The duo of Dendro Archon Nahida and Greater Lord Rukkhadevata in Genshin Impact has always carried a special sense of Dendro inheritance in my heart. This time at the anime convention, I finally found the opportunity to partner with Ziqiu to bring this duo frame to life.
Preparing these outfits actually took quite a long time. Greater Lord Rukkhadevata's white long dress uses a combination of sheer chiffon and satin fabrics, featuring light blue-green gradients at the bottom to evoke a divine, gentle, and ethereal feeling. Meanwhile, the golden starburst patterns and hollow-out design on the chest serve as visual focal points, requiring repeated comparisons of embroidery and stitching to achieve a rich effect. Ziqiu's Nahida Cosplay costume is a short white-green-gold ensemble with meticulous details, especially the leg straps and pointed elf ears. For this photoshoot, we specifically did a "no-makeup makeup" look, emphasizing clear eyeliner and soft lip tones while avoiding heavy makeup to truly align with the characters' inherent aura.
Look at the heart-framed ribbons and long satin streamers we hold in the photos—these were props specially made to enhance dynamic movement. Shooting duo cosplay on-site at a convention is actually much trickier than solo shoots. Not only do you have to manage two-person pose coordination, but you also have to deal with noisy surroundings. In Photo 3, where each of us holds a heart-shaped outline decoration while lifting a leg to display skirt hems and leg lines, that was the optimal pose found after numerous adjustments. The embrace in Photo 4 felt much more natural, where Ziqiu's rosy lip color formed a great visual contrast with my white-and-gold patterned long sleeves.
During the shoot, due to venue limitations, we couldn't find an ideal natural light environment. Luckily, a photographer friend traveling with us brought professional fill lighting equipment—like the high-power softboxes and grids visible in the photos—casting side highlights that maintained soft yet sculpted facial contours even outdoors, while capturing the flowing fabric textures. When packing these costumes, the rigid heart-shaped frames and transparent streamers at the bottom of the skirt were really difficult to store. At the convention, we constantly worried about the skirt dragging and getting dirty, but thankfully the final Convention photos came out looking very clean.
Carefully reviewing these photos, whether it's the solo action shots in Photos 1 and 2, or the duo combination in Photos 3 and 4, the light and shadow feel very comfortable. Especially in those two close embraces in Photo 4, Ziqiu's height and my posture created a beautifully staggered arrangement without feeling crowded. For ethereal characters like these, costume layering is extremely important; only by experiencing it firsthand do you realize the weight of wearing so many fabric layers. After the costume was made, assembling and detaching sleeves and streamers was a technical feat in itself.
Achieving this level of completion with just a single prep session for convention makeup and props leaves us very satisfied. If you ever have the chance to cosplay long-skirt Genshin Impact characters like these, definitely remember to draft patterns early; otherwise, an overly long hem easily trips you up—even when going barefoot with straps like me, moving around requires extreme care. Although shooting the entire set was exhausting, looking at these final images with delicate green leaf hairpieces, hollowed-out gold waist ornaments, and our tacit synergy in expression makes everything completely worth it.