I first came across this cosplayer at Blizzcon in her amazing humanised dragon costume and just had to look her up. The cosplayer is Geeky Red Cosplay. Her costumes are just so clean and beautiful and her body paint work is some of the best I’ve seen. Read down below about how she goes about doing her body painting
Age: 30
Location: Southern California, USA
What is your favourite food? Sushi is definitely up there. I enjoy all kinds of cuisine.
Photograph by Brent Allen Thale
When you put your costumes together which is you favourite part of the process? Why?
Painting. Painting is such a relaxing and fun process for me. When I’m making a piece that’s molded in worbla, I often have to remind myself that the item needs priming before painting, because otherwise I will jump the gun, and turn into an excited kid at the idea of painting it. PAINTING TIME?! YUSSSS!
Your body painting is really good! I like how you contour your face, how long does it usually take for you to paint your face for your costumes? What tips would you give to anyone who wants to do a costume that requires body paint?
Since I do my body paint on myself without help from others, I tend to practice months in advance before I have to wear the costume. My first test can take up to 2-3 hours, because I have to figure out the contouring, and shading for different characters, and what highlight and shadow colours work with the paint. I then do it monthly, until I get it down to about 30 minutes to one hour for my face.
My tips to anyone doing body paint: Contour and highlights shouldn’t always be white or black shades. I used navy for my night elf shadowing, and yellow for my orc highlight. It enhances the body paint color better than white or black/grey ever could.
Image taken by Onigun
On your Guild Wars necromancer the edges to your cape are covered in rune like symbols, how did you go about doing that and how long did it take?
That was one of the hardest things about the costume. I couldn’t figure out how to get the runes on the trim without the paint running. I experimented on the trim fabric itself with acrylic paint, pens, markers, and other means. I made stencils and stamps. Nothing came out clean. Eventually, I bit the bullet, drew out the pattern on a paper, and I hand painted all of the runes with a permanent marker, twice over. Thankfully, my boyfriend helped with some of the work, since this trim was everywhere, and I made a matching costume for him as well, but it was a lot of freehanded runework with fine tipped Sharpie pens.
What has been the most tricky technique you have had to master so far?
Without a doubt, sewing and learning about different kinds of fabric, and how they work. To some, this may sound strange, but I missed this life lesson when I was younger and given that my mother and grandmother passed away, I never gleaned any information on basic sewing skills from them. So, when I first started cosplay, there was a big learning curve for me. I couldn’t even thread my bobbin correctly on my sewing machine. I’d be completely lost if I went into a fabric store, and often asked for help, describing what I wanted the fabric to do. I still have yards of fabric that I purchased early on, and ended up not using, because I didn’t understand drape, stretch, and other elements of why the fabric wasn’t going to work for my needs.
The internet helped, a lot. And I ended up researching different fabric types while coming up with costuming ideas. I’m still learning this, so I won’t say that I’m a master, yet. My new hurdle is mastering spandex and stretch fabric.
Photo by Carlos G Photography
If you could go back to newbie Geeky Red what advice would you tell her?
Start simple! Hold off on the grand plans and complex costumes until you have a better mastery of what you’re doing. It’ll save you so much heartache if you work up to the big ideas, rather than trying to run out of the gate when you only know how to crawl. Also, its okay to cry when things don’t go as planned.
Photo by AshB Images
Image taken by AshB images
Photo by AshB Images