- I used to be absolutely terrified of body paint.
I flat-out refused to even consider cosplaying any character
with an unnatural skin color.
I did not consider myself good at makeup,
and paint seemed like makeup on hard mode.
But now...
(lively music)
In fact, I just played Jester's duplicate
in Critical Role's seven-year anniversary video,
where I did my own makeup and consulted on Laura Bailey's.
Can't believe those are true words.
What is my life?
So what changed?
How did I go from somebody who wouldn't even try face paint
to somebody who now does it every other week?
Well, turns out it's not actually that hard.
Once you learn a few tricks.
If you, too, want to become the Orc or Tiefling or Genasi
of your epic fantasy dreams,
stick around and I will teach you those tricks.
(lively music)
My biggest fear when I first started learning
to do face paint was that I would look bad.
Like, embarrassingly bad.
You know, that streaky, uneven, bought my makeup
during Halloween at the grocery store,
painted my football team's colors
on my face kinda look.
The good news is that look is super avoidable.
You just need three things:
The right paint, a solid base coat, and contouring.
I promise, with a little bit of practice,
you too can banish your fear of the paint.
To show you, let's actually put together a makeup look.
Swoosh cut.
(screen whooshing) (lively music)
The eternal question. Which paint is the right paint?
There are infinite blog posts
and videos breaking down all the different brands
and types of paint, and they all exist for a reason.
Some paints are more waterproof,
some paints do better in high heat,
some paints are less likely to rub onto clothes
or other objects.
This is not a which paint is best video,
because we could argue about that all day.
When I say the right paint,
what I really mean is that you have
to avoid the wrong paint.
I'm talking Halloween store unbranded cream makeup
in a little tube.
I'm talking store brand face paint
for kids' birthday parties.
As long as you use one of the most popular,
most common brands of face paint,
that is, Mehron Paradise, TAG, Ben Nye, Snazaroo,
you will probably be fine.
The other thing that makes some paint the right paint
is just what works for you.
You can read paint reviews until you're blue in the face,
heh, but you will quickly find that some people love paints
that other people hate, and the other way around.
In the end, you just gotta try 'em.
In this video, I'm gonna use Mehron Paradise,
because that's my personal favorite.
It's cheap, easy to find, easy to use,
and it comes off in the shower.
If you aren't sure where to start,
I think Mehron is a really good step one.
Arg, I have to put my character sheet into World Anvil
but there's so much to fill out.
If only there were some sort of character sheet fairy
that could just magically import my character sheet.
But that's crazy.
Why would that be a...
(host gasping) (twinkling music)
- Oh, finally, I was starting to wonder
if anybody would ever need me again.
- I need you.
My DM decided to start running our D&D sessions
through World Anvil because of their--
- Full suite of tools
that makes it easy to create your campaign,
invite your players, manage your sessions
and have everything in front of you
in a single super organized searchable screen?
- Yeah, happens a lot.
- And trust me, I get it.
I mean, interactive maps, rollable stat blocks
and character sheets.
It's gonna be great
but the problem is I already created my character sheet
in D&D Beyond
and it looks like a lot of work to transfer it over
to World Anvil.
- That's exactly what I do.
But nobody's been calling me
ever since World Anvil introduced
their new D&D Beyond character sheet importer.
It's even easier than summoning me.
And I have a wand.
- Wait, back up?
There's an importer that does it automatically?
- Yeah, it's stupid easy.
All you have to do is copy the unique ID
from your D&D Beyond character sheet URL
and past it into World Anvil.
It takes like four seconds.
- Wow, that sounds really convenient.
- Oh no, not you too.
But when I do it,
there's a twinkly sound.
(twinkling music)
- Too late, I already did it.
Oh, I can embed my character sheet in an article?
I am gonna make the fanciest character page.
- Damn it, I'm gonna have to go back
to collecting teeth, aren't it?
But they're so gross.
(lively music)
Without a solid base coat,
no amount of contouring or detailing will look good.
Start with clean, bare skin.
You can use a primer if you like,
but personally I feel like the paint sticks better
if you apply it directly.
You can apply your paint with a sponge or a brush.
A sponge can result in a smoother finish,
since you don't have to worry about brush strokes,
but I find that it's harder to deposit enough paint.
I'll use a sponge for an easier color, like red,
but I always use a brush for the more difficult colors,
like blue or white.
No matter the color, there are three rules
for getting a solid base coat.
Rule one: Don't use too much water.
Mehron Paradise is water activated,
so you'll start by adding water.
But if you use too much water, it'll thin the paint.
To avoid this, I just wet my brush,
rather than wetting the cake itself.
You basically just want the brush to be damp,
it shouldn't be dripping water.
It's always better to err on the side of too little water,
because it's much easier to add more
than to dry off your makeup.
Ultimately, you want a creamy consistency,
like I dunno, yogurt or something.
Rule two: Load up the brush.
Remember, it's a paint, not a dye.
You are picking up paint on the brush,
and then depositing that paint on your face.
If you keep painting with an empty brush,
you won't be depositing any color.
That means that every time you bring the brush to your face,
it should be full of paint.
It's better to reload your brush too much than too little
because there's no real downside to having too much paint
on the brush.
Rule three: Do it in one coat.
The main reason it's important to really load up your brush
and deposit strong, opaque color
is that you should be doing your best
to avoid going over skin that you've already painted.
