[Savage cosplay] Arknights Wasteland Ruins: Long Legs and Black Tights Outfit Composite Record

This set of photos was composited by myself a long time ago. Back then, I was still quite unpracticed with cutout masking and light/shadow blending, so looking back now, there are indeed many stiff and awkward areas. The stickers sprouting bunnies all over the screen were overly obvious and somewhat unrefined. Digging them up today feels a bit like rehashing old memories, but I wanted to share the creation process back then with everyone.

Cosplaying Savage from Arknights, getting into and out of this gear was extremely troublesome. The top features a multi-layered tactical style, and the leather belts and straps required repeated adjustments to look clean and sharp. The lower body consists of a striped mini-skirt paired with thick, long black stockings and glossy over-the-knee boots—a complete Black tights outfit. Blending these varied textures into a wasteland background in post-processing was quite a struggle with my retouching skills back then. Handling the highlights on those black patent leather boots requires serious technique; I often flattened the reflections, lacking three-dimensional depth and making the legs look like rigid cylinders.

The prop was that long pole with a complex metallic structure at the top, which easily suffered from artifacts under backlighting; when cutting it out, the edges always had white fringing or dark jagged borders. To match the atmosphere of Unrealized Realities, I adjusted the background into a gloomy rocky terrain, suppressing colors into deep darks, and used extensive backlighting breaking through the clouds to highlight the character's silhouette. However, compositing inevitably brought some dissonance, such as mismatched halo angles, inconsistent shadow directions, and contact shadows between foreground rocks and the feet that didn't fully align—all telltale signs of inexperience.

In reality, a major hurdle in composite post-processing lies in environmental blending. My thinking at the time was: since the model was photographed in costume, shooting purely in real outdoor settings was too constrained by location, so I gathered wasteland backgrounds to stack them myself. Placing the character in the midground and utilizing foreground rock faces and the distant sky to establish spatial depth, the dusty, hazy atmosphere was never quite nailed down due to imprecise brush blending.

Looking back now, I truly lacked experience back then, which led to numerous flaws throughout the set. However, the original intention was simple: I just wanted to shoot this Wasteland style gear. Flawed as the composite may be, one can see the high completion level of the props; the texture of the Black tights outfit and boots accentuated leg length, and the custom arm patch and crossbody bag featured plenty of details. If I were to redo this composite with my current aesthetic and technical skills, I could make many more adjustments and optimizations to the contact shadows beneath the feet, facial backlit fill, and overall textural layering, making Savage's presence against the desolate background far more powerful.

This shooting method of capturing raw assets first and building the environment in post-production certainly presents unique challenges. As my proficiency with editing software has grown, tackling this Wasteland style theme today would give me far more confidence than back then.