Post-Chapter 1, pre-Chapter 2 Q&A
Originally shared: 2019 December 22
Disclosure: Obselete questions have been removed due to the Definitive version providing an updated canon.
Welcome and thank you for joining me in yet another set of wild ramblings about Lapse?! As the title implies, I opened this Q&A to take questions after Chapter 1, but with Chapter 2 on the horizon and my impatience to get all this chaotic info out to the world, this Q&A sits on a haphazard line between information. I initially planned to open a Q&A after Chapter 2, but I pushed it forward, thinking it would be nice to give interested readers something to chew on between the chapter installments. YOU had questions and I have some answers! I condensed similar questions, but I did my best address the question as generally as possible. Note: I name drop a lot of characters from varying games so the format will be as follows: [game/franchise] character name. This Q&A will cover details about Chapter 1 and will assume you have already experienced it. If you have not, I would recommend doing so before reading as there are spoilers leading to the end of Chapter 1 ahead! Let's get to it!
What is your inspiration for writing the mysteries, murder mysteries and the cases? Since Danganronpa is known for making such intricate cases, what steps do you usually take to make the class trials and cases of Danganronpa Lapse as interesting and well thought out as possible? I enjoy character relations and the things they can get people mixed up in. A lot of cases in Ace Attorney are huge inspirations to me, Rise from the Ashes and Turnabout for Tomorrow in particular are some of my favorites (even though the Blue Badger can go to h*ck). So many characters involved with each other and so many motivations to play off of- the goals, their secrets and their vulnerabilities all culminate into something off the chains! Hotel Dusk is an incredible nugget of character intertwinement. I’m not a huge fan of the murder-y aspect of murder mysteries since they can be pretty jarring (and in DR's case, gruesome), so my focus is more on the 'why' when it comes to any case. I set up Lapse for readers to keep asking why at even the slightest things because that's what's interesting to me; I love asking 'why', keeping the node of info in my head throughout, and being rewarded (or disappointed) when a story later addresses certain things. Although I do love the Danganronpa series for their characters, I find Hotel Dusk, Ghost Trick, 999 + VLR to be much more compelling mysteries despite how contrived some are (but that's the fun of them as well!). Special mention to Return of the Obra Dinn for an extremely contrived example. As for my steps for thinking out trials and cases, I contemplate the thoughts going through the character's heads foremost. In Chapter 1's scenario, Art's thoughts were clouded from the start since he finally arrived at the supposed safe location he always wanted, only to have the group's lives be threatened. Conversations throughout the day led Art to bottle his conflicting emotions and thoughts. The final straw was Pandora’s suspicious note and her outlook on the Ultimate’s roles in society. For trials, I focus solely on making a natural discussion flow. The Mass Panic mechanic works in Akamatu’s case, since she boasts heightened hearing as the Ultimate Pianist, so I tried to add my own minor mechanic in the form of an (unnamed event in game) Event Echo- when Echo tries to think out the facts and events forwards and backwards, creating a sort of resonant play on Echo’s name. As an overall inspiration, I tend to lean toward location-based intrigue and contrived information. I personally enjoy this kind of stuff, a big inspiration for this type of twist would be [VLR] Sigma (I won't go into details if you don't know…! Please don't google it if you don't know either. Please play Virtue's Last Reward.) What was the idea behind Chapter 1’s murder/investigation/trial? Chapter 1 as a whole was very much a technical trial on my end of production. Stitching all these moving parts was essentially me dipping my toe in the water to see how the story would be presented in the best way I was equipped to do so going forward. The product I came out with is a foundation- if anything was too simplistic, I could always add to it. In regards to the murder, I needed it to be suspiciously lacking in clues to continue the air of disbelief, as Lyle will fail to recognize the game is real until it's too late. It's also very closed-off as the cast is already so small and the facts already so few, therefore I intended for readers to be in the dark for a fair moment until the trial, where further information would be revealed. I had to lay the groundwork of how this story would be interacted with so I drew inspiration from Your Turn To Die's discussion segments for the investigation, as I did not have any proper means of free movement within Ren'Py without