"You can be so charming when you want something, Jack. The trick is finding out what."

I'm finally catching up with my photo backlog! This is from our Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides cosplay photoshoot the Lapu-Lapu Shrine in Mactan, Cebu. It was our first time me and my friends had gone there. We really were on stranger tides!

I'm one of those who liked the fourth PotC movie. The first is still my favorite of course, but I immensely enjoy all of them. When I was a kid, I could tell I loved a movie or a show when I wanted to to be just like the characters when I finished watching. I wanted to be a ninja, a knight, a wizard, a samurai, a scientist, an elven bowman... The PotC films still cast that kind of magic on me.

_{About the shoot:}
The reason we ended up so far from home was that the wonderful people behind iluvcebu.com had been very gracious and flew us in as guests for the Cosplay HD event in Cebu last October. They toured us around, and even planned out this photoshoot for us!

The location was beautiful and very fitting. There was a beach, an infinite bright blue sky, ruins of a big old boat, mangroves, etc. It was pretty funny how the high ride suddenly rushed in while we were there. The ground turned from damp sand to knee-deep water in a matter of minutes.

This photo was inspired by this scene [link]
If we waited at the mangrove forest bit more, I think the water might have gone past our knees to rise this high, but we might not have made it back to shore. We'll save that for next time!

The whole thing was an awesome adventure, and we're happy our costumes got a taste of actual seawater! Hahah! There were lots of creatures in that water, too. Piles of pulsating tentacles, Jesusfish that folloped on top of the water, purple crabs, yellow squid-like things...

You can watch a short behind-the-scenes clip from the shoot here [link]

Anyway! I'm getting carried away!


_{About the cosplay:}
Here's me and Miguel in our costumes where we are least recognizable! HAHAHA

Miguel as Captain Jack Sparrow
myself as Angelica Teach
from the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, On Stranger Tides
photo by Ygie Aniban
post-processing by me *behindinfinity

Some of you have seen Miguel in this costume from my Toycon 2011 Disney Day journal entry, and this photo:


But yeahhh, that's me as Angelica (a.k.a that Spanish chick in the 4th movie to some of you). Hahaha! I know I look nothing like Penelope Cruz, but Miguel really wanted me to join him in PotC cosplay and I don't think I'd make a very good Blackbeard or Barbossa. And hey, I've never attempted anyone like Angelica, I enjoyed the fourth movie and liked her costume design (we love Penny Rose) so I was like, YOU KNOW WHAT, LET'S DO IT.


_{Notes on the costume:}
One of the things that really made us look different from our normal selves was all the makeup we needed. We have relatively fair skin so it was fun toning ourselves to look tanned and sunburnt. After a lot of research, I concluded we should try out Ben Nye cake foundation. It was excellent — looked natural, didn't feel heavy, and lasted the whole day and into the night. It also didn't rub off on our white shirts too much, which is very good.

_{No guns or other weapons in this photo because we had to take a plane to get to this location and they might have gotten confiscated by airport security if we brought them!}

I helped out however I could, but it was really Miguel who did most of the work gathering the right materials for our costumes. He participates in PotC costuming communities so he was able to find sources for fabrics, belt buckles, and other little details like my vest and corset trim so that we could get as close to screen-accurate as we could manage.

After looking for the materials, Miguel put a lot of it together. He made some of the dreads. He arranged and sewed the dreads into a Jack wig by himself, along with putting on all that stuff dangling on his head, some of which he had sculpted himself.

My wig on the other hand, just needed to be tossed about a bit. Hahah!

He also distressed and dyed the cloth parts like his bandana, sash, shirt and boots so that it'd look weathered as if it belonged to a real pirate. (And it's not visible in this photo but together we somehow put together a leather corset for me.)

_{Here are some of the people we'd like to thank:}
- Charlotte for the Angelica vest fabric
- Empire Worldwide for the Jack vest fabric
- Nick and Jim for some of the human hair dreads
- Tyrannical Piratical Treasures and Swag Arts for a lot of miscellaneous items
- Paulette for the Jack and Angelica shirts
- Richard Maldonado for the Jack belt buckles and sash, and the Angelica baldric

We also wore these costumes to Anime Festival Asia '11 in Singapore. Here are some photos by the awesome *shiroang: