[Elysia Cosplay] Honkai Impact 3rd: Refreshing Splash at the Summer Pool Party

Today, I cosplayed Elysia in her swimsuit form, heading directly to an outdoor swimming pool for the shoot. This two-piece purple-and-white swimsuit is packed with intricate nuances: the top is adorned with white ruffled trim, accented at the center with golden metallic charms, and styled with a pair of detachable white off-the-shoulder sleeves. The bottoms consist of purple swim briefs veiled beneath a skirt overlay detailed with white ruffles, featuring slender criss-cross side ties at the hips. To accessorize, I wore a gold heart-pendant necklace and cinched a delicate gold-and-green decorative chain along my waist. For the hair, I chose a shoulder-length bob wig with a pink-to-white gradient and subtly curled ends, anchored at the crown with a pair of elongated white horn hairpins. For makeup, beyond the violet contact lenses, I painted pastel-pink line work around the eyes—especially across the lower lids and outer corners—to emulate a stylized, scar-or-rune-like decorative visual effect.

Our shooting location was an open-air swimming pool. The water was crystalline, revealing the vibrant blue tiles at the bottom with absolute clarity. The water level reached roughly from my mid-thigh to waist; wading through water naturally generates resistance, and the water's buoyancy causes the skirt and sleeve cuffs to billow and drift with the ripples, which meant I had to keep my poses elongated and graceful when the camera caught dynamic frames. During midday, the ambient sun was quite intense, creating heavy specular reflections across the water's surface, which required the photographer to spend considerable effort searching for workable angles. As twilight faded into night, the background dimmed down, and we relied on high-intensity pool floodlights and streetlamps for fill light; nighttime shooting actually accentuated the garment's colors and the water's shimmering wavelets even better.

Throughout the session, I explored a wide variety of poses. We started standing in the pool shielding my forehead with one raised hand while resting the other on my hip, which cleanly outlined the overall silhouette of the styling. Later, I raised one hand high in a wave, or shaped heart gestures with both hands in front of my chest and abdomen. To lean into the theme, I also spread both hands wide to catch the splashing droplets. One shot—turning back over my shoulder with hands gently folded over my chest—aimed to capture a brief moment of quiet serenity. Another pose, resting one hand on my hip while pointing the other forward, brought out lively energy. The deepest immersion was a shot where I flung both arms wide open to welcome the falling splash; although there were multiple passersby in the background, that uninhibited, relaxed joy of playing in the pool felt completely authentic.

Shooting in water is genuinely physically draining: you constantly battle aquatic resistance while maintaining strict facial composure to keep water out of your eyes, requiring us to climb out onto the deck after each sequence to touch up the eye makeup and brush out the wig. Wearing violet contact lenses in such a moisture-dense environment easily causes eye fatigue and dryness, making eye drops an absolute necessity. Wigs tangle quickly once soaked, so every return to the poolside demanded careful, gentle detangling. Nevertheless, the overall atmosphere was wonderfully lighthearted; the pool water was cool and refreshing, leaving me completely revitalized by the time we wrapped. The wet ruffles of this swimsuit grew noticeably heavy when soaked for extended periods, so for the camera's sake, I strove to make every movement appear as weightless and buoyant as possible.