In cooking, even the best ingredients in abundance can be a bad thing. And I'm using this analogy because the latest shoot and costume project I had is a character from Shokugeki no Soma or quite literally "Food Wars". The same thing can be said about almost anything actually, it’s the timeless saying “Too much of a good thing can be bad”. There are certain aspects of Photoshop that we might not want to overuse. (Good example would be filters and those custom brushes— as fun as they are) Although at the very end of it, it goes back to “To each his own” because the overall effect we want differs. But let me just give you a few examples of using Photoshop to simply enhance color and fix minor mishaps like thread sticking out from parts of a costume: As much as I can, I like getting the fit of the costume, costume details, cloth color, armor color, color of the wig, eyes, hairstyle, makeup as perfect as humanly possible. I placed a ton of powder on my arms, neck, and face for the sake of Alice Nakiri. As her upbringing would give off, she spends most of her time indoors, inside a laboratory. And a darker complexion just wouldn't work with the pale silver wig as can be seen in the manga covers (Because currently the anime will be airing on April 2015 and it's currently February 2015) So, I am once again just doing guesswork...hopefully they keep the design so I don't look stupid (again) Admittedly, my cosplay makeup is HEAVY almost all the time, although I don't really put falsies as they have a tendency to make the eyes look too droopy (At least for me). And why is your makeup so heavy? I've noticed that what looks good in person does not have the same look on photos. More or less because of the amount of light I want on my features, but I usually have really red temples, cheeks and lips on shoots Unless the character looks a bit more 'forgiving' features wise, like Makise for example. But for most characters, my makeup will be 5x to 10x more than what I would wear normally. As usually cosplaying is accompanied by a photo shoot for memories! (Look at all the money I spent on this one! Hahaha.../cries) I don't really edit out my pores, or airbrush my face. I do however, edit huge pimples out of the way. At times though, when I'm lucky enough, my skin behaves and am practically zit free. Just the overly oily face issue, which helps light reflect on my face. And it also helps me reprint my face on other people's clothes when I hug them :| The most tools I use in photoshop are possibly your favorite tools as well: The dodge, burn, sharpen, and healing brush tool! (I WISH YOU WERE REAL!) Am not a huge fan of blurry photos, I like crisp images! So crisp you can feel the crunch! Lame jokes aside, there are times however that a HUGE amount of photoshop is also used on my photos, similar to the amount of makeup I wear the photoshop makes the photo a different thing altogether. I'll update this, but the actual shot was in a park's parking lot. And there was no amount of metal present on the shoot itself. The only thing real there is me, my costume, the wig flip and the red string. (Except that the red string wasn't shining on the actual shoot, it was dull and positively ugly) Everything in the background and the foreground metal was rendered from scratch in an open source 3D program called "Blender". (That's a link btw, and so is this if you're interested) So if you ever thought that 3D is something you need a crack and serial for? No, not really! But it does help if your system has the power to render these images sharply after you model them. Warning: There's "Everything in moderation", but there's also wanting really spicy things. My main point is, just do whatever you want but do it in good taste and for the sake of making something look good. If simply changing your curves on photoshop without the proper exercise can make you happy? Well then who am I to stand against that?
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Admittedly, I’m an easily affected person and it’s actually pretty hard to live like this. Because try as you might there will be times that you just get depressed. It can be triggered by absolutely anything, yet is so hard to escape from once it sets in. I give you tips that I do myself to escape the sudden feeling of sadness or loneliness that can sometimes sneak up on us: Make lists: As the image I made says, it can be of anything! Even figures you want to buy, people you want to see soon, stuff you’d like to do for Christmas. KEY IS: Don’t put any pressure on yourself, just a list of stuff that makes you happy or makes you look forward to tomorrow. This is also funner to do via an old fashioned pen and paper or your planner! There's an altogether different feel to it. Besides you don't need to type in passwords, lock in codes with pen and paper. You just look at it and it's there. Plus you can easily doodle things without judgement or fear that it might be accidentally uploaded into a cloud server. Tweak your daily routine: From the walk you take to work or school, the food you eat, to the things you do after work, during lunch or even at home. Do you spend all day in front of your PC or in general, in front of Facebook? Try going out for a nice drink! After work or school, take a scenic route and just let your heart race a bit with the walk you’ll take. Play a random game at the arcade, eat a slice of cake. Listen to music that ‘feels’ you: Something that has the words on your mind and heart, and SING TO IT! Added bonus if you even dance to it with matching air microphone or air guitar. You can do this in an empty bathroom at work or at school, or an empty elevator (I did this a lot back at my first job whenever I was stressed, I can also somehow brighten the day of the security people when they see the crazy person dancing in the elevator alone) Prepare/Cook/Make something for yourself Am not talking about easy fry food, instant noodles, cup ramen or easy oven lunches. Go for making yourself a nice dinner from actual raw ingredients! Take the time to prepare it, get a recipe from the internet and then try it! Or make yourself really good tea, or a good coffee drink! If you don't have a blender, a good iced coffee is heaven to a depressed spirit.
Making lists, playing a game, even singing a song gives us a sense of fulfillment even for a little while. Don't over indulge on the sweet stuff though, as being healthy actually gets you feeling happier than the sudden sugar rush you can get.
University of the Philippines, Diliman Quezon City Let's look at the facts first: Firstly this rate sheet is accompanied by an entire .PDF document you can find here (or click here). Examining that document, it states that you either have to pay a 10% security bond for cleanliness and security of the applicable rental fee or 5,000 pesos (Whichever is higher) For a public school, this is rather steep and even more is the fact that they should at least offer a lighter fee to the students. If it were a group project I suppose 1,000 pesos can be shared easily enough by at least a group of 10 or more people. But what if there's only 2 in a group, or even worse...just one? And this kid, not aware of this fee, have used the grounds relying on the information that the usage of his school facilities would be automatically free. Maybe 1,000 pesos isn't much to you, then let's move on to the non-UP people, now we're paying nearly premium. That's the same price for 3 hours in Heirloom Manila, or even in Secret Garden. Now, if that were the case why don't we just head on over there? Well, school is designed to be accessible as those two other places I mentioned are not. The fees are rather steep, they're nearly premium rates for private classy pre-nuptial places. Not that UP isn't, but let's remember that this is a PUBLIC school and 13 million went to this place from the US-Philippines war damage commission quite some time ago. Logic also tells us that taxes should be covering the maintenance of public schools, public hospitals and public parks. And yet we see these things, and then we see paychecks with that big wet 10% bite and we wonder where those are going when we pay maintenance to what our taxes should be used for. And if the fees aren't unfair to you, what's this: Is the economy spearheading by 10% as well? What is the basis of this 10% annual escalation? Thankfully, in all this I rarely shoot at UP Diliman due to the inconvenience of how far it is. But for people and even students who need the grounds...in summary, it's all a bit too unfair isn't it? |
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