Proving my Devotion

How much would you give up to prove your devotion?

So I had every intention of making a fun quicky yesterday.  But thanks to Steam and their Summer Sale, I ended up playing games with my nephews all afternoon.  I was going to go ahead and make one last night, but I just didn't feel like I was in the best of moods and ended up chatting the night away (staying up later than I wanted to).  That's fine, I can always make one this morning right?  Well for the first time since I set it up, my alarm clock crashed.  You see I have an iPod touch hooked up to an iHome alarm clock.  The alarm clock is more or less just a big time display piece and some decent speakers as all the alarm functions comes from their app on the iPod.

So when the iPod crashed.... no alarm.   That, coupled with the fact that I stayed up late, meant I got up late and started my day far later than I intended to.  Afternoon rolls around and I am just itching to cap.  I get my privacy set up, head over to fuskator and quickly find this image.  I immediately focused in on her eyes.  that look of 'oh no, what am I doing?' is equally measured (at least in my view) with "I have to do this.  I must do this".  Only two things in my mind can equate to that feeling.... blackmail and slavery.

Both of those can get that 'I don't want to be doing this' and 'I must do this', but from opposite ends of the spectrum.  Being forced to do something that you don't want can induce some very delicious squirmy feelings.  But in the end, its cruelty driving the cap.  And frankly, I wasn't feeling that cruel undertone.  So a Master/Slave is the obvious alternative.  There are still plenty of yummy squirmy moments to be had, but in the end it's also accompanied by an 'aww..... that's sweet' feeling.

Now when I think into the slave realm, I really only think of two people.  Jennifer and Simone.  Jennifer loves being put into a slave position, and showing the love for her mistress through sexual acts with both men and women.  Simone loves being put into a Mistress position and making her slaves prove their devotion to her through sexual acts on women.  Sometimes men.. but mostly saphhic delights. Now I could be wrong on my measures of Jennifer and Simone, but it's how I picture them and therefore how I picture master/slave/mistress relations when it comes to caps.

While writing this, I kept both of those mindsets working, but didn't feel that it fit either Jennifer or Simone.  So instead of being made for one, the other, or both of them, this is just a stand alone piece.  Yes, I still use Jennifer's male persona name of Jeremy, but I specifically didn't use 'Jennifer'.

It didn't take long to write the story, but putting it into the design went way beyond the time I normally put into a 'just for fun' cap.  My first attempt would have had the story all on the left side in a purely rectangular box.  The text box would have extended just a bit above, to the left, and below the image.  But the story was far to long.

I tried to extend the text box to the left, but extending it far enough that way just made the cap look over balanced.  I tried combining extending it to the left, and further into the picture... but it got to the point that it covered up what 'slave' was uncovering... and that was a pretty major part of the story.

So I sat back and considered my options.  The 'easiest' would be to go in and cut out more of the story.  Make some more cuts into the meat of it and just accept that it didn't fit.  But I've done that plenty of times, and didn't really want to cut more out.  I could make the cap taller, giving me more vertical space to use, but that would just create a lot more empty space to use or fill up above and/or below the photo where the text box wasn't.

Eventually I decided to try something that I hadn't done before (or at least if I had, it doesn't come straight to mind).  Using a non square or rectangle text box.  Making a text box like this is a lot more work than just drawing a more complex shape.  The biggest problem is adjusting it.  If I want to adjust a standard text box, I simply select it, then pull on one of fourth 'adjustment' points.  The text flows into the new space just fine.  But with a box shaped like the one I used, doing that type of adjustment would increase the vertical top portion of the box, as well as the horizontal bottom portion.  To change just one or the other (like making the bottom portion extend beyond the photo, instead of just inside of it on the right) I have to select the text box, then specifically choose out the two points that make up the edge I want to move.  I then have to move them in a way that will keep the top and bottom lines straight.

It's by no means 'difficult'... rather its just 'tedious'.  I like to play around and make a lot of quick changes just to see how it will look.  But there are no 'quick' changes with this type of box.  And even when I get the text looking the way I want, I then gave to all but start over to try and get an underlying text box to match up with the text.

And then to make more work (I guess I'm just a masochist that way) I had to play around with the title.  Normally I'd just find a fun font and place it... but I would either put the title inside the photo (leaving an odd empty space above the photo) or have a long title to take up the thin slice of empty space above the photos.  But I already had the title in mind and didn't want to change it.  After many minutes playing around I came up with the dual color effect.  I like the look of it, and love how it almost mimics the 'I don't want this' and 'I must do this' feelings I mentioned before.   But I'm not sure how easy it is to read.  And lets face it, if you can't read the title, then why bother having it in there.

 So the 'quick fun' cap that I wanted to make in about a half hour, ended up taking closer to 3 hours.  I'm just not sure if it's been worth that extra effort or not.