I’ve decided that one of my next projects will be learning how to make a decent cupcake. Not just decent even, but awesome cupcakes. And not just awesome, but suitable for friends with various allergies and particular diets as well. And, of course, they have to be super duper pretty.

This led me to today’s attempt at baking egg-free strawberry shortcake inspired cupcakes, based on this recipe from Honest Fare and with some decorative inspiration from Spork or Foon. I’ve never made egg-free cake before, but more than one friends isn’t able to eat egg and I often find myself feeling like baking but lacking eggs, so it seemed like a good idea to give it a go.

My first batch was somewhat ill-measured (doing a quarter recipe is hard, okay?) and turned out dense, rather tasteless and too small – it seems recipe doesn’t rise as much as regular cupcakes, or I was doing something quite wrong. For the second batch I bumped up the amount of sugar and lemon juice as well as being a bit more careful with measurements, and though they still turned out a bit smaller than I was hoping and not as delicious as regular cupcakes, they didn’t turn out too bad.

For topping I made a basic vanilla buttercream icing and mixed in my attempt at strawberry jam as I didn’t have any handy (chopped strawberries, sugar and a little water simmered down in a saucepan and cooled – worked pretty nice actually). Piped the mixture on somewhat unevenly and added in some little pieces of chopped strawberry, cut into triangles to sort of imitate the shape of full slices of strawberries. In the end they look sort of pretty, if inconsistent in terms of the piping, but the taste isn’t quite there. More work and experimenting needed!

Vocaloid: Alice Human Sacrifice

The Melbourne Showgrounds where the convention was held was great in terms of being able to handle the masses of people, but not so good for photogenic locations. The best we were able to fine was small patches of grass where if you point your camera just so you can sort of avoid getting ugly sheds, tents and tarmac in the background.

Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles shoot

As a result most of my photos are mostly quite closely cropped and in very similar environments. The weather was also only partly on our side – being extremely windy made for some dramatic shots, but it was also pretty damn cold!

Slayers

I also made the unwise decision to wear a lolita inspired outfit – that is, one involving a pretty dress and petticoat – which is really not ideal for rolling around in the dirt trying to get low angle shots, nor for windy days. From now on I’m sticking to jeans for photo shoot attire.

Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan

The cosplayers were all fabulous to work with and very patient with me as an inexperienced photographer. I think I’m slowly getting better at directing people, composing photos and editing them to suit the mood of the character or series. Still a long way to go!

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Huge thanks to everyone who participated in the shoots! I hope to do more in future.

The full sets of photos can be seen on Flickr and Facebook – if you are in the photos and would like high res or unwatermarked versions of the images, please contact me and I’d be happy to send them through.

]]> http://www.chigarden.com/2010/08/manifest-the-photo-shoots/feed/ 0 http://www.chigarden.com/2010/08/manifest-the-dancing/ http://www.chigarden.com/2010/08/manifest-the-dancing/#comments Sat, 28 Aug 2010 07:27:13 +0000 Chisa http://www.chigarden.com/?p=2464 If you were at Manifest, you may have seen me running around with a ridiculously tiny camera making people dance and capturing video. I honestly wasn’t sure I was going to do anything with the footage since I haven’t done any video editing since highschool, but there was so much interest and badass dancing skills from the con goers I filmed I felt I owed it to everyone to put something together. And here it is.

Okay, yes, my music cutting and video skills leave a lot to be desired. And I really could have used at least couple more minutes of footage to work with. And a Japanese pop song may have been a more appropriate song choice than a cover of the disco classic ‘September’. And yeah, the convention wasn’t even in September. But I love that everyone put aside maturity, dignity and self-consciousness for a few seconds of pure dorky fun, and together created something that’s a celebration of awesome geekery and camaraderie. I loved shooting the bits for this video – if you could hear the sound recorded it would mostly be me cracking at the dances people came up with.

Thanks so much to everyone who participated!

I actually pulled off a cosplay of my own, though nothing as sophisticated as some of the ones I got to take photos of! I was Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender on Friday and Saturday, and wore a lolita inspired outfit on Sunday.

We had a bit of a group going, although by that time we were running out of light and it was difficult to take many decent photos!

I have so much to learn about sewing and pattern making – this is the first time I drafted my own patterns, and although I’m pretty happy with the results it took a LONG time altogether. I really don’t know how people manage to put together those hardcore outfits!

The ChiGarden table

In terms of sales… well I had a better idea of what to expect after SMASH. An anime convention is definitely not the ideal place to sell (relatively) expensive, original, handmade items. A reasonable amount of my stuff sold, if at a significantly lowered price, and in the end I made enough profit to pay for my trip over to Melbourne. I think I’ll be sticking to handmade markets from now on, but I’d say it was definitely a worthwhile experience. If nothing else, at least Sam and I managed to hand out the rest of my 250 pack of business cards!

What really had selling at Manifest fun was hanging with Sam, Lisa and Cathy at our table and our fabulous table neighbours! On one side we had the fabulous Adre-es (I’m sorry I’ve managed to forget your real name!) and her friend Clea.

Lolita table neighbours!

And on the other side we had the very talented Ms Rósek and her posse.

We are so high fashion.

Meeting new and interesting people and catching up with old friends is why people really go to events like this, and I feel like I really lucked out in that respect!

I’ve only ever had the chance to take a few hurried photos of friends in cosplay before, and I like to think my photography skills have improved a little since then. This time we had four photographers and something like ten cosplayers for about 4 hours in a pretty cool location, and despite my lack of confidence I think we all worked off each other really well and came away with some pretty cool shots!

The cosplayers were absolutely fantastic – from my own dabbling with sewing and cosplay I have some idea of how much work goes into a costume, and these ones are pretty damn detailed with some really impressive craftsmanship. Everyone was also really patient with explaining their characters to me, as I’m not familiar with the series, and coming up with cool poses.

I think I’m getting better at overcoming my shyness and just chatting with people I’ve only just met. Not like we have nothing in common, we’re all geeks! It really helped to talk to the other photographers and draw from their ideas and experiences – I would probably have been a bit lost if I was working on my own.

I did make the mistake of not getting everyone’s contact details though, so I’m not really sure how I’m going to share these photos with them! I think some have my card, so maybe they’ll stumble across this site…

A massive thanks to everyone involved, I had so much fun and learned so much! If anyone is interested, the rest of the photos can be viewed on Flickr and Facebook. If any cosplayers want higher res or non-watermarked versions of the photos, please get in touch, I’d be happy to supply them.

First up, the main reason I went to Sydney for SMASH – to sell my crafty items at a table with Sam!

Myself and Sam, looking very tired after a day of selling

I have to admit, I was severely under prepared for this event. Some important bits and pieces I realised I needed at the last minute were ordered too late; I didn’t have time to make any prints or illustration based work; I left some important things (like little envelopes for people to take their purchases away in!) back in Canberra; Sam and I were madly sorting things out at 2am the night before.

With all that, I think that I actually got a pretty good response considering the terrible disorganisation! The anime convention crowd is very different to the handmade market crowd, which is something I should probably have anticipated and been less disappointed when I had to halve most of my prices in order for them to sell. In the end I sold most of my stuff but just barely broke even with travel expenses, which was a little disheartening but definitely a worthwhile experience.

I think one area that I let myself down was presentation, which was hurriedly put together and didn’t end up giving a very professional appearance to my work. It’s definitely something that I’ll be working on in time for my table at Manifest in just over a week.

I wish I’d had time to check out the rest of the convention as there were some excellent international guest artists and interesting sounding panels, but even when I went to walk around I felt too burnt out from the late night before to really do too much. I spent a lot of time sitting at our table eating jellybeans and chatting with our table buddies.

Table buddies George and Patrick

Definitely a lot of food for thought from this convention, and I’m hoping to iron out some of the issues before the next one!

Of course it wouldn’t be a convention if there wasn’t a mad rush to get things completed in time for it, right down to the last second. I’ve given up on the idea of sewing a costume in time, but since I’ve ended up making more things to sell instead I’m just as busy! Here’s what I’ve been working on this weekend:

Clay macarons!

Shrooms in many colours

More shrooms

Something to display them in

More bits in progress coming soon!

Just finished designing button badges! The top row are some of the original batch I did a couple of years ago, and the rest are new. My favourite is the red teapot – definitely going to be keeping one of those for myself. I’m hoping to get these in time to sell at Manifest, but unfortunately I’ve taken longer than anticipated with these designs so I’m not sure they’ll be ready. They will be available to order online through this blog though, so look forward to them coming soon!

Make mine a double. With a cherry on top.

Someday I will have enough time to do a full on illustration for Illustration Friday. But for this week’s topic of double all I have is one of the button badge designs that I’m working on, of one of those crazy double ice-cream cones. More badge designs coming soon!