Cosplay Spotlight: Beast!

Hey all! It has been quite a while since I posted, but it is time to reveal what I have been working on for so long! Here is a video spotlight and breakdown of the Cosplay my friend Lauren McLaren and I made for Emerald City Comicon.

After 5 months of work, we made this Uncanny costume of everybody's favorite blue-haired X-Men, Beast! We debuted it at Emerald City Comicon, which was WAY bigger than last year's event. I would guess somewhere around twice the amount of people, which really blew me away. Better yet out of all the contestants for this year's costume contest, I got 3rd place in the Marvel category! What made it better is that Yaya Han (a famous professional cosplayer) was one of the judges!

It was a very successful event and I wanted to create a video to break down the individual pieces that make up this costume. The video is made up of three different elements: live action footage of the costume shot against a green screen, piece-by-piece break down snippets, and a motion background with particle effects.

Re-shot Footage

Original Footage

The live action footage of the costume was originally shot horizontal, but the footage ended up being too dark and it pixelated horribly whenever I zoomed in. So I reshot the video, moving the camera closer and turning it vertical so that the subject took up much more space in the frame. It turned out much better and allowed me to zoom in with pretty good results. As I previously stated, the original footage was also too dark which gave me a lot of problems whenever I tried to key out all of the green. The reshot video had much better lighting and didn't give any trouble in the keying process. Lighting is very tricky with green screens.

The snippets (and the live action footage) were shot using a Nikon D5100 against a nice dark red curtain and my friend Lauren McLaren played the role of Vanna White.

A majority of the project was done in Adobe After Effects, which I am currently learning how to use (though there is so much to the program, I will probably never stop learning new aspects of it). I created the yellow and blue X background out of several layers with a mask on the yellow layer to cut away chunks and give it the X shape. Then I used two particle generators and stretched them from corner to corner to get the little yellow streaks to fly by each other. After I did all that, it was a little too bright so slapped a transparent grey layer over the top of them to dull all the colors. This helped the costume pop from the background.

Once I had all of the footage, I keyed out all of the green from the live action video, turned it vertical, then scaled down the image. I also created a virtual camera within the project so that I could zoom around the live action footage. After I figured out where I wanted to zoom in I brought in the scaled-down snippets and positioned them relative to their respective pieces. Then I made all of the different media layers into 3D layers so that I could move some forward and retreat others to give the video a feeling of depth. When all of that was done, I imported the finished After Effects footage into Final Cut Pro, where I mixed all the audio and added a fade-to-black.

This was a really fun video to make and I hope you all enjoy it! I have plans to make more videos like this one in the future to spotlight all the other fun costumes that Lauren and I have created.

Comic Review: AvX #1 and the Marvel AR app

I want you to do something.  Get out your smartphone or tablet computer and download the Marvel AR app (it's available on iOS and Android).  Now open the app, make sure your sound is on, and point it at the AvX cover and watch the magic.

On April 3rd the first Avengers versus X-Men came out.  I'm pretty excited about the series because Captain America is my favorite super hero and the X-Men is my favorite super team.  It is going to have some very awesome match-ups for sure.  In this story arc, the destructive Phoenix Force is rocketing toward Earth and people are starting to freak out.  It's coming to Earth to embody the newest mutant, Hope, as its host and everyone knows it.  The Avengers are trying to stop the coming of the Phoenix Force and have some sort of plan that involves taking Hope from the X-Men.  However, Scott Summers (Cyclops) is the leader of the X-Men and is refusing to give Hope over to the Avengers.  Scott knows that the Phoenix Force can be very destructive, but he also knows that whenever it destroys something it leaves behind a rebirth of new life.  He believes that the Phoenix will restore the mutants that were lost when Scarlet Witch changed reality back in the House of M story arc by changing all but 200 mutants into regular people.

It is understandable that both parties are conflicted as to what to do, but I have to admit that I am disappointed in my favorite heroes' problem solving/conflict resolution skills.  You would think that they could all work together to figure out a solution, but I guess they used up all of their teamwork skills in Fear Itself.  Then again, comics wouldn't be very interesting if there wasn't any fighting.

AvX #1 is a great read. The cliff hangar at the end has me pumped for #2 which comes out this Wednesday.  And while I'm excited to see where the story goes, I'm more excited to explore its integration of the Marvel AR (augmented reality) app.  If you didn't/couldn't try it out here's what you missed:  the app uses your camera and you point it at the page/pane that has the AR logo in the corner and watch as it brings the page to life.  The front cover of AvX #1 has animations and video that serve as a trailer for what's inside.  It's so cool.  Then on the title page inside, Marvel Editor in Chief, Alex Alonso, walks onto the screen to tell you about the series and the AR function.

The app is a little finicky but overall it adds a whole new dimension to enjoying the book.  I like comics, but my biggest complaint is that they are so short I'm always left wanting more.  So with all new content I got a lot more out of AvX #1 then I have with any other comic.  The best part is that the technology is brand new, so it will only get more sophisticated with time.  I can't wait for this Wednesday.

Exploring Washington: Count down to ECC

Last fall, long before I moved to Seattle, my girlfriend, Lauren, and I decided we wanted to go to the Emerald City Comicon in full Cosplay outfits.  I was onboard from the get-go.  My girlfriend was the first to decide on a character. She called me one day and was very excited to tell me she had decided on Kitty Pride from the X-Men (she is the girl that can walk through walls).  I laughed at her and asked why she picked an xmen from the b-list and she had a simple answer: she has red hair. I told her that there was plenty of other way more iconic women from the Marvel Universe with brown hair. But then I started looking and I found out that really isn't. All of the women have jet black, fire red, or bleach blonde hair. And since she didn't want to buy a wig, Kitty was the best choice.
So then I picked Kitty's mutant boyfriend, Colossus (the big Russian guy that turns his skin into liquid metal).  My first thought was how awesome of a character that is for a Cosplay costume.  But then I started to realize just how much work it was going to be. Nonetheless, with ECC this weekend, I am happy to say that Kitty and Colossus will be there and we are very much ready to go.
I encourage you all to go check out the details of the costume making on Lauren's blog: Cosplay Update: Ready for Con