Blog – Page 19 – Callidus

Really Quickie

July 30, 2009

I’ve really wanted to do more updating, but instead I’ve found myself falling back into my old routine and doing a bunch of nothing. Recent events haven’t made things any easier, but tonight I was feeling really sick of just sitting here.

So, in a fit of frustration I posted to twitter that I was going to finish a new manip in the following three hours. Now for those of you unfamiliar with this disease I have called ‘perfection’, know that a quick manip for me is usually measured in days.

So, when I perused my “To Do” folder to find an image I thought would be an easy project, I suddenly realized that two images I’ve had saved could work beautifully together. A quick check in Photoshop confirmed they were of comparable resolutions. So, full of new-found inspiration I set to work and here we are a few hours later and I actually have something to show for it.

Voyeurism carries with it the inherent danger of being caught, but I find that effect is deliciously heightened by some naughty mind control. What if you’re so distracted by the sheer eroticism that you don’t turn and leave quickly enough? What if you’re caught? They can make you stay…and eventually make you forget you ever wanted to leave at all…

Fun themes to explore; and it leaves me plenty to ponder as I muse over writing a caption. Though this one doesn’t have the polish I usually prefer, it feels quite nice to have something after being sidetracked for so long. As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Her Name Was Alina

July 21, 2009

This is not the blog entry I had planned to be writing but as someone much wiser than I am once said, life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. A little over a year ago I came across a blog on the now-defunct Yahoo 360 by a woman calling herself Blankserena. She was a major hypno-fetishist and quite a writer to boot. Her posts were filled with accounts of her real-life trance experiences. They were very exciting to read but, for me, they struck a deeper chord.

When I wrote about her blog last year, I talked about how her entries were more than just something to get hot-n-bothered over. Serena talked honestly about spending money she didn’t have on hypno-fetish videos and mp3’s, letting real-life plans take a slide to indulge her mind control fantasies, and losing the man she loved because he didn’t feel as important to her as her fetish. These things spoke to something in the very core of me…because I understood them all to well.

Shortly after my blog post, we started talking and became very close as the months went by. We formed our own little support group; encouraging each other to do constructive things with our love of hypno and mc, like writing and manniping. And I’m here to tell you, when serena, mind control, and writing got together, good things followed. She (and I) was very proud of a script she’d written for Nikki Fatale called The Black Room. It was a theme she’d later explore in a story she penned called The Brainwashing of Nina; which, after me bugging her about it for two days straight, she finally posted to the Garden where it belongs.

We shared an intense love for film making, screen writing, and all manner of creative endeavors. We dreamed up main-stream film ideas with nefarious mc plot threads like all those tv shows that had kinked us so many years ago.We marveled at all the quirky indie movies that shared a spot in our dvd collections. We talked endlessly about television and the amazing writing that’s happening there right now. We wasted many Mondays comparing notes on the previous week’s episode of Battlestar Galactica and Lost. We brainstormed dozens of ideas for scripts that we’d write together some day.

When Erik came back into her life earlier this year she was so happy; she loved him so deeply. She was so glad to have another chance to be with him and I delighted in her joy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long after that her cancer returned. Over the last several months things were getting worse for her, but our friendship was as rich and alive as it had ever been and through everything we always found away to get ourselves laughing.

The day we shared our real names with each other was a good conversation; lots of humor, some poignant realizations, and some very good advice was traded that day. The last time we spoke, although the it didn’t start that way, it sort of became our “last conversation” talk. We said the things we wanted the other to know, made some promises, and said goodbye. I remember thinking afterward that if it was the last time we talked, then we went out on a good note.

Earlier today, I finally got to speak with Erik who passed along the sad news that she died over the weekend. I don’t know if its better or worse to have a great deal of time to contemplate mortality; I’ve had months to come to terms with the fact that she was going to die. Today, I don’t feel angry, or cheated, or regretful; I just miss her. I miss talking about writing and directing with her, I miss sending photos with heavy hypno overtones back and forth (one of our favorite past times), I miss our conversations.

I’ve been thinking all day about what I wanted to say about her, how to communicate how amazing she was. She was the most unique person I’ve ever known. She was delightfully vulgar; she was ridiculously funny. She was wise beyond her years and, though she disagreed, she was always the clever one between us. She was much better at giving advice than following it herself. She was supportive, encouraging, and comforting. She was very talented. She was kind. She was braver than I will ever be.

