After freshly organizing this set of selfies, I've mentally listed this one as my absolute favorite of the year. Compared to the deliberate staging of outdoor blockbusters, the beauty of a selfie lies in the ability to fine-tune the camera angle and hand-held distance until you capture the exact expression you want. Returning to Ruan Mei from Honkai: Star Rail this time, my overall makeup and styling concept was to stay closer to that introverted yet translucent texture.
Let's start with the hair and makeup. The hair treatment this time was highly refined; the outer layer of a black base combined with turquoise highlights on the inside and hair ends serves as one of the souls of this look. Paired with lake-green colored contact lenses, the colors present a strong contrast without looking out of place. To reflect the character's inherent aloofness and cool detachment, I did subtraction on the eye makeup, discarding dense and heavy false eyelashes, and instead using an ultra-thin eyeliner to elongate the eyes, keeping the overall makeup clean. For lip makeup, I chose a peach-toned lip glaze with a certain luster, layered with clear lip gloss to make the lips look plump and moist.
The sophistication of the apparel is also key to elevating the texture this time. The pure white off-the-shoulder rigid neck-ring, paired with the cloud-pattern ruffles at the neckline, beautifully elongates the visual proportion of the neck. The circular emerald-luster gemstone embedded at the collar is an element I particularly love, packed with a vintage feel. The draping pink soft satin bowknot underneath features a delicate texture; the golden metal ring, tiny green gemstone pendant, and adorned pearl chain pendants connecting at the bottom of the bowknot stabilize the center of gravity of the overall styling right at the chest area, making the structure reasonable and refined. Although the white feather decorations on the shoulders and back only reveal a corner in this Ruan Mei selfie, they also nicely accounted for the overall lightness during the shoot.
Regarding the use of light and shadow in this set of photos, I intentionally adopted a purple-blue ambient light as the base color of the overall environment during set design. This alternating cool-and-warm lighting treatment can not only offset the large area of the white top, preventing highlight blowout, but also make the cyan color at the hair ends look more agile. The frontal key light was given very softly, not deliberately pursuing stark facial contours, but rather preserving the skin texture and radiance of the face. Settling the selfie in an environment with wooden grilles and pink flowering vines strikes just the right balance between soft and hard backdrops without stealing the visual centerpiece from the character.
Selecting this photo as the cover also comes with my own considerations. Among the three close-up selfies, this one features the most ideal composition. The character's head is completely centered, the facial proportions stretch out naturally, and the fluffy, slightly messy stray hairs fall evenly across the forehead and both sides without any clipping or sense of oppression. Compared to the other two slightly tilted camera angles, this front-facing eye-level perspective captures a casual ease that doesn't feel overly forced. The slight upward curve of the lips and the naturally relaxed state of the shoulders feel highly comfortable to look at.
Actually, in Honkai: Star Rail, the portrayal of the character Ruan Mei relies not only on apparel but more on that quiet and composed temperament. During the shooting process, I tried my best to empty my mind in front of the lens, keeping my gaze gentle, avoiding making exaggerated expressions deliberately, and only leaving the most natural state. When I finished this selfie, I felt that the gaze state at that exact split second was the closest to the character's inner core recently. On the day of the shoot, adjusting the lights and angles in front of the ancient style backdrop took up a major part of the day. Although the early preparations were cumbersome, seeing such a piece of work with clean imaging, a natural feel, and a perfect match with the character in my heart made all the hard work fully worth it. The meaning of doing Honkai: Star Rail cosplay often lies right in freezing that fleeting moment where the character and yourself overlap, through different camera perspectives and minute state adjustments during this process of cosplay photography.