera, dedicated cosplayers FTW ;D

Just last weekend I played makeup artist for Sam at her Hime Gyaru shoot, so hopefully once photos are out I’ll show you the result! And now with better weather, who knows what other ideas we’ll come up with~ Wonderful spring / summer weather gets me so inspired!

Last Saturday I attended one of my first (or maybe 3rd, I can’t remember now, I don’t attend these type of shoots very often, I’m more an outdoor photo shoot sort of person… which works great with my public audience anxiety!) studio shoots organised by the very talented Elias Lopez. He invited a bunch of us cosplayers to all come along and have a grand ol time.

I came with the intent to learn how to improve my Lookbook studio settings as a photographer (as you know I’m desperate to make my Lookbooks look more ‘pro’) and knew this would be the perfect place to learn. (So no costumes from me this time!)

After all some of -the- most popular and famous Manifest and con photographers were attending this shoot, people I’m so fortunate and lucky to be able to call my friends <3 Neil Creek, Sam Ee, Hayden Pratt and of course Elias. If you attend any Melbourne animanga and/or video gaming conventions, you’ll know who these guys are!

The models / cosplayers who came along were also some of the most well known in Melbourne / Australia, (again seriously how do I end up being around such awesome company!?) Sefie, Annie, Stacey and Siera~ Twas unfortunate K and Aly were unable to attend this round, but I’m sure I’ll catch up with them soon <3

See below my lovely makeup setup. I’m always this messy, a fact I’m not proud of :/ Why the makeup? I managed to squeeze in a Lookbook at the shoot that will be up this Friday~ =D

Annie’s makeup station, we are palette obsessed, yes!

Overall, I learnt a TON about how my lighting should work so I hope to bring you some better Lookbooks in the future. And as well, had a blast just because I was around such wonderful people~ I can’t wait to shoot with these guys again! I’ll make sure to have a new costume ready too

Yay! The finished products I think like every other cosplayer, I can see the flaws and I just hope you guys can’t! I haven’t had an official shoot with either costume, so for now they won’t be appearing in their own gallery on Extreme Motion. I need to wait for warmer weather because I was literally freezing in all these photos hehe.

Shidou Hikaru

I can’t wait for warmer weather for this photo! I have a ton of ideas! But more importantly, I can’t wait till my Fuu and Umi are with me to do our official shoot!

Xiao Qiao

The fans! Oh, the relentless “fan” puns I got that day <3 There is a ton of detail missing from this costume, I really hope I finish it off before I get to my shoot~ These fans are not wind friendly (they hit me in the face several times), but they are very light and sturdy! Let's face it, awesome fans -made- this costume =D

Hope you enjoyed my costumes for Manifest 2010! Will annouce it here when I get my galleries for them on Extreme Motion up! Now it’s pretty much back to work for me, and hopefully once I have some time to recover (and catch up at work), I’ll be back on the sewing machine to bring you some new costumes Seriously, why can’t making costumes BE my job!?

Like every year, I completed 2 costumes for Manifest. The first (and most time consuming) was Shidou Hikaru thanks for her sword, gems etc. And the second was Xiao Qiao. Unfortunately I only have 1 in progress photo of Xiao Qiao

Shidou Hikaru

I wasn’t keen on paying $50+ for a petticoat, so I decided to make my own based on one Sefie lent me. It was a bit of a pain, but at least it turned out perfect AND was much cheaper!

Red skirt and tunic were some of my favourite parts. Probably not as much as the cape… it was a pain to make, but came out perfect!

Hikaru’s wig was not hard to do, just annoyingly time consuming :/ I had to order a second long wig and cut out a bunch of wefts from it. Sew three together till I had 8 “bunches”, then I would glue them one by one to the short wig layer by layer.

Then I braided it and that would be Hikaru’s seamless ponytail! It looked great, but it’s not something I’d be keen to try again Took me 3-4 hrs all up. I had to use this method because none of the stand alone wefts were long enough and using a clip in ponytail wouldn’t provide that natural seamless look.

