墺洪

Hi there!

Spring has come - or is it summer already?
Anyway, during the last few weeks my count of photo shoots rose in proportion to temperature, so I had two (in numbers: 2!!) shoots since then.
My dear fellow student Eva's been contemplating buying a DSLR for some time now. She still hasn't bought a camera (yet), but wanted to practise a bit. Charitable as I am *cough*, I offered my DSLR for her to use and myself as a willing model - oh, selfless me! XD
Today, I want to write about the first of the two shoots we had:








On April 14th we went to Gardens of the World, which is a huge park, seperated into multiple smaller gardens which are inspired by gardens all over the world. There's a Chinese Garden , a Japanese Garden (where we took most of the pictures of our Ôkami shoot), an Oriental Garden and so on. This time, we used the Italian Renaissance Garden as location, because I think the fountain, the marble statues and the yellow-ish buildings create a fitting setting for our Hetalia costumes.
My sister and I had decided to wear Austria and Hungary again, because we've only worn them once at AniMaCo 2010 and still had a lot of ideas about some more pictures in our head.
On of them was the scattered-sheets-of-music-concept. I think we took a gazillion pictures (more or less...), but the wind just wouldn't blow as we wanted it to. Which is why I will work on my elements-controlling superpowers from now on. So in the end I took about ten single images and merged them into one using PS. I think most of my effort in editing went into these pictures ...
This is just a random sentence because I wanted to know who acutally read this and who just scrolled down to the pictures.XDD The shoot took quite some time, about four to five hours, but we were hardly bothered by other visitors (or rather: we didn't bother them), because it was a weekday and the weather was sunny but considerably cold compared to the days before.

Here are the results of our first time ever collaboration:











Date:April 14th, 2011
Location: Giardino della Bobolina, Gardens of the World, Berlin
Characters: My sister as Roderich Edelstein aka Austria, Yossi as Elizabeta Héderváry aka Hungary
Series: Axis Powers Hetalia
Photography: Eva, Yossi
Editing: Yossi

You can also see whole gallery on Animexx.
Eva's gallery is also in the making, once it's finished I'll post the link to her gallery too.



In case you're wondering about our second photo shoot:
That time we (Maddi, my sister and I) were wearing the Magic Knight Rayearth cosplays we wore at Bookfair Leipzig.
A report on that will follow, too. Until then, have this preview:

イベントレポ：ブックフェア

Hellohooo!.
This is my first real entry since this year began!
As usual, I started the new cosplay season at Bookfair Leipzig at the end of March.
This year I was very happy to have a wonderful group cosplaying with me and I hope
this sesason will continue to be as wonderful as it was at this first con ♪







The convention


Seeing that Bookfair Leipzig is getting more crowded each year, we took some precautions this year: First, we bought our ticket online beforehand and second, we stuck to "unpopular" places with less people for taking pictures. It worked!
I also stayed far away from the manga corner, because that's usually the place where it's most packed. That meant a considerable amount of fresh air and space, but also that I missed some people and events in that hall, but I'd take that over claustrophobia any time XD
I'd gotten myself a new lens for my DSLR a week before the con and was eager to use it... It turned out I still need to practise a lot more, but I'm quite pleased. Naraku had asked me to take some pictures of one of her original cosplays, which I gladly did. It was my first time shooting someone I didn't knew before, but it went smoothly once I figured out how the new lens worked.



The costumes
As said before, this year started with a group cosplay, namely with Maddi and my sister ♥
We had decided on these costumes last November (I think) and I've been looking forward to it ever since. We wanted our group to be well matching, so we all used the same fabrics and patterns. We also picked our wigs upon consultation u_û XD

Fuu Hououji (Magic Knight Rayearth OVA Vers.) I've always wanted to do a Rayearth cosplay, but I also always pictured myself as Umi. When my sister, Maddi and I decided to finally do this cosplay I ended up as Fuu - and couldn't be happier! I knew before that personality-wise she resembles me much more, but it also turned out that short curly hair looks soooo much better on me than long, straight hair. XD Sewing this costume would have been really simple if it hadn't been for the petticoats. Petticoats aren't exactly difficult to sew, but you have to deal with a shitton of fabric. Really, if my sister hadn't helped me, I'd have propably gone crazy @_@ Another tricky thing were the orbs on our hands or rather how we should attach them. We moulded them out of craft foam, the orbs are made of plastic and foils. We then tried to attach them with spirit gum, which didn't work. We ended up with using skin-colored elastics instead.

