Lina and one of her best photo!

Hello my Sweethearts!

I got back as soon as I could. And today I’ll share with another excitingly good looking image from Lina Dota 2 photoshoot. At least I hope, it’ll be that way to you!
But before I do so, I want to thank you for sharing your thoughts and feels with me. And for understanding my position. I’m also happy see how enthusiastically you’re participating in voting. We’ll sum up results closer to June, so the winner can change.

As you might noticed, I usually try to investigate character we decided to work on. If it’s a game character, I play the game. Movie/animation – I watch it. If I didn’t have time to do that, we have Tao, who enjoys many different media and usually heard/know/practiced something related to the character. One way or another we’re trying to “feel” the subject of our photo interest.
Because if you don’t do it, you’ll find yourself in strange situation on set, where you wouldn’t be able to come up with anything. How to shoot, where, how to pose etc. Literally there won’t be any bright idea in mind, empty space. Or as portrayed in Simpsons, just mechanic monkey playing cymbals.

It happened to us few times, that’s why we always have notebook with standard/classic poses drawn there. Really helpful tool. At least you’ll be able to find your ground and start working.
One small note, if you’ll shoot depending only on standard pool of poses, you’ll end up delivering the same thing.
As I said, it’s better to investigate and preplan everything related to character from scratch. That way you’ll be able to add new flavors to your craft and ideas. Good example from our works might be Cirilla, Nezuko, 2B and Sombra photoshoots. All of them consisted of two parts, and have very different feel from previous. At least a bit. There might be more, but I can’t remember at the moment. Maybe you’ll remind me of others? )

You might be interested on how we choose characters firsthand to work on?
If one of us found interesting character, pitched the idea and we decided to go with it – we start working on costume. If you were curious, we usually use my body size/proportions.
Fun fact, with small adjustments, costumes fit both small models and big models. I guess I was born with ultimate mannequin body, haha. )
If character doesn’t fit any of our current models, we put it on hold. Lina was this kind of character. We didn’t expect her to go that well with our Aerith/Nezuko/Ashe model. I think its good to revisit long prepared costumes time to time.
You know what makes me upset the most? When we have beautiful model in our hands, but none of prepared or in preparation characters fit her. For example, in a few days we’ll have opportunity to work with one of our loved models, but we don’t have anything. She has very distinctive looks, which is very hard to implement in cosplay. But when we were able, those photoshoots met with lots of love. )
That’s why it’s a shame. And upsetting.
I hope, we’ll have more opportunities in near future. )

Today I’m sharing with my favorite image from Lina’s photoshoot. I don’t know why, but everything in this shot makes me grin with excitement. Tao did truly great job on post-production highlighting the pose and form. What do you think? I hope, it brings smile on your face too. )

Have a great day!