Man, our first in studio photo session in over a year and a half. And it actually wasn’t even one of our own projects!
How We Got Here
A while back Tacocat learned of the existence of the Universal Online Cosplay Contest. With cons not being a thing during 2020 a bunch of well known and talented cosplayers decided to put together their own online contest. Which really they threw together in a few weeks. Because it was so quickly built and the short submission window they figured they’d get something like 30 entries. They ended up with 200+ entries from 20+ countries. Talk about mind blowing. And honestly the level of craftsmanship for that contest was nuts. All the entries that were in the Intermediate category could have easily been Masters at a local con.
For the 2021 contest they did change the category structure to more of a method based structure (Needlework and Armor) along with a general Beginners category and one called Out Of This World for the really insane builds. That along with the longer submission window brought in more than 250 contestants from over 30 countries. The Needlework category had quite a bit of Texas rep, so we were happy to see that.
UOCC also started a Discord server. Tacocat and I both joined it. It’s been a really good community with a lot of info sharing. And there’s quite a few Texas peeps in there. Some we knew or knew of along with a few new ones. One we didn’t know was a cosplayer who goes by the name ATXSpider. He was one of the Finalists in the Needlework category with a really good Spiderman costume. Because we were local he hit me up about possibly doing a studio photoshoot with one of his Spiderman costumes (let’s just say he has a few). We were like “Hey, why not?”
The Prep
Initially the studio space we were gonna use was Soundcheck, mostly because the size of the rooms we’ve used in the past were so large. But we found out not only had Soundcheck moved from its previous location they were still working on building their rehearsal rooms. So we fell back to another well known location: Waveform Austin. All of the gear they have would help make our lives easier.
My big focus point for this project was around lighting. I really wanted to try to capture some dramatic lighting so I certainly had in mind some ideas of what modifiers to use and how to place them. But while I was looking for gear to use on another upcoming project I somehow randomly found these interestingly shaped reflectors from Godox. I saw the possibilities with them and they were really inexpensive. So I grabbed two of them.
Outside of that there wasn’t a ton of prep. Given that the subject was Spiderman we all had a really good idea for poses and such. The only thing that was considered from the start was to use a Halloween webbing prop I found years ago to do some type of web shooting. Though the day before the shoot I asked in our team chat “Hey, should I bring the ground fog machine?” Tacocat was all for the idea, so it came with as well.
The Photo Session
Since both Tacocat and I had only talked to ATXSpider online we genuinely had no clue how he might be in person. He was super cool and really fell into our working vibe pretty well. So as far as that goes it was pretty smooth sailing.
Our ideas for the dramatic lighting really went well for this character. Our main lights were pretty much the same we used on Dark Elegance: an Interfit 36” octobox on one side, and a Paul C. Buff 32” x 40” softbox with grid on the other. These modifiers allowed us to make sure a good amount of light was on Spidey while keeping them off of the background. For the background lighting we started off using Paul C. Buff 10” x 36” strip boxes with grids. Those would eventually be changed out for the Godox reflectors with Rosco colored gels.
The standing, crouching, and “perching on an apple box” shots went smoothly enough. What was really interesting was figuring out all the action shots. In a way it was something I was considering though the approach wasn’t something I had fully fleshed out during the prep stage. Thankfully Tacocat was already one step ahead of me thinking through ideas for that. It did take a little work to get those shots in terms of the action itself, framing, using the fog machine, etc. It was worth it though. And ATXSpider is certainly more agile than the rest of us.
The Edit, or Technology Is Insane
I knew that most of the still shots would be easy to edit. But I wasn’t entirely sure about the action shots. Not so much around say color or contrast editing. More around framing and cropping. Since the seamless paper we were using was nine feet wide and there was the movement that had to be considered during shooting this was something I’d really have to think about in editing.
I knew that Adobe had been doing a lot of work with advances for their Sensei AI for editing. For things like Spot Heals and Patching it tended to work well. Content Aware Fill could sometimes work. Though at other times it produced weird or sometimes downright hilarious results.
To provide context that was with the 2019 version of Photoshop. So what about the 2021 version?
It’s downright batshit insane. In a good way.
Given the seamless paper size, the action involved, and how I attempted to capture there was a lot of space beyond the paper that was in the shot. I could have just cropped everything out and called it a day. But I kinda felt like that was the lame way out.
Since I was on the most recent version of Photoshop… why not see what it could do today?
Holy shit, it’s certainly a lot better.
Like as I was doing my first pass of edits for that sort of thing I was sending screenshots to the team being all “FUCK ME RUNNING LOOK WHAT THIS CAN DO NOW!” For some shots it actually even depicted the fog correctly. I did not expect that. Is it 100% perfect? No. I mean it does have to consider a lot of things in the frame. But going off of using it for this set I’ll have to remember it’s certainly a lot more usable than in the past.
There was one other thing I realized about this project. Spiderman is really symmetrical. Not only in terms of costume design but also how he’s shown to be ambidextrous. For some shots (mostly the action ones) they really were all taken from the same angle of sorts. But doing something like flipping an image horizontally would still certainly make sense. Pretty much most of the characters we’ve covered don’t offer that same flexibility. So it was interesting to pick up on that with this set.
Final Thoughts
ATXSpider was a joy to work with. As mentioned earlier he really gelled with us and certainly brought no obstacles to the way we work. We’d gladly work with him again.
As for me specifically I was happy to be in a studio setting again. Having so many aspects under my control allows me to explore things creatively and just lets me see what I can do. If you’ve followed us we’ve made a couple of attempts at outdoor sets. One was “okay”... and another was an outright fail. We’ll talk about that last one at some point.
With regards to the team and us working together in a studio setting… damn, I don’t think you could tell there was a 1.5+ year gap with us doing studio work again. All the thinking through shots, creative input, and giving each other shit felt like no time had passed. And when you fold in working with someone new and how we rolled with it effortlessly I was glad we could so easily get back in the groove.
Hopefully that can continue.
Postscript
Originally I had finished this article the day before this was published. But then we learned some backstory about the suit itself. And how this project had a positive impact on someone else.
ATXSpider actually received the suit from a friend of his who had the work commissioned from Alessio Lucchesi. They had owned it for a few years before they sent it along to ATXSpider to fix up and wear. When ATXSpider sent the original owner the photos…
None of us on the team expected THAT.
With the work we do we hope we’re providing inspiration to people in the community, whether it be through the costume creation process or the photography. And going by the comments from the first owner of the suit we’re heading in a positive direction.
