Zoom Out

Sometimes you need to look at changes with a wide angle lens!

So while I wasn't feeling particularly cappy today, I went ahead and gave it a try.  Instead of just doing a random cap though, I kept smitty in mind as he was next up on my debt list.  Now I know that smitty said to not worry about making a Kinetic Text style cap... but I really wanted to give him another.  When I found this image I fell in love with it... but didn't have much in the way of story.  Just the lovely look on her face, as if she's trying to figure out what was going on.  But with only a single image (actually there were two, but I didn't like the other one... you can see the set here) it wouldn't do for a kinetic text style.

My mind kept circling around it though... all the little 'wait, what's going on here' style thoughts that were running through her head.  But the problem with that is that I'd have to crop the image pretty heavily... I mean when you first looked at it, you'd know exactly what was going on and I wouldn't be able to tease it all that much.  Plus there isn't a LOT of room for text.  Yes... as a kinetic style cap I wouldn't use a lot of text, but at least the last time that I used a single panel that way ("True Friend") I had room for a story and then some text stylings.

Finally after viewing and discarding several other possible images, I just saved it and opened it up in Photoshop.  I laid down a bit of text using an 18 point font and saw that it turned out TINY.  A little looking around and I found that the image was 4000 pixels wide.  My normal cap size is between 1000 and 1300 pixels wide.  So at the least I'd have to reduce the size....

waitagoshdarnedminute!!

I could crop this image down a LOT and still have it look good!  In fact, at that size I could crop it down to just her face and it would still look good.  So I started playing around with the crop.  I started with just her face, but quickly moved on to laving certain parts in.  Her breasts, her waist, her hips (which included his hand).... and they all looked good.  It was only then that I realized I could use ALL of them.  Yes, technically it would be five panels all using the same image... but it would be perfect for a Kinetic Text.  Each one would have a different space for the text, letting it be truly unique.

I'm not quite sure how the idea of keeping the previous text came in... but once I started on the second panel, it just seemed to fit.  Each succeeding panel would have the text be smaller and smaller, and fade out a little more.  And by the time I got to the final panel, I really liked it.  I almost wish I could present this as a slide show... just glancing at the preview image of the final panel kind of takes away from the story... but I think it works as is.  I'm not perfectly happy with the story... but that's just from me focusing so much on the design.  If I do something like this again, I'll definitely work a little more on the story!