Commissioning Lilly: Working with Cuddly Octopus & Shadowgrave

• Warning: This post contains NSFW imagery (drawn nudity).
• Tip: Click or tap most of the images to view them in a larger size!

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Over the past few years, I’ve taken a foray into dakimakuras (Japanese body pillows) and their associated anime character covers. I wrote about my experience getting a legitimate cover from a Japanese auction website, with a design featuring Maki Nishikino from Love Live! School Idol Project. Next, I bought a print-on-demand cover from Cuddly Octopus, which depicted Hanako Ikezawa from the visual novel Katawa Shoujo.

Last year, I took a huge plunge and commissioned a brand new cover design from an artist called Shadowgrave. I did this through the Cuddly Octopus commission service. The cover I paid to bring into existence features Lilly Satou, another Katawa Shoujo character. In this blog post, I’ll be deep-diving into the commissioning process from start to finish.

Motivations: A Gift to the KS Community

For those unaware, the Katawa Shoujo visual novel started off as merely a gag illustration done by an artist named RAITA at the end of a doujin (fan comic). The concept of the illustration was basically, “here are some cute girls with various physical disabilities; wouldn’t it be interesting if they were the protagonists of a dating simulator?” The image gained traction on the 4chan image board, a number of folks decided to try making an actual visual novel using those character designs and descriptions, and the rest is history.

In short, Katawa Shoujo was a volunteer-led, fan-made work created by people who were simply passionate about making a great visual novel. The final product from 2012 was (and is) free of charge, and many of the developers (and writers, and artists, and composers) have dropped off the internet’s radar over the years. Meanwhile, the game’s turned into something of a cult classic, especially with a boost of mainstream attention that Doki Doki Literature Club brought to the visual novel genre in 2017.

I won’t go into my full experience with Katawa Shoujo in this blog post; I’ve detailed some of it in previous podcasts and other content, while other aspects are more personal. To put it very succinctly, the game was there for me during a part of my life when I needed it, and its story changed my outlook on relationships, friendships, and life in general.

When a piece of content touches me, I tend to want to give back to it creatively in some way. With Katawa Shoujo, I organized a two-part playthrough with a large group of friends, but that was limited to the first act due to the nature of the game (both the adult content aspect and the long and slow nature of the story). I also got involved in a fan-made documentary project that was supposed to explore the game’s development process, but that project petered out due to development materials being lost to time, developers no longer being present, and the difficulty of making game development look exciting on video.

So when I started thinking about commissioning a cover of possibly my favorite character, Lilly, I quickly began to see it less as a personal purchase and more as the sponsorship of something for all Katawa Shoujo fans to enjoy. The somewhat hefty price tag, which I’ll break down later, wouldn’t have made sense if it was for a random character from a commercial anime; but there is no company profiting off of Katawa Shoujo. If nobody sponsors (or draws) fan art, then artwork simply doesn’t get made.

With all of that in mind, my motivation for this project was to bring into the world a high-quality dakimakura design that fans of Lilly Satou would appreciate, and as a secondary goal, to have it be one that would complement the existing Hanako Ikezawa design for collectors who get both.

Reading the Fine Print

The Cuddly Octopus commission service page provides some very basic details about the commissioning process. First of all, Cuddly Octopus has a number of artists (currently 24) who are “on-staff” or available for commissioning. You as a customer get to approach Cuddly Octopus and request a design from a specific artist, who’s free to accept or pass on the gig.

This setup is somewhat unique. With regular pieces of fan art, it would be more common to approach an artist directly (either via a platform like Pixiv or Skeb, or via social media DMs). Some regular fan artists will draw dakimakura cover designs on request, although they may not be as well-versed in what makes a good pillow design or be as used to drawing those angles and perspectives. With Cuddly Octopus, you don’t get the artist’s contact information; you discuss the details of your request with a Cuddly Octopus employee (named Hrothmund), and he translates your requests to the artist, then passes assets back from the artist to you.

With the Cuddly Octopus commission service, you don’t get intellectual property rights for the resulting images. When dealing with individual artists, I’d expect this to be somewhat negotiable, or the artist might retain the rights. With this service, Cuddly Octopus owns the design, and it becomes their product. You do get full-resolution versions of each design the artist produces, so you could privately go to a different daki cover printing company (e.g. Dakimakuri) to have a cover printed there instead. But actually offering the design up for anyone to download in full-resolution would be leaking Cuddly Octopus’s product (and making things easier for bootleggers), and would be a copyright violation.

