*behindinfinity

Last edit! Sorry I'm cramming everything into this one journal entry. Just wanted to keep everything about this shoot in a single post.

Sorry about the nth edit. I fixed up a lot of the text. It seems my brain wasn't functioning as well as I thought when I first wrote this journal entry. (I'm not entirely sure it's performing very well right now also.) Added a few more omake pics - they just deserve to be shared. Oh, and check out our spanking new matching Bleach avatars! Hahaha! Such geeks are we.

Okay, first of all...

Before anything, please check our Frequently Asked Questions section where I've provided answers to, er, questions that we're frequently asked.

Saturday was the BEST DAY EVER. Okay, well, every day with these guys are always BEST DAY EVERs.

For a late celebration of my birthday, my friends (known to some of you as the Tuxedo Team) and I met up last Friday to do two of our favorite things - eat, and have a cosplay photoshoot. Our series of choice: Bleach

Since our proper Bleach costumes aren't ready yet, we decided to go with their casual style which shines particularly well in Kubo Tite's Bleach artbook All Colour But the Black and some of the colored spreads he does for the Bleach manga. He draws them in crazy, colorful outfits they would never wear in the anime, but we all admire his art style so we dedicate this photoshoot to him. The clothes we wore just came from our closets, by the way. Haha.

Oh, and since a lot of people are asking - no, we aren't professionals at this. Far from it. We're only regular students. This is just something we do for fun. Our photographers are our good friends who are photography hobbyists, but happen to have professional skills. Our "models" _{(ack, I wish I didn't have to use that word)} are just each other, our little group of geeks.

So I'm sorry we don't have more characters just yet. A lot of people are practically demanding for the missing members of the main cast. o_O It isn't an actual production with auditions and casting and everything. (On that tangent, I would like to know why they didn't include Ishida in Burimiyu. ) It's not like we'll have people apply for spots or whatever since, like I said, it's just something we do as friends. But we're lucky we have ones who are willing to be part of our cast next time. So you can at least expect Ishida, Chad and perhaps Tatsuki, Keigo and Mizuiro. And Kon! (I wish we could have a Renji, but the only person who wants to cosplay him among us is also me. Gah. That customized wig with a skin cap for his distinct hairline is going to take a while.)


myself as Kurosaki Ichigo
China as Kuchiki Rukia
Kat as Inoue Orihime
Miguel as Urahara Kisuke

awesome friends and photographers
Erving Go
Sandra Dans
Nico Dans

A little something to show our appreciation!


Special thanks to these guys for the gift art!

My original character was actually Ishida:


...but due to circumstances keeping Miguel *merkymerx from being Ichigo for now, I had to substitute for him. As =nekozumi put it when we were talking, I'm the substitiute Ichigo like Ichigo is a substitute shinigami. What's a Bleach group with no Ichigo, right? So I decided to take on that role for now.

Not that I'm complaining! Quite the opposite, actually. Ichigo has become one of my favorite characters because as the series progressed because I found that he's someone I can relate to in a lot of ways. I saw parts of myself reflected in parts of him. That made it extra painful to watch him struggle with circumstances similar to what I've gone through, but when he'd overcome them I'd be reminded of my own resolutions.

Hoo~ getting too emotional here, eh. Moving on!

So the character love was already there (something which I think is really important when you're cosplaying) but the trouble was, I didn't know if I looked like him. And gah, ORANGE HAIR! ?! That's the first challenge I decided to tackle. No matter where I looked, nobody sold wigs that looked to me like Ichigo's hair so I decided to do my own styling and dyeing. A mixture of cadmium orange and light brown gave me a good shade of orange that wasn't too neon and looked slightly natural. Did some texturing and got the spiky yet fluffy layers by cutting and trimming with a razor blade instead of scissors, though it's not something I would advise most people to do.


After that, I just did other silly things like practicing his facial expressions and the way he carries himself. I'm relieved that it pretty much worked out well (despite my fingers being tinted orange for a while) and I've been getting positive feedback about my Ichigo cosplay, so I'm very thankful. Thanks, you guys.

Credits for the photos go to Erving Go ~Huzafan, Sandra Dans ~littlesailboat and Nico Dans ~Artus13! You guys are the best!

After lunch we checked out Comic Alley out of habit, and got funny looks when we were standing amongst all the Bleach merchandise. Hahaha. Then after that, we went to meet up with everyone for the photoshoot. (For those of you who know the place we're talking about, the owner would appreciate you not mentioning it. Thank you! )