Monday Motivation: Join Me While I Critique My Makeup Videos!
When you’re an artist or content creator, the ability to self critique is essential. It’s not enough to believe in yourself (although that is also essential); you have to also be real with yourself and take a critical look at your work if you want to improve. This process includes analyzing your strengths and weakenesses, adjusting and challenging yourself as needed, and acknowledging your progress. For me, as a cosplayer, blogger, and now a budding YouTuber, this means constantly trying new techniques, figuring out what works and what doesn’t, and looking back at my old content to see how (or even if) I’ve grown over the years.
With this in mind, I’m inviting you to journey through my first video makeup tutorial to my most recent one, as I cringe and congratulate myself on continued improvement. Positive critiques will be in green, and constructive critiques (not negative, because we shouldn’t associate realistic self assessment and problem solving with negativity!) will be in red. Let’s get into it!
Skelita Calveras Makeup Tutorial
My very first makeup tutorial was uploaded nearly 2 years ago, on September 17, 2017. I took a crack at cosplaying Skelita Calaveras from Monster High because I love skeletons and spooky shit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I095vEONaf4&t=37s
- Equipment + Tech:An iPhone. I filmed this with an iPhone 6, I think. Possibly an iPhone 5, with no lighting other than the not-so-great for video lighting in my room. I didn’t have a microphone, so my phone was not only my video recording equipment, but it was also my sole source of audio capture as well.
- A $5 desktop tripod
- A mobile video editing app
- Location: My Room
- Critiques:I’m honestly still proud of the overall makeup look, even though I can do a much cleaner and more detailed version now (and I will very soon, so be on the lookout for that). I’m also really proud of myself for defeating my camera shyness and putting myself out there.
- Ultimately, I made a full cosplay makeup tutorial, and it’s not terrible! That’s something to be happy about. I also edited this video entirely on my phone, which is kinda cool and kinda not, depending on how you look at it.
- VERTICAL VIDEO. Why didn’t I just rotate the camera? Forever a mystery.
- Those. Eyebrows. Damn. They haunt me every day. I wanted a quick way to bring them back from the dead after I covered them in the white facepaint, but surely there was a better way. Fuck.
- The lighting & audio/video quality aren’t the best, but hey, I was working with what I had at the time, so I’m not going to beat myself up over it. However, it’s obviously something that needed to be improved upon and addressed.
- I also could have chosen a more legible font for the text pop-ups in the video.
Himiko Toga Makeup Tutorial
Fast forward to exactly 1 month ago, and I have a Himiko Toga from My Hero Academia makeup tutorial. In the time since my first video, my makeup skills have improved, and I learned to use Adobe Premiere to edit my videos.
- Equipment + Tech:An iPhone 7 plusA mirror mount for the aforementioned iphone
- Adobe Premiere Pro
- Location: My bathroom.
- Fun Facts: Let this be a lesson in planning and being prepared…I originally intended to film this tutorial in my room with my ringlight, my backdrop, and my Nikon D5600. HOWEVER, upon realizing that I didn’t yet have a desktop stand for my ringlight or camera, I had to improvise. In the time since filming my Skelita makeup tutorial, I knew the lighting in my bathroom was better than the lighting in my room, and I knew the video quality on an iPhone 7 is not terrible, so I improvised since I needed to have something done as I’m using my cosplay content as part of a class project (yay, college!) and I couldn’t just do nothing. Sometimes you have to work with what you have and apply your knowledge to the best of your abilty to produce. Ideally, you should think of and acquire everything you need before you shoot, but sometimes shit happens.
- Critiques:My makeup skills have obviously improved. I’ve also come to accept that I have have naturally thick eyebrows and I’ve learned to just shape them and then leave them alone rather than trying to do too much with them. Ultra legible font!
- Made better use of the lighting available to me
- Used more advanced editing software
- I incorporated my new logo!
- No narration. I wanted to dub over the tutorial with narration, but I didn’t have a mic and wanted to do more research to find the best one, so I filled the silence with some royalty free tunes and relied on captions to explain. I would rather not have any recorded audio than to have subpar recorded audio.
- I didn’t get to use any of the new equipment I’d invested in because I didn’t plan ahead as thorougly as I could have.
- No special backdrop. Not a super big deal, but still.
- This time around, the overall quality is definitely an improvement compared to my first video. The editing is better, the makeup is better. The lighting is better. For my next video, I decided I was going to learn from the issues I had here, and address them to create something even better!
Ariel (The Little Mermaid) Makeup Tutorial
Finally, coming in just a week ago, is my latest makeup tutorial. I was inspired to do an Ariel look because I’ve always loved The Little Mermaid, and I wanted to celebrate Disney’s casting choice for the upcoming live action movie (spoiler alert: She’s Black. Racist hoe’s mad. Cry about it). Since Ariel doesn’t really have much in the way of visible makeup, I decided to play around with the colors a bit, drawing inspiration from the colors of her tail and signature (and entirely impractical) purple seashell bra. I didn’t make a seashell bra because, frankly, I didn’t fucking want to. The makeup was the focus, as it was never intended to be a full cosplay, and some people were really in their feelings about my purple microbikini top, as though it’s somehow worse than a strapless seashell bra that appeared to be held up entirely by faith and a single strand of thread, but I digress! Let’s get to critiquing!
Equipment + Tech:
- A fully fledged camera! Specifically, a Nikon D5600
- A ringlight + accompanying desktop stand!
- A homemade backdrop <3 (click here to learn how to make your own!)
- Adobe Premiere
- Blue Snowball USB Microphone
Location: My room, but with better lighting! Woohoo!
Critiques:
- Look at that HD video quality. Fantastic!
- I spent a lot of time learning about my new camera, and making good use of the autofocus and tracking features to show off the products I used, and I think it pays off.
- I was a lot more prepared for this video, which made both shooting and editing much easier.
- My makeup looks good. Duh.
- Sound quality is good!
- My backdrop looks good!
- It’s not super evident in the final cut, but one thing I didn’t account for when recording was the white balance. As a result, I spent a lot more time than necessary adjusting the white balance in post in order to color correct. It was a pain in the ass. I addressed this problem by ordering a gray card and learning how to use it to get proper white balance during recording, so that I don’t have to spend so much time correcting it during the editing process.
- I didn’t write a script for this, opting to just narrate the final cut as it played before me. I feel like there’s a certain authenticity that comes with going unscripted. I’m going to try out writing one for the next tutorial I do and see which method I prefer.
- Overall, I’m super happy with this video!
Well, that’s it! I hope you enjoyed reading/watching me analyze my content. I don’t think that self critiquing should be an intimidating task, or an exercise in self deprecation, so I hope that sharing how I go about it doing it on my own will inspire others to do the same in way that it is helpful and constructive. If you personally found this amusing or helpful, be sure to share it with your friends and subscribe to my blog and channel for more!
~DeLa Doll
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DeLa Doll is a culture writer, cosplayer, and artist based in Florida. She has been writing professionally since 2016, with some of her work being featured on sites like HuffPo and /Film. She is an advocate for meaningful diversity and representation in media, a gamer, a mom, and an avid user of DIY hair dye.