Being used to the mindset of a content creator where I need to have full rights over the assets that I use, and being concerned with the longevity and permanence of what I’m buying, these terms were almost enough to put me off. The fact that I get a full-resolution copy of the design is sort of a safety valve; if Cuddly Octopus ever goes out of business and stops offering the design in their shop, then I have the option of taking a gamble and posting those full-resolution files elsewhere for use with other printers. (I don’t plan to do this as long as Cuddly Octopus is around and offering this design.) Also, at the end of the day, they are providing a service keeping the artwork in their catalog, so them profiting on the design (rather than me) doesn’t feel great but does feel fair.

Making Contact

I sent an initial email to Cuddly Octopus’s support email address on 13 November 2022. I mentioned the artist that I wanted to commission, as well as the character and franchise of the design. I requested the artist’s rate, since the terms page said the “average cost” is “around $1,000” but noted some artists cost more than others.

They got back to me about five hours later, at 3AM MST. The employee who replied to my email was named Hrothmund, and he was the only Cuddly Octopus employee I had any contact with throughout the process. He broke the bad news that Shadowgrave’s rate is $1,300 USD for the artwork (slightly more than the quoted average cost), and getting four printed covers of the design(s) costs an additional $150. He also let me know that Shadowgrave had two other works in the queue, and that if I wanted to join the queue, then I’d still need to wait until those were finished before proceeding.

I needed some time to consider the cost and also to responsibly save up the money, so I didn’t reply right away. A few months later, on 18 March 2023, I reached out again confirming the price hadn’t changed and asking to be added to the queue. Around a month later, on 13 April 2023, I was contacted again. At this point, Hrothmund asked to move the conversation over to Discord DMs; that was essentially the end of e-mail communications.

After providing my Discord username, I received a peek and a greeting via a couple of branded images. Hrothmund’s changed his profile photo in the year it’s taken me to write this blog post, but at the time, he was using a yellow-haired avatar that matched the character shown in the second image (and was just going by the username “Hrothmund” instead of the current “Hrothopus”).

Hrothmund asked if I’d given some thought to how I’d like the design– poses, clothes, expressions, etc. I took a few hours to collect my ideas before responding.

Design Considerations

My top priority with this design was being true to the character of Lilly Satou. I started off by linking to her Katawa Shoujo website description, since that includes some basic measurements (height, weight, and bust/waist/hips). I also mentioned that I’d like the background material’s texture to look similar to the existing Hanako design, and for the poses to be similar (and mirrored, if possible, so they can be placed next to each other as a pair).

One of the next things I mentioned was Lilly’s blindness. While not her only defining characteristic, being blind is obviously the trait that landed Lilly a spot at Yamaku and in Katawa Shoujo. I thought it would be important to ensure that’s reflected in the artwork. But how do you visually show that a character is blind?

The most common mistake fan artists make with Lilly is drawing her very clearly looking at something. It seems like an obvious thing to avoid, but when a piece of art has a focal point, it’s natural to make the characters look towards it. Lilly has excellent hearing, and will know to turn towards whatever’s going on– but her eyes don’t focus directly at it. Instead, she simply turns her head in a general direction.

With this being a daki cover, though, that’s not quite good enough– Lilly’s going to be the only thing on the cover, anyway, so there’d be nothing to show her not looking at. With that in mind, I let the artist know that Lilly’s blindness is sometimes communicated by having fewer details in her eyes– less clear pupils and less reflections than you might expect from any ordinary character.

I also pointed out Lilly’s crinkly blonde hair (owing to her being half-Scottish). I’ve grown somewhat fond of that detail because seeing it in a screenshot (without any other characters) made me think it was simply part of Katawa Shoujo’s art style, which caused me to avoid playing the game for some time before I really discovered it.

For the clothing, I wanted to start with the Yamaku school uniform. I made sure to note that Lilly’s tights are white, as opposed to Hanako’s black nylon. While looking through source material, I was surprised to find that Lilly’s tights actually aren’t visible in any of her character sprites– they’re only briefly shown in the infamous panty-shot CG when she’s standing off with Shizune– although they’re also shown on the cover of the player’s guide, which I consider to be official artwork.

