Madagascar 3: Creating Gia's Cat Eyes

Gia the Jaguar has probably been one of the funnest costumes I've researched/planned in a long time, but unfortunately her time as a featured character on my blog is coming to a close (mainly because Brave comes out next week and I would like to talk about Merida a bit before it opens). I will, however, write one more post about Gia, giving comprehensive instructions, Things You'll Need lists, and a Cool Things I Didn't Use list. And, per readers requests, pictures. But don't expect that for a good while.

On to Gia's eyes. As you can tell from the pictures, she has a strong black outline to her eyes, along with long lashes and a bit of a shadow above her eye, but none below. Obviously, unless you are blessed with a particular ethnic background, there is no easy way to achieve her beautiful almond eye shape, but there is always a way to manipulate looks.

The best way to deal with the long lashes is simply to buy fake ones. Two sets that I particularly like (and require little to no trimming) are Eylure's Naturalites for Gia's regular look and Hed Kandi Lashes for Gia's blacklight look (the lashes are supposed to have purple accents in them). If you look closely at Gia's eyes, her lashes are very short close to her nose and very long at the corner of her eye. Both of these sets are already trimmed that way, cutting out the nasty work of trying to trim them Just So.

Beyond the lashes, of course, you want some good eyeliner to give the black edged look that most cats tend to have. You have good liquid eyeliner and a steady hand, you'll do fine--just add a little Cleopatra flair to the corner. If you have issues with applying eyeliner or aren't used to using it, you might want to try something like Eye Rock Designer Liner. I've never used this one specifically, but I must say, I'm a huge fan of the peel-and-press sorts of makeup--it makes everything so much easier and cleaner!

Finally, a light swipe of grey eyeshadow finishes the look. You won't want to do more than one brushwidth above the lashes, and it shouldn't be very dark at all. If you don't care to use eyeshadow, smudging the eyeliner a bit will give the same sort of effect.

I feel a bit sad moving on from Gia. This has been very fun and I enjoyed writing and researching about her. Who knows? Maybe we'll see her again in Madagascar 4.