Every daughter needs a mother

Just like every son needs a father

So... I have to admit I've had trouble making a cap for Annabelle.  You see, one of the things that she really enjoys is having her transformation be part of a family affair.  She likes changing from the father of her son to the mother of her daughter (or vice versa).  And while I've included family members in caps before, they ween't part of the transformation.  And something I should be honest about is that I look at most caps as sexual in nature... even when sex isn't part of the cap, it's in the back of my head.  So with that in mind, I find it especially difficult to have two family members transformed in the same cap.  My 'sexual' thoughts and 'family' combine to form incest.  Ick.

Now understand... Annabelle is in no way looking for incestual relationships.  She even spells that out in her preferences.  But that thought still goes through the back of my head.  I COULD have made Annabelle a normal one person changing cap... but she REALLY likes the whole family angle.  I mean... just check out her blog "Annabelle's Family Tradition".  And I really enjoy making caps that others like... so this morning I put all sexual thoughts out of my head and vowed that I'd make Annabelle a nice loving cap (loving is something that I also associate with 'family').

I tried finding an image of two women that could be mother/daughter.  Even though fuskator is primarily hardcore images, they still include enough images from a set that I hoped to find a fully clothed pair of women.  Surprisingly I quickly locked into this image set.  It was only of one woman, and she was performing ballet (something not listed in Annabelle's preferences), but she just had the air of a mother to me.  Tie that to the fact that I found the photography to be quite stunning, and I had an image set to work from.

With this image picked out, I sat back and let my mind wander.  I knew that this was the new 'Annabelle', but I needed to include her son/daughter and explain how she ended up in a ballet studio.  A lot of thoughts came and went... her son was kidnapped and transformed so she transformed herself to save her (by learning ballet?)... her son always wanted to be a ballet performer and kept the desire when he was transformed by a curse, so she transforms herself to keep an eye on her new daughter... his wife and daughter die in an accident so he and his son transform themselves to take their part in a big ballet production...

All of them had their problems, but I liked the direction and details from each part.  The basic storyline that I started to work from were this:  His son was cursed into transforming into a girl.  He and his wife knew it, and had planned on her teaching their new daughter about her life.  But just before his transformation she passes away.  When he sees how difficult it is for his daughter, he takes it into his own hands and gets himself transformed to a woman so that he can be by his daughters die, learning how to be women together.  I'd throw the ballet in as something that the daughter tried to help her adjust, but while she moved away from it, he loved it and kept up with it.  (showing that he was becoming his own woman apart from his daughter).  And since I was working with a Father/Son to Mother/Daughter combo, I figured I should go ahead and use one of Annabelle's daughters.  Picking out Kyra seemed like a logical step.

The story came out pretty easily.  When I started writing though I had a slew of sadder songs play and that came out into the story.  I honestly didn't intend the loss of the mother/wife to be quite so sad.  But when I re-read it, I thought it fit the arch of the story and even the style of the photograph.  Yes.. in the end they both accepted their new lives, but it was still colored by this sadness.

With the story done I was about to start the design and layout.  But as I cropped the image I realized a problem.... she was blonde.  Annabelle's preferences state that she prefers "Dark brown/black/auburn".  She does say that she'd accept "Redhead, 'natural' Blonde, Sandy blonde, Light brown" too, but I figured if she wanted dark brown more than blonde, then I should at least get the hair brown.

Here's the original:

I remember Britney talking about how she learned how to change hair color in photoshop, and since it was a skill that I wasn't good at I decided to do some internet research.  The first result send me to this web page.  And um... WOW.  Following the directions there was as simple as anything I had previously done and at least in my eye came out really well.  I couldn't easily make her hair long (something else Annabelle wants), but I figured it looked like her hair was up in a bun, so that should work.

So with her hair at least brown now, I moved on to design.  I knew the story was too long to fit into a standard square text box, so making the text flow along the photo made sense.  I tried several variations of having the story flow around her arm, but I honestly didn't like how that looked.  My eye kept following her arm instead of the story.  So I just went ahead and covered it up.  And to help people not focus on it under the text, I darkened the entire right side of the image as well.

I'm not sure how I feel about the cap.  I think the design and layout works well enough, but I'm pretty sure I missed my mark on the story.  Maybe... just maybe.. if I worked on it longer I could tighten it up.  But seeing as I've been struggling with the entire idea of making a family cap for a week now, I didn't want to give myself a chance to toss it out.

I'll be waiting patiently to see if Annabelle likes it.  In the mean time I hope all of you get some enjoyment out of it as well!