Finally, we have facial expressions. As I mentioned in my unboxing of the Hanako cover, Hanako looked borderline uncomfortable in her design– and in the game, she’s often uncomfortable in front of other people in general. While Lilly’s also politely soft-spoken, she’s much more confident and more comfortable in her own skin than Hanako.

Despite her conservative demeanor, Lilly also likes to have fun in private company. In the fandom, she has a bit of a reputation for being surprisingly promiscuous. This manifests in the scenes involving alcohol, as well as those involving sex.

In order to properly reflect her personality, and to make sure her design’s fun to look at, I described her as such:

For the expression, Lilly is not nervous like Hanako; she’s instead a bit playful, but mainly just “at ease.” (Hanako’s R-18 expression was on the verge of being too uncomfortable for me; Lilly should look more content/like she’s enjoying herself, albeit still modest.)

In case Shadowgrave wasn’t familiar with the character/game, I also put together a couple of folders with game assets and official artwork. I made sure to note that I liked Shadowgrave’s style, and that these were just intended to serve as references.

From there, Hrothmund passed the details of my request over to Shadowgrave, and we set about waiting for him to create the initial sketches for the dakimakura cover design.

Communication

From when Hrothmund said he’d pass the info over to Shadowgrave, it took about 13 days for Shadowgrave to come back with the first couple of sketches. In the meantime, Hrothmund started discussing the different variants I’d requested.

I initially requested a minimum set of variants that would match what Hanako’s design had available:

• All Ages
  • Front: School uniform, fully clothed
  • Back: Bra & full tights
• R-18
  • Front: School uniform, partially off
  • Back: Top released or off, tights partially off

The way I structured these bullet points matches the buttons you’d click on the Cuddly Octopus website to select each option (in Hanako’s case, the “All Ages” button and the “R-18” button). This would end up causing confusion later on… but before that, Hrothmund asked a question that was the start of a successful upsell.

My initial response indicated that I’d considered the night gown already, and I would have preferred to have that on the back of the cover (with the school uniform on the front). However, Hanako’s design (thanks to whoever commissioned it) simply has her underwear on the back, so putting Lilly in her night gown would mean they don’t match.

Digging for pricing information, I got Hrothmund to tell me that additional variants beyond the standard front/back SFW/NSFW quartet run around an extra 25% to 50%, depending on the artist. He also mentioned, though, that some artists (including Shadowgrave) will include a completely nude variant for free.

While brainstorming ways to fit the nightgown in while keeping the number of variants (and the cost) to a minimum, I tried to ask about the possibility of having all-ages variants for the school uniform and the night gown (each with the respective underwear on the back), and a single R-18 variant with partially removed daytime underwear on the front and night gown underwear on the back. It took quite a while in our conversation for me to understand from Hrothmund that this wasn’t possible, or at least wouldn’t be worth it.

The reason is that, although I as a customer was thinking of each set of images as a front/back pair that would be printed on a standard pillow case, the artist (or at least Hrothmund) was thinking of each set as an all-ages image and a corresponding R-18 edit. Take the example image that Hrothmund sent me below:

As you can see, rather than ordering the images as front/back front/back, they’re ordered SFW/NSFW SFW/NSFW. The reason is that the NSFW version is essentially just an edit of the SFW version (or, if you’d prefer to think of it the other way, the SFW version is just the NSFW version with clothes drawn on top). Apparently, most of the artist’s work goes into figuring out the pose and the majority of the outfit, and the extra fabric or skin shading that makes up the difference between R-18 and all-ages takes negligible effort.

What all of this means is that, even though I think the R-18 variant of the Yamaku school uniform was a less-than-stellar idea (since it makes no sense for the bra and panties to be missing underneath the uniform), that image is included in the cost of the all-ages school uniform image, so not taking it is just throwing some of the money away. Likewise, if I don’t ask for a front pose with fully-put-on underwear, then I can’t get a front pose with partially-removed underwear.

I do understand the logic behind this after-the-fact, but it wasn’t intuitive to me initially (simply because that’s not how I select what to buy from Cuddly Octopus’s own website when purchasing already-made designs). For his part, Hrothmund didn’t seem to understand what I was even talking about when I tried to refer to pairs of designs as front/back the way they’re organized on the website. I ended up getting incredibly annoyed when I was trying to clarify exactly how this worked and he wouldn’t give me a simple yes/no response.

