Saturday, June 29, 2013

NPC Spot: Shade from Endgame

Shade's makeup consists of white cake makeup,
which is cheap and sadly streaky, and black and blue Mehron 
eye pencils, and some bronze eye-shadow powder.
So, I'm notoriously bad at taking pictures of any and all makeup that I do for NPCs. (It's the only reason I took "Alternate Appearance" in Mirror, Mirror.) For this reason, I decided to attempt to recreate and photograph some of the makeup I've done for larps. I did this for my benefit, but figured I'd make a blog post out of it. (I did this makeup project in humid, 88 degrees Farenheit weather-- poor choice). And, so, without further ado, I present to you Shade, one of my Endgame NPCs. I had a good time with her costuming, though I've only preserved her final form.

Shade was based on sea creatures. In her final form, she was like a jellyfish mermaid thing.


Shade sans veil, so you can get the effect. I'm very
influenced by kabuki makeup, though I'm never really directly
aware of this influence-- it just happens, hence the eye lines.
Shade was an alien, and one of the more interesting NPC assignments I've been given. When I was given my briefing, I was told, to summarize, that she was incredibly alien and would have difficulty communicating with humans. Oh, and she communicated primarily in colors. 

Shade changed form 3 times-- this is her final iteration, where she looks the most human. In the first one, I dressed all in black, and drew all over myself with a blacklight reaction body crayon and body paint. Then I mounted a black mosquito net on a pole, and attached a battery-powered blacklight to the top of the net. I think I had a color-changing LED orb too. So, I walked around under a black net, glowing in the dark-- PCs decided it was a jellyfish, which was apt. It was a pretty cool costume, and it stuck around for three events. However, it was difficult to move around in, and limited my ability to interact with PCs. When Shade became the object of some (unexpected) romance plot, I figured it was probably time to ditch the net.



I don't know if PCs understood my cuttlefish reference-- they
were mostly just sad the mosquito net was gone. Sorry guys.
Shade's second iteration only lasted for an event, but it was kind of neat: I dressed myself in a multi-colored robe, and a gold and white mantle that was supposed to look like a cuttlefish's body. This also involved copious amounts of blacklight reactive body paint, and hovering around blacklights.





And then, of course, Shade's final costume, which was actually my favorite. I wanted to make her look like a jellyfish-stringray-mermaid-princess. In addition to the makeup and veil, she had on a multi-colored silk tunic, and black Isis wings. And, of course, blacklight reactive and glow-in-the-dark bodypaint. The coolest part of the bodypaint was that Shade was ritually bound to two PCs-- both of whom took to decorating themselves with blacklight reactive crayons. Glowing stuff everywhere!

The hidden secret of Shade is that, even though she had a fairly elaborate costume, almost every event, about two minutes after Shade went out, I had to go back in as my gothic death cultist character. So, under my Shade costume, I usually had on a full skirt, corset, and stowed-away makeup wipes. It got hot in the summer.

So, what have I learned from Shade? PCs love aliens. Aquatic life enthusiasts shouldn't be allowed to design character costumes.

4 comments:

  1. Love this write up, thank you for sharing! The effort and thought that is put into character costuming is one of my all time favorite things about larping and favorite thing about the staff as well ^^

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    1. Thanks! Funny part-- she was supposed to be a one shot NPC.

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  2. thank you for sharing!
    While Jellyfish mermaid was fine, I do admit I fall in the 'miss the mosquito netting' crowd...

    Also, the fact that she was supposed to be one shot is awesome. Thank you for rolling with what enthuses your distractable player base

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    1. Connor was legitimately sad when she changed. :p

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