Gintama | Anime Expo 2013

Heres my super ghetto Gintama shoot from AX 2013 weekend! Why ghetto? well, dont you see the super ghetto red backdrop we have on the bg?! lol well when in doubt, just use a ghetto backdrop for shoots haha. Originally we wanted to try and shoot this at some badass place that would fit the theme of the show or their costumes but that didn't quite work out. We were all tired, it was hot and just uncomfortable so we ended up shooting this in the hotel room with yards of fabric we had lol. I think it turned out quite well if I do say so myself. I might just start bringing yards of fabric with me to cons lol with shitty backgrounds to avoid ugly con bg photos...
and aaah for shooting indoors with A/C!


Cosplayers: Ash - Gintoki | Hannsel - Kamui   

Heres one of the few behind the scenes shot we got lol
because of course, we need more blood.

The bathroom looked like a crime scene afterwards....

Hakuouki AX Photodump | Anime Expo 2013

Took me long enough to finally get to this photo dump. I didn't really get a chance to do any behind the scene photos from this shoot since there were several factors invovled LOL. Mostly because we were definitely in a rush to get this done, this had def. been one of those insane late night shoots and its definitely one to kick start the convention weekend.

But before I proceed any further with the backstory on this shoot, the cosplayers featured here are from the Bananahammock cosplay group 
Chi as Chizuru and Lynne as Kazama.

We (Angels Instead & Moi) were shooting Panty & Stocking Day 1 at our hotel when we spotted them from the corner and pretty much chased them down. (Kinda rude imho LOL but in life, opportunities only knocks once! lol. When shooting other cosplayers, you shouldn't chase after other cosplayers....LOL) but thankfully it all worked out in the end~ yay.

Originally I had something bigger planned for this shoot but with timing and circumstances beyond our control we were pretty much forced to just work with what we got and thankfully the shots still turned out pretty well. Had a blast working with these two. I got another set coming up that I'll be posting from them too...when I get around to it. You can follow me on Facebook for the other sets too~

We shot this in Little Tokyo around 11ish. Pretty late if I do say so myself x__X originally we wanted to try and play with dry ice to create a more alluring effect and shoot it in the gardens but considering how late it got, we just rushed it. The benefit of shooting that late at night on 4th of July is that there was little to no one there, it was practically deserted already and the shops were all closed. The guards pretty much left us alone for the most part  but of course we got kicked out around midnight since apparently you need a permit to shoot after midnight and lol I'm sure the sparklers also set them off..haha...

I had no intention on posting this one lol but it was just too lol...I'm pretty sure I have another one
that is salvageable.

 

Matcha Green Tea Yogurt Mask

Forever procrastinating on finishing up the photoshoots to make a quick post on another DIY Face Mask thats super good for you! Matcha Green Tea Yogurt masks.

Another cheap and effective masks without breaking the bank. I made this masks for less than $4 since I already had most of the products at home minus the yogurt which I was out....

The benefits of a Yogurt Mask:
Fights premature aging on your skin and super hydrating for your skin as it contains lactic acid and also helps make your pores smaller.
Helps fight discoloration brought on by sun damage and acne scars as it naturally bleaches your skin to even out your skin tone and has natural anti bacterial and anti fungakl properties to fight off acne.

Benefits of MATCHA green tea:
The difference between regular green tea and matcha is basically green tea usually comes in packets and you let it seep through to flavor your favor to get the extracts from it. Matcha on the other hand is all that good stuff that comes in that little packets you use but finely grounded to a nice powder. Giving you all the the amazing benefits of it.

Matcha is rich in antioxidants and has a lot of anti inflammatory properties which helps keeps your skin young and youthful. Natural cleanser and exfoliant, high in EGCG which helps fight cancer. Smells great and a great mood booster. Love the earthy smell~ always puts me in a relaxed mood when I drink it or smell it.

So clearly when you combine them together you get great stuff. This has been my alternative to the oatmeal honey mask since that tends to clog my sink LOL....so if I do use it I have to rinse out in the kitchen sink u__ull

Making this is pretty much a no brainer. All you need are the following:

-  Pure matcha powder (read the ingredients to make sure it only says matcha, you want it as pure as possible)
- Yogurt (plain unflavored - avoid anything with additional flavoring ingredients thats not natural as it might clog your pores)
- Tea Tree Oil or Rose Oil (optional - I like to use tea tree oil as its an added benefit for acne fighting and helps control oily ness, rose oil is great for that added extra bit of moisture and if you enjoy the smell of roses)

Take half a cup of yogurt, a table spoon of the matcha and your oils and mix! I like to make a decent sized batch and keep them in the fridge so I can use it 2-3x a week without having to keep making a new batch every time.

