I really like the idea of dreams in caps. I didn't always like them, as it seemed a cop out, kind of like how I felt about Magic. But the more I read caps, and the more I make them, I realize that they can be a powerful story telling device. In a dream you can be anything and anyone. You can act like a complete slut and cum queen, because when you wake up, it was just a dream right? Well what if the dream starts to effect you in real life? What if the feelings experienced in dream land bleed into your real life? In "Click Click Click" I talked a bit about my one and only feminine transformation dream. Well that dream affected me for a few days. I found myself swinging my hips occasionally and even at one point walking a bit up on the balls of my feet.... as if I were in heels. This wasn't me TRYING to act girly... it was the dream affecting my reality! And that was one quick dream for one night. What if dreams kept coming like that? Could you resist those changes? I don't think I could.
That was the basic idea going through my head. But being a cap I didn't want to just talk about someone having sexy feminine dreams... I wanted it to affect his reality to. I started to picture how he could really lose teh difference between the dream and his reality. And eventually it wouldn't make a difference. Dream and/or reality was his new existence!
Now most of the times I think of a story, I just pile trouble onto my plate. The story demands a specific image and I spend hours upon hours searching for THAT image, and never find it. I either ditch the idea completely, or make half assed changes to make another image work.
The beautify of this idea, is that it was a dream. I just needed an image that had a dream like quality. And a lot of great photography has that feel. When I started looking my only criteria was an almost unbelievably beautiful woman with brunette hair. I struck pay dirt when I found the larger image in this cap. When I clicked on it in Google Images it of course showed the website it came from behind it...and I saw a link to a 'Mega Gallery'. I was intrigued as there is absolutely no reason that multiple images can't be used in a dream story. Once I clicked to the website I found these and dozens more images that all had that dream like quality.
With all the images, I decided the original gold one would be the center piece. The 'new reality' if you will. So I wanted it visually different from the others. And not just in size. I started by making the others black and white, but it seemed almost too obvious. So I played with some selective color, saturation, and other techniques when I remembered working on a wedding photograph. There was a technique that gave a "Dream Like Glow' to any wedding photo. And it is so simple. Simply copy the image so that you have to identical layers. Blur the top layer (and blur it A LOT!). Then simply reduce its opacity so that you see the sharp image underneath. It immediately has that 'glow' to it.
Now that I had all the images prepped, I went to work on the layout. I did the layout first because I'm trying to train myself to make a story fit the space provided. If there isn't much space, then I have to write a shorter story. If there is a lot of space I can write more, but I still have to be careful of over writing. I did pretty well with this one as I only overshot the original size by 100 pixels. This is also following my new title design, but emphasizing it with a seperate layer under it. I was a little tired of jus the standard semi opaque white or black (funny how I get tired of it so fast!), so I wanted to just find a texture. And then the google image gods smiled upone me again. The image was of a television screen (the CRT type) shattered.
Shattered. Reality Shattered.
Even before writing a word I had my title, and the perfect image to emphasize it!
When I began to write I didn't force the 'shattered' reference in, as I knew it would fit in anywhere. On my first proofread I saw that I had added it without even giving it a second thought. I would love to share with you the 'original' draft, but this story came out just about as is!
Sha-dooby .. Shattered, Shattered!
ReplyDeleteReally enjoyed this one, and I am so happy that you are explaining to people how much you put into each panel you make. It can also give people reason to aspire to better designed captions.
I think the fact that you "justify" the text in this caption helped to keep the flow of the story heading down the page, and also to keep you from being distracted by the glorious picture to the right.
Nice to see you in a groove too where you can make multiple captions in one day!