Mostly, she was my friend.

Her name was Alina and I miss her dearly.

Goodbye ‘A’, I love you, and I’ll always remember you, and I will keep my promise.

I’m Supposed to be Doing Something Else

June 12, 2009

…but I’ve been stealing quick glances at sara castle’s recently completed XXX4, and I’m here to tell you…this one’s a scorcher. Sara is one of the finest authors we have in the community, so let’s get that out of the way, and XXX4 is one of the best stories she’s ever penned.

All the usual suspects are in on this one; bleak visions of an oppressive future, a paramilitary force of ass-kicking hotties, and more cyber-punk mind controlling nasties than you can shake a steel tentacle at. Yet far from being a repetition of past ideas, XXX4 is a refined celebration of all the things that make a sara castle story great. There’s mass-quantities of mind control (three times fast), there’s love and betrayal and revenge, there’s girl-sex so hot it’ll melt your eyes right out of your friggin’ head.

I’m speaking ambiguously because I really don’t want to ruin any of the fine work she’s done crafting her narrative, but in the broad stokes, four women are in competition for a single position. They each have mind control tech, fancy weapons, and three women standing in their way. From there, sara does just delicious things with her characters; love, betrayal, see above for more.

The point is that’s its a ridiculously good story, its one of the hottest things you’ll ever read, and I am so glad I put off what I was supposed to be doing to read it. I recommend you do the same.

Congrats sara, you’ve really outdone yourself with this one (waves).

A Quickie While I Attend to Other Things

June 11, 2009

While I haven’t been quite as productive this week as I’d hoped to be (I was honestly hoping to have a full update ready by now…so naive), I have been working on some new material and I thought I’d share a sneak peek with those loyal readers (all twelve of you) who are kind enough to keep visiting.

This pic was one I’d instantly seen the story in when I laid eyes on it. It was just a matter of finding the right props and fashioning the text. I’d intended to keep the text quite breif, just a couple sentances, but what I wanted to convey simply needed more. Influenced very heavily with this one by the terrific betrayal in Daphne’s Fairie Tale, the inducer is right out of trilby’s Watering Hole, and some vibes from a very hot scene in Tabico’s Winter Flesh.

Speaking of the inducer, I wanted something flashlight-ish but nothing too recognizalbe. What I found was the K2 Porcupine tactical light. Its a self defense torch that has a retractable ring of spikes around the lamp. Somewhere, someone is butchering watermelons with one of these things.

What a month

June 8, 2009

Hey all and welcome back. Its been a hell of a month for me. My vanilla job is going really great and keeping me extremely busy. This has been a particularly trying month for me, but I’m happy to say I made it through and things are returning to some semblance of normalcy.

I’m working on some new manip material and desperately trying to return emails this evening; hopefully if I owe you correspondence, you’ll have something in your inbox soonish. I’m also doing some housekeeping on the site and trying to fix some broken things. Incidentally, the rss feed should be functional again.

Lastly, I had time earlier tonight to read a couple items from the new update at mcstories. Betrayal, by zorkmeister was quite good as was the always delicioius Jukebox with Play the Game. There’s still several I haven’t gotten to yet (including sara castle’s newest chapter to XXX4 which I’m dying to check out), but hopefully I’ll make up for lost time tomorrow night.

The announcement this week of the The Beatles Rock Band video game has me thinking about the greatest band that ever was and reminded me of a story I’ve been meaning to tell you all about the Beatles break-up and how some nefarious mind control may have played a part. But I’ll leave that as a tease for next time.

Finally…

May 15, 2009

Well, its like…a month overdue, but my new animated manip is online!

This one had a long road to completion. The actual animated frames I’ve had finished for months now, but I knew I didn’t want to just have four individual animated manips that would force the viewer to go forward and backward through browser pages in order to view each panel. That, of course, meant I needed to learn some flash.

Or more precisely actionscript, which is the programing language that drives flash. Animation I can do, but even simple user-interaction (like Next and Back buttons) takes some programing. So early this year I decided I wasn’t going to let my lack of programming knowledge hold me back anymore. I bought a book and started teaching myself how to write flash applications.

It seems almost silly, all this work for what amounts to a slideshow, but such is the nature of my illness. I’m a perfectionist you see; not always in a healthy way. Its not enough to do something, it has to be done right. Also, I’m a hopeless control-freak and know-it-all; if I can’t do something myself I get cranky.

