Teaching You (Almost) Everything I Know About Cosplay!!

Hello, today I will teach you how to do cosplay makeup. I am by no means a professional, and some of my tips here might not follow proper hygiene or health guidelines. I've been cosplaying since 2018~2019, and these are some insights, tips, and things that I found across my crossdressing, cosplaying, and social journey. Not until very recently, 2022, did I start to learn deeply more about cosplay and makeup. YouTube, TikTok, Douyin, and 小紅書 brainrots surely help.

Body and Base

Here, I'll be talking about the basics of things that would stay with you daily, even outside of cosplay! These are more of the optional prerequisites that you'd do if you wanna start doing cosplay!

Eyebrows

These are rather new to me. I never thought that eyebrows were an important aspect of cosplay until very recently. I went to Japan, went to a photo studio, and got my eyebrows shaved! After that, my entire face gives a very different vibe, charisma, nurture, and care. Believe me or not, Eyebrows are really important.

Another META for eyebrows when cosplaying is to use Washable Glue for eyebrows. My ex-girlfriend taught me this. She used to apply one of those Kenko paper glue to me lolol. But for real, I know some of my cosplayer friends still use this glue, because it's easily washable and easily obtainable.

After applying this, you'd apply liquid foundation, concealer, and another foundation until you have bald-like or thin eyebrows, then color them with your favorite color from your eyeshadow palette.

About trimming your eyebrow, you'll see many differences in your facial appearance in general.

Body Hair

Trimming hair is very important. If you have long hair, it will be hard for you to wear a wig cap. So for male cosplayers, I recommend that you have your hair cut short. long hair's maintenance is quite expensive, because you need more hair treatment when you shower—hair conditioner, oil, time for hairdrying, and dyeing costs. To help you minimize cost, you can cut your hair yourself. I recommend not to cheap out on conditioner, and always use it every time your hair is wet!

You can cut your body hair using an electric trimmer (I recommend it because if you use a shaver, it would appear sharp and would cause severe itch, at least on me, especially in the armpits and legs). They are cheaper in cost, because you can recharge their battery. The white top one is an eyebrow shaver. You can ask an artist to help trim your eyebrows, and just trim them daily following their prior trimmed lines.

If you have a beard and a mustache, I recommend using a manual shaver; it's sharper and more hygienic because it's one-time usage. Leg hair is also quite important. Even if you wear stockings, 2 cms hair is thick enough that it would appear if you look at it closely. But relax, usually people won't notice, and you won't see it in pictures unless you zoom in on the details.

Skin Care

These are super tricky. Usually, you'd want to moisturize as much as possible and avoid food that causes breakouts in your face. Small discolorations in your skin are easily concealable. But when it comes to bumps and acne, usually you'd want to avoid touching your face anytime. Wash your face and apply proper cream!

For me, my acne breakouts when I consume too many dairy products.

Body Shape

These are tricky too! HAHAHA. Just exercise and eat responsibly!

My body is too build....

Item Components

These parts are more into the things that you'll only do when in character!

Contact Lens

There are many kinds of contact lenses available in the market now. Wearing a contact lens can be tricky.

• When you wear it, and it feels super itchy or doesn't fit, most likely it's flipped, take it off, and re-wear.
• You can get an affordable lens liquid in your closest pharmacy. Some liquids work as a cleaner, a rinse, and a soak. Usually, you'd store the multi-use contact lenses in a plastic container; I myself prefer a glass container. Every time you are done using them, don't forget to soak them with the lens liquid, and wash them by rubbing and gently rinsing them multiple times with the liquid.
• Contact lenses have an expiry date and a storage guide. Make sure you understand them. Contact lenses are one of the cosplay components where I never cheap out. They can make your eye very pretty, and personally, I feel the eye is the key component of beauty in cosplaying.
• Contact lenses come in multiple shapes.

• Dgugulens
• Obalen
• EyeSinger
• Comic Pie

Those are my favorite cosplay contact lenses.

Talking about having multiple contact lenses, I store many contact lenses in many different colors: 💜 Purple, 💛 Yellow, 💚 Green, 🌊 Sea Blue, 🩵 Baby Blue, 🥇 Gold, 🤎 Brown,❤️ Red, 🔥 Fire Red-Orange,🩷 Rose / Soft Pink. Usually, there are some special character lenses, like Kureiji Ollie, Rabbit Hole's Miku, that need special purchase.

Lenses are cool too, because you can get prescription ones for myopia (up to -8.00 or more), and most sellers let you choose different powers for each eye — like one for the left and a different one for the right — well, lenses don't have left-right parity.

This is me, with just the eye makeup. You can't tell the gender, right? So I say if you wear a face mask and good eye makeup, you could pass as the other gender, either Male to Female or otherwise—Well, I can't do male eye makeup, so ... you decide which kinds of eye makeup you'd wanna learn or apply.