Take the following snippet of conversation, beginning with me almost getting to the bottom of this:

The fact that Hrothmund somehow took “you communicate your commissioning so disconnected from your website” to mean literally communicating on a different platform from the website shows that even at that stage of the conversation, he had absolutely no clue what I was referring to. The Cuddly Octopus website has very obvious buttons to switch between variants:

Even if this isn’t how things work behind the scenes, an employee (possibly the sole employee) of this website should probably understand that a customer might be talking about these buttons when discussing a commission, and be prepared to simply explain that that’s not how the images get drawn, so it’s not how they’re billed.

That rant aside, we eventually got that squared away, and Hrothmund was generally very polite and pleasant to work with when it came to providing feedback on the artwork. I ended up getting an absurd number of variations total (one of the highest numbers I’ve seen on Cuddly Octopus’s website), with two outfits (each with a SFW and NSFW variant) plus two free nude variants (one with the hair bow and one without). I didn’t actually want both sides of every variant, but the extras were essentially included with the package, and options are usually good to have (especially since everyone has different tastes).

Sketches & Works-in-Progress

Here comes the fun part: actually seeing Shadowgrave’s work! I’m going to show the progression between each stage that I saw here.

In order to not facilitate unauthorized reproduction of Cuddly Octopus’s designs, I’ve intentionally scaled these images down before uploading them to my blog. Full-color images are scaled to the same size as Cuddly Octopus uses for their website’s preview images (195×600 per side)– by using the same resolution as what they already publish themselves, I can be sure I’m not violating their wishes. Black-and-white sketches are scaled to double that size, since they wouldn’t be suitable for printing.

To start off with, here are the very first two sets of sketches I received on 26 April 2023:

A great start! As expected, Shadowgrave nailed the basic character features, poses, and expressions. The art style already matches the Hanako design.

One additional piece of miscommunication was apparent from this, though: in the SFW Back image, Lilly appears to be wearing thigh-high stockings with panties, rather than full tights. (I can understand this one, as different people have different definitions of the difference between “tights,” “stockings,” and “pantyhose,” and I’d imagine they’d get even more uncertain when translating into another language.) I did ask to make sure this wasn’t an intentional change or recommendation by Shadowgrave, and Hrothmund seemed fairly confident it was just a misunderstanding, so we agreed to ask for that to be corrected in the next iteration.

About one day later, we got the next set, including a pajama variant:

After the last long conversation regarding variants, I had three main points of feedback regarding the artwork itself:

• The shorts being pinched on SFW 2 Front looked strange. I know that happened because Shadowgrave was trying to fit the new outfit into the same pose, but I asked if he could have the shorts be on normally and straighten out the index finger to match that.
• I asked if we could get the hair bow removed from the pajama variants (SFW 2 and NSFW 2), since Lilly’s hair is always down when we see her wearing her night gown in the game. (In order to make sure this was really what I wanted, I roughly mocked it up by just erasing it in the existing images.)
• In the NSFW 2 variant, I requested the shorts to be around only one ankle instead of stretched between both, in a manner similar to one of the Katawa Shoujo CGs; to make room for it, I also asked for the shoes to be removed from that image, since it doesn’t make sense for her to have just kicked her shoes off while wearing the night gown. I also mentioned that I’d imagined the pajama top fully unbuttoned in that variant (again, understanding he’d left one button closed to fit the pose easier).

Like clockwork, after about a day, we got the next revisions back from Shadowgrave:

It took one more round of back-and-forth to get the hair bow removed from the back of the pajama variants to match the front.

I’m glad I was allowed to ask for changes during this process, since it did take a decent amount of tweaks to get things exactly where I wanted them. At this point, though, I was happy with where we’d landed, and I was ready to move on in the process– which involved payment.

Price & Payment

To recap, there’d been no upfront payment before having the sketches done. Payment happens when you sign off on the sketches, after which the artist cleans them up and colors them in.

In USD, the price breakdown was as such:

• $1,300 base price (4 images): this includes SFW and NSFW variants of a front/back design.
• $300 additional outfit fee (4 images): this got me the pajama edits, also with SFW and NSFW variants of the front and back.
• $150 printing cost (4 prints): this covered four physical dakimakura cover prints, which is about half off from what you’d normally pay ordering through the website.

