The above image isn’t a still promoting future Avatar films or the opening of Disney’s Pandora – The World of Avatar expansion. It’s a photograph featuring model Maia Koo as Neytiri. She wanted to be the character for a photo shoot, and her makeup artist Jonna was on board. Maia contacted Antti Karppinen about shooting the costume, and though she was hesitant about doing so, Antti was interested because he appreciated the film and Maia had already found makeup and hair professionals to help turn her into Neytiri. Antti added to the shoot by contacting Marko Paakkanen to make the bow. Antti explains:

Again, for this project a lot of different talents and elements came together and created something none of us could have done on our own. It took hours and hours of planning, collecting moodboards and making the props and costumes -including tens of hours to make the unique bow, six hours to braid the hair and nine hours to paint the body. Finally, three more hours in the photo shoot, I-didn’t-even-count-how-many hours retouching the images and we were done, literally. I’m proud to present what we accomplished, and I can only hope I will stumble on similar projects in the future, too!

You can read more about the complex project at Antti’s site.

via Fashionably Geek, photo by Antti Karppinen