A lot of thought went into preparing the shoot for this Ohto Ai styling. The photographer was Guoguo, while modeling and post-processing retouching were both handled entirely by myself. The blue wig was trimmed for layering, paired with yellow triangular hair clips, and wearing a bright yellow hooded sweatshirt with dark brown elbow patches, yielding extremely striking overall color contrast. Down below, it was matched with blue-and-white color-blocked athletic shorts, making the overall styling look clean and sharp visually.
The shooting venue was divided into two parts: outdoor and indoor. The exterior shoot took place at the railings outside the building. With wonderful natural light at the time, I leaned over the gray metal railing, gazing blankly off to the side. Such a casual state unexpectedly captured a side that fit the character's temperament quite well. Because the clothing colors themselves were exceptionally vibrant, under conditions of ample outdoor lighting, the color tension between the yellow sweatshirt and blue hair was particularly intense. Before the lens, I needed to master the visual impact brought by this color while portraying the character's somewhat lazy, nonchalant atmospheric vibe with her surroundings. The photographer also fully utilized the building lines and geometric structure of the railings during composition, keeping the frames from appearing monotonous.
The interior shoot was chosen in a corridor lined with a row of gray-blue lockers. The overhead lighting in the corridor was relatively even, and paired with the cool-toned environment, it successfully fostered a quiet and even slightly aloof atmosphere. The indoor space was relatively narrow, and the neat arrangement of the lockers easily made the images look rigid, so I experimented extensively with positioning and poses. Sometimes standing sideways with my back to the lens, other times looking back toward the camera, I leveraged the corridor's depth of field to enhance the storytelling of the frames. To match the character's slightly melancholic yet quirky feel, expressions and body postures underwent numerous rounds of communication and adjustment on site with the photographer. After every take, I checked the playback monitor to confirm whether details were properly in place and if there were any wardrobe malfunctions, ensuring the quality of every single Cosplay photoshoot.
In terms of makeup, to align with the character's vibe, I specially adjusted the eye makeup details. Avoiding overly heavy colors, I focused primarily on a translucent and natural look, putting emphasis on eye-shape delineation to make the gaze appear cleaner. The base makeup was kept as lightweight as possible to fit the daily campus atmosphere. Since yellow and blue are already visually eye-catching, an excessively heavy makeup would instead make the overall styling look uncoordinated, so considerable effort went into restraining the makeup. On the shooting site, due to complex lighting, frequent micro-adjustments of makeup highlights and shadows were necessary to guarantee facial dimensionality before the lens.
During post-processing retouching, I deliberately preserved the intense contrast between the blue hair and the yellow sweatshirt. Avoiding exaggerated skin smoothing, I kept the skin texture as natural and translucent as possible. The color grading stage was the most time-consuming because the color temperature difference between indoor and exterior was massive, requiring partitioned adjustments. For the locker corridor shots, since the environment carried cool tones and formed a fantastic color collision with the outfit, the color grading slightly compressed the environment's saturation to make the subject pop more, visually guiding the gaze to concentrate on the character. The outdoor shots appropriately brightened some shadow areas to make the overall lighting appear softer and closer to everyday life.
There are still some segments and videos I wanted to shoot that I didn't get around to, which we can take slowly later. Although this Cosplay photoshoot only features a portion, it has fulfilled a long-held wish. The upcoming plan is to supplement the remaining videos, hoping to edit out footage with an even stronger atmospheric feel. Changes in on-site lighting, wardrobe detail control, and character emotion conveyance were key focuses constantly adjusted during this shoot. Subsequent clips are also conceptualizing specific camera movements and storyboards, striving to make the storytelling rich. From still photos to dynamic videos, plenty of materials and ideas remain to be prepared; for now, let's treat this as a phased record, freezing the core styling first before gradually supplementing creations from other perspectives later.