Virtuous Sins

Virtue... Sin... they're almost the same thing right?

You've probably noticed that I've been talking a lot about caps I made for Smitty lately.  In just the past month I've made him both "Magic Wand" and "True Friend".  Those, along with this cap, are because he made me three lovely caps in the past few months.  But I've been feeling guilty that he made me a couple longer Kinetic Text caps and was striving to make a similarly styled cap for him.  I enjoy that style, and I believe that Smitty does too... but when I complained about it last time Smitty reminded me that I didn't have to be exactly 'even' with him.  And he was right... Smitty is just far more prolific than me (proven by the fact that he's made me ANOTHER Kinetic Text cap!).  And if I continued to limit myself to one particular style or to a certain number of panels, I would eventually be limiting what I put out.  It not only would be less caps that I make, but they'd be less creative as I was constantly putting ideas back since they didn't follow that format.

So a few weeks ago I had the idea behind this cap.  And if I'm fully honest, I'd have to say the basic idea came months ago when I was reading Rauk's "Seven" series.  You see, I've always loved the concept of virtues and sins.  The easiest to write into these fun little caps are the sins... especially lust.  We all love lust.  but Rauk made it so deep and thought provoking.  His "Seven" caps weren't merely about the sin in the cap... they were about the sin within all of us.  And as you may recall I took one of his caps quite seriously.

Now I had no intention of going that serious or thought provoking.  Not because I don't like doing so.. but because Rauk already covered it so well.  There's no way I could do it without simply being a thin faded copy of his work.  But the idea of somehow using sins stuck with me.  I think it was probably in the discussion of his caps that someone mentioned the "Seven Virtues", and that got me to thinking about making a cap not just about the sin, but it's corresponding virtue.  I tried briefly making the cap for Smitty (it just felt right for him), but I was mid-funk and couldn't get anything out.

That brings me back to a couple weeks ago... the idea came back and this time for some odd reason it came back with the idea for this layout.  Having four very tall images with the names of the virtues and sins over the top of them.   I passed on the design layout and instead tried to make it work in a Kinetic style... I though it would be fun as I could easily make it a 16 panel cap... one beginning  one ending, and one for each of the virtues and sins.  But finding images to use for each sin was tedious .. and really the Kinetic Text style doesn't work very well for telling a succinct tale in each panel.  So after struggling with it for awhile, I dropped it again.

Yesterday though, I picked it back up.  With the idea that I'd follow Smitty's advice and just make him a fun creative cap and not worry about which particular style, I started laying out the cap.  Now I normally don't do a layout before the image selection, but in this case it was important that I get the size for the image.  I ALMOST made it with the space for all seven virtues and sins, but it just looked to jumbled.  And if it looked jumbled without images, it was going to look awful with photographs in it.

Once I had the layout down (50 pixel border all the way around, 25 pixel gutters between the images and text box, leaving each image 813x206) I then moved on to pick images.  I started first with the virtues, and figured I would just look for nice images and pick a virtue that it worked with.  The only one that I knew I wanted to use was Chastity (since it's sin opposite is Lust!).  But after searching for over an hour, I couldn't find an image that really screamed 'Chastity'.  Nor 'Kindness', nor 'Humility', nor 'Temperance' nor 'Charity', nor 'Patience' nor 'Diligence'.  So with the layout worked out, I saved it and left it to this morning.

And that worked out perfectly... as this morning I was able to make the leap that I couldn't yesterday.  The images didn't necesariy need to scream out for each virtue... they could simply be 'nice' and 'happy' and 'innocent'... and then the reader would do the final association.   So I focused on that.  I ended up with about 9 images, but narrowed it down to 3 that would focus in on the girls' face.  That way they would all be cropped about the same.  I had the most trouble finding a fourth to match my trio.  Thankfully Britney was on and she helped me locate that last one (I ended up using that last image for 'Chastity').

From there I simply picked the virtues to use.  I'd love to say I thought long and hard about which ones to use, but honestly I picked the ones that would fit and look good.  I didn't like how 'Charity' looked so similar to 'Chastity' so it was out, and I didn't like the D or P in 'Diligence' or 'Patience'.  With those images in place, I went on to layout the 'sin' panel.   I wanted almost everything to be the opposite... so the background image is the same, but the colors are inverted.  The font for the sins is the same, but in black as opposed to white.  The story text and text box are similarly inverted   Even my watermark is inverted 

Next up was picking out images for the individual Sins.  This time I actually wanted the image to convey the sin, and thankfully that was a lot easier.  Where I'd say I searched for over 3 hours for 'Virtuous' photos.... I spent about 20 minutes searching for 'Sinful' photos!  And I'm still happier with the sinful ones.

The only thing left was the story.  I had the basic premise from months ago that 'Smitty' was part of a long series of scientists that were trying to make the perfect person.  Over time they gained the ability to make a person's body perfect, but only recently had they gained the knowledge of how to imbue a person with the virtuous thoughts and characteristics.  But when they put it all together, to goes horribly wrong.  I even had the ending twist that they would now make everyone over to this 'new' perfect form.

So since I had that in my mind for so long, it didn't take long to write it out.  In fact the hardest part was keeping each panel's text to take up the same amount of space.  Trust me, I could have written a LOT more about the sins.

So.. is this a cap that I would classically call 'Smittyesque'?  No.  But at the same time I love how Smitty takes conventions and turns them around.  A slave topping from the bottom.  A person made over into a dominating and almost cruel sissy boi.  A Dream Aviator that gets off on letting his target change and almost destroy him before turning the tables.  So in that way, I think this is VERY smitty.  Having each virtue perverted into its corresponding Sin.

The one thing I regret is that I never used his name.  But then again, that goes against the grain of most trade caps... and I think smitty will get a kick out of that too!