Thursday, February 10, 2011

Saint Valentines Day Show

Another sweeter cap!



This is a cap I did for Kaitlyn over at the Haven.  I had been rooting around with some of my dirtier caps before making this and felt it was time to go clean again.  Kaitlyn provided the perfect opportunity, and it was great as she also was leading the MoZ game I was playing.

When I found this pic, I loved it.   It sparked a good idea and I ran with it.  But after the story I came to a design problem.  It looked like I would have to cut out a LOT of it to make it work in a cap. And with all the light and dark areas (not to mention the 'snow', it would be difficult to lay the text directly over the background.  I was about ready to give up on the photo and try to find another that would work when I recalled some of my favorite caps designed similar to this.  I didn't have to completely cover the background to let the text work over it.  I just needed to add that slightly opaque block that would add enough contrast for the text, and at the same time allow the background image to remain visible.

I like the idea, but it offers up its own problems.   First is that I now have to work within the confines of the original image.  I can't just make the cap taller or wider to fit the text i wrote.   With this long of a story, I would generally start the text out on one side of the image, and have it flow further below the image.  That way the cap would be in a more vertical format.  But I can't just make more runway appear below this model.  And I think the effect would look really bad if I had some of the story over the photo, and some over a plain background.

I hemmed and hawed for a long while about this problem.  I did spend some time trying to find another image to use, and a lot of time trying to crop the photo in such away that would let it sit over a background like the majority of my caps.

In the end I just accepted that this cap would be to long for most people to view without scrolling side to side (funny... Dee and I are talking about this very subject now on her blog).  Even with the larger formats I use today, this is far to wide to fit on a screen, especially in a web browser.  But I didn't want to sacrifice the story, or the image and that left me with what I present to you here.

2 comments:

  1. Funny you mention this, because I had a similar issue with a caption I made for Jillisa. I had a lot of story but the source picture was small. I had to use some ideas from your design favorites to overcome it and it worked out fine.

    Story vs. Picture is often a problem I run into: Do I have enough pictures to effectively tell a story along with the text I've written. Every so often I have the issue of wondering if I have enough text for the pictures I have!

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  2. I hear ya on the story vs picture. I can't count the times I find a great single picture that whispers a great story to me. But by the end of writing I have 3 pages of story and only the one image. I hate that. Hate it Hate it Hate it!

    I don't often have to many pictures. I find it fairly easy to throw out certain pictures and then just beef up that part of the story.

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