The total in USD was $1,750. Interestingly, payment was not collected in United States dollars, Chinese yuan, or Japanese yen, but in euros. With the exchange rate at the time, it came out to €1,573— plus an $11.40 transfer fee. Hrothmund requested payment via Wise, which is a common platform for international currency conversion and payments.

The Wise payment method was a little clunky. Hrothmund gave me a different name for the payment recipient than I’d seen listed anywhere else, as well as a Cuddly Octopus-related Gmail address (as opposed to the @cuddlyoctopus.com addresses listed on their website). When I punched the email address into Wise, the name came up as Cuddly Octopus instead of that random other name, anyway. Hrothmund gave me the recipient account number to confirm I had the correct one.

I had to complete identity verification using a government photo ID for Wise to complete the transfer, but to Wise’s credit, that process only took about one day to settle. I sent the exact amount in euros that Hrothmund quoted me, but Wise actually debted me a few dollars less in USD ($1,744.35 including the transfer fee).

With that out of the way, it was time to sit back and wait again.

Coloring & Finishing

About four days after Wise finished sending the money, I got a final set of black-and-white artwork with cleaner lines than the previous sketches. For some reason, half of them were lower resolution than the other half (and they weren’t simply split by variant, but seemingly randomly).

It only took two more days after that to get a set with initial coloring, which was also when the fabled nude set appeared.

There was another small problem that popped up in this set– Lilly now had white stockings on with her pajamas in SFW 2 Front, which hadn’t been discussed before and wasn’t part of the sketches. Hrothmund said it was most likely a layer mistake (meaning the stockings for the NSFW school uniform version were on their own layer, and that layer was mistakenly applied when Shadowgrave exported the SFW pajama version). Along with adjusting that, I also asked to have the shoes removed from the front of the nude set.

It was a full two weeks before the next round of images arrived, and this time, they had shading!

My only remaining question with this set was whether it would be possible to remove the hair bow from at least one of the sides of the nude variant. Back on the 7th, along with the shoes, I’d also suggested removing the bow from the front side, and also having Lilly’s eyes closed as they are in the SFW pajama variant– that way, there’d be more of a difference between the front and the back, since the poses are fairly similar when there’s not a change of clothes involved.

I never got an answer about the eyes (I could just photoshop the relevant portion of Lilly’s face from the nightgown option onto the nude version if I ever want that in the future), but I did get an entire additional nude variant without the hair bow.

The final set, six days later, came with a presumably full-resolution .tif file for each image (the resolution was about twice that of the previews I’d previously been receiving from Hrothmund– a whopping 4,252 x 13,072 pixels each). I’m a little disappointed I didn’t get layered files such as PSDs, since I know the artist was working in layers from some of Hrothmund’s earlier comments, but it’s not like it would make a lot of practical difference compared to slicing and overlaying the .tif files.

Publishing & Ordering

Cuddly Octopus wasted no time publishing the design on their website– they were posted for purchase the same day I received the finished set of images from Hrothmund.

On the day Hrothmund sent me the images, he accidentally included a version of the nude back-side image that was missing the coloring for one of the nipples (again, likely a layer mistake). He sent me a corrected version about six hours later, before I’d even had a chance to see the broken version. However, five hours after that, I saw the broken version had been published on Cuddly Octopus’s website.

Although Hrothmund told me he’d fix it the next day, the defective preview was still online four days later on 31 May; when I mentioned it to him again that day, he said he was aware, but still didn’t fix it. When I reminded him a third time nearly a month later on 23 June, he finally corrected it in a matter of hours.

When it came to placing my own order, I knew I wanted a SFW school uniform set that would match the Hanako cover I already had, as well as a SFW pajama set since that fits in better on a bed. For the third cover, I went with the pajama NSFW front and the school uniform NSFW back– that gave me the best of both worlds, since it included the pulled down shorts just like in the game (and omitted the canonically inaccurate commando school uniform), but still included the tights action on the back.

I also knew I wanted a nude cover for the fourth option, but I was torn on what specific combination to get. With my suggestion of having the eyes closed on the front ignored, the front and back look almost the same, so it was obvious I should get the hair bow on one and hair down on the other. Considering the back side also has a pillow under Lilly’s knees, my first instinct was to have the ribbon on the back, for the following reasons:

• It provides a very clean side (the front) with no extra features at all.
• Since her arm’s raised on the back, it looks like she just got done tying her hair up.
• The ribbon helps balance out the asymmetrical alignment of the breasts on the back.

