I Spent a Whole Day Just on the Dress Explanation (with Illustrations?)

My own website features a novel with a unique function where clicking on parts of the text displays an 'explanation'…as I wrote in a previous article…↓

Actually, I was so particular about that 'explanation' that I spent an entire day on just that once.

Specifically, it was the explanation for the 'Dress of Sky-Weaving' that appears in Chapter 9, 'Feast of Nightmares' (and subsequent chapters) of 'Island Where Dreams Fall'...

Because this dress is a fantasy world's magic dress, it has a unique appearance.

Just because I wanted to show off that 'uniqueness' visually, not just through text, I ended up putting in an absurd amount of effort.

Since I have almost no CG production skills, I use images from stock material collections for my site.

However, there is no way that an image of a 'special dress' like the one in my original fantasy novel would be in existing stock collections.

That said, I naturally do not have the skills to create such a 'dress illustration' from scratch.

So, I compromised by taking a silhouette asset of a woman in a princess-like dress from a stock collection, arranged it, and recreated the 'dress that appears in the novel'.

Since it was originally a shadow-like silhouette asset in only one color, I colored it in like a 'coloring book' only on the dress part to express the magic dress.

Because it's not just a dress but a 'magic dress,' I was also particular about how I applied the colors.

I colored it through trial and error, trying to recreate even the 'light' and 'atmosphere' so that viewers would think, 'Ah, this is truly the dress exactly as it was written in the novel...'

Moreover, I wasn't satisfied with just coloring it; I even created gimmicks using GIF animations and rollover effects to recreate the 'magic' itself.

Furthermore, I wasn't satisfied with just one, so I ended up making multiple versions (there is a daytime version, an evening version, and a nighttime version).

…Even though I work a regular job on weekdays and can only do creative work after I get home or on my days off…

I think to myself, "What a fool I am..." for spending one of my precious days off on something like this.

However, I am satisfied with the quality of the explanation (especially the dress images), so I have no regrets.

Since the multiple dress versions have been distributed to each customized version (this novel has a total of four versions based on fantasy level intensity and the presence or absence of furigana), I suspect some people might not even realize that "other dress patterns exist"…

I was creating them while thinking, "I hope at least some people will be happy and say, 'Wow! What pointless attention to detail!'"

(My entire creative process is full of such "pointlessly time-consuming luxurious obsessions." It is self-satisfaction, but having things like this makes my work fun and boosts my motivation.)