Doing my best to keep up with my blog, and kinda failing because I'm getting into the swing of filming and editing videos on a regular basis, plus I have a bunch of different projects I'm working on.
ANYHOOS!
Over the last month I've been working on one of the most fun projects I've done in a WHILE.
The team of AnimeKon approached me and asked if I'd be willing to help them put out a series of videos of character transformations.
In a nuthsell, AnimeKon, for those of you who don't know, is our local Pop Culture Convention. This year is AnimeKon's fifth year, and they have enjoyed great success because for long time we have wanted soemthing like this. It's really not feasible for us to fly out to Cons in the US becuse airfares from BArabdos are horribly expensive. As the Kon has grown, we've had international guests like author Tobias Buckell come (he's a repeat guest, such a lovely man!) and Cosplay Maven Yaya Han (also an absolute sweetheart and so supportive and inspiring to our cosplayers!), among others. This year we have the lovely Meagan Marie and the awesome Johnny Zabate of Junkers Cosplay coming in!
There is an AnimeKon Cosplay Competition, but because it is really one of the only chances we have during the year to cosplay, most people come to AnimeKon in costume (as you would expect at a Con). They work very hard to create costumes with very limited access to scultping/painting materials, because if they miss out on cosplaying at an AK, they have to wait a whole year for the chance to come around again. It's very inspiring to be a part of this community!
And so we had the idea of doing some Cosplay tutorials. We chose a theme eah week and had people enter for a chance to be made up on camera. Thank you to everyone who entered!
Our themes and chosen characters were:
Week 1: Star Wars - Queen Amidala
Week 2: Bleach - Half-Hollow Ichigo
Week 3: Game of Thrones (in honour of the EPIC just-finished fourth season) - Melisandre
Week 4: Marvel - Electro
I also threw in a surpirse video because I had to get in on the transformation action. I made myself up as Morticia Addams.
They weren't advanced cosplays int erms of the costumes, rather we wanted to show people how they could create characters with makeup (which I find to be one thing people seem to have a general hard time with), and approximate costumes at home with what's readily available in the island. Everything I used was purchased here in stores, not online or overseas, or were taken from each person's own closet. We decided to do it in June rather than July (AnimeKon is in August) to give people time to practice the techniques and get the materials.
Though we of course couldn't do a whole lot of characters (we scheduled four videos, one per week for the month of June), I tried to choose characters that would help me teach a wide array of techniques: from facepainting clean, crisp lines (Ichigo) to more controlled chaotic patterns (Electro) to using shading and contouring to alter a face shape (Melisandre). The techniques can be adapted and used for a wide range of characters.
We had such wonderful responce to the series and had so much fun creating the characters that we've added the Charicature (a play on the words 'character' and 'cariacature') Files to the callendar for next year.
I have a whole Cosplay Playlist on my YouTube channel. Please do check it out!
I'll be at AnimeKon this year of course, and this is the second year I'll be having a booth!!
Check out the transformation photos below, and please do check out the playlist!
See you at AnimeKon!
Keishaas Queen Amidala
Patrick as Half-Hollow Ichigo
Robyn as Melisandre
Dexter as Electro
Me as Morticia Addams