However, the more I looked at the complete set I was ordering, the more it seemed to make sense to include the ribbon on the front and not on the back, which results in:

• Two versions of each side including the ribbon, and two without (rather than three and one).
• Having both an eyes-closed and eyes-open version with and without the ribbon.
• Following the general principle of “more clothes on the front, less on the back.”
• Balancing out the items so there’s one on each side (the ribbon on the front, and the pillow on the back).
• A bigger difference between the two sides, since having the hair down makes more of a difference on the back than on the front.

Finally, this offers some future-proofing, because if I do end up editing the design myself to have the eyes closed on the front later, I’d want the closed eyes (which could mean she’s sleeping, as an alternative to simply listening) to be paired with no bow– and should I order another nude cover in the future, it’ll make more sense for it to be as different as possible from the one I already have, instead of just tweaking that one detail.

I informed Hrothmund of my selections on 31 May 2023. I got an update about the printing process a month and a half later on 19 July 2023, letting me know the printers were taking ages, three of the four had been received by the Cuddly Octopus warehouse, and the last one “probably arrives tomorrow.” This was fairly standard time for Cuddly Octopus’s order processing, so it wasn’t an alarming wait. At this point, I was asked for my shipping address.

I was told the cover would actually be shipping out “tomorrow” about a week later on 25 July 2023. I did not receive a tracking number from Hrothmund or via e-mail, but the FedEx label showed that it indeed shipped out from the warehouse in Guangzhou, China on 26 July 2023. I didn’t note down what day it actually arrived (and I covered the tracking numbers up before taking any photos), so I can’t quote the actual delivery date, but it was as expected.

Unboxing the Finished Product!

I was incredibly busy throughout much of 2023, in part due to an actual real-life relationship and various other responsibilities. I stowed the box away for a “rainy day,” or rather, a sunny day with enough light to take photos– and, ideally, a day when my landlord/housemate would be away so I could lay out all four covers somewhere more spacious than my bedroom.

A few months later, on 17 November 2023, I finally got around to unpacking the box. I went for it in the back yard, which had plenty of space and sunlight, as well as a deck to take overhead photos from. As seems to be customary with dakimakura boxes, it was a little beat up.

Slicing the box open revealed a tightly-packed white plastic bag, which was rolled up to fit inside. After unfolding it, I simply tore it open to reveal the contents.

As you can see, I pulled out the four dakimakura covers and arranged them in the “order” I’d ordered them in. Each one was wrapped in an individual clear plastic bag, each labeled with a bar code sticker that also contained the Cuddly Octopus product code (corresponding to the design) and the size of the cover (160x50cm for each).

The back of each clear bag had an “I’m secure” sticker over the part that tears open, and when torn, the word “VOID” appeared underneath. Interestingly, though, one of the four bags had burst open at the side, which completely circumvented the sticker.

At this point, all that remained was to lay the four covers out and see how they looked. Despite my efforts in doing this outdoors, though, the lighting ended up being pretty poor. For one thing, the back yard I did this in is surrounded by trees, fences, and other houses, so I was racing against time to try and get a shot without shadows. For another thing, though, the dakimakura covers are far more flexible than I’d expected, being made of a stretchable material and designed specifically to be soft. Because of that, they actually sunk down between the blades of grass, which created micro-shadows throughout the entire thing. (Basically, the covers look extremely wrinkly because grass isn’t smooth.)

I tried again a week later, and this time, I laid down a picnic blanket on top of the grass, which absorbed the wrinkles of the yard and allowed the daki covers to sit smoothly on top.

I also took another shot of the front sides with the custom-printed third cover (containing partially removed clothing) flipped around. Regardless of the poses, I kind of consider the daytime underwear the “front” and the night clothing the “back,” going with the pattern of the back side being less dressed. In my haste to get this all done before any neighbors started asking questions, I apparently got confused and did this twice instead of getting a shot of the backs following this rule, so I threw together a very rough manipulation in GIMP of what the corresponding back set would have looked like.

