I was pleasantly surprised last Friday whilst browsing a comic shop, as I happened to stumble upon volume 1 of the D.Gray-Man manga, which I've been wanting to read for a while. I say plesantly surprised, because animenewsnetwork.com lists the release date for that volume on May 2nd! Ahh, and I figured I'd have to wait longer! XD (I found Death Note 5, too, which also has the same release date if I'm not mistaken)

I've already been won over; I think the Akuma (token Evil Things(tm)) and the Millenium Earl have really interesting designs (especially the latter), but the protagonist Allen Walker (who you see here) is my favorite XD I really like both his personality and design. He wins 50 awesome points merely for wearing a tie, too ('cause ties are boss D: )

I tried to add some blue backlighting to add depth, and I really wanted contrast between the lights and darks to make his akuma-seeing eye stand out so I tried to accent the shadows a little more than usual. See, good coloring draws attention away from bad lineart! ^_^ ahuhu... what?

I listened to nothing but Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill composer, also does some DDR stuff) while drawing this for a sort of dark ambience. Such a cool industrial/rock/dance sound! XD I hope the mood music paid off.

I wonder if I could pull off cosplaying Allen? At least, this outfit doesn't seem too difficult... black jacket, pants, white shirt, tie, wig... ahh, but the disfigured hand! o_o I wonder how I'd go about putting that together? (anyone have any ideas? XD)