[Jie cosplay] A Visual Record of Intertwined Chinese Fantasy, Brush, and Ink

When shooting this set of Jie cosplay works from Arknights, the focus landed on the fusion of Chinese-style cosplay and Chinese fantasy elements. This costume is highly layered, with a stand-collar white shirt and wide-leg pants as the base, and a blue-and-orange color-blocked wide-sleeved robe as the outer layer. What took the most effort were the black wooden ornaments and charms at the waist, which needed to be manually adjusted to sit naturally along the edge of the waist seal. To match the character's racial traits, the white deer antlers and pointed ears underwent a long process of molding and coloring, ultimately presenting a matte, jade-like texture, while red rope tassel earrings were used to balance the colors of the head.

For the studio set design, I chose classical Chinese wooden furniture as the base, with a backlit circular decoration behind it, giving a sense of transparency akin to an ink-wash painting. Pine and cypress bonsai along with broken plum blossom branches served as foreground and side scenery, preventing the frame from looking monotonous. For lighting, we insisted on using a warm-toned lantern light source for the base and used highlights to outline the character's silhouette. The white mist in the photos was actually created using dry ice, which perfectly connects the upper and lower halves of the image and softens the rigid wood grain. Throughout the shooting process, I kept trying to express the freehand, poetic feel of the character holding a brush and a scroll, remaining relaxed while maintaining the character's solemnity.

The shooting process was very pleasant. In the first photo, I sat on a wooden couch, holding a brush, slightly turning my body, and casting my gaze outside the frame—I think this composition and light/shadow are perfect for a great shot in this session of Cosplay photography. Throughout the entire shoot, we coordinated a large number of streamers and a highly draping skirt hem to achieve dynamic snapshots. The choice of clothing fabric was crucial, especially the pattern on the outer robe; besides the color-blocking, I particularly love that red coiled dragon pattern. The main idea of this shoot was to capture a texture where an "ethereal aura" and a "literati vibe" coexist. To go with this casual cosplay sharing, I also specially tidied up the details of my makeup after the shoot; the eyeshadow used a combination of red-and-brown and orange, avoiding overly heavy eyeliner to preserve the character's cool serenity. Wearing gloves was to restore the non-human hand texture in the character setting, which is an obsession of a detail freak. The post-production color grading leaned towards a film-like texture, maximizing the vintage feel of the Chinese scene. Actually, the character's expression management is also quite important, as this type of Chinese fantasy theme requires a calm and unruffled demeanor. The most satisfying props in this set of works are definitely the bamboo slips and the dark blue-covered book; they have a lot of weight in hand, making the body posture look more natural.