going way off the deep end. Chapter 2's investigation is much more involved and will only get more involved going forward. As for the trial, simply put there are things some characters know, and things some characters don't know, so the trial discussion would bring to light what Echo knew about the notes existence and subsequently it would bring out the notes existence as a whole to the rest of the class, singling out culprits. This would play on Echo's latent talent of Ultimate Memory, testing those who can line up the facts. Ultimately, the pivot of the trial is when readers remember that during discussion it was Art who mentioned the music. None of the characters know how to conduct themselves in a serious trial, so it's led by the basic action of discussion. Missy might be exempt, but she's being polite. Why 10 students? I created 10 students out of resource necessity. I don't consider myself a confident writer, so I had no interest in creating a slew of 16 students whose personalities could go running wildly out of my control, nor did I want to draw a million character sprites. Writing and designing 10 students was more my speed. Going into Lapse I had no intention of fully recreating the Danganronpa formula anyway, as evidenced by declining to replicate the canon art style (and stiff poses, for that matter) and using a unique font for the logo. I tried to make it clear with those significant elements that Lapse wouldn’t be following too closely the mainline games. What was the process like, in terms of creating and writing up the characters? In terms of personality, appearance, unique characteristics, talents and etc. etc. My process was as follows, bearing in mind my theme and setting came above all. From highest to lowest priority: Talents > The characters’ fates > Story significance > Names > Designs In my original concept document I referred to characters as "Singer does X", "Watchmaker does Y". It's hard to read in hindsight, haha. Talents: For the most part, I just tried to think of talents that hadn't been used in the main games, exception being Kanon Ota. The existing cast and their talents have persisted and remained the same from the initial planning stages. I avoided my personally coined 'modern' talents (Voice Artist, Online Influencer, Web Designer), weapons-users, artist-types and medical-types since I didn't think any of them were very compelling for my purposes. I also refused using Lucky Student and Detective since I feel like they've been done and done at this point. I adore the contrast Danganronpa created between Detectives Kirigiri and Saihara- Kirigiri's strong individualism foils Saihara's reliance on others. It's great writing and I couldn't do anything to add more flavor to the talent overall if I wanted to, haha. However by eliminating the Detective talent, the need for analytic supporting type characters came unto its own in the form of Puzzlemaster and Tactician. Regarding Kanon Ota, I wanted a Photographer because I loved Koizumi and I've always wanted to name a character Kanon. It's a pretty simple reason but I hope I've done Danganronpa justice in creating a contrast between the photographers…! I wanted to create a quite literal opposite to Koizumi, someone who’s namesake was taking pictures of smiling people, and came up with Ota's specialty being rückenfigur. As for designs, I often find myself combing through lookbooks for certain clothing articles and piecing interesting ones together. Color and silhouettes are important to me so I cut bold shapes into the character's outfits (example; Forte's scarf, Sei's coat lapel, Pandora's apron, to name a few). What are the design cues you took for the characters? I could go on about the individual character creations but I'll leave that for another time! Or for a bonus concept art book! I'm undecided!! However, I'll address Echo quickly: I've been wondering, is Echo non-binary? Yep! Echo goes by they/them. And Echo's clothing I took notes from [999] Junpei and his weird top three layers of clothing. Echo wears a blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a grey sweater vest atop that, and a tri-color windbreaker above it all. For their personalities, I admit I wrote everyone to be very mild-mannered. I’m a rather dry-humored person so I couldn’t find it in me to write eccentric outspoken characters, opting instead to write happy-go-lucky/bright characters like Art and Pandora to balance that missing aspect. I’m also not particularly a fan of ‘vulgar’ characters or sharp-tongued characters despite seeing so many in the mainline Danganronpa games, as those characters feel unnatural to me. The situation is clear to everyone (except Echo) that the other students they're with have willingly come to the safehouse and have little to fear, so they behave benevolently. However, the cast's reactions to the killing game turn of events would change that calm atmosphere… (But of course we as the viewers