Just found this thread.......i'm subscribed......Popcorn by my side, a beer on the other side.......Rose tinted spectacles?.....check.
Looking forward to seeing how this project evolves. It looks to me that it's early days so far, but I think it's 'got legs'.
The way I see it is that there are on the surface two things attached to the success of this project (like many if not all projects of this kind).
1- The impetus is to make the bike feel less cruise and more ride with intent, and that's the core reason to carry out the project.
2- In carrying out the changes necessary to achieve primary goal, there are inherent changes to be made and that will change the look of the bike. The second activity is therefore to make those changes result in an overall look that confirms the dynamic intent.
So far, I understand that by raising the seat to an optimum position for your requirements, you now feel more in control, but I think this exercise is only part done, because until you have changed the position of the bars etc... the core intent hasn't been completed.....so it's still early days.
Regarding how the aesthetics are shaping up.......From a distance it looks both interesting and questionable at the same time. It's a work in progress, so why wouldn't it look something like that at this stage.
I do agree with an earlier comment recommending that you should consider the TRIK (UK) full length rear fender and ditch the stock 'feeble excuse of a fender' if you really feel the need to keep the licence plate etc.. in the same place as the stock one. I can imagine that by implementing the TRIK fender it will completely 'resolve' the lower part of the bike and that would then allow you to concentrate on getting the upper area to resolve cleanly.
Top tip from an internationally renown designer..( just blowing my trumpet a little...sorry about that
) You probably need to make a primary decision right now as to which bit of the tail section is going to be the eye catcher and which bit needs to recede into the background. What I mean by that is that the subframe and the seat/cowl shouldn't be visually fighting with each other. They either need to work in harmony together or one of them needs to disappear as much as possible. You have (i think) made the choice, at this time, to make the seat cowl the main feature and attempted to hide the subframe by kinda blobbing it out in black/carbon, which is interesting to try to see how it will turn out. Trouble is, the thing is too big to hide and no amount of blacked out blobbing can hide it or integrate it into the mid section of the bike......but stuff like that is somewhat subjective, so if it was me, for now, i'd be focussing back onto the next core task......handlebars.......get the core dynamics right first, then worry about the aesthetics a bit later.