Friends who never tried or were scared when applying contact lenses can try using some of these tools. For me personally, I can wear it without any of these.

Wig

Wigs are the top 1 important part of your cosplay. Some wig stylists don't cosplay. Some cosplayers don't style their own wig!

I, for example, stick with this measurement every time I'm going to commission a wig stylist.

• 1: 6.5~7 cm
• 3: 58.5 cm
• 4: 25.5 cm

Wigs come in different sizes; most wig brands usually have a size that is big enough to fit on your head. There are bands behind the wig that you can hook and adjust according to your head size.

If your head is super small, you can even criss-cross the band like this.

If your hair is not that long, you can simply wear your wig cap like this. If you have short hair, it will even be easier. Try to put all your real hair inside the wig cap, and try to make it as flat as possible; you don't wanna create any bump that causes unevenness in the wig cap—trust me, you'll have trouble putting on your wig, especially if you have a big head.

There are many kinds of wig caps, ones without the nets, and they come in different colors. Remember not to buy the ones that are too tight, because you can get dizzy and lightheaded pretty easily. You can faint!

Cosplay or daily wigs that are not styled have really long bangs, and it doesn't look really good, so make sure you buy a prestyled wig, commission a wig stylist, or learn to style them yourself. To be honest, I'm very shit at styling my wig. So I won't include anything regarding wig styling here.

Face cover glue will also help you! Wigs that are used frequently can blossom and make it look "爆炸."

About wig brand, usually there are character wigs, or you can commission a stylist to just craft the hair for you—these usually are way better and customized wigs from scratch, everyone! For branded character wigs, there are good brands like:

• Manmei
• 1/3 Delusion - 三分妄想
• 喵屋小鋪
• HSIU

To store them, I recommend using styrofoam wig heads or the plastic structure ones to maintain their shape and style. There are wig nets that you can purchase to protect long wig, too!

Face Tape and Double Eyelid Tape

Very niche technique, but if your face looks soggy, and you want to aurafarm harder. You should add this.

People usually put tissue under the wig cap so they don't tape their own hair. This face tape can make your face look more V-shaped, and your eyes less tired!

Also, you can use double eyelid tape if you don't have one. I personally don't like using this, because my makeup usually involves lots of eyeliner, and it's a bit inconvenient for me to use a tape that I find many people would not notice.

Makeup

This is the craziest part of all, and to be honest, this one has no limits, and you can just follow many tutorials on the internet. But let me share with you some of the important stuff.

I will mark ⚠️ for "the" don't cheap out, meaning it's important to pick a good brand so that you don't ruin your skin or use any stupid brands that can cause harm to you or your body.

Must Have ❤️:

• ⚠️ Primer—These are the base, the canvas, and usually they come mixed with sunscreen. I use Esprique. I recommend Cezanne and/or any brands you can find in Matsumoto Kiyoshi, Sasa, or any credible makeup store.
• Eye shadow palette—if you're only doing makeup in general, you can buy some good daily brands. I personally use Canmake Tokyo. But for makeup, I bought the 108 colors one.
• ⚠️ Concealer—you truly need this to cover some unwanted scars, moles, or spots on your face. I personally use the brand Luna.
• Fake eyelashes and their glue—I recommend you shop for different ones, varying in length and shapes, colors, styles, and just experiment and try as you like. I also recommend that you have one for the bottom eyelash! Bottom eyelashes are not significant, so any of them is okay. There are types of makeup that will let you draw the bottom eyelash or use a fake one. I prefer the latter because I feel they are easier and more beautiful.
• ⚠️ Foundation—Some people use powder foundation or liquid foundation. I prefer liquid foundation. I use Maybelline with #118, a light beige color.
• Micellar Water—For cleaning, either before you do the makeup or after the makeup.
• Eye Liner—Key of eye makeup, make sure you have the small and a bit thicker brush ones! Any brands are fine, nowadays there are lots of good brands.
• White Eye Liner—I love this. It gives life.
• Sponge Mixer—Yes.

When cosplaying for a fun session, I rarely use foundation lolol. I just use concealer and don't even paint my eyebrows!

Make-up, in my opinion, is easy to learn, hard to master. The graph is essentially still having an almost linear gradient for at least 5-10 years of experience.

Good to Have 💙:

• Lipstick and gloss—Usually, if your lip is already pretty, you can skip this. But it's always nice to have. Lips are one of the hardest to nail, I think, because you want them to look natural and not too much.
• ⚠️ Skin care—Apply your moisturizer and everything before you do your makeup.
• Setting Spray—This is quite important if you're doing a whole-day event. I'm actually kinda confused about where to put this thing. But considering that I would leave this if my bag is too full, I put it in this section.
• Contour, Highlighter, Shadow, Blush—This usually comes in a palette.
• Eyelash curler—after setting your fake eyelash, you can use this to make it have a better shape.
• Glitter—yes.