Leave it on your face for about 15-20 mins or till it starts to dry up, rinse it out with warm water. As your rinsing be sure to scrub it in so it helps to exfoliate your face as it rinses, its super gentle on the skin but if you have sensitive irritated skin I wouldn't be scrubbing that in too hard and would also avoid the tea tree oil especially if your sun burned....

Moisturize and your done!

264.

Barely survived AX. Still got quite a bit of photos to work on before I can do an actual photo set dump ): but again alot of the photos you can probably already see on FaceBook. I may be able to do a photo dump sooner for 1-2 of the photoshoots I did...hopefully...LOL till then...HURHURHUR FILLER POSTS JUST COZ I CAN ఠ___ఠ
This is pretty much a conclusive overall haul for the last couple days/weeks/months coz Idk where have I been other than trying not to freak out about AX / At AX / Trying to SURVIVE AX....I didn't get a chance to poke my head inside the dealers hall this year...which is probably a first for me ): though lately even when I go to cons I pretty much just go just to check out merch and never really bring anything back unlss the Bandai booth is there but even still I still have 1.5 model kits that haven't been done yet. (I say one and a half coz one of them has been partly built and the other is just sitting there waiting to be touched. Maybe once I make it through all the AX photos I can work on that...but then..theres also remaking some cosplays...gdi LOL and schoooool noooo) .__. oops. I'm running out of room. maybe I should just transfer all my BBs and slap them on my dashboard with my storm trooper...but...then again it wouldn't work lol...

So I guess I'll just start from here  ఠ__ఠ not sure if its due to late nights spazzing about AX or just dragging my butt out of bed to go to work has caused my skin to break out =_= Ironic that I didn't break out the entire time I was at AX and thats with pounds and pounds of makeup, little to no sleep. But I get back to SD and its like break out central щ(ಠ益ಠщ) (mind you, I mostly just wear bb cream and powder when I go to work. Sometimes I would wear foundation coz need extra coverage sobs and not sure if thats what caused the break out but I also went on an intensive disinfect/clean all brushes spree this past weekend too)
And summer means oil sleek central and I am not about to keep dabbing my face with oil blotters and powder it to no end qAqll hateoilycomboskinusogei. Tried out Clinique's Stay Matte. So far so good. Cheaper than MakeUp Forever but hurhur maybe someday I'll try that. IDK I've always sworn by Clinique's formula. Never broke me out.

Shine reduction? So far so good, wear time? I'd say averagely a good 4-5 hours before I see any form of significant shine coming through. Better than 1-2 hr of wear and already shine ):< I can probably even say it works till the 6th hour lol which isn't bad at all. And of course, korean ladies just love showering you with samples. I hoard sample packets like these so when I travel. Never have to bring a damn refillable bottle ever again. If I can help it.
 
A job well done, I got rewarded a Marshalls giftcard at work~ whoo whoo for putting up with egnrhnoreh many new trainees and having to train them orz hey its no raise but I'll take it

And from there, I picked up some old lady perfume lol Elizabeth Arden Green Tea (lol how to smell like an old Asian lady lawls) and finallyyy a curling wand. I held off on getting one before coz dumbass me burnt myself twice using my old curling iron from school like a wand. Yeah. Never again ╭(๑¯д¯๑)╮

Just coz. IDK. 

A sneak peek into the abyss that is in my giant man purse.

I say man purse coz. its a messenger bag from the dude section.

it does its job, its sturdy and is almost a bottom less pit.

 

Forever21 makeup pouch - whoo mee I downgraded lol and emptied out the crap I carry with me usually

to just the bare essentials...and I thought I had the bare essentials before

but lol, IDK.

Pills/Vitamins. Food. Coz, you need food. Candy coz you need sugar lol

External Hard Drive....tbh IDK why I was carrying this lmao when I have a thumb drive...

While everyone was out enjoying Comic Con, I was working that Saturday and this is me taking my hipster photos of the 'local' coffee shop. Seriously, its just outside my condo LOL...
6am no one is there so hurhurhur shameless IG photos all the way....

Not real Starbucks tea lol....you'd think it'd be their peach green tea lemonade

nope. Its my ghetto version of Minute Maid Peach Tea + Pineapple Juice.

Coz. Why not. It taste good and you should make it too. Its THAT refreshing.