The most annoying part is that length of the long wig wasn’t 100% even, so the braid is starting to come undone a little, will probably re-braid and apply some hair spray before I do my official shoot.

Xiao Qiao

Unfortunately like I said above, I have only one in-progress shot of Xiao Qiao The hardest part was creating a pattern for the skirt, seriously. The skirt is like an uneven wrap, so it did take a bit of trial and error, so glad it worked out somehow in the end. And dyeing this was no walk in the park either, took about 1-2 days total of continous soaking, dipping, drying, soaking, dipping, drying etc Still, the result was awesome! Very happy with how the dye creeped

I really should have embroidered this part to be more authentic, but I was running short of time and turned to my paints to save me :/ I hate when that happens!

I apologise before hand, I will be spamming this blog with about 3 posts recapping the making of my costumes for Manifest this year Let the photo spam begin!

Swords

This year (like most years) I was one of the judges for the cosplay competition. I thought it would be a neat idea for all 3 judges to cosplay from the same series, so I suggested we do the Magical Girls from Magical Knight Rayearth! Fuu, Umi and Hikaru. I was Hikaru, and decided to make everyone’s gems and swords…. cause I’m nuts like that XD

All swords started out this way (except Umi’s, just because Umi’s sword was SOOO easy in comparison, hardly any progress shots for Umi)

After much sanding and slicing the blades were shaped to look like this! Much love and thanks to Toby for helping me with this, we rotated and took turns with the sander @_@ Took us over 2 weekends to finish this, by the end of it I was literally coughing up saw dust XD

So this is how the end of my sword was done, the reason for the groove on one side of each blade was so we could embed a strong thick piece of wood down the center, it would act as the inner core strength for each sword. When you weilding a 2 metre sword around, you want to make sure it is very strong!

Glueing everything together =D

I carved the hilt of Fuu’s sword out of flower foam! This stuff gets EVERYWHERE, Sefie warned me before hand so I made sure to do everything outside.

Painted the blades with chrome, love the finish for them Here I have to thank my dad, having had years of woodworking experience (he built a lot of the furniture we have at home), he taught me a lot about how to obtain smooth finishes etc

I made the hilt for my sword out of wonderflex, I -love- wonderflex. Later this year I’ll be doing another order for armour related cosplay =D

Swords are done, minus the paint and gems! I didn’t get a finished photo of all of them together But the judges and I are planning a group photoshoot very soon, so you’ll get to see them completed in all their glory soon!

Resin
This was the first time I tried my hand at casting crystal resin, and it certainly paid off! I think when you see the finish produce you’ll agree that crystal resin was the way to go rather than just painting the gems on.

There isn’t much too it. I made the models first out of clay, then I created mould from them (the yellow stuff), THEN I just poured in the correct amount of resin and I was good to go! Obviously there is a little more to it than just that (a lot of sanding involved and glossing) I made everyone’s gems, and whilst it took forever (and FYI wet resin tastes bitter… eww), I’m glad I managed to get through it because the pay off was awesome!

Fans

I bought the white fans from a store in America a while ago, and went paint / foam crazy on them! I only seem to have one in-progress shot. Using my makeup mixing plate to mix the paint @_@ My hands were covered in paint by the end of it lol

And that’s it for props! Next will be in-progress costume shots!

Not sure if anyone remembers, but a month or so back I made a post about my friends and I entering an EB Games competition. Well we didn’t win, but at least it forced me to make a new costume which was a great excuse for a photo shoot (And you know I love them). Shot these in a car park near work, I love shooting indoors because you are not dependent on the weather at all, which is a great thing when you live in Melbourne.

Visit Extreme Motion if you want to see the rest of the photos as well as some construction notes. I took a bunch of in-progress shots, but I have no idea where they went O_o I’ll make a separate post with them if they ever turn up!