Foretelling dreams

Can your dreams foretell the future?

The journey from first seeing this image to ending up with this cap was a fairly winding path.  About three weeks ago I came across this image set.  They're beautiful images, but didn't inspire any story in me.  That is until I came to the bottom of the set and saw this image:

 Even though the image set had a beautifully sexy woman reading a book, only this image got me going on a story.  The story was simple enough... a man is changed by a former female classmate into a young woman and forced to go back to college.  I figured from there the story could go in any number of directions... he could be trying to start his life over with a better education, he could be fighting the sexual urges of this young body, he could be attending school with his daughter.... it just had a lot of possibilities.

Sadly, when I pulled it into Photoshop  I didn't have any luck making a full story come out.  I'd get a few sentences in and change my mind on the direction of the story and have to start over.  I did that a few times and realized I just wasn't in the right place to start writing.

So I saved it and figured I'd come back to it later.  Well about a week later, I was going through my 'Caps in Progress' folder where I save any images and/or story ideas and came across a notepad with several websites listed in it.  Most of them were ones I still use on a regular basis... fuskator, Google Images, freeones... but at the bottom was a link to Artful Porn.    When I went to the site I remembered that I had used it quite often before finding fuskator.  I really like the way the site is run as it focuses on the artful side of porn (you probably guessed that from the name right?).

Well low and behold when I went to revisit the site the first listed image set was the same one with the girl and the book.  Artful Porn directly links to the preview galleries at various sits and this time it was from one of my favorite sites... X-Art.  As you can see I now not only has the single image to work from... I had sixteen images to work from.  I still didn't have an idea of where to take the story, but I knew I could go more graphic in the story and have images to match it!

Well... now we come to this morning.  I wanted to see if I could make this story work and pulled up the preview gallery.  A lot of quick ideas went through my head but none really took root.  So I headed over to Rachel's Haven to see if I could get some inspiration from someone's preferences.  Next up on my cap debt list JaySeaver, but I was feeling a little more 'hardcore' than I'm comfortable using for Jay.  And or the first time in a long while.. there was no one else on my cap debt list!

So that freed me up to pick someone out of nowhere to make this cap for.  Now when I look for someone to cap, I'll often use my friends first.  Dee, Smitty, Jennifer, Simone, Bren, or any number of people that I've capped before.  But this time I wanted to cap someone that I hadn't capped before.  I've been meaning to cap Jillisa a she's been leaving me great comments and makes wonderful caps herself.  But her preferred rating for caps falls between PG-13 and R.  She DOES accept X rated caps though "if the story fits".  She also lists a desire for long hair of just about any color, but puts super-platinum-blonde at the bottom of the list.  Since I want to make a very good first impression when it comes to a new person to cap, I figured I would hold off and give Jillisa something that's more in her strike zone.

After rejecting Jillia as a subject, I started just looking at random people's preferences   The first few were immediately struck down as this image set violated several 'Do Not' scenarios like ratings of R or less, no men, no male genitalia, blonde hair... stuff like that.  I was getting a little discouraged when I came upon Neorotoxin.  Neoro has given me some great comments both at the Haven and here on the blog, so I perked up and hoped that his preferences would fit.  When I read over the preferences I couldn't find anything that would disqualifiy this image set and/or the story idea I had.  And in fact I found several things that helped spur me on.  Some things that stuck out:

• I do like a naturally curvy body, but i also like a fit and slim body, petite is good, tall and short are also good.
• PG-13 ish to XXX.  I don't much care for pure PG style, as i like it to be sexy most of the time. 
•  I prefer a man being turned into a lesbian most of the time, but if the story seems sweet/loving i don't mind being turned into a straight woman.  I prefer being turned into a submissive woman in both cases most of the time.
• I prefer lesbian to heterosexual, but i'm open to the latter at least a little.  I mean, if you are turned female having sex with a man isn't that wierd.
• Pale skin.  Not the unhealthy type that hasn't seen the sun, more the type that many true redheads have, pale, but creamy smooth, and with a healthy glow.
• My body driving my desires.  I.E. : having my body changed into a woman, and though I (at first) want to be changed back, and having the physical pleasure convince me that being a woman is far better.  I even like the idea of knowing this, and being unable to resist
• If I end up a straight woman, I want to have been a straight man originally, and the transformation being what changed me

 With these in mind, I started to firm up the story a bit more.  I changed it from a former girlfriend to a family curse... that way I could have the 'mother' warn her 'son/daughter' that she would slowly change to a heterosexual woman.  I could start the story with him being changed into a 'lesbian', but through some experience he starts to get attracted to men.  As Neoro prefers lesbians (but is open to straight women as well) I could even make him struggling against the change as it sounds like Neoro would in real life (yeah.. the real life where he really does change into this beautiful woman).  I could even have the body pushing the desires on him.

So I started writing... the one problem I was having was keeping it sweet and loving.  I admit my mind was firmly in the gutter and the most I could do was write out short quick passages of him struggling but submitting to the change.... and then it hit me.  What format do I use that works best with short quick passages of text?  Kinetic Text.

I could use FAR more images that way and focus in on the feelings.  Now, I had already written up the first few paragraphs, and figured they'd be important for setting up the story, so I kept them.  After laying out the first panel I sat back though and realized that I'd have one frame of 'regular' formatting (maybe two if I made the last panel match), and then multiple panels of Kinetic Text.  If I was going to go down that path, I wanted the Kinetic Text to stand out in more than just formatting.  That's when the last piece fell into place... it wouldn't be a study partner that was making the moves on our new heroine.. it would be her own dream!  Each of the Kinetic Text panels could be used as the dream sequence!

That's where I really got rolling.  The first Kinetic Text panel went smoothly and I got the idea of adding the 'fog' blurry effect to maximize the dream state.  It still took me a while to write it all out as I still tended to go a little too hardcore and focus on the body and actions instead of the mental changes... so I'd have to go back and edit quite a bit on the fly.

I'd guess that overall it took me about four hours to make this cap.  One hour to get the images in mind, work out the basic story and to find the subject.  Two and a half to write out the dream sequence and final panel.  A half hour for final edits and changes.

I have to say, I'm really liking this cap so far.  I had intended on using a different image for the last panel  but the only other single image of the girl was a vertical one... and wile it was fine cropping a vertical image into a horizontal one for the dream sequences (where the blur effect covered up the pixelation), it wouldn't work for a clear image.  Since I didn't want it to be exactly the same I figured flipping it horrizontaly would work, and as long as I was reversing things I went ahead and reversed the colors in the text, text box, and title.

When I posted it for Neoro, I told him that it should be considered a gift as I already had the images and basic story line in mind before I considered his preferences.   But to be honest, I couldn't have made this without those preferences.

I hope Neoro as well as all of you enjoy the cap!