While I was here, I also took photos of the new Lilly design next to the old Hanako design. Just as I wanted, they match very well! I was surprised to see how much taller the Hanako cover looks than the Lilly cover, since both are supposed to be 160cm tall to fit my pillow– I went so far as to message Hrothmund about it, thinking I may have received 150cm prints by mistake. He confirmed the factory sent the right size (using the package weight as well as the stickers that were on the bags), and he explained that covers tend to stretch out a bit over time when they’re put on pillows, especially if the pillow’s in use.

Of course, Hanako being taller than Lilly is not canonically accurate… but hey, what can you do? If both covers were brand new and unstretched, Lilly actually would show up slightly taller.

Looking at the side-by-side comparison, it’s interesting to see how different the shade of green is between the two girls’ skirts, as well as the shade of black between their blouse ribbons. Again, the reason for such a large disparity is mostly because I’d already used the Hanako cover for many months and washed it several times, which in turn washes out the colors a bit. When you compare the thumbnails of the two designs from Cuddly Octopus’s website, there is some difference in shading– Hanako’s bow was much less emphasized, and took on some of the purple hue from her hair and eyes– but it’s not nearly as extreme.

Usage as Intended

Speaking of washing, just to be safe, I threw all five covers through the laundry once after they’d been sitting outdoors on the lawn twice. As I do with all my clothes, I used the washing machine’s “delicates” mode– using tap-cold water rather than hot water minimizes shrinkage and color fading. While I’ve tumble-dried my Maki and Hanako covers in the past (with the drying machine also set to “delicates” mode), I tried hanging them out to air dry this time. This is probably the way to go if you’re worried about damaging the cover, since machine drying is typically where most of the stress on fabric comes from during laundry.

A day later, it took a patient five minutes or so to slide the cover onto the pillow. You know the rest!

A Year Later: Looking Back

This blog post took me a long time to write, largely because it had so many images and, despite the impression it might give off, anime waifu pillows are a relatively low priority in my life.

I’ve been using the Lilly daki covers ever since unboxing them (so far, the school uniform version in the winter/spring and the nude version going into the summer). As with my other covers, it’s certainly brought a splash of color onto my bed where I’d otherwise have only solid-color sheets.

Reflecting on the commissioning experience, it was a lot of fun. While I occasionally had to spend extra time explaining myself to Hrothmund (possibly due to a language barrier), I felt that my input was overall handled respectfully and was certainly taken into account in the design. I did have to babysit certain details, but Hrothmund and Shadowgrave also provided (and sought) input, and were not just running on autopilot. I was confident by the end that my attention to detail with the character was reflected in the final product, and it’s really cool to know that the art not only exists because I funded it, but looks the way it does because I guided it.

And of course, despite my careful guidance, I mostly got to sit back and direct while Shadowgrave did the actual work. Although Shadowgrave’s style may be somewhat limited in scope, I continue to be a fan of it for these particular characters and for the particular application of dakimakura cover designs.

Not counting the four covers I received, Hrothmund reported there were 6 sold within the first month. Following up just before publishing this blog post, he updated me that an additional 5 covers had been sold, for a total of 11 in the year since the design was published. The variant spread’s been fairly even; it’s been about 50/50 between all-ages and R-18 versions, with a nearly equal amount of each option purchased within those two categories. (It’s great to see all the different variants have gotten some use, since it indicates the details I sweated over matter to people!)

It doesn’t sound like a lot, but Hrothmund told me 6 in the first month was actually pretty good for a new design. Nobody except for a serious collector is going around buying every new cover that pops up on the market. However, the design’s out there in the world now, and anyone who’s interested in a Lilly Satou dakimakura in the future will have it as an option.

That’s really the best part about doing this. One day, there will come a time when I no longer have anime girls on my bed. I’ll have a partner who I won’t want to bother with it, or I’ll get old enough that it would be weird(er). Eventually, my particular covers are going to get packed up into a box and never used again. But someone else who discovers Katawa Shoujo in a year, a decade, or more will have the art to enjoy, and will be able to buy their own copy to remind them of it for a little while.

If you have any questions about Cuddly Octopus or dakimakuras in general, feel free to leave a comment! I’ll be giving a panel on the topic at some anime conventions around Denver in the near future, starting with Nan Desu Kan in a few weeks, so knowing what I may have missed would be helpful. For now, this experience was a pretty definitive conclusion to my adventure with dakimakuras.