This low quality photo (that features a sketch that will appear exclusively in Visions) shows the original design chosen for Satsuki (shown for the first time thanks to Too) and the modern design, which Too helped creating.

As I said in a previous post, Satsuki’s original design was heavily influenced by D4 Princess character Doria [...]]]>

This low quality photo (that features a sketch that will appear exclusively in Visions) shows the original design chosen for Satsuki (shown for the first time thanks to Too) and the modern design, which Too helped creating.

As I said in a previous post, Satsuki’s original design was heavily influenced by D4 Princess character Doria Rurido. Her role in the first draft was not that big, she was a journalist tied to the occult trying to uncover the truth about Yumiko. She was very detached, to the point of being cold, and her intentions towards Yumiko weren’t that clear. She already possessed demonic powers, but they were completely different. During the various revisions, her role started to grow, becoming the spectator of the unstoppable descent of Yumiko towards the dark. At this point, the possibility of having the “short novel” illustrated was being discussed, and the first real artwork of Satsuki looked like this:

It was quite a departure from what I had in mind. Still, I liked the new design more, so I decided to change a few things in her behavior. She became more active, her role grew a lot, and she almost assumed the features of the most recent version. A few years later, when Too became involved, he slightly alterated the second design, resulting in this:

Too opted for a reinterpreation of what he saw, adding a more tonic/sexy image to Satsuki that I saw fit to the new flow of the novel. Therefore, I made some more changes, and the character became what she is now. Quite a long journey, development-wise.

This will be the last post till 26th August, but we will keep working on The Path to the Light. As a final gift, I present you a work in progress from Visions:

Have a nice holiday!

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First of all, you don’t get very far in the publishing industry if you don’t have some kind of connection: the number of manuscripts received is so high that 90% [...]]]> Some people may wonder why we chose the way of self-publishing instead of going through a “proper” publisher. There are a number of reasons for this.

First of all, you don’t get very far in the publishing industry if you don’t have some kind of connection: the number of manuscripts received is so high that 90% of them are automatically discarded. Worse, the selection process is flawed. Recently someone in the UK sent to five publisher a copy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice without the author’s name. Four out of five refused the manuscript without even looking at it! Only the fifth noticed what it was.

Second, the genre of illustrated novel is not very popular outside Japan. True, there are a number of translations of famous novels such as Slayers, Shakugan no Shana, Boogiepop wa warawanai, but most of them didn’t perform too well sales-wise. Add this to the fact that we are inspiring to the Japanese works (but with our own style, not that inspiration is bad by default) and chances are even more slim.

Therefore, why not taking the chance of publishing it ourselves? Please remember that the means of publication mean nothing about the content: anyone could put up a book on Lulu.com, but each case has to be valued individually. As for us, we tried our best not to be sloppy (though some errors slipped in Lost Innocence, thanks to those who reported them!), having someone (Melissa Adkins) design the cover and two English teachers (Dr. Alessandra Frigerio and Dr. Vilma Bettoni) to do the grammatical corrections.

The end results are two books (with a third coming out). If you want to take a look, feel free to. Just don’t shun them because they’re self-published.

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