And the last of my shameless vanity haul looo....I actually had to go back to Sephora like 2-3x to return a few stuff before I finally said FUCK IT ALL. I'm just gonna get the right thing and the right thing this time =__=ll and finally got the Too Faced Chocolate Soleil powder. HEAVEN. HG contour powder I cannot say enough praises for it щ(ಥДಥщ)

IDK if your like me but my biggest pet peeve with bronzers and contour powders if - they turn your skin orange. Especially if you have the same skin tone as me. And, I prefer a matte powder in a cool tone brown. 2-3 tries at Sephora and several product later =__= I figured, enough. Just. Get this. No regrets.

Its the perfect matte powder, in a  COOL TONE brown shade, does not give me a streaky orange tinge midway through the day, its completely matte and SMELLS LIKE VANILLA MARSHMALLOWS OMG HOW CAN YOU NOT

I'm tempted to return the highlighter I got for their candlelight one too honestly ಥ⌣ಥ but jebusss its an arm and a leg...but forever kawaii lol

And the other stuff were from ULTA. Which =_= I need to go and return an item coz, that concealer is not my shade LOL.... (╯°Д°）╯┻━┻ So fail. So freakin' fail.

AX 2013 recap

I've been putting posting this recap for so long now I feel like this is going to be one of those rushed entries just to get it done before I put it off longer and just oforeget everything and I just end up going noooo LOL so I guess bare with me?! I pretty sure the last post I did was just me whining about AX and just having it be over with. Let me say though, this AX was.....busy. LOL. Exciting, exilerating and tiring. I liked to think we were prepared but you can never be prepared for the madness that is AX ):

and of course, like with any con, who needs sleep? Whos got time to eat? I can def say this was one of the cons that really whipped me out.

We started out this con thinking we're gonna be badasses and jsut book ourselves shoot after shoot, coz hey, better be busy than not right? Since we didn't buy badges figured we'd make the trip worth it and just book book and book! Which is amazing, fun, exciting, you get to meet new people and whatnot. But man, like I said, you can just never prepare for the unexpected! LOL If you followed me on IG and FB you can probably see us spazzing about the end if near, and working relentlessly on last minute projects and props and charging up all your gear coz you're gonna hit this con full scale. Wow, it was not what I was expecting.

The photo above pretty much captures how me and Anh felt on tackling AX lol....I dont have alot of behind the scene photos at all during AX since I was just so busy shooting and running from one shoot to another to really have any downtime at all ): so you probably just gotta wait and see when I finish all the sets and do some major photo dumping. Till then you guys can already view quite a few of them on the following sites:

Facebook Fanpage | DeviantArt | Tumblr

So I guess I should go and back track to the Day -1/Day0

Day -1 / 0 was mostly spent not sleeping from Monday night till Wednesday working on League of Legends, props and other items that needed to be addressed, I was pretty fail and completely forgot to order new cards so it was a trip to kinkos x__X to print some ghetto ones. Now I need to make it a point to order a new set before the next con (I say that now, watch me go to J Expo with still the same set of ghetto cards lawls)

Originally planned on leaving SD noon-ish probably at 1 at the latest to give us enough time to get into LINE CON and pick up badges, get checked into hotel, hit up LilTokyo to get some provisions for the weekend then pick up sister and roomates from LAX.....

yeah that didn't quite happen as planned and we ended up leaving a little later than we had expected, thankfully traffic was a little forgiving till we got to LAX ):

but of course no trip to LA is ever complete without stopping by 85C bakery and Lollicup!

 Had a few hiccups on the road to getting everything in order but at that point I don't even remember what happened next, all we knew was, we needed to prepare for the up coming busy weekend.

Woke up fairly early day 1 and got to work on slapping our faces on, heres some selcas LOOO coz. Why not?!

 

With Anh from Angels Instead Photography :D follow her, shes awesome :D

(I stole some photos from her too lol so yes you should follow her. She has funny updates)

 On my face, because, why not, I'm sure some people would ask or if they dont, lets just pretend I'm a multipurpose blog LOL and pretend were one of those cool kids who talks about how awesome their face shit is...

Dueba/GnG Puffy 3-tone violet lenses | Sephora Primer | Smashbox Foundation | Mac bronzer | Inglot Liner | Some Pink eyeshadow from a palette | Clinique Matte Powder | Urban Decay All Nighter Spray (this shit was legit) & AWESOME SUNLIGHT FROM GIANT WINDOW AND LINE CAM FILTER FOR AWESOMENESS LAWL

Because we all know the next few days we just crawled out of bed in a rush looking ratchet as ever to make our shoots orz so no more selcas after Day1 lol....no OOTD either....

