Week 8: Finished plot, final cover, and final title

Hello, It is Week 8. Week 7 was Spring Break, so I will be covering progress during that week in this post as well. 

There is not much to say, but the overall plot draft has been completed. The story will be short but will center around giving the reader a fragmented view of the characters trauma as well as their emotions. I will try to refine it to be just within the range that it is believable and emotionally, somewhat understandable, but leaves much to interpretation and analysis. 

Additionally, I have also finished the overall drafting sketches of the major scenes. I will share a few below to give a sense of what they look like currently. 

After creating the plot, I have also decided to create one more full work for the cover. I felt the first cover I made was not as inspired by the plot, which I had not even fully created at that point. The characters I felt were very arbitrarily created as I have only had some designs for them. However, after drawing them in multiple angles as well as messing around with character details such as the eyes especially to portrait a certain personality type. I felt that creating a new one was appropriate. Personally, I was also simply somewhat unhappy with the previous cover as I had much less practice, especially of drawing the characters themselves. So, I will share that as well at the end of this post.

With the plot done, and a new cover, came a final title idea as well. I decided to call it 余韻だけが残る or roughly “Only and aftertaste remains” in English. I felt this was a nice title, as in Japanese, it is both subjectless and timeless. I also felt that it reflected the plot quite well, both emotionally and physically. The 余韻, meaning “aftertaste” has the connotation of the emotional feeling after an event as opposed to the literal definition of aftertaste, being 後味. I felt that the work itself, although more focused on literal or physical actions that the characters take, are fundamentally being driven by emotions, left from trauma we don’t fully understand. I also just liked the idea that just like a physical aftertaste which can change the flavor of a kiss, an emotional one caused by trauma can also change an interaction between the characters.

As might be clear, this new title is much more thought out compared to the original filler I had put in. In the next weeks, you should expect finalized works of the sketches to compare to, and ultimately also filling in of the transition scenes in between the major scenes.

Without further ado, here is the art from this, and last week: