Real Magic

Masks magic is the best magic! (plus a discussion on tumblr)

I know black and white images don't generally play well here, but I just love them.  This image may well be incredibly sexy in full color but I doubt it would feel as 'classy'.  While the cap and story are fairly straight forward, I'd like to talk a bit about tumblr.  

I wrote in my last post that my tumblr blog would mostly just be images and snippets of ideas.  Well, that hasn't happened.  Instead the images and stories there are far more in line with my obscura.  Or at least what my obscura were supposed to be.  Short stories of a few paragraphs.  That's why I haven't posted much here since that post.  I put that up at the end of August.  Since then I've put up 37 posts on tumblr.  

37. 

My normal process for making an obscura is this.  Find an image that inspires a story.  Save the image, open up MS Word, and write out the story.  Open up Photoshop and crop the image down to the header graphic size and add the standard Obscura title and graphics.  Save that in .jpg format.  Open up the new blog post page and add the Obscura header graphic and a one line teaser.  Add a jump point and copy/past the story below it.  If I remember, add the source of the image (or at least where I found it).  

Not a bad process at all.  But if I find the image on tumblr, the process is so much faster and easier.  See the tumblr post with the image.  Hit like (respect to the people who originally posted it), and hit the reblog button.  Open up MS Word and write the story.  Copy/paste the story into the re-blogged tumblr.  Hit post.  I don't have to worry about image size or a header graphic or anything else.  

If I look at posts (stories, caps, obscuras...) as either hit or miss I'd wager that I have far more misses on tumblr than I ever do on this blog.  BUT, with the number of posts I'm putting up I also have far more hits.  I'm just able to post these quick hits a lot faster.  

Back to this cap.  I saw this on tumblr and immediately had this idea.  A couple find some masks that transform them into ideal lovers.  After enjoying them for awhile they come across someone with another mask that turns both of them into HIS ideal lovers, making the man into a sexy woman along with his wife.  I was about to go through the normal tumblr process when I realized I'd like to actually post it here.  But as I wrote the story I realized it was short enough to fit into the image as a simple cap.  

Obviously the image election process didn't take much longer.  The writing of the story didn't take too much longer until I copied it into the cap format.  Even in this simple format, I want to tweak the text to fit properly.  Pick a font, re-size the font to make it readable but not big enough to cover the whole image, then edit it down so the paragraphs look right (no final line with just one or two words... stuff like that).  Then I pick the colors, add the background behind the text, add the title, and add my watermark.  

I found this image an hour ago.  About 10 minutes was spent writing the first draft of the story.  About 15 minutes has been spent writing this post.  So that's about 10 minutes to post it as a tumblr re-blog or 45 minutes to make it into a cap (if I wasn't writing out this more complex idea of cap vs obscura vs tumblr I'd post more quickly here).  

That's not a small difference.  I'd imagine if I was just making it an obscura it would be a 5 to 10 minute graphic job and post.  10 minutes on tumblr vs 25 minute obscura here for basically the same thing.  Or 10 minutes on tumblr vs 45 minute cap here.  The cap is far better... but is it worth the time?  That's a question I'm going to have to work on internally for awhile... but it might just be the death knell for obscuras.  

For now, if you're interested in following all my material, you'll have to also follow me on tumblr as well as here.