My reservist stint was more lenient than I expected. In short, I got back home last Monday, and ever since I had an office-hour duty at some place where my organization wants me to place at. Office hours equals free weekend! (I wanted a free weekend of my own, especially after a week spent staying in a fire station bunk.)
I asked around if I can find an opening for a photoshoot; Hexlord has graciously invited me to attend a photoshoot last Saturday, where there was a cosplay photoshoot featuring Kaito of the Vocaloid series.
Introduction
Through my acquaintance with like-minded bloggers, the Vocaloid series have attracted a lot of attention in the cosplay subculture. Since 2008, there has been an explosion of creative content from both the fan community and content makers, and a lot of promotional videos (PVs) and songs are made every week, released on the Internet, and ends up in Youtube, Youku and NicoNicoDouga. The fascinating part of this subculture is that there are endless opportunities to create whatever content you can wish up for, and a lot of fan and conceptual arts gets featured, which accompanies a PV whenever there is a new song release.
Back when Hatsune Miku, the first character for the new Vocaloid 2 software line, came out, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of her sudden popularity. Ever since, Yamaha – the content maker of the software – has churned out other variations/characters of the software. (When they eventually featured Gackt as the voice of their extended line software called, aptly, ‘Gakupoid’, I cringed, because I kept thinking of his “crotch splitter“.)
Character-in-question comes from this PV that was released quite a while ago, called “From The Sandplay, Singing of The Dragon.”
The cosplayer hails from China (you heartlanders, keep your flaming torches away!), and having only briefly touched on the sidelines of cosplay photography, I was amazed at the commitment this person devotes her time on her hobby. Apparently, these people cosplays at least every other week!
The Pictures
The following are selected pictures from the photoshoot. I opted for a more gritty Kaito & the landscape (is it supposedly gothic?), but nevertheless, I am quite satisfied with the shots.
Non-flash set
Slideshow (requires Flash)
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