Who Goes There?

July 23, 2011

Check it out, I’m writing about movies again. In my continuing quest to figure out why the hell I can’t seem to update here more regularly, its occurred to me that I might broaden my horizons a bit. I don’t necessarily have a erotic-mind-control-moment every day that would be worth sharing, so why not write about other things?

So, this week I’m going to write about an upcoming film that is a unique prequel/remake of which I happen to be a big fan of the source material. As it turns out, I’m a really big fan and this is going to take two posts so…buckle in.

Last time, I wrote about At The Mountains of Madness. Now, in addition to being one of my favorite Lovecraft stories, it was also extremely influential on a novella published two years later: John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There?

Spoilers ahead…

Who Goes There? depicts a group of scientists in Antarctica who discover a spacecraft and its pilot buried in the ice. They bring the preserved pilot back to their camp where it’s thawed out and they discover that it is a highly-intelligent creature capable of assuming the physical appearance, memories, and personality of any being it devours. Soon, panic and madness set in as the group realizes that someone, and probably several someones, amongst them are no longer human.

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Return To Middle-Urth

July 19, 2011

Somewhere in this lengthy email I’m reading from Tabico is an offer to collaborate. She’s working on a manip series, it involves Middle Urth mythology, a hot young thing, and a large book. That’s how it all started. An email out of the blue. She was going to go off on another adventure and wanted to know if I’d care to join her. I imagine it must have been the same for Sallah. Sitting around, enjoying the simple life in Cairo when a telegram from the U.S. arrives. Dr. Indi-Tabico-ana Jones is off hunting fortune and glory again. Wanna come?

Four more paragraphs to go before I can reply and say ‘YES.’

That was three months ago. Tabico and I just finished (as in six hours ago) the aforementioned new manip series and I have the distinct pleasure of unveiling it in public for the very first time. In typical Tabico fashion it involves several (though one in particular) brilliant ladies messing with things that they oughtn’t to be. But of course, they’re going to mess with them to their (and our) eventual delight. You know how these things go.

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Its Not Guillermo del Toro’s At The Mountains of Madness, But…

July 1, 2011

H.P. Lovecraft gets mad-love in the mc community. Particularly with the likes of Tabico, thrall, Lady K, and others who aren’t averse to wandering into squicky waters. I’m a fan of Lovecraft and an even bigger fan of Guillermo del Toro (btw, if you’ve never seen The Devil’s Backbone, get it now). As such, I’m patiently waiting for Del Toro to get around to making his adaptation of Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness.

As that film recently hit a bump, I may be waiting a long time. Until then, this very intriguing short film may have to suffice. Its an Italian, animated storybook that moves through Mountains in about 30 min and, despite some pretty simple animation, is nonetheless very enjoyable. So, if you’ve never read Lovecraft…go read Lovecraft. If you HAVE read Lovecraft, then give this a spin and see how it compares to what you see in your head.

Oh and by-the-by I’m collaborating with an old friend on some spicy new naughtiness. More details soon.

Manip Musings 003

March 22, 2011

Well I’m afraid I fell off the wagon there for a few weeks, but y’know what? That’s okay. I’m not going to apologize for being busy. That said I’m definitely trying to get back on-track with my goal to do a lot more updating this year. So for now, I’m here with some more mouth-watering, manip-morsels for your perusal and enjoyment. So let’s tuck in shall we?

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Literary Lauding

February 16, 2011

Just to give you an idea of how far behind I am in updating this blog, the very post you’re reading now was originally intended for Thanksgiving. You see, around that time there had been a literal (or literary) deluge of fiction from some of my very favorite authors. Jukebox and thrall had formed an alliance and released the White Album trilogy in late August/early September, Tabico had rolled out a 6-part, chapter-a-week scifi epic beginning in mid-November, and Vanderbilt had been busy adding to his ongoing Harbinger mythos as well as an non-canon gem I’ll discuss later.

The point, dear reader, is that I had a lot to be thankful for in the way of mc fiction last year but I was just a bit too busy to say so at the time. So, I’m saying so now; which in a sense isn’t such a bad thing, because now there’s even more naughty stories to discuss from the aforementioned authors as well as some delightful prose both new and classic from one of my absolute favs: Sara H and an especially hot-n-naughty tale from Flibinite. So without further delay, lets examine these fine authors and their work in a bit more detail.

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Free Photoshop Training This Week

February 8, 2011

For all those out there that aspire to do their own manipping, Photoshop can sometimes seem an intimidating prospect. Its a complex program which can make for a steep learning curve if you don’t have some grounding in it to begin with. This week, Lifehacker is running a series of posts to get you trained up in the tools and techniques of the world’s most famous image-editor.

