My Kind Of Girl

You gotta be you... even if that still mean's being a girl!

Before I get into the cap, I want to talk a bit about my posting.  You see, normally I can't wait to publish a cap.  As soon as I finish it and post it to the Haven (if it's a trade), I immediately come here and publish it to the blog.  Now most of the time that's not a problem.  I don't make all that many caps so I rarely have more than one post in a day.  But when I DO post more than one thing in a day, the last thing to get posted garners all of the attention.  I can see that in page views as well as comments.

For non cap posts, I really don't mind that.  A 'Question' or 'Rant' post generally won't get much attention anyway.  The people who are interested in reading these kinds of posts will read it anyway.  But when both posts are a cap, it can be rather frustrating as I can't tell if the cap just wasn't successful, or if it was just a matter of being almost immediately buried by a newer cap.

So I'm going to try something new... posting only one 'major' cap a day.  I actually started this back on April 9th when I posted "The Haunted Mask".  I had just posted that cap when I received Petra's cap "Where have you been?".  I knew that if I immediately posted Petra's cap that "The Haunted Mask" wouldn't get all the attention, and I was really curious as to how it would do when it had the spotlight (It turns out that it isn't doing well at all!).  So while I wrote up the post for "Where have you been?", I scheduled it to post on the 10th, giving "The Haunted Mask" time to bask in the sunlight alone.

So to continue this experiment I'm going to continue with the idea of only one 'major' post a day.   Questions and other non cap posts will still be posted as soon as I make them,  Even some caps that I consider 'minor' works like partials or LtSL caps will get posted whenever.  But with caps like this one (which I just now finished the morning of April 10th), I'll hold off until they can have the day to themselves.

On to the cap!

I've actually had this image set in mind for quite awhile now.  I originally saw it on December 17th of 2012!  I knew that I could make a good story out of them, but didn't have that story immediately   And while I've given up several other images in the mean time, I've held on to this one.  The only thing I had in mind was that this newly transformed guy was escaping from the person who did this to them.  There were enough images and variations on her pose and expression that I could still go in many different directions with the final story.   

Come to this morning, and I was feeling fairly cappy.  I checked and saw that next up on my cap debt list was it12707.  At first I was a little frustrated.... the last few caps I had finished were fairly clean and I was in the mood to do something more 'naughty'... but then I recalled this image set.   While it certainly oozes a certain sensuality, it's still a very clean collection of photos.  And upon reading it12707's preferences, I realized I could make my original idea work really well for him.  Here's the parts of it12707's preferences I had in mind:

• Being an unwilling / reluctant transformee, someone who isn't eager to turn into a girl & isn't happy being one.
• Resigned to my fate: I'm not happy about being stuck this way, but there's nothing I can do & I need to move on with life.
• People being aware of the transformation & pressuring me to accept its permanence.
• Dear god I love pregnant captions

Running away certainly works for the 'reluctant' part, while doing so as a girl could work for the 'I need to move on with my life' portion.  And as I thought of the people transforming her, I got the idea of it being a group of people adding to their 'family'.  A magical man and woman who transform rough boys into their darling daughters.... and later the daughters help their new 'sister' accept their new life.  

The combination of this story idea, this image and making a cap for it12707 all combined to make me very excited to start writing.  The story came out fairly easily as I tried to focus on how the new family were focused on training their new member instead of worrying about how 'Grahm' fell into their clutches or actually was transformed in the first place.   I even found a way to hint at pregnancy even if 'Gretchen' never actually ends up pregnant (although I did make sure to leave it open... maybe she DID get pregnant!).  

Design wise I went through much the same process as I used on "My Role In Their Threesome" where I used Mistress Simone's method of extending the canvas.  Here is the original image that I started from:

I knew I would want to reverse the image (Don't ask my why, but I like it when the subjects are looking to the right, rather than the left).  So I flipped it around.  Now while her placement in the photo works (having her be dead center), I knew that it wouldn't work for story placement.  So I cropped the 'blank' space on one side, while extending the other side. 

Next came the gradation to cover up the white space, and have it blend into the phot.  As the over all tone is dark, I decided to stay with a brown selected from the car:

Next came the text and the text box. But I had a real problem finding a comination that works.  My first attempts were using a light yellow text box (color selected from her hair), and the same dark brown for the text:

I thought that the light text box actually took to much attention away from the photo.. so I reversed it:

I felt better about this as it let the photo shine... but it bothered me that the text box now completely blended into the background on it's left side.  Plus the text seemed just a little bit hard to read.  So the last bit of editing was making the text box completely black.  It's subtle, but you should now be able to see the difference on the left side of the text box:

I try to use true full black (and true full white as well) as little as possible.  About the only time I'm really comfortable doing so is either in a full black and white image, or with an image that's been spot colored.  But in this instance of having a dark text box over a dark background it seemed to be the only option that worked. Is it subtle?  Yes.  Did it take longer than it should have?  Yes.  Was it worth it?  Well... I'll let you be the judge of that, but I think it was.  

The only things to add in now was the water mark and the title.  I have to admit that I was a little upset at the title... while I was playing around with lining up 'Kind' and 'Girl' I liked now the n and l could overlap... but the kerning was being a pain in the ass.  Even straight text gets 'blurred' a bit... it's just how photoshop places text over a photo.  Sometimes that slight blur is on the left hand side, while other times its on the right hand side.  In this instance, the 'blur' was on the right hand side of the l, and on the left hand side of the n.  You'd never notice such a small detail... until you tried to line the text up.  Here is what it looks like when blown up to 500%:

It's very subtle when viewed at 100%, but it's still there.  And even though you may have never noticed it, it bothers me that it's there.  

Anyway... I hope both it12707 and you all enjoy the cap!