The Cover's Book.

(Jun. 19, 2013  12:20 AM)nupmuk Wrote: can I use the pegasis/Ldrago battle as my signature?

Sure, nobody really uses it right now.
I think time might have come to post about my (first) cosplay :


[Image: nMLhoZC.jpg]
(Credits to Dark_Mousy for the photograph.)


For this cosplay, I had to purchase :
- a tight white 3/4 sleeve T-shirt
- at least eight packs of pens for clothings
- boots
- Kryolan makeup (white, red and black)
- a black veil (piece of clothing)
- sarouel pants
- 'bobepines' to hold my hair back
- whiteout/intense white contact lenses
(- black kimono)


First version :
[Image: rNK0SmP.jpg] [Image: jl5F9xL.jpg] [Image: G1yklAw.jpg]

The core part of this version is really the T-shirt, which you can see details of here :
[Image: qub7hRx.jpg] [Image: 7sDJoeu.jpg] [Image: o6O7PuR.jpg] [Image: sAeTtO0.jpg] [Image: nXgMxno.jpg]

What the costume represents is a Hiroshima burn victim with a ghoul face. With this version though, I am really putting forth the Hiroshima zombie more than the rest. A few years ago, during the short Ratio ducat, non fortuna -Zombie- tour in Japan, Kyo disguised his body as clearly a burn victim, using paint directly on his skin and using a treatment that made some parts stand out, creating the illusion of charred skin. It covered his tattoos, but he also chose the base colour of the skin to be white. After a while and once I had researched several photos of burn victims, I realised that he was not portraying just any burn victim : he was representing one from an era where pictures were still black and white, so that only refered to one event - the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. Acting as a burn victim would have already been worthy of the 'shock' in a rock-metal band act, but by selecting for it to be mainly in black and white, he was giving it a whole other definition, one that could not be misinterpreted.

As such, I spent several dozens of hours in my spare time drawing directly on that white long-sleeved T-shirt to try and reproduce highly charred skin. Of course, with just pencils and unable to apply the same body paint directly on me, the effect is not as successful though. Still, considering the size of the reference pictures I had, I think the result is decent.

[Image: Zombie-Makeup-kyo-29820695-422-750.png] [Image: 68710050_p.jpg] [Image: 68710018_p.jpg] [Image: 68710031_p.jpg] [Image: 68710058_p.jpg] [Image: ?c=isi&im=%2F6868%2F80436868%2Fpics%2F30....jpg&w=486]

The ghoul makeup originates from the GHOUL tour that also came to North America. I saw it personally in Toronto last year, and I knew I had to make it. I think I was already thinking back then that I probably wanted to do a cosplay for Anime North 2014, but the face was unclear, so this sealed the deal. The makeup, paired with the black veil, brings a dark and twisted addition to the costume. The ghoul, in the show, seemed to be a representative of death.

[Image: hqdefault.jpg] [Image: dir-en-grey_4.jpg] [Image: tumblr_mwpzqfjgzi1r5sfsvo1_1280.jpg]

Doing all the makeup and adding the contact lenses took three hours.


Second version :
[Image: fqLtMOQ.jpg] [Image: TiFF1yw.jpg] [Image: adSNFrX.jpg] [Image: AWpXAHR.jpg]

I wore it at Otakuthon in Montréal at the end of August. To be honest, I just knew I did not want to go through as long to apply all the paint, so I ditched the arms and went for a version of the costume that now focused more on the ghoul than on the Hiroshima burn victim. Kyo's ghoul disguise essentially only varies from my cosplay in that the big eye is drawn directly on his chest and that the other details on the abdomen are not there.

Having a kimono instead of basically bare arms successfully gave a more 'majestic' nature to the costume, like a priest.



Oddly, only one person outside of the Beyblade community asked me for a photograph at Anime North, and nobody at all even dared to ask me for one at Otakuthon, although I got a few muted comments of shock or awe. Apparently there are no real Dir en grey fans out there or the cosplay really sends the message that people need to avoid bothering me, hah.
Very...very cool.
The neck paint looked fantastic, the outfit screams (no pun intended) horror in general.
For my birthday, I decided to make myself a new signature banner. Damn, it has been five years since I last created proper graphics and not just small things here and there for the World Beyblade Organization.

[Image: mM1ltvo.gif]

There are other cooler images I would have wanted to use, but they were not appropriate to have tagged to each of my posts, in case kids' parents look at my messages and threads hah.

This verse from Dir en grey's song C really sums up much of what Dir en grey and their concerts specifically are to me : "If you've forgotten how to scream, then scream right here and live right here". In other words, when you repress things for so long, use this music as an opportunity to scream it all out and live right this moment, compared to being 'idle' normally.

Despite having had no practice in five years, this turned almost exactly like what I had in mind. It is a piece of the empty background falling violently and making gold dust fly right out from underneath it, and then flutter everywhere into a big cloud. The only thing I would have wanted to improve is to animate each dust particule so that it really floats in the air smoothly, like dust in
real life. In any case, the dust projected illustrates three photographs of expression.

And of course, only the second part of the sentence is in capital letters.


So, dust, idle, violent change, etc. I think the meanings in this work are clearly visible.
I really like it. Not only the graphics and the signature itself, but the whole, strong message shared only by this animated picture. Just great.
That's awesome Kai-V , first time i've ever seen your post graphics modified at all Grin
(Jun. 20, 2010  5:27 PM)Kai-V Wrote: KaiV_Avatar2
Admittedly, I like mathematics.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v106/K...vatar2.gif
Coolest. Avatar. Ever.
You are really talented. Your sigs and avatars are some of the best I have ever seen
I do not know if they are the coolest ever, but I certainly do the best I can with the limited equipment I have, and I definitely put all the thought I can into it. Oddly, this all stems from one person called Odin on the Beyblade Spirit Forums telling a few of us that our graphics were totally mindless and that the best creations actually involved a lot more than just visual admiration. Like some other things, I took it to heart and everything I have produced since has at least a small meaning.

Thank you for your reply, it definitely caught me off guard, seeing someone care about this thread hah.
Well it's the thought behind it mostly on that avatar, really cool philosophical meaning behind it, it kind of made me think a lot, and it looks cool too.