[Flandre Scarlet Cosplay] First Time Wearing the Touhou Fanon Draft: The Floating Night of the Scarlet Devil Mansion's Little Demon Sister

Wearing a costume based on my own Touhou fanon design for the first time, there was quite a gap between the actual implementation and the conceptual sketch in my mind. The tailor also made a few deviations from my original design drawings. Although I held a tiny whimpering regret, the moment the finished garment was on my body, there was still a wonderful surreal feeling.

The inspiration for this outfit actually comes from my personal understanding of the character Flandre Scarlet in Touhou Project. On top of the original setting, I incorporated many of my favorite dark magic elements and more exaggerated layered designs. The skirt hem has numerous ruffles and lace. To achieve the visual puffiness, several layers of stiff crinoline petticoats were stuffed inside. Although my movement was somewhat restricted when spinning around, the final effect on camera was unexpectedly heavy and substantial.

A lot of effort also went into the props this time. The red apples, the floating teddy bear, and that translucent magic wand were all things I figured out bit by bit during the early stages. Especially that glowing wand—to give it that multicolored light effect, I made a hidden light-emitting structure inside. Because I wanted to capture the effect of levitating in mid-air away from gravity, it was actually quite tiring during the shoot; I needed to constantly maintain a cross-legged posture to keep my balance. It relied entirely on the photographer's snapshot skills, as well as the post-production master's skillful ability to erase the support structures.

For the makeup and hair, to match the character's temperament, I chose an extremely fluffy light blonde curly wig paired with highly pigmented red contact lenses to enhance the character's spirit. The base makeup was deliberately made into a pale matte texture, paired with red eyeshadow elongated at the outer corners of the eyes to add a touch of mystery and danger to the character. The shooting location was actually a relatively dark indoor venue, where lighting is not easy to control. However, with the help of dark-toned light and shadow and the red magical ribbon effects surrounding us, we perfectly created Flandre's signature aura of being lonely yet harboring immense power.

Special thanks also go to the photographer @Dongzirao (冬次郎) this time. During the shoot, he knew exactly how to capture the burst moments in the frame, using dark vignettes and local highlights to wonderfully bring out the red-and-white contrast of the outfit. During post-processing, those flying red particle effects also helped compensate for some material deficiencies in my previous cosplay costume design, making the overall photo atmosphere feel more like a dynamic illusion of Anime-style photography.

The Touhou Project series has always been one of the driving forces of my creation. Being able to interpret this character in the real world using my own Touhou fanon design morphology—choosing not to completely copy the original setting but walking a more personalized path—was indeed a very challenging attempt. Although there was a gap between the finished garment and the design draft, details like the teddy bear and apples at the shoot venue also allowed me to find the focus on props and expressiveness from when I first started playing cosplay. This shoot didn't use those cheap post-production filters full of grain, but instead preserved a lot of authentic photography texture, which can be considered a miniature record of my current understanding of the character.