After slapping our faces on it was breakfast time~ it the only meal of the day we've really had that was on-time, the rest of the weekend we didn't get any proper meals till really late into the night...orz

Iced Carmel Machiatto | TOASTED roast beef sandwhich

We didn't have a toaster with us at the hotel but a little creativity you can make anything happen.

Some foil, some bread, some cheese and an iron. 

We were so tempted to cook bul-go-gi this way too. I kinda regret not trying

Day 1 started off with a morning shoot with Panty & Stocking and I believe Card Captor Sakura shortly after. I don't have any photos or behind the scene ones from those shoots so I think I'm just going to do some photo dumping from here orz...

we also tried to shoot Magi in the Figueroa hotel which was suppose to only be a smaller group but it somehow turned into 20+ people and 3-4+ photographers ): which turned rather problematic as we were frantically trying to get through everyone there to get them their photos but we eventually got kicked out by the ladies there =_=l despite reassuring them we had a room booked there...

Had a few more shoots to run to and we eventually had dinner at a 24/hr Korean BBQ place in Ktown at around 2-3am in the morning which spewed the idea for us to throw together a last minute FREE! Photoshoot in celebrating of the anime launching its first episode during AX weekend oAo

 

Day 2 was madnessss we had anticipated on getting up a little earlier to give us enough time to get ready (that didn't quite happen) and we ended up scrambling to get our gears in check and run to Little Tokyo to meet up with group we were shooting~  Day 2I feel was the busiest out of all the days we had, I don't even remember doing anything other than running from one shoot to another, barely having enough down time to back up my files on a laptop, recharge really quickly and off we go again.

One of the highlights of the weekend was definitely trying out a 5D from a friend who so generously lent it to me along with some of the equipment that came with it and being snuck into the cosplay photography room where we abused the crap out of the little sets they had there. Which is def. genius and I hope more and more cons do that! 

Working with the 5D I admit had a bit of a learning curve as I was working with a different lens than I was use to, not to mentin homeboy had some lights with him! woah. I'm so used to being so old school and 35mm everything, external flash and reflector lol that this was a bit of a learning curve and I felt quite a bit out of my element when we tried shooting outside but again that didn't last long as we were ushered to basically gtfo the area by the staples center since there was a concert happening ):

The Gintama shoot was def one of the funner ones and most comfortable one as well. We shot it in the hotel room, LOVELY A/C room. With yards of fabric to use as a back drop and my good ol' flash and reflector. I can def. say I'm quite happy with the results considering we were trying to find where to shoot this since theres no place in LAX Con center that would be friendly to eastern style costumes and we barely got away with shooting in Little Tokyo as well haha....

I feel that I am definitely missing quite a bit of stuff from this posts but hopefully the photos will fill in the gaps that I am missing on my AX timeline....

I guess in a sense to sum up my AX weekend was: late night shoots, getting kicked out of venues, shooting, shooting some more, late night eats, what is sleep? Shooting FREE! at the last minute. Abs. Abs. Abs.

looking for dry-ice, ended up not using it D8 coz afraid to get kicked out again.

broken GPS sending us everywhere but where we needed to go orz

Meeting and shooting lovely people

 Deliciously expensive creme brulee was one of the best things I've had all weekend - other than bacon wrapped hot dogs for dinner LOL at one point in time....yeah, this is basically what you shoot when you're working with a 5D ಠ__ಠ

 

 Yep, I think that pretty much summed up my AX weekend and I feel like I am missing quite  abit of stuff but again, I didn't really get to go to any panels, or stalk the exhibit hall ):

Lesson learned, as much as I like to stay busy. AX just isn't the right place to be /that/ busy LOL that you tend to miss out on quite a few things. I don't regret any of it, it was fun but wow that heat though.

I guess to wrap it all up my biggest peeve about AX and honestly I dont know why I keep coming back every year is the lack of photoshoot places, you thought we'd all get rather creative on where to shoot or simply abuse all the hotels in the surrounding area or the urban scene? Looking back at it when I was going through my photoshoot sets I just recalled just how many times I got kicked out of places simply for shooting. it might be because we were using strobes or simply had profesh looking camera and gear but even when just durping around for photos we pretty much got the boot. =__=

Thoughts on J-Expo? Possibly tentatively still gauging if I'm going or not (´−｀) ﾝｰ