Water-activated paint doesn't really layer,
because when you drag a wet brush over it,
it just re-activates the first layer of paint.
Instead, your best bet is to nail it on the first go.
That said, if you do need to patch an area,
I'd suggest waiting until it's totally dry,
and then trying a stippling technique.
This doesn't make for a very smooth texture,
so use it sparingly, but it can help
when you run into a stubborn patch.
Rule four: Finish with a powder.
There are a few ways to seal your paint,
but I really like sealing it with a colored powder.
Not only does this lock in the paint
and help keep it in place,
but it also allows you to even out the color a little more.
Look for a matte powder, that means no glitter,
in a color similar to your paint.
You can even powder directly on top of wet paint,
which can help the powder stick.
Once you're lookin' like an off-brand Blue Man Group dude,
it's time for the fun part.
If it isn't perfectly even at this point,
try not to stress out too much.
Just get it to the good enough point,
because a lot of it is about to get covered up.
(lively music) (screen whooshing)
As you can see, a coat of face paint
does not make you look like you have colorful skin.
It just makes you look like a horrible nightmare creature.
In order to really sell the color,
you have to give it depth and detail.
That comes from a few things.
The main one is contouring.
All you need to do is add shadow to the places
where shadows naturally appear, and highlights
to the areas that naturally catch the light.
Let me show you.
First, pick your colors.
You want a darker version of your paint color
for the contour, and a lighter version for the highlight.
Next, you'll start adding shadows.
I usually put them under the cheekbones
but not too close to the mouth under the jawline,
and at the temples if you're gonna see that part
of the face.
There are a lot of ways to do nose contouring,
so depending on your face
and what you want your makeup to look like,
you might add contour lines down the sides of the nose.
But personally, I'm usually going for more
of a button nose look,
so I usually just draw a little contour circle
around the tip of my nose and call it good.
Finally, you'll shade around the eyes.
If you're doing an eyeshadow look, just do that,
but if you're dressing up as a character
who wouldn't wear eyeshadow,
just shade a little on the lid and maybe under the eye.
Just make sure that you don't give yourself
under eye circles unless that's what you're going for.
I would suggest doing this with a light hand,
especially if you're new to contouring.
It's always easier to add more color than to take it away.
Make sure to blend everything out so that it looks natural.
If you're doing a look that would benefit from blush,
now is the time to apply that, by the way.
Feel free to get creative with your blush color,
maybe a blue character would blush purple, for example.
Once the shadows are in place, you just put highlights
in the exact opposite spots.
On top of the cheekbones, at the tip of the nose,
and I usually put some in the inner corner of the eye.
It's okay for a highlighter to be glittery,
but if you're going really hard with the highlight
and putting it anywhere besides cheekbones,
nose, and eyes, you'll probably want a more matte finish
to avoid looking like a Twilight vampire.
Next up, the eyes.
Again, even if you're not doing eye makeup per se,
you'll want to define the eyes to make sure
that they stand out from the paint.
At the very least, I would suggest mascara
so that you don't end up with paint-y eyelashes,
and maybe a white or black waterline
to hide that little human-colored strip of skin.
In my case, naturally I'm gonna go hard
and slap on some false eyelashes too.
Last up, the lips.
In general you want a darker color than the skin,
even for a no makeup look.
You don't even need lipstick for this, by the way.
My favorite tip is to apply some ChapStick
and then use a small brush to mix eyeshadow powder into it.
With this technique, you can make lipstick
in pretty much any color.
Technically you could be done here,
but if you have any other fun details that you wanna add,
they can go a long way in bringing a look to life.
Like freckles or beauty marks, for example, or scars.
By this point, the makeup itself should be pretty much done.
But when you're doing an otherworldly
or fantastical look like this, accessories like wigs,
ears, fangs, and horns can really help sell it.
I find that my makeup often looks overdone
and extreme until I put a wig on.
By the way, you can paint other parts
of your body depending on what your costume reveals,
but the faster and easier solution,
particularly if you're gonna be wearing this
to an event or for more than a few hours is gloves,
tights, or even a leotard.
You can sew your own gloves out of colored tights
and glue fake nails onto them for a quick solution
that doesn't require painting your arms and hands.
I'll link to a tutorial for gloves in the cards
and the description, and make sure
to thank a Homestuck for their contributions to cosplay.
You did it. You did a body paint.
Wasn't as bad as you thought, was it?
Be careful, you might get addicted.
People are always asking me,
how do you avoid getting paint on your clothes?
And the answer is I don't.
With enough friction, your paint will rub off
on anything that touches it.
The good news is, it's water activated paint,
so you can just toss your clothes into the wash
and the paint will come right off.
It works pretty much the same way for your skin.
When you're ready to return to your normal human skin tone,
the easiest answer is to just hop in the shower.
It should come right off with some soap or body wash,
and then you can clean up the remainder
with a makeup wipe.
Red and green are sometimes a little bit more stubborn
than other colors,
but it's nothing a little makeup remover can't fix.
My final warning: You're gonna have colorful boogers
for like, two days.
Don't ask me why.
There's no point where I intentionally put paint up my nose,
and yet and yet.
I hope this helped.
If this has inspired you to dive into the world of cosplay,
make sure to check out this video
to learn how to get started crafting your own costumes.