Surprise!!!

I'm sure that everyone had thought that this blog was long dead, and there have been times that I have thought the same thing.  I do, however, occasionally get the drive to create something.  This little number here is the result of one of those muse inspired bouts of creative delirium.

Before you get excited at my triumphant return, I'm going to caution you.  I do want to keep making captions, but it's not going to be on a regular schedule.  I will cap when my muse smacks me over the head and says that I must.  (No, I'm not taking applications for the position of muse.)

Nip / Pluck: An Adventure in Explaining My Process

A recent challenge was made to have several captioners take a single source image and put an individual spin on it.  The idea is that by explainining the thought process behind the scenes that new captioners might benefit.  Since the request has come up recently on the blog as well, I'll open this post up to do my best to answer any questions on my captioning process.

Here was the source image everyone was given to work with:

 

The first thing I noticed with the image is that it's a lower resolution tumblr pic.  That doesn't leave much real estate for adding text without modifying the image to add some.  I chose to remove the blur of red in the top right corner and stretch the shadow on the right to make more space.

The image itself gave me the feel of Snow White and the witch's hand for some reason, so I ended up on a bit of a fariytale slant.  Somehow, I settled on a reverse Pinnochio theme...real boy becomes puppet girl.  I added a frame to the image to give the feel of the classic storybook illustration brought into real life.

That left the writing.  It's the most important part of the whole caption to me.  The words should mesh with the image just enough to tie them together while letting the image speak for itself.  The controlling shadow hand in this image is ideal for themes of control and loss of it.

Since D/s themes can sometimes become heavy, so I chose a lively and fun font to keep things light.  It may not be the most readable font, but it expresses the undertones of softness and femininty I want the hidden dominant to have.

I like to add a teaser title to captions when I can to give a quick taste of the full caption.  I will usually put that in some 'dead space' in the image where it won't interfere with the core focus of the caption.

Last, and hopefully least, I add a transparent watermark to the caption to help deter other people on the Internet from claiming credit for my words and artistic adds as their own.  If this hadn't been a problem in the past (see here), I wouldn't bother.  Sadly, there are schmucks out there who scrape and repost captions while claiming they did the work.

And here is the final result:

Have questions on something I didn't cover in my explaination?  Ask them in the comments, and I'll try my best to answer.

Turn the Page

This photo practically screamed at me to create a caption for it.  I decided to go with a different direction than the obvious one.  Hopefully some of you can appreciate where I took this one.

The Cold Shoulder

I had a bit of inspiration for the November caption contest on Rachel's Haven.  The rules for this month include a restriction that the captions tell the story through only dialogue.  Since the vast majority of my captions are done in that style, it seemed like I would be remiss to let it pass me by.  The result is this caption.

Guest Caps by Dawn Carrington

I was recently contacted by a reader of this blog with an interesting proposition.  Since I've been busy fighting the good fight with real life recently, I decided to give it a try to see where it goes.

Dawn Carrington, a writer at TG World, came to me and offered up some of her own captions to be posted here.  After taking a look and seeing promise in them, I've agreed to post up a batch of her captions for you all to peruse.

Feel free to leave comments to let me know how you feel about me posting guest caps.  If you like what you see, leave some feedback for Dawn here.  If you really like them, go read her own caption blog: http://tgcaptions-metamorphosa.blogspot.com/

Waiting for a Call

I'm slowly getting back in to the swing of getting a few captions made.  It's still going to be slow going for the foreseeable future.  My attention is focused on other ventures at the moment.  I'll continue to post caps as I'm able to churn them out.

Join me

I've wanted to make a caption for Simone (http://misstresssimone.blogspot.com) for a very long time.  Every time I tried before, I always ended up scrapping a partially finished caption.  I finally found an ideal image and a story to go along with it formed.  Everything came together to make something I wasn't embarrassed to give to her.

Without further ado, here it is...

Elly's Downfall

I got into a bit of a caption tussle with someone on Rachel's Haven last week.  The story of the previous captions was essentially that I was brought in to take advantage of someone turned into a friend's pet because of that person using me before.  Then the friend decided to take advantage of me by turning me into a girl for the night too.

This caption was made as a follow on for me to get revenge on the friend for using me for his/her pleasure.

Flipping Channels

Sorry to say that life has been keeping me away from capping very much.  I did manage to pay off a Fantasy Football loss cap a week ago.  This one is unique in that the request was for a caption including a sports reporter that is very hard to find good photos of online.

I ended up opting for a lower quality image, and I hope that I managed to do something creative with it.

Catch 22

A while back, Alectra (Alectra's Playgrounds) made a very nice caption for me.  I made this one in return to let her get the best of me...just this once :)

The Surrogate

This is another caption I made to pay up for a fantasy football loss.  The good news is that I won this week, so I might have time to make a non-fantasy football cap.  I think it's time for me to revisit the Enchanted Penis series again... :)

A quickie: All Work and No Play

One of my dear friends that is playing in the Haven Fantasy Football league has yet to win a week.  She was feeling down, so I threw together a quick 'pick-me-up' caption for her.  This is the result.

You're Doing It All Wrong

I made this quick cap as a return for Candy's recent cap of me.  While it doesn't specifically include her name, I hope it's pretty clear that it was meant for her.

I think I'm beginning to feel some inspiration returning, so I'm hoping to get some new caps posted before too long.  Thanks to all for bearing with me.

Making the Cut

I have a friend who recently dragged me into playing in a fantasy football league, then proceeded to smack talk me about how I'm going to lose.  This caption was a bit of a revenge and return caption that pushes some of that friends buttons.  I know the type of change is different than I normally cover, but I hope that some of you can appreciate it anyway.

Oh yeah...this is my first caption with an experimental new style.  Comments on that (good or bad) are appreciated.

A Re-Birth of Sorts

A good friend who I chat with often had a birthday this week, so I made this caption for Elly.

Hot For Teacher

Don't Swim with Sharks and an Update

My caption output has stayed pretty low lately, mainly because I've been starting to help people by doing hypnosis over online chat.  Practicing hypnosis is getting the bulk of my free time at the moment, and it will likely stay that way for a while...at least until I work out a way to quickly get new partners into a state where they respond well.

I could still use a practice partner or two.  If you're interested, leave a comment and we can try to work something out.

Here's a new exclusive cap for you:

Happy Easter

The Jokess

This is another caption I did as part of a scavenger hunt.  The item was a Rule 63'd cosplay girl.  I had fun with what I found in my image search.  Believe it or not, the Sailor Moon pic is less disturbing than the other one I found.  I still shudder a bit when I think about it.

Spring Break

Spring is in the air, and I think back a bit and regret that I never got to experience Spring Break while I was in college.  Here's a little something to show how I think it may have gone.