September 4, 2013

Tracon 8 cosplay plans!

This beautiful thing popped up in the mailbox yesterday!

My Tracon ticket!
That means I now have the con ticket in my hands as well as the hotel room booked (thanks Ri-kun!) and so far it seems I will be carpooling with some people from the north. :) Everything seems more or less set now so let's roll out the cosplay plans!

Saturday

Series: Fruits Basket
Character: Kureno Sohma


Kureno on Saturday because I will be part of a Fruits Basket group. I don't have so much to say about this cosplay, it's casual and easy-to-wear and having a cosplay group is always a bonus. I would have liked to have a more flashy/cooler cosplay on Saturday but oh well.. ~

Sunday

Series: Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan
Character: Toshizo Hijikata (rasetsu)


Time to be crazy again, Hakuouki style ~
I really want to have a photoshoot of this cosplay (c'mon have like no proper pics of it.. ;_;) and seeing how Tracon has a really nice outdoor area I thought why the hell not? 8D Also Hasakitsuki will join me as oni!Chizuru ku ku ku ~

August 30, 2013

Lens review: Super Pinky Bright Red

What's up bros? ;)

I bought these contacts already some months ago and wore them to Animecon for rasetsu!Hijikata but haven't done a review of them yet I'm lazy, okay? OTL I thought I could do it now while I still needed to check if they looked okay for my coming Kureno Sohma cosplay.

Okay, so these lenses are the Super Pinky Bright Reds. They are my second pair of contact/circle lenses ever, my first pair being the same lenses but in violet, which I also made a review for back in February. There's quite a lot of red-eyed characters I want to cosplay in the future so buying red lenses was bound to happen!

Lenses in solution.
 
Base curve: 8.6 mm
Diameter: 14.8 mm
Water content: 45%
Life span: 1 year (I recommend 6 months)

The first time I ever put these on –which was back at Animecon last month– they went on like a charm! No problems whatsoever and they were very comfortable all con day. But today when I put them on both of the lenses felt uncomfortable in the eyes and when it didn't ease after a while I took them out, cleaned them again and put them back in and then it was a-ok! I guess there was some dirt left in them or something...

I won't talk too much about these lenses but I have some photos to show the photos are pretty crappy though, sorry about that. Excuse me but all photos, except the first one with the lenses in the lens case, are taken in the bathroom with my older camera (aka not the SLR) so not the best lighting and sharpness. Oh, and sorry for my eyes being red no not the lenses but as I mentioned earlier I had problems putting them on. ._.

With just one contact in.
(my natural eye color is a mix of blue-gray-green, depending on lighting)
With both lenses in.
These are quite enlarging but not enough to swallow your eyes, at least not according to me or on my eyes. If you have small/narrow eyes these might appear big but that, of course, depends on your eye shape as well.
I'm sorry if they look a bit orange-ish on the photos but I assure you that the color is indeed a true red, it's just the bathroom light being yellow and a troll. It's actually a pretty intense color and thus great for cosplay! The Super Pinky line of lenses also covers a lot of your iris, which means that the pupil hole is small and thus there's very little of your real eye color showing through in the middle. Unfortunately this also means that they might blur your vision in places with poorer light conditions.
I really like these because while red sure isn't a natural color they still don't look ultra-mega-demonically-unnatural but rather kinda if-red-was-natural-it-could-look-like-this – if that makes sense. :'D But maybe that's helped by the rather realistic pattern of the lenses...?

Oh, and here's a quick try-on with the Kureno wig and a random shirt.

From a distance. (bathroom light)
 
-- EDIT! 2014, mid-August! --

One year after I had opened these contacts I still had them lying around; I thought that I could take some additional review photos and upload them here before I throw the contacts away. Couldn't be bothered to do make-up, sorry. The previous photos were so poor (friggin' bathroom light!) so here's a new photo batch of the contacts going for their last wear, in different lights.
I must mention that I had huge problems keeping my eyes open because the contacts had turned so dry and uncomfortable; it felt like they were pulling my eyelids closed all the time. I constantly felt them in my eyes so I didn't wear them for more than 30 minutes maximum and when I took them out they were dry as hay. I threw them away after this – they had served me well.

All photos taken by me, as always.
There's no color filters or such and that's so that the colors would be as true to real life as possible. I'm sorry that my eyes appear to be half-closed or something... I don't know what happened, lol.

Inside in natural room light, facing the window on a cloudy day.
Outside on a cloudy day, facing the (hidden) sun.
Outside, standing in the shadow.
Outside,  some weird bright light going on.
Outside, cloudy day.
Facing the sunlight. It friggin' hurt to keep my eyes open... xD
 
As you can see they are really red and show up well in most lights. They aren't completely opaque so some of your real eye color will show through close to the pupil hole. The hole is still smaller than on your average circle lens, which means that occasionally you can have red corners in your vision.

Psst, if you are curious about other colors of the Super Pinky line and how they look on light eyes then check out my other reviews here: Violet, Green, Wine Red, Black

Short summary:

Color: 9/10 
It's a really bright red that pops. Everyone will notice it!
Design: 5/10 
Looks pretty nice although not really unique. I wish the outer rim would be slightly darker.
Opacity: 8/10
Very good color coverage!
Enlargement: 8/10 
Notably enlarging. A bit borderline if you don't like big contacts and they might look freaky on people with smaller eyes.
Comfort: 7/10 
Comfort-wise okay but I tend to feel them in my eyes sometimes.
Naturalness: 2/10 
Not natural because of enlargement and color. You don't buy these to have people think it's your real eyes, lol.

Nothing else to say, ciao ciao!
Thanks for viewing ~ 

August 25, 2013

Kureno Sohma preview! + Tracon

Yesterday I picked up my wig for Kureno from town and today I did a super quick preview! (aka no cosplay make-up except coloring eyebrows)
Excuse me for the huge mess in the background and yeah, mirror photo.

Yes, that's a plush bird and I'll totally carry it around!
I think it makes it easier to recognize the character ~
I actually thought I would look kind of silly because this shirt is too big for me but seriously, it's pretty much the perfect color and I found it at a second-hand store for like 1 € or something so.. I don't care! xD But with the cosplay on I figured it didn't look all that bad so okaydokay ~

Oh, and speaking of the shirt! There's barely any color pictures of Kureno -as far as I know- but as you know by now I went with the color on one of the manga's front covers showcasing him. But because in the manga he pretty much always has his shirt tucked into his pants I decided to wear it this way too.

Kureno to the left
I also plan to use my red contact lenses for Kureno (I just couldn't be bothered to wear them for the preview test..) because he has red-brown eyes and well, because my eyes aren't brown and I don't have brown contact lenses then I have to roll with red ~

Oh, hey hey also!
Tracon is closing in and I have bought myself a con ticket but it hasn't arrived yet. I'm still not 100% sure who I will cosplay on Sunday -so I won't make a cosplay plans post just yet- but I can say that Kureno will be my Saturday cosplay because there is going to be a Fruits Basket cosplay group that day!