Well... for some of you....
I don't know how involved/invested some of you might be when it comes to this, but back in chapter 4 of "Prescription for Love" I had designed outfits for the two Agreste men and two Tsurugi women to wear to the British Royal Wedding.
I had a couple of reviewers state that I did a wonderful job designing everyone's wedding outfits, and/or they also feel the pain of trying to design new outfits for their characters. It was so great to feel that camaraderie and praise that I figured I'd let you know exactly what I do to get these outfits figured out.
I meant to go over all of this last week, so it would be closer to when I posted the fourth chapter, but with everything else I talked about, and how long it kept me to finish the post, I just forgot. Which means you guys have the delight of learning my process this week instead.
Buckle up, there are a LOT of pictures to go through.... I probably use as many reference pictures as artists do. I just wish I could DRAW the finished product to show everyone... Oh well, my readers seem to have a decent mental image. We'll see now if I was able to describe the below in a good enough capacity that you, dear reader, were able to imagine what I did.
To start, sadly, I don't know why, but it seems I deleted the reference pics I had for Gabriel and Adrien's matching white tuxes, and I can't re-find the pictures I used via Google image. At least, I can't re-find them in a timely enough manner for it to be worth it.
Just know that I spent probably hours online flipping through pictures of tuxedos of varying degree of formalness. I saw some really sharp-looking white tuxedos with waistcoats, and, with both Gabriel and Adrien wearing white jackets/cover shirts normally, it seemed to fit them.
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| Gabriel, Adrien, Kagami, and her mother from the "Miraculous Ladybug" episode Backwarder |
Once I decided on a white tux, I wanted a bit of an accent. I'm not entirely sure how I stumbled upon silver paisley, but I did find a lovely picture and ran with it. Along those lines, I just pictured Gabriel in a top hat, and it worked for me. Same with Adrien in a trilby. I would love to show you what I envisioned, but I just spent the past 45 minutes trying to quickly edit a few clips from Style Queen with Marinette's derby hat replaced with a trilby. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a trilby image at the right angles for the edits to work, so they all look like these...
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| Last one is the best, I think.... |
The real problem, though, was trying to figure out what the Tsurugi women were wearing. I did a few internet searches, resulting in kimono-like dresses such as this one for Kagami's mother.
I still wasn't very satisfied, though. So I went to one of my mobile games. It's a fashion designer/dress-up game called Love, Nikki. In the game, the Cloud Empire has very Chinese-oriented clothing, but there are also kimonos, so I figured I'd flip through the Cloud Empire clothing to try to find something Kagami and her mother would wear.
For Mrs. Tsurugi, I put together this.
After an hour or so, and coming up with the above look for Mrs. Tsurugi, it was Kagami's turn. I knew I wanted her in red, and in a more modern look. My Love, Nikki take was this one.
Anyway, back to the internet I went. As I looked for "modernized kimonos" and "Japanese modern wedding outfits" I stumbled upon this article: Antique Kimonos Elegantly Transformed into Contemporary Wedding Dresses
The long and short of the article - which isn't long to begin with - is that designer dress company Watabe Wedding pioneered the trend of modernizing kimonos as colorful Japanese wedding gowns. Out of their collection of five gowns they rent out to brides, these are the three I combined to eventually design Kagami's dress for my story.
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| The Kanazuru (“gold crane”) designed by Watabe Wedding |
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| The Tsurumomiji (“crane maple”) by Watabe Wedding |
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| Marinette, freaking out about Adrien and Kagami having a weekend away, starts envisioning how Adrien would fall in love with Kagami after seeing her dolled up. |
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| The Botangiku (“peony and chrysanthemum”) by Watabe Wedding |
The last bit was Kagami's sleeves. In truth, that idea came from my own wedding gown. It was an October wedding, so I wanted belled sleeves to wear during the ceremony, and then I could slip them back off for the reception. However, on top of that personal spring of inspiration, I also found images of looooooong sleeves like these, that kind of matched the look of a furisode kimono.
I wasn't QUITE done yet, though. Mrs. Tsurugi had her hair up in the elegant buns showcased in that Love, Nikki design, but Kagami just had her hair down. Even in Marinette's imagination, Kagami's hair was down with just an accent in it. I wasn't a fan. She needed a bit more as well. So back to the internet I went, searching for updos for bobbed hair. I eventually found this.
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| Hacker Girl Facebook sticker by Birdman, Inc |
The above process kept me about three or four days to accomplish, so you can probably see (a) why I wasn't able to write at a fast enough pace to get the story done and up in a timely manner after Backwarder aired, and (b) why I have a love/hate relationship with the idea of designing outfits for characters....
This is why I gave up fashion designing, and why I'm sticking with writing.
But all of that was what I did back in February. What did I do THIS week?
Well, in part, I slacked off a little.
I didn't finish and post my blog update last week until Thursday, so you can read that post to see what I was doing on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Friday was supposed to be when I would post chapter 7 of "Prescription for Love." That way I was still, kind of, keeping with my "every three days" posting schedule. As you could probably guess, I failed at that deadline.
