Friday, April 12, 2013

The Importance of being Detailed

They say the devil is in the details!




So last night as I was drifting off to sleep, I had this idea on how to present an image.  I'm sure I've seen it in some movie or some television commercial  but I can't think of specifically when.  The idea was having a box float in front of a black and white image... and inside that box the image would appear in full color.  I liked the idea and even thought on how to utilize it in a still cap... I could do multiple panels with the box highlighting a specific area of a girl's body, and each panel would be her complaining to a doctor that she hadn't had that feature before... she had been a man before.

At that point I fell asleep.  Surprisingly I remembered all the little details.  But I held off on making the cap for a few hours as I figured it would look interesting, and I wanted to make this cap for Smitty (he was next up on my cap debt list).

While thinking of details for the cap, I went over the last few captions we've made for each other, but didn't get inspiration there.  I then went over to Smitty's blog and noticed something... he's been using a LOT of shemale pics lately.  They work perfectly for the over the top sissy caps he's been pumping out lately.   But I have to admit... I find it a bit of a turn off.  I know, I know... I can have a curvy sexy woman working over a huge cock in any number of my caps... but there's just something 'off' about seeing an actual shemale in the photo.

I guess while I'm still opening up to various types of caps written for me, I'm also firming up on my specific desires for photographs used in caps... I like studio style photographs as opposed to snapshots, and I like real women in my photos.  Even if the person portrayed is supposed to be merely crossdressing or a full on breast having shemale.

But seeing as Smitty liked using those photos, I figured I could make this a little more special by using a shemale for him.  And there has constantly been one girl that I like... Bailey Jay.  Not only is she damned sexy, there are a lot of images of her out there.

So I went to find an image.  I figured I would like to have about four panels, so I needed to show off four parts of her body.  Her breasts and her penis were obvious choices... her eyes would make sense... but what else?  As I looked through the images on Google Images though I realized that I had another problem... finding a single image that would show off all of these body parts.  Sure, I could find a great image of Bailey's tits... but those images generally hid her little friend.  I could find an image that showed off her eyes and her lips... but those were generally face shots.

I eventually decided that I would use multiple images of her.  I'd even accept that some details would change from shot to shot like her hair.  I could just hope that the overall layout and design would help everyone look past that.

When I narrowed my search down to images that just showed one part of her, I had a lot of images to pick from.  Here are a few that I picked out, but didn't use:







Once I had several images to pick from, I moved on to laying out the actual panel. I actually used one of the last caps I made for smitty ("Virtuous Sins") as a template since I knew it had a lot of guidelines already in place.  Instead of the four tall images, I just had the photo take up all of that space.  To get this effect, I pulled the image in, making sure that it flowed off one side.  I then copied the layer and cropped the bottom layer to fit within the square shape and made it black and white (I also lightened it a bit, giving the color portion a little more contrast).  Next I went to the color layer and selected out a portion, deleting the rest.  This portion would run from the edge of hte panel to about 3/4 of the way to the other side of the photo.  That way it would have that 'moving into the frame' feel.

From there it was a simple matter to give it a shadow and an outline.  Once the first color section was made, it would act as a template so that all of the color sections would be the same size.  I'd love to show you how I did this step by step... but with all the false starts I made, I've now done this about a dozen times.  I didn't save any partial frames, so I'd have to do it from scratch.  If you REALLY want to see how I did this, just ask in the comments, and I'll make a 'Behind The Layers' post demonstrating it step by step.

With the images finally selected and fit into the panels, I then I had to write the story.  I kind of used a mix of Dee's and my writing styles... some of it I wrote inside the frame, while other parts I wrote in word.  You can probably tell which panels utilized which style (quick hint... it's easy to get wordy in Word).

At first I had both Smitty's voice and the Doc's voice in the same text box.  But it just looked wrong.  So I deleted the text box, and played around with having each voice stand up on it's own.  Sadly I couldn't find two different fonts that I was happy with and since I didn't want to use colors for the text, I had to have a text box for Smitty's voice that allowed me to make his text white.

