time to be dorky
This Japanese cosplay website features a decade's worth of high level costume craft by a woman who calls herself Shin', with choices of subject matter that are often incredible. This person has good taste and I'm really impressed by how ambitious some of her projects are.
I figured I might as well post this because I know about a dozen people to whom I'd be sending links from it anyway, and this is really much easier, and I know there are people here on LJ who I don't talk to that often who will be interested.
Speaking of people I never get to talk to anymore who gotta look at this... I'm looking at you, dressdragn
This Ghost in the Shell outfit absolutely blows my mind. I don't know if it's even appropriate to call it an outfit, since it's a full-body suit creating the illusion that an outer layer of artificial skin has been partially stripped off of a metal structure. I've certainly seen this attempted before, sometimes successfully, but never this well by a non-professional. The photography is beautiful, too.
Here's one more photo that's not as good but shows the details of the front of the costume a little better.
(By the way, it's based on this action figure and this poster for the first GITS movie.)
Here's another one that knocks my socks off, Ryuk from Death Note. Full-head mask that leaves her blind, according to web-translation of the page, and all the clothes handmade.
And in case that wasn't scary enough, here's Gollum, as depicted in the LOTR movies. Holy freakin' crap, man. With how the prosthetics change the shape of her face, hands and feet, it's hard to even see the person within the costume.
I'm also in awe of her Kaiko and Sanshi from 12 Kingdoms.
As for the rest of this, there isn't anything else quite as intense as those five, and pretty much any page on the site has well-made clothing items, so I'm posting pretty much just stuff that I like for a particular reason or intend to send someone else to look at later on.
She's done many other Ghost in the Shell costumes, including a ton of outfits from the recent Stand Alone Complex TV series, including the one with black pants, the one with white pants, the one with no pants, the black combat suit, the silver ghostdive gear (based on an eyecatch in the TV series), and the Mandarin dress.
It's amazing how much some people can change their appearance by hairstyling and the cut of clothing; compare this male character from Cafe Kichijouji or this one from "Heaven?" to, for instance, this version of Lust from Full Metal Alchemist. It's also little weird how much older and younger she can look from photo to photo, but I'm not going to bother to point out examples of that.
kanna will appreciate these, one costume from D.Gray-Man and another one.
Various anime/manga/game:
- Shadow Lady's Cat Shadow form and Bunny Shadow form
- Kushana from Miyazaki's Nausicaa comic
- Queen Bee from Vampire Saviour/Darkstalkers
- Eureka 7's Talho and Hilda and in a group and the Moondoggie cosplayer from the group shot.
- Pudding from Space Channel 5 Part 2 (and again)
- Ora from Clover with a nice prop: one version and another one.
Various American TV and film:
- A couple of Star Wars Twi'lek women, from Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace
- Star Trek: TNG's Beverly Crusher
- The stewardesses from The Fifth Element once and again
- Violet from The Incredibles
- Elrond from the LOTR films once and again - I can't believe she can pull that off!
- Niobi from the Matrix movies
- Long Sky from Hero
- Storm as seen in the second X-Men movie
- The witch from Disney's Sleeping Beauty
- And speaking of Disney, her maskless Donald Duck is ridiculously cute.
By the way, in case anyone is wondering about her costumes' provenance, given the prevalence of professionally made character costumes among Japanese fans, this website clearly represents crafter as well as wearer. Her costume pages all seem to indicate what was handmade and what was purchased, and there's a section with examples of her made-to-order costumes and instructions for commissioning.