Make The Voices Stop

And I thought I had a problem with voices in my head!

So Dee made me a great cap a while back.  Instead of just looking at my preferences and making a cap that I would like (and really... who wouldn't like a Dee cap?) she dug a little deeper.  I have a line that I use many places to describe myself "We All Wear Masks".  You may have noted it at the top of this blog.

Well I found that really gratifiying.  Not only did she make a cap that I like, but she utilized something about me that I don't call out for, asking to be capped.  It made a great cap greater!  So when I got around to capping her back, I thought I would do something equally special.

I played around with several ideas, including making a second part to her own cap (working with Mistress Dee), but I didn't want to go down a path that she has already blazed.  Plus 'Mistress Dee' isn't one of the persona's that Dee asks to become.   And then it hit me.... Dee has several personalities that she does like to get transformed into:

Dee which is just the female version of Damien.
DeeDee which is a bimbo
Dementia who is a goth babe.

So I thought of making a cap where Damien is transformed into all three of these personalities. I liked the idea and went searching for an image.  But looking for a picture of a 'girl next door' a 'bimbo' and a 'goth chick' is an exercise in futility.  At least doing so in a half hour is.  I didn't want to give up on the idea, so I started looking for pictures of triplets.  Again.... not an easy find. An even more difficult one if you expect it to give you a story about a man transforming into these women with the same body, but different personalities.

I was a little frustrated, but didn't give up.  While searching for images I came across the image I finally used.... and it hit me.  Not three bodies, but all of the personalities in one body.  Along with the original Damien!  And this body would work for each personality.  Dementia would love the tattoos and 'naughty black and white outfit'  DeeDee would love the fact that it is a slutty school girl, and lifiting up the skirt.  And Dee would just love being in a woman's body.

So with the image in tow, I started on the story.  But I kept stalling out on the transformation.  I thought of Damien making caps, as the voices form urging him into making himself more feminine.... but I kept getting about a panels worth of text before I got to anything really interesting.

So I saved it, and tried again several more times over the next few days.

Then today I knew how to do it.  I would take a page out of Dee's cap manual and just skip the actually transformation.  Instead I would just start at the interesting part and have Damien arguing with the voices.  Once I started writing it just flowed out.

And then I went to design.  I did a basic layout, added the title, and added the plaid title line. I pathed out a text box, and inserted the text.  I played a bit with the 'arguing' lines and lined them up differently.

But it didn't sit right.  For one, you just couldn't really tell who was talking.  If you really knew where I was coming from, you might get the gist of it.... but it wasn't easy.  So I played with coloring each of the 'voices'.  This is what it looked like before I stopped that design path:

It would work, but it just didn't snap.  So I started throwing in some text boxes behind the text, but because all the text lined up, it was just a series of text boxes one on top of the other.  Plus getting the angle around the picture would be a pain.  So I went to a different manual:  Comic Life.

I cleared out all of the text, and started dropping them in line by line.  This let me individualize them a little more in length across the page, and give it that conversational look. It also let me play with the fonts a little easier.

Now I normally don't like odd fonts.  So I chose out a clean readable font for Damien, Dee, and Dementia. But I figured to accent the DeeDee bimbo form, I just had to use a cutie font.

In the end I like it.  Its not my standard design style, but it works better than my standard style.