What The Bleep Am I Doing?! Rebel’s Guide To: Project Safety

Hey everyone, welcome to this week’s What the Bleep am I Doing?! A Rebel’s Guide to… This week I’ll be covering something that, in general, should be common sense, but unfortunately a lot of us—myself included at times overlook it. I’m talking about Project Safety. Making sure you don’t hurt yourself when you work on things varying from EVA foam, hot glue, even wood, and metalworking. So let’s get started, shall we?

Mask up when using a Dremel or sanding. Eva foam dust gets everywhere and it can cause quite a few bad sneezes and cough attacks
Latex finger guards are a godsend when using hot glue guns and heat guns. Nothing is worse than burning your fingers while working with small objects or projects
Keep a bowl of ice water nearby as well so you can quickly cool your hands when dealing with high heat
When using a Dremel or using woodworking equipment safety goggles are important
Also, use a mask when using things such as Plasti Dip or contact cement. Also, keep the room well ventilated so you don’t get dizzy or bad headaches.
Rubber finger guards are also helpful when using Exacto knives so you don’t get cut easily if the tool happens to slip.

That’s as much as I can think up for now, but I’ll be sure to write a second part if more comes to mind or I learn more. Which I’m sure is a given seeing that when you work hard in your craft enough, you continuously grow and learn.

That’s all for now though and if y’all have any questions feel free to ask! I’d love to help!

Lastly, if you wanna support Rebel Fae and get exclusive access to things such as work in progress posts and stories I don’t post here or anywhere else, hop over to my Ko-fi page and donate. I’m eternally grateful for all that y’all do for me, you guys give me the strength to keep going so thank you from the bottom of my heart!

That’s all I have to say…

Rebel Fae out!

June 23, 2021 0

What the Bleep Am I Doing?! Rebel’s Guide to: Posing for Cosplay

Hey everyone! Welcome to this week’s What The Bleep am I Doing?! This week I’m going to be talking about one crucial thing when it comes to doing a cosplay shoot. And that my friends is posing.

Posing is the thing that really brings your character to life in your photos. It shows them off and makes them pop off the page so to speak. Especially if the cosplayer embodies the character well.

What exactly do I mean with “Embody” the character?

When I say embody the character I mean when you pose as your character you give off the vibe so to speak of that character. For example with my cosplay of Envy from Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. Envy is a malicious and conniving character with a cocky and snide way of doing things. So in order to make the character believable I had to think of how he would react in different situations. I had to study a few pictures of him and watch Brotherhood a few times–not that I was complaining, all in all I had to really take to studying this character so I know how to move and pose in a way that it made it look like people were really seeing the actual character in the picture and not just a cosplay. That’s what it means to embody the character.

Use what you have around you.

Another way to embody the character and make the posing more epic and seamless is to use your surroundings to your advantage. Depending on where you are depends on what you’re able to use. For example the objects you’d be able to use in a tulip field would be vastly different than in an underground parking lot in the city.

With using your surroundings, you can act like it was part of the world your character is from. A tree can become a mythical entrance to a fae filled forest. Or an old junkyard can be biochemical wasteland. It all depends on where you shoot at and what you can use.

Communicate with your photographer

This, my friends I can’t stress enough. Sure you can get good pictures and still have fun with doing your shoots solo–heck I do it all the time, but I can’t deny the fact that working with a Photographer professional or a friend works wonders for your pictures. And what I mean with communicating with them, I don’t mean have friendly conversations and schedule a hangout–granted this is perfectly fine you get more friends this way. But what I mean is talking with your photographer and getting their advice on what would be a good pose or where’s a good place to stand for the photo.

Having a good conversation with them while you’re doing a shoot will not only make the shoot more fun, but it turns into a sort of collaboration. For example, when I did my Envy from Fullmetal Alchemist shoot with Silver Fyre Studios, we were in this really pretty trail and I was unsure about how to pose and really get into the character. So we came across this really pretty bridge and we both thought of the scene where all of the main characters are fighting by the brick wall and then Gluttony goes and ruins everything. So thus, this picture was born!

It’s really something else when two artists of like minds come together and work on a project. It’s the same with photographers and cosplayers. That’s why communication is so important.

Well, that’s all on cosplay posing for now my friends! As I myself learn more I’ll definitely share more with you guys! I hope some of this advice helped!

See ya’ll next time…

Rebel out!

April 28, 2021 2

What The Bleep Am I doing?! An Artist’s Guide To All Things Creative ~ Cosplay Clay

Hey everyone! Welcome to this weekend’s: What The Bleep Am I Doing? An Artist’s Guide To All Things Creative. This week, I’ll be talking about a special type of EVA foam: Cosplay Clay.

Yep, y’all heard me correctly. Cosplay clay. It’s a material completely made out of EVA foam. But with the properties of clay! After it dries with any shape you have decided to mold it into it has the properties of EVA foam. It’s probably one of the most helpful types of EVA to work with. But, just like every other material out there it’s not without its pitfalls that you have to work around.

The clay will dry fairly quickly. Now, that’s definitely a good thing so you don’t have to worry about your project losing its shape or getting any unwanted scratches or indentations. And believe me I’ve had more than my fair share of those that I had to fix. But, it has its drawbacks.

For one, if you were to accidentally leave the lid open even by just a bit, you’ll come back to find that your whole tub of cosplay clay is completely dried out and practically useless. This happens too when you’re trying to mold your clay and work with it, it’ll get dry spots.

But! Fear not my friends for there is a way to solve problem! Just have a handy dandy water bowl by your side when you work. So, whenever you get those pesky dry spots on your clay you just dip your fingers into the water bowl and put it on the dry spots. Just make sure to rub the water in so it smooths out. It’s also really handy to smooth out the pesky wrinkles that tend to pop up when you work with it.

The other drawback to this material is it can break fairly easily depending on how thick you make your pieces. For example, when I made my chakrams the end points–sadly can’t think of a better word for them, that extended off of the smaller circles on the main base I accidentally made them too thin making it easy for one of them to crack off in a photoshoot–thankfully that happened at the end of the shoot. But, just like with the clay dryness, this can be fixed too.

My poor little prop. It served me well 😥

All you have to do, is when making small or thin pieces like those end points on the chakrams, simply reinforce it with more clay. Yours truly just forgot to do that with her project. It’s probably and practically the easiest way to fix it. You can reinforce it with Worbla, but that would honestly take a lot more time and it would be a lot harder.

Well, that’s all for this article! More than likely there will be a part two to this since there is plenty more I can tell y’all about this amazing material. That’s all for now my little Rebels!

Rebel Fae out!