Android 18 Wig Tutorial | How To Style Tall Anime Bangs

Welcome back cosplayers, let's see who we're going to be styling today: android 18 from dragon ball z. What we can see from references of her and i like to use figures as my reference just because it's a lot easier to see and visualize. The three-dimensional shape is that her part is quite noticeably asymmetrical. She also has a sort of stringy texture in the front of her hair, so we're going to incorporate that as we're styling, i've seen some references with a widow's peak, while others don't have a widow's peak. So i am just going with the no widow's peak option because i think it looks better usually when there are two canon references that are completely different. I will just choose to reference the one that i think looks better actually a lot of times. I just throw away canon and do what i want anyway, for this style i am using an assist cosplay fluffy bob in yellow shane. Recently i have been marking my crucial measurements long before i touch the scissors or hairspray. These are hairline to eyebrow, full width of the eyebrows hairline to chin and temple to temple. I have found this has made such a huge difference in terms of where things are going to be falling on the face. Wig heads are obviously a lot smaller than human heads, so having all of these key points laid out for you makes your styling a lot more precise. First, we're going to part the wig into an extremely precise line when i'm first sectioning i like to do it in very small increments. It helps me find the sweet spot of where the part should be without, like you know, uprooting all the hair. Once i have determined exactly where my part should be that's, when i'm going to make those broader strokes and after those broad strokes, i can do some detail work and make sure that every single fiber that has been flipped over is all part of the same general Layer, oh and by the way, if i sound, extremely unenthused right now, uh, it's because i feel very sick, but waiting to record until i sound better is for dumb babies and i'm not a dumb baby. Stylist pro tip make sure your steam gun is plugged in before you start filming once you're finished parting, the area you're going to heat, set all of the fibers to naturally stay in that direction, with a steam gun or iron. You can also use a blow dryer, but i just prefer a steam gun with the part out of the way i can now straighten out the rest of the wig. You can also use an iron for this part, but i still prefer a steam gun. I find that steam guns are a lot softer on wigs than irons, even though, in this particular case, the fibers are heat resistant steam guns, don't generate static, electricity that irons do and they can reach temperatures surpassing that of a blow dryer. This is where i'm going to start focusing on the volume, particularly on the left side, to do this hold the fibers upright, while heating the base hold them in position until they are cooled down. Do this all across the left hemisphere of the wig, there is significant diamorphism between her parts. So you want to make that extremely apparent, even though her right side isn't as voluminous there's still a fair amount of lift so make sure it gets the same amount of heat set treatment, albeit a little bit less. I mean in terms of volume. At this point, the entire wig is pretty moist, so you're gon na want to dry it out with a blow dryer or let it air dry. Whenever i am using a blow dryer on a wig, i really like to use the diffuser. Not only does it spread the heat evenly, but when i'm holding fibers in a precise shape, i can be rest assured that a gust of air isn't going to blast the shape and ruin the style now something that i was just so jazzed to talk about. I mean like it's freaking genius. Assist cosplay doesn't have lace fronts; instead, they have mini lace, parts that you can just glue into the wig they're only like 17 each and the wig itself, i think, was like 18, but together they are still cheaper than the standard lace front wig and i'm a Cheapy machine person, so this stuff like blew my mind now, i'm going to cut out the approximate length i need for the bigger bang first and then i'm going to hot glue it into place. Now, i'm only hot gluing on the portion that won't be visible. Like you don't want to glue it on the visible portion of the lace. The point is you just don't want any hot glue, peeking out from underneath it'll, like completely invalidate the reason why you got the lace in the first place. Now i'm just going to do the exact same thing on the other side, i actually didn't use all of the lace, so i'm going to be using it for a later part of this tutorial. Now here comes the bread and butter of this tutorial. All of the teasing god, my arms are tired, just just watching this back over first find the lowest point of where the volume should be. For me, it was just at or right above the temple pick out a small section and start backcombing. If you've noticed, i've used a tiny bit of hairspray right before i started teasing. This allows for a significantly better tease, especially with softer fibers like the ones i'm dealing with right now, once i've created a rat's nest, i don't leave it alone. I skim the surface of the knot to get rid of all of those. Little loopy ends that stick out by cleaning up these layers. Now you won't have any of them peeking out later. This makes a huge difference in how clean the wig looks in the end. Do this all the way until you reach the outer layers, that is, don't actually tease the outer layers they're going to look like. If you do now just fan out the bang, fibers and spray, they should naturally fall the way you want them to because of the heat setting you did earlier. I absolutely hate buying wefts. If i'm only going to be using a little bit because i find it really wasteful, so i am going to show you my super special secret technique of weft grafting. The way it works is you take some of the wefts from the middle of the wig, like the middle of the back nobody's going to see it nobody's going to miss it. Remove them with a seam ripper then glue them in the areas that you need them. Let'S say you need an area to be a little bit thicker or