I started by changing my header and background. Above you see my current personal favourites among my cosplays: Frog Prince and Wonder Woman. I also slightly changed the layout. I think the main texts are easier to read and the different blog entries easier to navigate. At least I hope so.
This post is the first of four that I will write in the next two or three weeks. I figured I should tackle the cons and photo shoots I left uncovered in chronological order, so I'll start with telling you about the two big photo shoots I had in 2012: Persona and The Idolm@ster.
In lovely May 2012 (yes, one year ago), Niklas Liebig, whom I've had the pleasure to work with a couple of times now, asked if he could take pictures of our Velvet Room trio. We, that is Videros, my sister and myself, readily agreed, happy that we got the chance to get more beautiful pictures of these costume we'd only just debuted at Leipzig Bookfair two months earlier. I don't exactly recall how we managed it, but we also found a date we were all free on just as quickly. Finding a location to shoot in, however, was tricky. Of course, a fancy hotel lobby or a limousine would've been awesome, but decidedly outside our financial comfort zone. Niklas suggested the
Federal Ministry of the Interior, with its glass architecture. None of us had ever been there before, so we were quite surprised when we arrived there and found these huge buildings with a lovely little park and playground nearby. You'd think a federal ministry was heavily guarded with tons of security and whatnot, but the whole site is actually quite open and we saw many families with children taking a walk on that sunny day. It encouraged us to get a bit closer to the actual buildings for our pictures. We found out that there was security personnel, after all, but they didn't seem to think of us as a threat, apparently.
All the things we were afraid would go wrong (curious bystanders, strict security, too much/too little sunlight, that is) went smoothly, but we forgot to factor in the wind. It wasn't much of a windy day to speak of, but close to these tall buildings the wind was quite strong. Thus, the difficult part on our (i.e. the cosplayers' side) was to keep our eyes open, our wigs and costumes straight and on Niklas's side to keep the strobe lights from falling.
Here are some of the results:
Click here to see the full gallery.
On to the second shoot, which took place about 6 months later:
This photo shoot was different from the first one in many ways:
It was a group photo shoot with 13 cosplayers and 3 photographers.
Months of planning went into it.
It took place in a studio.
Each cosplayer sewed her costume for this primarily photo shoot and none of us had debuted her costume on a convention before.
Let's tackle it chronologically:
Somewhen in autumn 2011, acorea published a weblog searching for cosplayers willing to participate in a quite ambitious group project: She wanted to have a full cast of The Idolm@ster cosplayers with matching costumes. I didn't know much about Idolmaster back then, but I liked the designs and as I usually only cosplay with one, sometimes two partners, I wanted to take part in a big group at least once. Hence, I volunteered. (And watched the anime later that year to get to know the character of Azusa, whom I was assigned to.)
It didn't take long until we had a full cast (although it underwent a lot of changes in the following months), so planning started. Most of it was done by acorea, who did a great job in coordinating everything. It was clear we probably would not managed to set up a photo shoot at a con, so we settled for a studio shoot in September 2012 in Berlin instead.
Mismatching groups are a big pet peeve of mine, so I was thrilled when we agreed on purchasing the same fabrics for everyone. We even matched our eye shadow! We had to cut corners when it came to the boots, though. Most of us were working on a budget and it's pretty much impossible to purchase 13 pairs (minus two for the twins, who wear different shoes) of cheap white boots and not everyone felt fit to sew bootcovers.
It goes without saying that we underwent some troubles and a some point in July 2012, I couldn't even see the whole thing happening anymore. Frankly, I was still expecting someone not showing up or without a full costume when we met up at the day of the shoot. But everyone did! And everything worked! Our top priority, of course, were group pictures, but we also did some solo or pair shots.
