[Qingxiao cosplay] Recreating a Wuthering Waves Fan Content Xianxia Style Look

From preparation to final photos, this Xianxia style look for Qingxiao took a full two weeks. Since it was based on a Wuthering Waves fan content concept without a fixed official splash art to directly replicate, I spent a lot of effort early on communicating with the tailor and prop maker regarding costume and prop coordination.

For the costume, I chose a modified silvery-white cheongsam made of a faux-silk fabric that gives off a natural pearlescent sheen under the lights. The neckline features a teardrop cutout paired with pearl clasps on both sides, which softens the formality of the mandarin collar. The halter neck ties on the shoulders are made of thin light blue and light purple cords that sway gently as I move. The blue swimming fish embroidery along the dress was hand-stitched, matching the wig's color palette perfectly. The translucent horn accessories on my head were crafted from resin, and the sword was a custom lightweight prop from a friend, so holding it for prolonged shoots didn't feel exhausting. The wig started as a basic light blue medium-short base; I cut the bangs and shaped the outward flips myself based on the design, thinning out roughly one-third of the fibers so it maintained an airy, weightless feel on camera. I chose bright blue contact lenses, and the diamond forehead mark was carefully hand-drawn stroke by stroke using liquid eyeliner—set with three layers of setting spray to prevent smudging.

For posing on the day of the shoot, I referenced postures used in spellcasting and sword-kinesis from Xianxia dramas. The peace sign in the first picture was meant to balance out the cool, aloof character archetype with a warm, casual everyday vibe. The second picture—holding a two-handed mudra hand seal—required tightening my core, dropping my shoulders, and flexing the tendons in my wrists to define sharp lines, working with the radial light beams from the studio ceiling to evoke the narrative of gathering spiritual energy and casting a spell.

In post-processing, the raw lighting was rather flat and the studio background was messy, so I first keyed out the subject and replaced the backdrop with pure blue. As mentioned in the post description, blending manual editing with AI lighting was truly the core of the retouching process. I first generated radial light sources and specular masks using AI to add cool rim lighting around the subject's silhouette. This required careful blending and erasing via layer modes to prevent jarring seam lines along the hair strands and sword edge. The biggest advantage of AI lighting is simulating facial highlights naturally, though I still went in manually with brushes to paint detailed catchlights in the eyelashes and pupils, preserving skin texture without over-smoothing. I pulled down the overall saturation and dialed up the blue tones, creating crisp depth between the silvery-white fabric and the deep blue swimming fish embroidery.

Even though the editing strained my eyes, seeing the final results made every tedious step completely worthwhile. Blending traditional Chinese aesthetics with Xianxia elements felt like a rewarding, breakthrough fan content attempt.