Cosplay Realm Feature: Arda Wigs
Written by Aesthel
Photos by Emily Rey and Aesthel
Cosplays by Emily Rey and Aesthel
This month the Cosplay Realm team had the awesome opportunity to team up with Arda Wigs to create some content for them! We wanted to take you along on our two photo shoots for Arda and break down the shoots, cosplays, and wigs involved with this feature!
Our first photo shoot for this feature with Arda Wigs was CRM founder Emily Rey cosplaying as Triss Merigold from The Witcher. We’re both super excited for the upcoming Witcher series on Netflix, so as we’ve been replaying the games we’ve been falling in love with these characters all over again! The day of our photo shoot it was actually pretty gross out, it wasn’t too bright and there was a light layer of rain falling all around us in the woods. Despite the conditions, these photos came out exactly how we wanted them to! The dark atmosphere really brought the setting of the game to life and we think it added a lot to these photos that we wouldn’t have gotten on a sunny day.
Emily’s Triss wig is the Buttercup CLASSIC in the shade Rust Red from Arda! For the most part, this wig was just taken straight out of the bag for our shoot! The minimal styling we did involved trimming a few wispy hairs to frame the front of the face and putting the remainder of the hair into two low buns on the back of the head. We loved the bright tone of the Rust Red fiber color for this cosplay, because it perfectly mimicked the character’s bright hair from the game! We’ve seen a lot of people go for a more “natural” tone when cosplaying this character, and if you’d prefer to go that way for your cosplay of Triss, Arda also has plenty of wig shades that would work perfectly for a more natural tone too!
When it came to editing these photos, Emily had a really fun time working on the magical spell effects! She replicated Triss’ spells through photo editing along with her regular color grading and touch up edits. We love how these photos came out and we think they perfectly brought to life the setting of The Witcher series, and Arda Wigs’ Buttercup was the perfect wig for completing Em’s Triss Merigold cosplay!
For my shoot with Arda Wigs, I decided to cosplay as my Dungeons and Dragons character, Yuukie! This is something I had been wanting to do for a long time now, but I felt kind of intimidated by it. Working with Arda felt like the perfect opportunity to finally jump in and tackle this project, and I couldn’t be happier with the results! Everything about Yuukie from the initial character to every little detail of the cosplay was a huge labor of love for me, and I’m still honestly a little shocked about how well this all came together! After our photoshoot, Emily and I were going through the photos on her computer and I couldn’t believe how much I looked exactly how I imagine Yuukie in my head while playing our D&D game every Saturday night!
The wig I'm wearing for this cosplay is Arda's Chibi CLASSIC in the shade Dark Blue! It had minimal styling, mostly just moving the placement of the pigtails and trimming Yuukie's signature choppy bangs. Her face framing portion of her hair is short on one side and longer on the other, with the middle portion of her bangs is cut at an angle. In game, this is because Yuukie has never been one to care much about appearance or beauty (much to the dismay of her older “sister”), and she cuts them herself with a knife when they start to get too long. The wig is super comfortable and easy to wear! I got the “small” version of this wig because I have a kind of small head, but if you have a larger head or a lot of hair to tuck under it, Arda also has a “large” version of the wig available too! Be sure to check their measurements to figure out what size is best for your needs! The wig has some nice clips inside of it for adjusting it and helping the wig clip onto your head and stay secure. throughout this shoot the wig was snug enough to stay perfectly in place, but not too tight that it hurt or gave headaches. I get chronic migraines pretty easily, so this was a really important note for me to make sure of!
My character Yuukie is an Oni drunken master monk in our 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons game. Some of her hobbies include collecting useless items, drinking blueberry ale, and eating large quantities of meat. She's part of a group called "The Circus" and her role is the strong woman! Other roles in “The Circus” include the acrobat, the talking animal, the dancing bear, and the ring leader among others.
One of my favorite parts of this cosplay to work on was her tattoos! They are all hand painted on a We Love Colors bodysuit in the shade light blue. Be sure to check out our guide to using We Love Colors products for cosplay for some helpful tips on painting and wearing your own! Her tattoos are inspired by traditional Japanese tattoos and art, and there was a lot of symbolism I put into designing them when I made her! There are also hidden references to other player characters, NPC characters, and events from the game so far in her tattoos. Those hidden references made this cosplay feel even more special because even in a small way I could bring my friend’s characters and our world to life through her. I made Yuukie’s horns myself and they are life cast replicas of actual goat horns! I painted them to match my Mehron Makeup shade that I used for my body paint. Since they were made of a light foam, the horns were very comfortable and light to wear. Another small detail I liked on this cosplay was the things around Yuukie’s belt. As I mentioned earlier, Yuukie likes to collect a lot of useless items. This could be stuff like shells, fancy rocks, weird coins, whatever she thinks is interesting. She brings all of the items back to her family on her home island after every adventure. As a nod to this in my cosplay, I attached a small mesh pouch to my belt containing a bunch of random little objects. I also temporarily put my dice that I use for Yuukie in the pouch too for our shoot! It felt like just another way to bring our game further to life! Also on Yuukie’s belt is a little potion bottle containing a blue liquid. In actuality, it was blueberry lemonade in there, but I used it to represent Yuukie’s favorite drink of blueberry ale made by her friend Olenna in the brewery of the party’s base town!
Emily’s photography was really the final step in bringing all of this to life and I couldn’t have done this without her! We were lucky enough to shoot this cosplay on the last warm day of the year out on the beach. The beach was mostly empty, aside from a couple of people taking their dogs out for one last warm walk before the winter began. That made it so much easier for shooting! The setting was perfect for Yuukie since she comes from a small island. Sitting in Em’s house looking through the photos after our shoot, it felt so hard to choose my favorite images to be edited! All of the photos came out so good and I was so excited to see how Yuukie perfectly came to life exactly how I imagine her!
724 Likes, 15 Comments - Arda Wigs (@ardawigs) on Instagram: "It's DnD December! 🧙♂️ Everyone loves a little epic fantasy roleplaying game now and then, and we..."
Have you ever cosplayed as your Dungeons and Dragons character? If so, be sure to check our Arda’s #ArdaDnD2019 contest, going on now! The contest runs until December 20th and you can win tons of cool Arda Wigs loot by sharing your cosplay!!
“It’s DnD December! Everyone loves a little epic fantasy roleplaying game now and then, and we are no exception. We want to see what you guys bring to the table, so as your honorary cosplay DMs we’re offering you your very own quest: break out your character sheets and share your original costumes featuring an Arda wig to qualify for amazing loot!”
-Arda Wigs
Check out Arda Wigs website for the full guidelines on how to take part in this amazing contest!
If you’d like to see more behind the scenes looks into these photo shoots we did for Arda Wigs, be sure to check out our Gift Guide behind the scenes vlog!