ORIANNA // LEAGUE OF LEGENDS
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CHARACTER BUILD PROFILE
Character: Orianna Day of the Dead splash/fan art Game: League of Legends Photographer: Phosphorescence Original Illustration: "La Calavera Catrina Orianna" by josephjramirez.com Materials Cost: approximately 100$ Time: I started in November and procrastinated finishing until March so... hard to tell! Date Completed: May 29th 2015 Debuted & Worn At: ConCarolinas 2015 RESOURCES WIP Album THE MOTIVATION
I'm a big fan of Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and when the unofficial splash art of Orianna came out it spoke to me! Plus, it deviated a little bit (a lotta bit?) from the well-known Riot skins so it appealed to me that it was unique! THE BUILD I'm pretty impressed with myself from taking a half-finished costume and finally finishing it the fuck up. I'm really bad at that. I have a million ideas, and when I execute on one sometimes I hit a wall and progress on it stops. I've had the Orianna costume SINCE NOVEMBER!!! I couldn't bring myself to decorate the ball so it was sitting unfinished in my room. Sometimes it moved places, in between my bouts of cleaning/organizing shit. I was scared of messing up the design (and wasn't sure where to start) so I just didn't. Even though if I messed up I could have sprayed it all out and started over. I was also searching for the perfect shoes and was considering making some out of Worbla (see: Louboutin Ballerina Ultima, then die from trying to figure out how to diy a pair, go to limbo, hang out as a spirit, become friends with vampires and werewolves, receive your door, then finally go to heaven where there are unlimited Louboutin Ballerina Ultimas you can float/fly around in). When it became clear I wasn't going to diy some, and I wasn't going to buy a pair, or even a knock off, I took out my trusty costume shoes I bought from Morris's post-Halloween sale at 70% off. Can't beat 70% off. So it wasn't a total loss, seeing as they looked pretty damn good AND I could actually walk in them. Anyway - another reason I procrastinated so long was the skirt/tutu. That was the other piece sitting around unfinished. Or rather, I thought it was finished until I bought a serger and went serger-crazy. You can see in my progress album what it looked like "before" when I thought it was finished and "after" when it was actually finished. The skirt has two parts - the satin yellow & red piece and the black soft tulle piece. Because last November I wasn't the best at sewing I did a fantastic botch-up jorb on sewing the satin to the elastic. It was uneven in lots of areas, and it was fraying on the elastic and the seams. It wasn't really an issue unless you looked at it really closely. But I decided to play with my serger and was able to clean up the seams A LOT. I also shortened the satin piece so that the black piece would stand out a bit more. You know how you sometimes have that bit of hesitation before you go fuck with something that at one point you considered finished? Well as soon as I started fixing/altering it I knew I was doing the right thing. Then I added some sheer ribbon as trim on the skirt and it turned into something I hadn't even conceived the prettiness of. Lesson of the story - let the creative process take you where it may!
Finally, the last reason was that I was very apprehensive trying to portray the Day of the Dead sugarskull makeup look. First I tried to free-hand it, and that looked frumpy and bleh but after I sketched out on a piece of paper what I NEEDED the design to look like it was almost easy. My makeup test involved some of the Mehron white face-paint but with even minimal wear of like a hour my skin was breaking out and my wrinkle lines were greeting everything I looked at very enthusiastically. I decided to not use the traditional white face-base and just use my regular CC cream & powder. It was probably the best decision I made regarding the makeup. I also watched a few YouTube tutorials and learned some neat tricks like: use a round shadow brush to get perfectly shaped petals around the eyes, and: you probably want to go for the I have lips-look instead of not. It just a little more feminine. Also - probably one of my favorite things of this cosplay was CHIPMUNK CHEEKS!
All in all, due to my (let's call it) "creative procrastination" the final result was better than I imagined when I actually started! Lidia 1: Procrastination 1 Thanks for reading my rant! Brought to you by post-con depression and post-con-photography-elation! THE EXPERIENCE The experience itself was made awesome by my friends and people I hung out with. Deb, Vivian and I shared a friendaversary (we met at last year's ConCarolinas) and that was pretty awesome. Karaoke was hilarious and made amazing by all the actual dancers in the crowd doing awesome ballroom and breakdancing moves. Seriously, those guys and gals were freaking awesome. On another note, the day started out a bit sour with the costume competition. The pre-judging ended before the allotted given time, moved rooms and no one from informations was informed, and even more time was lost trying to find it. Even though I pre-registered, I was judged as a walk-on. I will be leaving some constructive criticism and let the contest-coordinator know that it would help adding the categories (best in show, craftsmanship, best performance, etc) to their online pre-reg booking form, instead of having it be another spur-of-the-moment thing to keep track of. A kid's category might help too. And to honor the given timeframes. BUT I'M NOT GONNA BE A SOURPUSS I STILL HAD A GREAT TIME THE REST OF THE DAY! |