a little bit longer. Well, this is how you do it without wasting an entire pack of wefts, i'm taking the wefts that i harvested and i'm going to be, adding them to the bang areas. On both sides, i really wanted them to just be a little bit thicker. The length of the spare wefts worked very well for me in this case, because i wanted the sides to be a little bit tapered compared to the reference. I find that tapering the lengths compared to having them all one length really frames the face, much nicer. This is one of the many reasons of why i am such a proponent of going off. The canon grid, sometimes anime, doesn't translate as well into the third dimension. The proportions of your facial structure are also completely different from anime changing little details like this to better suit your face, completely change the final product and how it sits on your face. Of course, all of this is just my opinion. You can do things, however, you want. I just wanted to give you that pass for you to do whatever you want cause. I sure, as hecky do remember that extra piece of lace. I told you to set aside for later. Well, it's later use half of that extra piece to cover up the wefts that have been visible this whole time in the front i glued half of it just under the topmost layer of the skin top portion and then directly right on top of the wefts. I'Ve been working with hot glue for so long that i am very confident in my abilities to keep it hidden. However, if you do not have the same level of confidence for this layer, i would highly suggest that you sew it in and for me, miss anti-needle and thread to suggest that you sew anything onto a wig is pretty darn serious. Now we can start teasing and shaping. On the other side, i usually like to do all of my teasing at once, so i don't hurt the already hair sprayed side, but because the divide was so big, it was okay, make sure you don't create too much volume with teasing, because we want to have A lot more volume on the left side, rather than the right take the remaining lace front piece and glue it. The exact same way that you did on the left side, i trimmed off some excess and put it to the side. I swear when i style i'm like a squirrel. I pack things away and save them for later. Nothing goes to waste because of the weft surgery. I did the wig kind of deflated, so i had to re-tease some portions. I also restyled the bangs since they got so jostled, but hey welcome to brooklyn kid. That'S just how it is once everything's sprayed down come in with a steam gun to flatten out the sides from all the references i've studied her hair doesn't curve in. Rather, it sits at the sides bone straight. If you find that any fibers got misplaced after you steam them, you can just go back and touch them up. Finally, finally, finally, we can start cutting the hair i like to use pins as my guide for how short i should cut it to now. I actually did the trimming in about two layers. This means i divided the hair in the middle, put the top layer up and trimmed the bottom layer. I cut in an up down motion to avoid choppy edges once you make it all the way across you can bring down the other half of the fibers and cut them in the exact same way. The goal is to get the lengths about even enough. Normally, i'd be way more of a stickler about leveling out the ends, but in this case some mistakes are going to be okay and i'll. Show you why, in a second okay, it's been a second i'm going to be curling the edges in on this one. You didn't think i was going to be sticking with cannon on this. One. Did you come on? You know me, i saw a stylist on assist, cosplay's instagram use product and then iron. So i wanted to try it out for this style, and i can wholeheartedly say that i actually really love this process if you're a beginner at shaping this is a great method to use. I will say, though, that this would probably work a lot better with a smaller iron. An iron made for short hair would work way better than this one, especially if you're styling in layers like i was trying to do after you're done curling all the edges. All you have to do is just brush them out, see perfectly blended, since the bangs on the right are going to be tucked behind the wearer's ear. I need to put in sideburns to do this. I take the fibers along the rim of the wig cap and then i pull them tautly in the direction of the chin. Then i gently sprayed the topmost part. You can see that i used an iron on the part that had product, but i ended up not liking how it looked in the end, so i just used a blow dryer to solidify the shape. If you think the sideburn isn't the right thickness, you can just add and remove as much fiber as you'd like trim the section to be the exact length of your sideburn and hairspray in place. I like to use pins to keep my edges sharp to make sure the fibers don't actually slip off of the ear. It'S a good idea to heat set them to curl inwards. Don'T forget to trim the lace as close to the hairline as possible. The last little detail, i'm going to add onto this wig, is to add the stringy texture to the front of the hair. You do not know how many times i had to redo this before i settled on a texture that i liked. The technique that i settled upon is take a small piece of hair, just a very small piece of hair hair spray. It roll it into a tiny cylinder and blow dry. I did this on all the fiber that would touch the face, but it's up to you where you think the placement should be or if you even want to do this at all. I understand that i can be very extra, so a lot of stuff i do is extremely unnecessary and that's how you style, android 18, or at least how i did it. Usually my videos are heavily scripted but um. I could not be bothered. Bad health is a regular occurrence for me, so putting extra effort into something like a script takes away way more time than i actually have, but are you guys, okay with something like a stream of consciousness? Video like this was, let me know your opinion in the comments, as well as any tutorial suggestions. I actually read all my comments and find them really insightful, as always. Thank you so much for watching. I really hope this video provided value to you in some way. Happy cosplaying, you