This photoshoot featured Nian and Dusk from Arknights, capturing a special Duo cosplay in an antique Chinese-style room. Today, let's jump straight into discussing the wardrobe, makeup, props, conceptualization, and the hard work behind this shoot.
Nian's look features white hair and red horns, paired with a modified qipao with a dominant white base and red dragon embroidery, along with matching red detached sleeves and leg garters. Since this character naturally embodies a strong Traditional Chinese style essence, we dedicated immense effort to costume details—communicating back and forth with the embroidery master for ages just to ensure the precision of the stitching. To faithfully recreate the texture of the dragon horns, the wig and headwear were also custom-made.
Dusk's look features dark hair with teal-blue highlights, paired with turquoise dragon horn headpieces, wearing a teal-blue high-slit qipao with gold trim and a long pearl necklace. The most dramatic element was her massive dragon tail, which was not only made of special material but also carried considerable weight. Because the two of us needed to pose closely during shooting, finding proper support points for the tail took quite a bit of time. I wore red for Nian cosplay while my partner wore blue for Dusk cosplay; the contrasting warm red and cool blue tones stood out vividly against the vintage dark wooden backdrop.
The shooting set featured a traditional carved wooden daybed, latticed doors and windows, scrolls and books on the table, and red plum blossoms as accents. The photographer put immense effort into lighting, utilizing side-backlighting paired with a fog machine to craft a hazy light-and-shadow ambiance that gave the scene a cinematic quality. The shooting process was actually quite challenging: wearing long-sleeved qipaos in the summer heat with heavy headwear under hot studio lights was sweltering. Moreover, posing on the compact wooden daybed required keeping our limbs relaxed without exposing framing flaws while maintaining the characters' signature languid yet haughty demeanor—a true test of core balance and facial expression control. Post-processing was equally meticulous: the garment textures, skin radiance, iridescent glow on the dragon horns, and floating dust particles took extensive hours to retouch.
Every time I edited a photo, I thought about posting after finishing the next one, which ended up dragging on for a long time—that's why it took so long to share! The photographer's composition was very clean, with comfortable visual textures and perspective relationships, capturing the unique Traditional Chinese style elegance of both characters perfectly. The shoot was a fantastic experience; big thanks to our photographer buddy and my wonderfully cooperative partner. The final shots turned out great, creating a deeply satisfying ambiance against this ancient backdrop.
I personally love the texture of these photos; everything from wardrobe, makeup, props, and set design to post-retouching represents the team's heart and soul. Looking back at the photos, every late night and drop of sweat felt completely worthwhile, and I'm glad to share this outstanding work with everyone.