The fact that the text boxes flow off the panel was a happy accident.  I was moving one section around and had the wrong layer selected.  When I zoomed out I saw the text box flowing off the page, and I realized it looked like the color section of the photo... so I copied that same effect on all of Smitty's text boxes.

Once I had that done, it was a simple (but repetitive .. four panels!) matter of placing the title in and adding my watermark.  Overall, I'm very happy with how the cap came out.  Yes, it's a little photo heavy, but I think they're all gorgeous images of Bailey, and the short text keeps it snappy and funny.

I hope Smitty likes it, and I hope all of you out there do too!

11 comments:

  1. Surprised this one doesn't already have a lot of fans drooling over it. As I said on the Haven, great cap. Inventive, funny and sexy to boot.

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    1. I'm glad you enjoyed it!

      But to be honest, I'm surprised too. I thought for sure the combination of a cap made for you, a new layout, and of course a hardcore image would bring people in... but it hasn't received all that many views either here or at the Haven.

      Maybe it's just the days I posted it.

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  2. Amazing graphics and amazingly graphic :-)
    Absolutely one of your best. Dialogue was funny with a nice bit of squirm. the pictures and the filters and layout, light years ahead and enhanced the story!
    Loved it. Smitty makes a fine muse for nice and nasty caps.

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    1. Thanks Candy!

      I'll freely admit that just like making caps for you tends to bring out my 'alpha domineering' voice, making caps for smitty tends to bring out my more 'smutty, funny, over the top' voice!

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  3. Nanobots! Interesting cap Caitlyn! Bailey Jay is one of my favorite shemales as well! She's really quite pretty! Very creative layout as well. Just a minor mistake I found, in the second to last line of the fourth panel, it reads, "You could be a living example of how I can any of their performers". I think you might be missing a word between can and any.

    Still, great job though!

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    1. Thanks Kendall!

      Yeah... I was working on that line for awhile. I thought I had finally fixed it, but it looks like while I may have figured it out, I didn't commit it to the cap. It should read "You could be a living example of how I can enhance any of their performers".

      Ah well... thanks for pointing it out though! Knowing that people see my typos makes me focus more on fixing them BEFORE they get published.

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  4. From a visual aspect, this might be my favorite caption of yours. The use of the color boxes is stunning, and the way you mirrored their shape with the text boxes below tied the story and the images together beautifully.

    And while I'm with you on usually finding shemales a bit of a turn off in captions, Bailey Jay is gorgeous and worked perfectly for this story.

    Had you told me the best caption I've seen in a long time would have featured a shemale model and a story about nanobots (a trope I'm generally not a fan of either) I wouldn't have believed you. But I stand corrected.

    Great pics, awesome dialog, and a jaw-dropping layout. Fantastic work, Caitlyn.

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    1. Thanks Rauk!

      I used to love 'technology' caps far more than magic caps. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that tech like 'nanobots' or 'genetic modification' or 'gender changing rays' are all just a different take on magic. They each bring their own unrealistic sensibility to a story. I think if they're treated well it shouldn't matter of the gender change comes from a modern lab or an ancient spell book.

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  5. Awesome...If only someone had told me long ago that a lack of attention to detail could have such great ramifications...from now on, I am going to cross my I's and dot my T's. What was the name of that "Dr." again?

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    1. Thanks Jenna!

      Now don't go messing up real life things hoping that it will cause some sort of random gender change! The only real result is that you'd probably end up paying to much interest on a mortgage or selling away your favorite record collection.

      As for the 'Doc'... I actually modeled him a bit after 'The Technologist'.

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  6. Thanks everybody!

    It was fun to make this new layout, and when I didn't get a quick response I was afraid that nobody liked it. I guess I need to learn to have more patience!

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