Allen Walker: The Boy Who Got Cursed

BAM! What an original title! XD
Here's another shots from the photoshoot I had a few days ago - my dad took some amazing photos!

Actually quite the story behind this cosplay; it’s been around two years that I’ve had this cosplay moving around the rankings of my cosplay wishlist. When I first watch D. Gray-Man, I was blown away by Allen’s character, even though I wasn’t completely attracted to the anime itself. Even if I wasn’t sure whether or not I liked the series, I knew I loved Allen (again, one of those characters who I love, but not in the way that I’d want to date him, but that I’d want to be him). Just, his tremendous morals and courage had me from the beginning and his whole approach to not necessarily wanting to harm his enemies, but rather defeat their dark instincts. Plus his character design. I’ve always wanted to cosplay a character with a badass face marking. X3 Anyway, even during that phase where I thought I’d have to give up on the series, I was still determined to somehow get into it because I legitimately wanted to cosplay from it so badly. By that time, an awesome friend stepped in and lent me her manga volumes, telling me that the manga is far better than the anime, and that’s what did it for me. The manga really showed off the amazing character development (quite frankly, I had trouble just convincing myself to stick with Allen XP). I will always love the anime’s music, though, that’s for sure. So there you go, that’s my shmaltsy backstory for this cosplay.



As for the actual construction, (if anyone cares), stretch satin was used for the actual jacket (HARD to sew with, oh goodness) with the excess silver from my Rukia uniform for the trim, since I wanted to go with the silver trim option instead of the white (I also wanted to save that fabric for another cosplay I mean to make, but it ended up using more than I’d thought... What can you do)? The boots are actually the same boots that I used for Umbreon and Kida (yep, those were boots, not shoes ) with the silver part added on. Then I made the Rose Cross, (which was really fun to make), out of these little pieces of cardboard that come in the chocolate bars I usually get (yes, I had to mention that), painted silver with the markings drawn on with Sakura pigma pen and then glossed. The hand was also really fun to make, though it took many coats of paint. The first few coats got soaked up, so I had to paint over them quite a few times to get the colour that I did. Then I added some black to make a bit of gradient and glossed it all over (which really sold it, I must say). The nails, by the way, are made of a cut up toilet paper roll, since those have the curl in them, which was then painted and glazed. I also had to paint the buttons on the arms and cuffs of the jacket since no buttons looked at all accurate; these were originally just little wooden ones.
... Also, I must mention that that wig is sooooooo soft. SO soft.

Overall, I have to say that the hardest part was finding references. x_x With the differing anime and manga versions as well as the three different uniforms, finding helpful references was like pulling teeth, especially since I was looking to do the manga version and I don't actually own any of the volumes.

This is my first time describing the construction process, so I hope that was worth while! XP



More photos will be coming soon! ;D

If you'd like to see the alternate shot for this (there were two that I couldn't decide between, so since I tend to spam quite a bit on my WorldCosplay, I put the other shot there as well as this shots), you can see it here: [link]

Character: Allen Walker
Series: D. Gray-Man
Cosplayer/photo editing ~ (me)
Photography ~ my dad!
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- comments are always appreciate and answered! ^_^

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