Makeup Study

So as a general rule, I operate on a principle of 'Dont fight what you're working with'. In other words- make the most of what you got.

When dealing with makeup for larp, especially alliance, theres certain demands of makeup at play and the thing about how the stuff is written is that I am generally given the impression whoever came up with the decisions on how each species should have is makeup and its costumes that number one this was written a long time ago when there wasn’t a lot of higher grade information on costuming and cosplay and makeup so readily available. Number two, I dont think it was written by anyone who had a lot of experience with theatrical makeup. SO that leaves me and many others today with sortof an outdated manual that says do something one way, when there’s actually far better ways to do it today.

One rule, asks for makeup coverage on all exposed skin. Now, for limbs and such thats pretty easy using leggings and spandexes and lycras of different deniers and colors and mattes etc etc- but for the faces there’s a lot of other challenges.

Now part of those challenges I’ve worked on trying to very literally COVER with figureing out never and better ways for making masks, in particular for the animal-people races (in the case of Alliance, called Wylderkin, but many games have their own obligatory man-animal races that are basically the same thing). The upper half of the face is covered, I can even wrap-around and create a streamlined look, But the issue of paint on the neck, chest and lower half of the face is still... iffy at best.

Here wheat I am playing with is rather than trying to cover all the skin, I am instead somewhat just blending into my skin tone as though there are portions that are fur covered and portions that are not. Much like many species will have around their mouths, hands, feet, eyes, ect for whatever reason. My logic being, well fully covering the face with paint dosnt make many more or less sense than doing it this way because either way- its still just paint, neither way is actually going to fool anyone into believing paint, is fur there’s just no texture there to make that happen. So instead, I decided to consider the fact that I am working on a character that is not entirely animal anyway, so I dont really need to have the appearance of full fluffy coverage in order for it to be believable. Consider the island of dr Moreau American Werewolf in London, Warriors of Virtue, Tank girl- all examples where combinations of human and animal came together WITH FLESHY EXPOSED SKIN in areas.

The other consideration is coverage in flat color to convey fur or feathers is something out of cartoons. It really doesn’t have a place in the 3d physical world when trying to create something naturalisticly believable. You have to work texture in there somehow to make it feel alive and lets be honest the amount of skill and/or time it would take to make a stunningly believable makeup job in color alone for larp is just not practical for most people.

Theres an additional practicality in mind here... makeup is annoying as hell. Keeping it off the areas where it will just get messed up the most and the quikest is smart as within only a few hours of sweat and rubbing its going to get screwed up anyway on those spots and then not only do you have unrealistic makeup, you have unrealistic screwed up makeup that keeps needing attention and keeps pulling you out of game, and dosnt look good to anyone.

So anyway, thats my thoughts on that whole mess. Its cirtainly not the only way, nor do I even think its THE BEST WAY EVAR omg but I think its important that new methods be looked at to achieve old ideas. Its how you keep something fresh and evolving.