• Nails—For a one-day event, I recommend using the liquid glue one, or paint your nail using water-based paint a day before; the sticking one with sticker glue is shit.
• Makeup brushes/tools — blending brush, flat shader, lip brush, fan brush for glitter, no brainer.

Costume

These are hard to elaborate on because most of the cosplay costume markets are centered in China. I recommend that you get the good brands or order a custom request yourself, or commission someone. Usually, to tell the quality, you can tell by the ratings and the reviews of the shops.

Fun fact: I've spent a shit huge amount of money on cosplaying. Spoiler: 9 IDR digits.

• UWOWO
• 1/3 Delusion - 三分妄想
• 喵屋小鋪
• Monenjoy
• CGCOS
• Sealed Heart
• 秘密结社
• 二线小兔
• and many more.

Mikira's costume! My favorite one!

Costumes are a bit hit or miss; you need to buy and learn them enough to know whether things are good enough. And also to know how to wear them properly, you need to have experience, flight hours basically. Materials, comfort, fitness, you'd learn and know which ones are the best for you eventually.

Height: 164 cm
Weight: ~57–62 kg
Shoulder width: 40.5 cm

Bust: 91 cm
Waist: 72 cm
Hips: 90 cm

Upper arm circumference: 30 cm
Forearm circumference: 26 cm
Wrist circumference: 16.5 cm

Thigh circumference: 50 cm
Underarm circumference: 36 cm

Calf circumference: 41 cm
Thigh circumference: 52 cm
Knee circumference: 40 cm

I usually wear men's S–M, or women's L
---
这是男生穿的~~
身高: 164 厘米
体重: ~57-62 公斤
肩宽: 40.5 厘米
三围:
胸围: 91 厘米
腰围: 72 厘米
臀围: 90 厘米

大臂围: 30 厘米
小臂围: 26 厘米
手腕围: 16.5 厘米

大腿围: 50 厘米
腋下围: 36 厘米

小腿围: 41 厘米
大腿围: 52 厘米
膝围: 40 厘米

我通常穿男装 S~M 码,或者女装 L 码

Measuring yourself is super important, too. Get yourself a body measurement kit!

Shoes—don't wear heels that are too high or make you walk on your tiptoes. You'll just hurt your legs. Unless, again, for photographs.

Event Day

One thing you must know when going to an event and attending a photoshoot session is the accessories that you are wearing and the details of your costume. On event days, you will not stay with anyone, and they will not pay attention to every detail of your clothes. Skipping some small accessories is super common among cosplayers, and no one will notice that!—Yes, talking about you Hoyoverse characters 😢

No one noticed that the hairstyle doesn't match 🤣 But no one paid enough attention broo!

Things that I usually bring:

• Touch-up supplies—concealer, powder, lipstick, eyelash glue, nail paint, nail glue.
• Bobby pins, safety pins, fashion tape
• Snacks and water
• Powerbank
• Business cards or social media cards for networking
• Portable fan
• Mirror
• Glue—I recommend bringing a glue gun, or at least having one in your hotel.
• Portable lighting
• iPhone 17 Pro Max

Gender Passing

Umm, some things are a bit 變態 (hentai):

• Breast forms/padding: I never recommend using any padding or silicone ones, especially since they are heavy, unbreathable, and you'll die, unless it's a photoshoot. If you want to achieve a woman-like figure, I recommend just a single bra without padding.
• Hip pads for creating curves—These are nice; you can find butt and hip pads easily at an online store.
• Chest binding and corsets—These are nice, I recommend getting these too.
• Tucking or compression garments—not an expert at this, but just put them properly.

Cleaning

This is a no-brainer section.

• Take off your wig.
• Remove and store your contact lenses.
• Remove eye tapes—this is crucial, double eyelid tape stuck inside my eyes for 17 hours before! LMAOO.
• Remove your costume.
• Clean your makeup using micellar water and cotton.
• Shower.
• Pack up.

Apply a hydrating mask or heavy moisturizer after removing everything — cosplay makeup is brutal on skin. Check for any skin irritation from adhesives (face tape, eyelash glue, body tape)

Results

Warning: Some gay shit down below

I was trying goth makeup, I never used thick eyeliner and black lipsticks before. I also tried using pre-shaped snowflakes make up on my right cheek.

I was experiencing using a very open dress, which I don't recommend. It's too uncomfortable for me.

I tried having Gyaru-like makeup that makes my eyes look sad, and my face looked plump as fuck. I don't know what happened...

Actually, I have many more, but I'm not gonna dox more of myself in this blog. Anyway, to cleanse up your eyes, here's my male makeup attempt.