The shoot took almost all day and it was quite exhausting. All the girls were awesome, though! It was most interesting to learn how the other girls had tackled their costumes. Everyone has a different way of sewing, after all. I think I learned some new sewing magic tricks that day. Same goes for posing, which I'm really not good at, but watching some of the others act in front of the camera was really inspiring. Most of them I'd only met briefly before at cons, so I was afraid that my social awkwardness would ruin the day for me, but they were all so nice (and funny!). I was even sad when the day was over. (Most of us were able to attend AniMaCo in November, though, so we had some sort of reunion)
As I said, three photographers were present, but as of now (May 2013), only one has uploaded his pictures, as the other two are still busy with other things. I'm not sure if we'll ever get to see the other pictures, but I hope so. Here are Hasengott's pictures:
Click here to see the full gallery.
I will post a full rundown of my Azusa costume in my blog on AniMaCo 2012, whichwill should follow next week.
Here are some of the results:
And an outtake, as well, because everyone loves outtakes, right?
| Cosplayers: Videros as Theodore | Patalord as Elizabeth | Y-o-s-s-i as Margaret Photography & editing: Niklas Liebig (Homepage | deviantArt) |
Click here to see the full gallery.
On to the second shoot, which took place about 6 months later:
This photo shoot was different from the first one in many ways:
It was a group photo shoot with 13 cosplayers and 3 photographers.
Months of planning went into it.
It took place in a studio.
Each cosplayer sewed her costume for this primarily photo shoot and none of us had debuted her costume on a convention before.
Let's tackle it chronologically:
Somewhen in autumn 2011, acorea published a weblog searching for cosplayers willing to participate in a quite ambitious group project: She wanted to have a full cast of The Idolm@ster cosplayers with matching costumes. I didn't know much about Idolmaster back then, but I liked the designs and as I usually only cosplay with one, sometimes two partners, I wanted to take part in a big group at least once. Hence, I volunteered. (And watched the anime later that year to get to know the character of Azusa, whom I was assigned to.)
It didn't take long until we had a full cast (although it underwent a lot of changes in the following months), so planning started. Most of it was done by acorea, who did a great job in coordinating everything. It was clear we probably would not managed to set up a photo shoot at a con, so we settled for a studio shoot in September 2012 in Berlin instead.
Mismatching groups are a big pet peeve of mine, so I was thrilled when we agreed on purchasing the same fabrics for everyone. We even matched our eye shadow! We had to cut corners when it came to the boots, though. Most of us were working on a budget and it's pretty much impossible to purchase 13 pairs (minus two for the twins, who wear different shoes) of cheap white boots and not everyone felt fit to sew bootcovers.
It goes without saying that we underwent some troubles and a some point in July 2012, I couldn't even see the whole thing happening anymore. Frankly, I was still expecting someone not showing up or without a full costume when we met up at the day of the shoot. But everyone did! And everything worked! Our top priority, of course, were group pictures, but we also did some solo or pair shots.
The shoot took almost all day and it was quite exhausting. All the girls were awesome, though! It was most interesting to learn how the other girls had tackled their costumes. Everyone has a different way of sewing, after all. I think I learned some new sewing magic tricks that day. Same goes for posing, which I'm really not good at, but watching some of the others act in front of the camera was really inspiring. Most of them I'd only met briefly before at cons, so I was afraid that my social awkwardness would ruin the day for me, but they were all so nice (and funny!). I was even sad when the day was over. (Most of us were able to attend AniMaCo in November, though, so we had some sort of reunion)
As I said, three photographers were present, but as of now (May 2013), only one has uploaded his pictures, as the other two are still busy with other things. I'm not sure if we'll ever get to see the other pictures, but I hope so. Here are Hasengott's pictures:
| Cosplayers: aco-rea as Iori | flakes as Miki | Y-o-s-s-i as Azusa | kojiu-infinity as Hibiki | Patalord as Takane | SG09 as Mami | ladydeadpooly as Ami | elsch as Chihaya | neni-chan as Yayoi | Amapolchen as Ritsuko | co-xx as Makoto | fuwishi as Yukiho | Konzertjunky as Haruka Photography & editing: Dominik Haas (deviantArt) |
Click here to see the full gallery.
I will post a full rundown of my Azusa costume in my blog on AniMaCo 2012, which
