Towards the frost! – Desucon Frostbite 2015 cosplay plans!

Hello!

So it happens to be that I've gotten myself a ticket for Desucon Frostbite at least they didn't sell out in three minutes like Yukicon did and the train has been booked as well, wohooo!
Frostbite is held on 13-15 February in Lahti, in the same building as the usual summer Desucon. I haven't attended Frostbite since 2012 – aka since the very first one. It will be really interesting to see if it has changed! :D The thing with Frostbite though is that last year, as well as this year, there is an age limit – you need to be 18 years old or above to attend, heh. I assume that means that more people will do cosplays that reveal skin and/or are from not-exactly-child-friendly series..

But hey, this post was meant for me to reveal my cosplay plans! Here goes!

Friday

Series: Original

Character: Taregard Frir

Taregard was debuted at Kemi's manga day last year but he really needs a photoshoot *coughnopicscough* so what is better than photoshooting him on Frostbite's Friday? :'D Also a quick 'n easy cosplay to put on which is always appreciated on the first con day, especially considering that Friday is a short day that starts fairly late anyway.

Saturday

Series: Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan

Character: Hajime Saitou

Saitou is the violet-haired guy to the left.

Well, what do I say? Originally I had planned to do an OC for Saturday too but then –when it was almost too late to change cosplay plans– I got a horrible "oh gawd no, I want to have a totally different design!" dilemma in the middle of the night which ended up with me deciding on recycling an old cosplay instead because duh, Frostbite is way too soon for me to have time to order/make something new...
So yeah, I was thinking that I wanted something with some relation to snow – and so the idea to cosplay Saitou in his casual (aka swordless) form feat. snow bunny was born! :'D Yep, instead of doing the usual Saitou cosplay –which I tend to do– with the shinsengumi haori and the swords I'll do his "chilling at the headquarters" version with a snow bunny prop instead, as seen on his Sekkaroku OVA episode! I'll still bring with me the haori in case it gets cold...

Sunday

Series: Attack on Titan

Character: Levi (suit version)

Yep, it's time to run after titans! or have titans run after me... D:
Levi is one of my favorites from the Attack on Titan world –aka Shingeki no Kyojin– and so of course I decided to cosplay him! But I really don't have time right now to do his usual soldier uniform so I'll roll with his casual suit version instead!
I will have a cosplay group with Hasakitsuki and Jäätynyt Enkeli because hey, the more the merries! Unless we're talking about titan stomach filling...


I guess that's it for this time. See you!

Hakuouki's Souji Okita makeup test!

Chu chuuu ~

I know I know, I've already cosplayed Okita several times so why am I doing a makeup test now? You see, that's because during the last month or so I've been trying to change and improve my cosplay makeup a bit; I came to the conclusion –along the way– that I wanted to update and try on the new makeup first for my Hakuouki character cosplays, mainly because they have really beautiful eyes that require more makeup than some of my other cosplays. For most of the Hakuouki guys I do the same eye makeup (with possible slight differences) but since I had thrown away all my circle lenses (they expired) that I had been using for all the characters except for the green lenses that I use for Okita... well, guess? :'D

I still don't have his usual Japanese style outfit, so I just took my asanoha pattern yukata (that I'll use for the cosplay) and rolled with it for now. The lenses I'm using are the I.Fairy Ash Green and after taking these photos I threw them away. :'( I've had them since last summer and I never wear circle lenses for 1 year anymore – max 6-7 months, just to be on the safe side.

Actually, when I was taking the selfies (yeah, had no photographer around...) I got surprisingly many decent ones and well, I just couldn't decide which ones to upload because they were all good so, err, prepare for seeing my face a lot... xD I hope you don't get sick of the photo spam ahead!

But I'll stop babbling now and let you see the updated makeup test results.
Sorry about the unfitting background, I didn't have much choice because the lights were kinda bad in the house and so I had to go stand next to the windows...

It was soooo hard to blink like that lol. OTL

I actually have more pictures than this but I think I'll stop here...

How do you like the new makeup look? o/ 

Personally I do kinda like it, but I really need to buy some more precise makeup tools because it felt like I didn't have the right equipment for this kind of shit. Some lines could have been thinner/cleaner/less bold *coughlineundertheeyecough* but I blame my lacking makeup brush arsenal and my lack of knowledge of said brushes for that. I also should invest in different color shades for, well, shading, as well as blending equipment etc. I don't have enough makeup and I also need to learn more. Makeup is not my strong point when it comes to cosplay.
I will do changes to this makeup style and improve it along the way; this was just a first try to try it out and see how it looks. Needs more practice ~

Not really anything else to say, sayonara!
Shiro Samurai out.

Cosplay with circle lenses – Necessary or not?

Hi everyone!

