[Medicine Melancholy cosplay] Touhou Project's Poison Doll with a Withered sunflower

This photoshoot was primarily designed to complement the Withered sunflower, deliberately choosing direct hard lighting to accentuate shadow contrast. The costume features a classic red, white, and black color palette, with the large red headpiece and white lace trims closely fitting the character design. For the specific lighting setup, direct frontal flash was used to give the skin a pale, porcelain tone, matching Medicine Melancholy's character complexion.

During shooting, we explored various angles, including close-ups and medium shots, and ultimately organized photos capturing these distinct moods. The Withered sunflower provides strong visual impact, forming a striking contrast with the pink-toned makeup. For retouching, facial contours were preserved while intensifying the lip color and the blue tones of the eyes, alongside lifting shadows to establish clear visual depth. Especially in the shot with a shadow cast across the face, we adjusted the light source distance to make the lighting effect resemble a painted doll.

Before shooting, the wig was styled with care—using a curling iron to give the ends natural curls and trimming the bangs blunt with shears. I chose vivid, translucent bright blue colored contacts, elongating the eye shape with liquid eyeliner and adding glitter accents. The white lace collar was slightly scratchy and took effort to put on, while the red bow needed to be pinned at a slight tilt on the head to evoke that classical Lolita style flair.

The shooting environment was quite dim, requiring high ISO paired with flash to separate the subject from the background while retaining textures of the dried flowers and leaves. The withered yellow of the sunflower and the red of the headpiece created a fantastic warm-cool contrast. I feel this photo set best captures the character's delicate yet subtly venomous essence. Overall, the shoot was an exploration of character emotion, merging the withered flora with character expressions to create a vintage, slightly melancholic style in this autumn-winter season—my most satisfying recent Cosplay work.