Don’t have Photoshop? Don’t worry. As the article and accompanying video explains, knowledge of the toolset is applicable across a wide variety of Photoshop alternatives. And speaking of which, if you’re on Mac, I highly recommend you check out Pixelmator. Its an image editor that’s been kicking around for several years and is showing great signs of maturity with every update. With the launch of the Mac App Store, Pixelmator is available at half of its original cost; running a very reasonable $30 (but only for a limited time). The devs note that if you buy now, you’ll get a free upgrade to v2.0 when it launches this year.

I’ve been playing with Pixelmator this evening and I’m very impressed at how far this program has come since the first version I tried out years ago. While there are still some key Photoshop features I miss (vectors, layer styles, and deeper typography options), the actual image editing tools are absolutely comparable with Photoshop’s. If you’re a budding manip artist, I’d highly recommend downloading the free trial and giving it a spin.

That’s all for now. Happy manipping.

Manip Musings 002

February 1, 2011

Welcome back true believer. Good update at the Archive this week, including great stuff from Jukebox and Vanderbilt. I’m prepping a post now that highlights both of these authors (as well as some others) and some of their recent contributions that I felt were paticularaly strong. But for now, I thought I’d share some more spicy images from the Callidus-manip-treasure-backlog file.

Submitted for your approval…

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Manip Musings

January 25, 2011

They say the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one. I have a problem. I want to do so many things and I don’t always manage my time well. Compacting that problem, is the fact that I’m a perfectionist to an unhealthy degree at times and, in the past, when I’ve felt like I couldn’t do something spectacular, I just ended up doing nothing.

Alright, so I’ve admitted my problem, time to move on to a recovery plan.

I really enjoy posting and wish I did it more. I know it would give you all a reason to drop by a few times a week (instead of a few times a year) and I’d feel more productive and so and so forth. But I’ve had a very basic problem in reaching this goal. I have no idea what to write about. Or, more precisely, I need to find something to write about a few times a week.

I’ve always really enjoyed thrall’s posts wherein she highlights various fetish-photos from around the web. So I’ve been giving some thought to adapting the idea. The one mc-fetish related thing I do with consistency is hunt for new images to manip. Since, I’ll never actually manip everything I have saved, I thought I’d just start pulling some notable images from my ‘Watch Folder’ and sharing them with you all.

Maybe it will lead to inspiration for me and an eventual finished product, maybe it will lead to inspiration for you and we’ll play a ‘everybody write a caption’ game in the comments. Maybe it will just be a cool collection of pics with mc-possibilities. Whatever the case, I’m excited to write the first installment, so let’s get started shall we?

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New Animated Manip – Alpha

January 19, 2011

Welcome back true believer! Tonight, I’m pulling the curtain back on the long-teased super-secret-manip-project that’s been in the works…well a very long time. I think this one may have taken longer to complete than Orientation, which was relatively straight forward by comparison. But for all the starting and stopping, working and re-working, Alpha, is finally complete. For those of you who can’t stand the anticipation any longer, click on the image to the right and godspeed. For those who’d like to get the story behind the story…well, I’d still recommend clicking to the right and watching it; there will be spoilers ahead. Go ahead, I’ll wait here and have a celebratory beverage until you return.

All done? Well, I hope you enjoyed it. Putting it together was quite an interesting journey. It all started a little over two years ago when I came across an image set of Tera Patrick in a mosaic-tile shower. I took one look at the first image and had this vision of all the individual tile pieces flashing and spinning as though the whole shower was a giant hypno-trap. I saved the gallery and marveled at my good fortune for finding such juicy material to work with. I was looking forward to a challenge with this new piece; as it turned out, I got exactly what I was looking for…and then some.

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So Close…

January 18, 2011

While formal employment hasn’t allowed for much progress over the weekend, I thought I’d post tonight anyway and let everyone know that its going to happen this week. The manip I’ve been working on for twice as long as I’ve been teasing it is ‘this close’ (you can’t see my finger and thumb, but they’re really close together) to being finished. I’m finishing up the writing along with some final tweaks to the images and putting together the flash file. This is the final stages of work, once the flash file is complete with the latest media and text…I’m done!

So since I’m teasing you (you know you like it) I’ll drop some non-specific facts that won’t spoil anything but will hopefully whet your appetite. This new manip will be titled Alpha and will feature 16 panels; most of which are animated. There is an appearance by a character who was introduced as an unseen hand in a prior manip and if you happen to be familiar with said-manip, you’ll see that while the method is quite tech-heavy this time, Her strategy remains true-to-form.

As I write this, I’m having a flash of inspiration regarding this character. I think She’s the sort of serial-enslaver whose methodology isn’t determined by what is most efficient or effective, but rather by very powerful compulsions. I think She has a process for enslavement that She needs to (must) follow; She finds a target, develops a plan, sets the pieces into place, and then puts the gears into motion. The actual act of enslavement does not satisfy Her unless it comes about by the ritualistic machinations of her process.

I want to write more but I think I’ll stop there and save the rest to actually put in the story. Don’t worry, I promise it won’t delay the grand unveiling.

See you soon.