I had the chapter written up, but part of it was Kagami's story tagged onto the tail end of chapter 6. I realized it didn't really work in her POV, so I gave it back to Adrien. Which meant I had to rework a few things so it fit his perspective better. The second part of the story was from Adrien's POV to begin with, but it was an awkward transition from Kagami's chapter, so THAT needed to be fixed. Once those opening parts of the chapter were polished, I realized I wasn't a fan of how I described Adrien FINALLY getting the medicine Marinette asked for, so that needed to be reworked as well. Lastly, I felt that, as the sort of culmination of the whole story, the drive to find the meds that has pushed Adrien throughout the plot, the chapter was kind of bland.
I zipped through their Sunday in London, got the pills for Marinette, and had the quartet on the train within 1800 words. That was too quick. I mean, it kept me 6 chapters, and roughly 9,000 words, to describe everything that happened during their Saturday, but only a fraction of that length was spent on Sunday? The day where everything kind of comes to a head? I couldn't rush this.
So I slowed things down. I showcased Kagami's attempt to help Adrien, and Adrien's frustration that they walked "all over London" - as he says in the episode - to find the medicine. The end result was an extra day needed to write and edit. Which meant the chapter was OF COURSE late and posted on Saturday instead of Friday.
Late Saturday as well. It posted at 10:30pm my time. I'm good at this deadline thing...
"Chapter 7"
This chapter, after slowing things down, became MASSIVE, compared to my other chapters. Well... other chapters within PfL. This past chapter certainly isn't massive when compared to chapters in my other works.
Anyway, my point is, I was proud that this story had "bite-sized" chapters of only 1000 words or so. Then I inched closer to 2000 words. And then this chapter? Darn near 4000 words. Granted, that was the average size of a “Peeping Tomcat” chapter, but... well.... I wanted shorter chapters for this story. I mean, it was SUPPOSED to be a simple story inspired by a single episode. I wasn't expecting it to blow up to a 13,000+ word story! And I still have at least one more chapter to write, maybe two.
Worse yet is that I'm still not completely satisfied with my timing for Chapter 7. Upon doing further research for my upcoming chapter, I realized that Adrien and Kagami seem to be stopping to eat a LOT in this last chapter.
- Kagami and Adrien had breakfast at about 8am, and it takes roughly 30min to eat.
- Then lunch less than 4hrs later at noon, which again takes about 30 or 45 minutes to eat.
- Then they had to try out the British tradition of Afternoon Tea at about 3pm, which meant only two/two-and-a-half hours between meals...
- While Adrien and Kagami finished their tea early and went to go feed ducks and talk, Mrs. Tsurugi enjoyed a full hour for her tea, which means they went back to touring about 4pm.
- I had the train leaving at 8pm to arrive in Paris at 10pm, but I forgot about time zones, so the train has to actually leave at 7pm.
- Which means, when they stopped for an early dinner before meeting up with Gabriel and boarding their train, they had to have stopped no later than 6pm.
- And that's based on the idea of them both getting, and eating, their meals in about 20min!
- So, in truth, they probably stopped closer to 5:30. WAAAAY too soon after having Tea!
Maybe I shouldn't have had poor Adrien try a "Full English" breakfast at the start of the chapter...
There were a couple of other things with the chapter that bugged me, like a distinct lack of location transition towards the end. Adrien is in the pharmacy, then there's internal monologue and contemplation, and then, suddenly, Adrien is at the train station and asking his father something.
No mention of reaching the hotel to gather their bags from the storage lockers, where their stuff was moved to after 11am check-out. No mention of meeting up with Gabriel after a day away sight-seeing. No mention of reaching the train station. Just a vague hand wave, and BOOM! They're in the train station!
So, I'll most likely go back and polish up Chapter 7 one more time in the future. For right now? It's at about 85%, so I need to focus on finishing the story first.
Which will be fun, since, while rewriting Chapter 7 in the first place, Adrien threw a curveball at me that I need to handle. I also never got around to actually finishing the story before I started posting. Remember a few posts ago, when I said I couldn't QUITE hit my goal of one new story per month because I couldn't finish PfL in February? Yeah, I was so focused on my sister's birthday and playing catch-up polishing off my first draft, that I never actually finished it.
A new chapter is SUPPOSED to go up today, and I have a decent chunk of the chapter written already. Who knows if the chapter will actually make it to being published though.... Wish me luck, fast fingers, a steady flow of inspiration, and a LOT of discipline to not distract myself.
Also, don't forget to check in on your favorite link to my story for that next chapter update:
"Prescription for Love"
Keep in mind that if you follow the story on FFN, subscribe to the story on AO3, or follow me on DA, you'll get an email notification once I post the new chapter. That way you can be one of the first to read it! And you don't have to wait for the link in my post next Tuesday. Yay!
Alternatively, you could follow me on Tumblr to see me post a promo for the latest chapter once it's live. Lots of ways to find me, find the story, and find out when a new chapter or story is posted!
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| NuaNia Facebook sticker by PRANEAT |
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