Break On Through

...to the other side!

I got this image a few days ago.   Normally it's something that I would look at and just move on as it didn't inspire a story, but for some odd reason I wanted to try and change her hair color as I did in "Every Daughter Needs A Mother".  So I pulled it into Photoshop, pulled up the tutorial and went to work.  One thing became quickly evident... changing a very light blonde into any realistic darker color either isn't possible, or more than likely needs a different technique.  I was actually going for a darker more 'natural' redhead look, but that darkness just wasn't able to happen.

Once I was done with the image, a story idea came to me.  I figured it would be a nice short and sweet cap. Here's what I wrote down to try later (I wasn't in the mood to write it out at that point):

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He sees a mirror that instead of reflecting himself, reflects a feminine version of himself.  He touches it and goes to the other side... becoming the woman.  When he touches the mirror again he flips but is now the same girl (with different hair).  In the mirror he see's his girlfriend, but when he looks into the room he sees a male version of her.

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Fun right?  I didn't think that I would write this for anyone in particular but when I brought the image and text up today... well it just fell flat.  I didn't feel that I was getting any emotion into it whatsoever.  Recently I was chatting with Jennifer and she had a suggestion to help me with writers blog (this was about the time I posted about writers block).  Write for someone else.  At first I was thinking 'yeah yeah... whatever', but it was so obvious that it went right past me.  

In the past I was only able to write for others.  The idea of making a cap without a target subject was completely beyond me.  But as I made more and more, I found the preferences to be kind of stifling.  So I started to make caps for here at the blog.  Over time that become my default position... I'd make a cap for the blog first, and if that didn't work out I'd check into my cap debt and make a trade cap with someones preferences in mind.  

The only problem is that I had the image and story already picked out... Sure I could customize the details for someone, but it wouldn't feel right if I was stretching their preferences.   So I went over to the Haven and looked around at various people's preferences.  As I flicked through and kept finding bad matches I remembered Helena... and I remembered that she had a preference for both blonde and redheads.  I double checked her preferences and didn't spot anything that wouldn't go with the story... in fact her preferences matched up really well.  

And what made this even better is that Helena has offered up some very kind comments both here and to the caps I've posted at the Haven.  So making a cap for her felt natural and right!  Now I'm not sure if this is the start of a long term trend or if it's just a blip, but making this for someone specific instead of just a general 'blog exclusive' cap really worked.  I wasn't just writing 'Harm' and 'Helena' into an existing story, I was writing this with Helena in mind.  

Design wise I wanted to play with the idea of all yellows and reds as I rarely use those colors together.  I found a background image that would give some visual flair, but wouldn't over power the image and laid out the text and text boxes.  The title as a bit of a pain as I couldn't find a font that was both legible and something that wouldn't overpower the whole cap.  And I swear, I moved that title from the right hand side to the left hand side about a dozen times before I settled on the right.  

Oh.. and if anyone is interested, here is the original image before I played with the hair color:

You can view more of the image set here. 

Anyway.. I hope that Helena enjoys this and that you like it too!