know that this is a Danganronpa story so there's no way it would ever stay so calm!) When I first saw your Fangan, the thing that stood out to me the most was the color palette, I absolutely love it. Probably my favorite color palette in any Fangan I have seen so far. So my question is when you were picking the colors for the characters, was it something that came naturally or was there a lot of different color palette concepts for some of the characters? And if there were a lot of different color palette concepts for a character, will you ever show it and talk about it? Thank you I’m quite flattered! Color does indeed come rather naturally to me as it's typically my favorite thing to work with in illustration/character design (quietly slides my portfolio for examples >illustrations). To be honest, I drew the each of the characters all in one go- I did have one page of initial ideation sketches for most characters, but for the most part when I started their final looks, I went straight with gut feelings on their colors. My general process for character palettes is to start with three/four main colors and work from there. I feel a little silly for using a closely associated set of colors for Missy and Cyrus, but I just bank on Missy's bold red skirt and Cyrus’ shades of brown/neutral tones to create the difference, haha. Only for Forte and Art did I lift inspiration from existing color schemes- Bass.EXE and [Pokemon] Kahili. I suppose the one thing I can say I was particularly aware of was balancing the overall values- half the cast has dark overall values (Missy, Lyle, Sei, Cyrus, Forte) while the remaining have lighter values (Art, Pandora, Ashley, Echo, Kanon). How do you construct the way you establish who lives, who dies, and how their characters are developed? Why did you choose those two to die first? The characters’ fates have been determined by the theme. Aside from the battle of hope and despair, I won't be revealing my theme quite yet… What made you narrow down the setting to a manor? Were there other potential settings you thought of before the manor? The manor was intended from the start, as I wanted to invoke the sense of comfort. An overly luxurious manor with a ridiculous amount of amenities suits the ludicrous nature of Ultimate students as well, don't you think? Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries also may or may not have had a part in enabling my desire to try to replicate a 20's atmosphere. (Side note: I'm IN DESPAIR that Miss Fisher was taken off Netflix!!!!!) How many chapters will Lapse have? Lapse will consist of 5 chapters (excluding the Prologue), with the fifth featuring the final turnabout that reveals all…!! Will you be doing Free Time Events or bonus modes for all individuals? I have something in the works, yes! I realize Free Time Events are typically meant to pad out the in-universe time between the in-game events but given the finite amount of time Lapse partakes in, this sort of personal interaction event will come in a different form. Similarly, three short stories focusing on three characters will be released at the same time as Chapter 2 (but I recommend reading them after Chapter 2 proper). Did Art and Lyle like each other romantically? Also can you reveal the characters' sexualities? They did! It was a fleeting moment of the heart so it’s a bitter situation for Lyle… but that’s Danganronpa for you. Everyone is asexual and it's hard to see my characters as otherwise. Art- panromantic Pandora- lesbian Sei- repressed lesbian Kanon- grey-A Echo- demiromantic Forte- aromantic Cyrus- gay Lyle- demiromantic Missy- lesbian Ash- demiromantic Are you taking plenty of breaks? Are you working too hard? Are you drinking plenty of water and not forcing yourself to work through writers/art block? Take care of yourself. Yes, I take plenty of breaks! Working a full time day job does well in ensuring I’m not glued to my computer (sarcasm). In all seriousness, I always cycle between the various tasks (writing, drawing, coding) to keep a steady momentum moving at all times. And whenever I feel overwhelmed, I take a brisk bike ride (sunny California weather in the pits of December persists, horrifyingly enough)! So far, I haven’t felt too wrung out so I must be doing something remotely reasonable. What's up with Zero? He's the arbiter of the game, behaving as a 'Monokuma' of sorts for the Lapse story. In the Fangan wiki why do I see a Zero Report card? Because I left it in the Chapter 1 game files and forgot to delete it lol. Seems like someone found it.
Aaand that’s it! Thanks for reading this far; I hope to have satisfied some of your curiosity! If not, feel free to toss some more questions my way (bearing in mind spoilers/plot-relevant questions will be ignored). At the time of writing (12/22), Chapter 2 is just on the horizon- CGs are the only thing left and although Chapter 1 didn’t have many, Chapter 2 looks to remedy that. Please stay tuned!