I've thought about making this kind of post for a long time now and that's because, well, I have quite something to tell about this whole topic! :'D You see, I realized that almost exactly 2 years ago from this day I ordered my very first circle lenses. Wow, can you believe it?? o_o

Khrmm, yes, the post for today will basically be about my life as a cosplayer before and after I started using circle lenses, along with how drastically my opinions changed along the way! This whole post will be based on my experiences and opinions only, your mileage may vary.

So let's get to the chase, shall we? ;)

*drops the bomb*

First off, I've been a cosplayer since late 2009 and the first time I wore a cosplay out for the world to see was on summer 2010. I remember being aware of cosplayers using colored contact lenses pretty early on in the hobby, but for several years I was strictly of the opinion that "it was not for me". Maybe it was out of fear of trying, maybe not. I don't know. We'll never knoooooooow...

I saw lenses as some do-it-only-if-you-have-the-extra-cash-to-burn thing that wouldn't even pay off and be worth it – unless the character had obviously unnatural eyes like screaming red or something, then I thought that maybe it could be needed. Maybe. But even so it was low-priority and easy to forgive if you didn't have contacts.

This so illustrates me and my opinion towards circle lenses pre-2013. xD

I used to think that colored contacts were one of those "optional but kinda pointless" extras that you could add to your cosplay if you had nothing better to spend your money on, basically. I kept this point of view from 2010 to the end of 2012 something; in the early 2013 I started slowly loosening up and changing where on the line I was standing. Black had started moving towards white; now it was gray and in the middle.

"Maybe contacts weren't so unnecessary and pointless as I had thought. Maybe wearing lenses was actually a more noticeable thing and could even give your cosplay a whole new level of feeling complete."

I believe that one of the reasons I started slowly to realize that "hey, having circle lenses for cosplay actually looks good!" was because some of my cosplay friends were using lenses and *gasp* it was actually one of the things I noticed first as I talked with them! No way! I mean, how could I have missed to see the bigger-than-usual eyes with pretty patterns and vibrant colors?

Before I had seen circle lens users in real life I had always thought that "nah, it's just the eyes; it's such a small detail that no one will notice it unless they're basically standing so close that they can see your nose hairs moving". Oh boy, how wrong I was.

So yeah, on mid or late January 2013 I had a cosplay coming that had obviously violet eyes. I thought that now was the time to step into new waters – it was "now or never" and "you couldn't know unless you tried" and all of those. It was unfair to judge without at least trying so now I threw myself in there too...

"Even though I had done a lot of research on how to wear and care for circle lenses I had to admit – I was scared. Really scared of wearing them for the first time."

Seeing how much I love circle lenses today it's unreal to think that I used to be so bleh about them earlier. But even I, when I started, was more scared of putting something into my eye than I'd like to remember lol. I remember that the first time I ever put contacts in it felt SO WEIRD. It surely took me around 10 minutes to get both of them in and I remember my eyes turning very red and watery and oh gosh, it took forever before my eyes returned to normal and it was horrible. xD I also remember my eyelid blinking and twitching like hell when I approached my eyeball with the "foreign piece of plastic", pff. But yeah, never underestimate the importance of hygiene when handling your lenses and remember, some people just can't wear contact lenses for whatever reason. Personally I don't have any problems with poking my eyes and so for me it was no biggie to get the lenses in the first times and yeah, when they were in it felt like a big fat slap in the face of my former ignorant self – circle lenses made my eyes pop and look really anime!! OヮO Definitely improved the overall impression of my cosplay!

Suddenly I had moe moe desu kawaii bling eyes... or something like that.

Okay so, first I only bought lenses for cosplay characters that had eye colors that were notably different from my own – red, gold and violet for example. I tried to limit myself to unnatural colors only because I thought that these would be the most noticeable, but at some point I started feeling like something was missing if I wasn't wearing circle lenses – even for characters with natural eye colors! *double gasp*
I ended up widening my self-put restrictions to also allow purchasing brown and green lenses before long, but I thought that I wouldn't really need blue or gray lenses because my eyes were blue-grayish to begin with – "why would I spend money on an eye color I already had?". Well, that didn't last long because when I had lenses of all colors –except those closest to my natural eye color– then it felt like all cosplays had that extra "oomph", except those that I didn't wear contacts to... yet. Something was lacking. I wonder what?

By now I'm wearing circle lenses of all colors and yes – to all my cosplays. I can't even imagine cosplaying without lenses because, after all, the eyes on anime/manga characters are usually a very important and noticable part of their visuals. Human eyes with normal-sized pupils just aren't always flashy and eye-catching enough lol. I actually feel kinda naked without lenses on my cosplays and circle lenses look especially amazing on close-up photos etc.

"Before I noticed it my opinion had drastically changed. I had gone from 'contacts are an almost pointless addition' to 'I can't even cosplay anymore without circle lenses'!
What you mean I went from black to white just by giving it a try?"

I think that about sums it up – quite a difference, neh?

I hope you found the read not to be a complete waste of your time and psst, any comments are very welcome! ^_^ Ciao ~