Magic Vs Technology

The debate will continue....

As you may have seen, Smitty made me a wonderful cap on his blog (Smitty's TG Caps).  He included his new character Vince, as well as his classic Smitty character.  I wanted to repay Smitty for the great cap and had the vague idea of doing an homage cap.  I would utilize his Smitty character, as well as combine our layout styles.

I thought it was rather nice that Smitty had 'Calvin' change into 'Caitlyn' via technology (which is my preferred method), as opposed to Smitty transforming him via magic.  So I thought it would be really fun to have a 'competition' to see which is better at transforming us unwilling males, into obedient sissy slaves.  Of course Smitty would represent the Magic, but as Caitlyn was already serving in Smitty's harem I would need someone to represent technology.  I thought about doing some revisionist history and just having Calvin show back up, but I really like following the 'history' of a universe.  I thought about having Caitlyn escape and use technology to reverse himself, but then we would have the answer.... technology would have already proven itself superior.  So instead I created an un-named character (unless you really think his name is Nerdy McNerderson!) that would stand as an Arch-type Hero (Villain?) to the Smitty Villain (Hero?).  I now had my cast and began my image search.

While searching for the right feminized Smitty, I realized that if I had someone transform the villain in the beginning using technology then the answer, again, would be obvious.  I really wanted to explore the Magic V Tech aspect a little more.  It then came to me..... Smitty and our un-named technologist would have an 'experiment' or 'competition' and both transform someone.  Oh!!! And as a funny twist, they would both transform a clone of the other.  So technology would transform a Smitty clone, and Magic would transform the other.

With this idea I had to start the image search over, as I now needed two girls.  Ideally there would also be two guys, but I didn't consider it necessary.  I came upon these images in a thumbnail gallery, but there just weren't enough of them.  It was a shame, as I really liked the facial expressions.  Luckily I came upon another thumbnail gallery that was from the same set, but used different images.  Yay!!!

O.k... so I had some images that I could use.  I tried to work out the ending, but wanted to enjoy the ride as much as I enjoy the destination.  So I worked from the beginning and would decide the ending when it came up.  Now I'm sure that you've read plenty of 'Smitty' caps.  The character is over the top in his actions and his dialog.  I wanted to make a counterbalance to that.  So I started writing a very generic exchange between a 'wizard' and a 'technologist'.  After I got a few lines in, I would go back and 'Smittyize' the wizards dialog, and then make the technologist as uppity and pretentious as I could (you can see where I started slipping in the later panels... I was tired of looking for different words in the thesaurus!).  It was fun, but more work than I realized.  Mainly because my own internal dialog sits somewhere between these two extremes.  I basically had to write every line of dialog twice.  Once to see how the story progressed, and then again to add the characters back into their roles.

Once I had enough dialog for the first page (and am image to match) I opened up Photoshop and started laying it out.  On the first try, it looked like any other cap I did.  I wrote this first draft in my normal style:

"Hey wait... how the hell did you get here so fast" Smitty said stunned.  "I teleported, and there is no way...."

It was nice, but I kept having to find creative ways to not name the technologist, and it just didn't look right.  It was actually hard to read, as it was almost all talking, and not much action.  So the paragraphs all started and ended with a quotation mark. It didn't take me long to realize that the majority of Smitty caps had all the dialog in text boxes, using different colors to denote who was speaking.  Whelp, in for a penny, in for a pound.  I re-layed out the panel in that format.  I even changed up the font and color so that Smitty was using Comic Sans in black (I don't know if that is what smitty uses, but it looks close to me), and the technologist spoke using Euphemia in white. This really simplified the reading, as well as furthered the differences between Smitty and the technologist.

The only snag was setting up the text, then creating the box behind it.  It isn't difficult or strenuous, but it is time consuming.  I'm used to laying out all of the text in one fell swoop.  Now each part of the dialog had to be laid out individually.  I think it was worth it for this cap, as the layout was now really a combination of our styles, but its not something that i will be doing much of in the future.

So I had the first panel.  Magic 1 - Tech 0.  The second panel followed suit tying up the score.  After the fourth panel, I realized I could keep this up forever.  Lets face it, in this fiction there is no real answer to which method is 'better' at transforming.  As they layout was taking much longer than normal, I was also ready to wrap it up and call it a good day's work.  So now I had to decide which would win?  I wrote out several variations with both sides winning, neither side winning (the transformed clones used THEIR abilities to transform our Hero and Villain in that one!), magic winning, and technology winning.  I finally settled on magic winning.  Smitty is such a great character that I wanted him to beat out technology.  But of course I couldn't let him get away with it fully, so I added in the last part about Smitty continually humiliating and degrading 'himself' by winning.

But as smitty replied in the Haven "Only knowing Smitty, that probably just makes it hotter for him."


Indeed.