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| My fridge |
What is Purikura?
Purikura, a portmanteau of the words Print and Club are specialized photo booths that allow you to take and decorate photographs of yourself and your friends which you can print out into stickers.
Each booth it's own special features, themes and decorations and give you the options of changing the size of your eyes and darkness of your makeup among many other things.
You can also alter your physical appearance such as being able to alter your makeup, change your hair, slim your features and all lashes and lenses.
New booths are released relatively frequently and every booth has something different to offer, whether it's cute stickers, the ability to make your legs look longer, make your eyes bigger; the list goes on. They are generally found in their own arcades where several machines are bunches together and these places are everywhere in places like Shinjuku and Shibuya.
Every so often, these Trend Girl magazines appear in Purikura arcades (I don't know if you can even call them that) that showcase some of the latest models of Purikura booth. On top of that, it also features fashion articles, editorials, heath beauty and diet; pretty much like a regular little fashion magazine.
This entry focused on the Shiroyuki [it was brand new at the time] booth so it talks about how to use the machine, types of stickers,stamps and pens you can use in the booth and any special features.
Depending on the machine, you often have the option to pick what types of shots you want to do. whether you want to highlight your outfit, your makeup or just derping with all your friends, these are the recommended shots for you, my friend.
Types of shot
The "Beauty-Line" Shot
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| From natural to super uguu |
The Beauty Line is green line/box on the floor of the booth which you must step in to achieve these kind of close-up face and bust shots. The screen in the booth will indicate when you need to step into this box of move away from it
The high-angle beauty line shot
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| Beauty Line shots. Taken from the bust up |
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| Full body shots. |
Things that can go wrong.
Quick warning for these shots; the booth will probably automatically elongate your legs and they do this from a specific point in the picture so it is really important that you stand with straight legs that are facing to the front and not put anything in the shot that you don't want elongated, otherwise you'll end up with some interesting deformities.
Take these beautiful examples by friends of mine.
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| Note all the crazy leg deformities varying from knee-ankles, uneven sized calves, pin heads and titan proportions. |
Decorating.
So after you've snapped your pictures, you're shown into a booth on the side of the machine that lets you put stamps on your pictures. Not only stamps but glitter, makeup, lashes, the time and date. There's even options to make your eyes bigger or change certain features.
You are given a time limit on how long you have to decorate your stickers but it only counts down to zero (usually stops at 30 seconds) if the arcade is really busy or there's a queue of people waiting for the booth.
Extra features
For a small monthly fee (approx 300 yen), you can have your purikura pictures sent in HD to your phone. Please note that you need a Japanese phone number/email address to use these services. Also note that there are several companies that make these booths and you will need to be signed up with the associated service to be able to receive purikura from their booths. Examples of popular companies are Makesoft, Furyu, and Dekopika.
Recent advancements.
Purikura machines are generally pretty straight forward to use even if you can't read or speak Japanese. More booths are starting to become more English-user friendly, but either way it's quite easy to just guess your way through the process thanks to the picture examples.
So there you have it. Not the most informative thing in the world but I hope it helped some of yall.
Over and out~