My favourite picture: Elements by ~y-o-s-s-i on deviantART

For more pictures visit my Animexx gallery

Special thanks to:

• My sister for being a not always in-character Umi XD
  
• Maddi for being oh so cute
  
• Sarah for for being our angel of Berlin
  
• Eva for staying in touch ;D
  
• Naraku for the shoot
  

イベントレポ：ＡｎｉＭａＣｏ

Hellohoooo! *waves*

As usual I'm two weeks late with my con report and as usual I blame it entirely on uni for being so stressfull.

It's got nothing to do with my lack of time management skills!






AniMaCo here in Berlin was my last con this year. Nothing special, but nice. I have to admit that, if it wasn't in Berlin, I propably couldn't be bothered to go.
This year was rather fun, though and that's most likely thanks to my company: Friday Eva came with me, Saturday it were my sister and Sarah. I only went alone on Sunday, but due to several appointments I've made beforehand it didn't get boring that day, either.

	Friday Yuuko Ichihara (xxxHoLiC/Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles) This was actually my second WCS prelims cosplay. I wore it underneath my kimono and it was only visible on stage for about 10 seconds, which is why some parts (read: the sleeves) were more like stand-ins. But because I really like the dress, I wanted to wear it to a con as well, so I redid the sleeves, the choker and the ornaments on the dress. As you can see in the reference picture, it's supposed to be a dress and a corset, but I simply sewed it as one piece, using a different fabric for the corset part to create the illusion of two seperate pieces. The golden ornaments are made of painted pleather, the silver ones are painted directly onto the fabric. Eva took a lot of pretty pictures of me in this costume. I'm happy now <3 I'd still like to do a proper shoot in a more appropriate setting orz
	Saturday Hungary/Elizabeta Héderváry (Axis Powers Hetalia) Hetalia is the most ridiculous and racist anime/manga series I've come across (yet) - to a point where it gets hilariously funny. Even though the fandom scares me sometimes (I know, Hetalia kinda asks for it, but still: Why do people slash everything? We're talking about countries here, for crying out loud!), I hugely enjoy every new episode and webcomic. Luckily, my sister is just as addicted to the series as I am, so it was quickly decided that we wanted to cosplay as Hungary and Austria. Problem: No time. So, for the first time EVURRR, I commissioned the costumes via ebay. And well, I didn't expect them to be perfect, and they fit quite well at least. Still, I redid about half of my Hungary costume, because I wasn't happy with how it looked like. But I am now. Yay. Just kindly remind me not to commission a costume EVER AGAIN XD ↓ 1st and 2nd picture: with as Austria; taken by Andy-K aka Squirrel-of-doom ↓ ↓ 3rd picture taken by MissKrone ↓ ↓ ↓ last picture taken by my sister
	Sunday Garnet (Tsukiji Nao original illustration) I've been pondering a lot about which costume to wear on Sunday, but then I saw that was going to come to AniMaco, too. I really, really like her pictures and something like that was just was I had in mind for a shooting with my Garnet costume. So I asked her to take some pictures, she said yes and well... I LURV TEHM ALL! XDD Thanks to this costume, I looked hugely preggers that day (again), but people assured me that pregnancy suits me XDDDD For more info on the costume itself, please refer to my Connichi report. ↓ All pictures taken by Gina Kühn

My AniMaCo 2010:

+ cosplaying with Melli again ♥ ♥
+ taking pictures with Gina, Eva, Krone and Squirrel
+ nice weather (cold, but dry)
+ found some nice photo shoot locations I didn't knew before
+ cheap and yummy food
+ meeting Pü, FederMON and Cari-chan again ♥
+ I'm really pleased that my costumes showed some variety this time Σd(-∀-*)

- no Maddi ;___;
- ugly convention site (as usual...)
- prices in the dealer's room were ridiculous
- Hetalia yaoi fangirls galore



So that was my last convention this year. Maybe I'll have one more photo shoot this year (with my Belle costume), but I'm not sure - the weather's been strange lately.
But even without another photo shoot, I'm busy enough: My master's thesis and final exams are coming up >_>
Plus, I still need to edit some pictures of previous photo shoots. (Yes, believe it or not, but I am working on it! Sorry, Lao!)