For animation this works because the light will shift from frame to frame but when walking around a convention hall in real life your makeup may be styled with shadow on the left and your fake light source on the right yet you may stop for a photo with the sun shining from your left side. The only real-life problem that you will come across with manually adding light and shadow to your costume and make-up is that you have to pick a direction the fake light is coming from and stick to it. Mallory also has some areas of white highlight on her lips and other characters from the show have many more areas of highlight on their clothing and hair. This, along with using varying thickness of black outlines gives the look more depth than just drawing simple outlines. I also incorporated the shading into my makeup by contouring my nose with a taupe eye-shadow and covering half of my neck and face with this shadow as if there was a light source coming from one side of my body. Vamp Rouge Cosplay as Malory Archer – Photo by Jon Fisher Photography 2016 This is designed to turn regular paint into fabric paint and works wonderfully. As this required A LOT of paint and fabric paint generally comes in very small containers I purchased some “fabric medium” to mix with normal acrylic paint. I first made Mallory’s dress, sourced the belt, handbag and shoes and noticed from reference pictures the areas of grey for shadow and set about painting the shadows onto the entire outfit. This time around I took notice of the lighting that gives the figures their 3D appearance in a 2D world instead of just relying on my own 3D existence to draw black outlines onto.

Two years later, in 2016 I decided to attempt another cel-shaded character, Mallory Archer from the FX adult cartoon “Archer”. Dahl pistol from BL2 – Photo by Food and Cosplay 2014ĭespite the lack of depth this costume still incorporates one of my favourite props my DAHL pistol, which was created with a base of spray paint, acrylic for the details and a black sharpie on all outlines and edges.

Borderlands without cel shading