But enough of my problems.

The point (finally) is that it took me a while before I had the programming skill to put together the interactive part of this latest manip (and truth be told I still leaned heavily on some handy online tutorials). Plus there was that whole “lets completely redesign the website” thing right as I was finishing up.

So, I’m very glad to have the new site up and running and very, very glad to finally have this new manip on display for everyone to see. As we’re all beginning to discover, I’m an Aria Giovanni…uh…enthusiast. I’d had a pic set of one of her few fetish video shoots and after looking at them for a while, finally figured out where they could go..with a little Photoshop.

The source pics required some extensive work: duplicating and blending large sections of foreground, head replacement, logo removal, and I still had to fabricate one side of the head clamps from scratch. The large “Enable” button was a 3D model dropped in from the Google warehouse, then textured and lit in Photoshop to blend into the background.

The visual fx were really inspired by an episode of Hart to Hart where a neferious hypnotist uses light bouncing off a crystal chandeler to put Jennifer under. Its a really neat effect and I sort of used that as my jumping off point. The subliminal text and images were added at the eleventh hour when I realized I had more story than would fit into three panels, and decided to insert a POV shot of what Aria is seeing.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Time to enter The Room.

Almost there…

May 6, 2009

updates_folder So here we are. The migration is nearly complete, still some broken links to hunt down and some images to restore, but, failing that, the new site is up and open for business. I’d appreciate any thoughts you have on the new design, particularly if you’re experiencing any problems. If that is the case, including your operating system, web-browser, and screen resolution with your comment would be much appreciated.

My over-hyped, much delayed animated manip is still on the way, and if I find time to work on that tomorrow night, might even get uploaded by the weekend. Cross your fingers and throw the blood of a goat over your shoulder…or something.

See you soon.

Site Migration

May 4, 2009

If you’re seeing this on the new site then congrats, I’ve managed to not sabotage the internet. However, I’m still migrating things from behind the scenes so chances are good that links aren’t going to work, pages aren’t going load properly, and things in general are going to go wrong until I finish.

I appreciate your patience and things should be back up and running soon.

Dreams and Delays

April 17, 2009

So, that whole “I’ll have an update this week” thing? Sorry, looks like I have to be a liar on that one. In my vanilla life, I sort of back-stepped into what is rapidly becoming a career. Things are at a crucial point right now and all of my focus is there. Anyway this week I got sidelined by some work-stuff and I didn’t get to finish my manip series as I’d hoped to. But I thought for those of you still checking my blog I’d tease you with a little preview of what’s to come.

I’m quite pleased with how this one has turned out. In some ways its quite simple in its final form but the technique and detail-oriented work that went into the actual art was very satisfying. Then there was a fair amount of time teaching myself some Flash programming to accomplish the technical aspects, but what I’ve learned has really got my imagination running wild on the possibilities for future projects.

Anyway here is a small tease of my latest work, which I should have ready to unveil early next week (for real this time).

The Room

Hope you enjoy.

Weekly Picks – The Manip Edition

April 12, 2009

So…its been a while. As much as I want to make updating here a priority I just don’t have the kind of free time I used to. Not that I’m complaining; I’m finally doing what I love and beginning to see an actual career taking shape, but building a career means putting in the time and so my life as Callidus just has to take a back seat right now. I’m not stepping away, I’m not closing up shop, I’m just saying I’m going to update as often as I can, just don’t expect miracles.

To those of you I owe an IM or email…I’m getting to them I promise, please bear with me a little longer. I’m actually way ahead of where I normally am in terms of workload this weekend, so I’m trying to squeeze in as much as possible while my inbox is mercifully empty. But now…time for a little fun.

I’ve been meaning to update my picks blog with some manips, but just haven’t had time to really check out all the new work being done at the Collective. After taking some time this morning to browse some of the latest uploads, I’m happy to say the ridiculously talented people there haven’t lost their touch. In no particular order, here’s the recent entries that caught my eye. Note: you will need a free account at the Hypnopics Collective Gallery in order to view these images.

First up is this nice bit of business from Scifiscribbler. I’ll probably be repeating this throughout, but the single most important step in manipping is choosing a good pic to start with. Personally, I’m drawn to pics that have some strange or unique quality, something not even necessarily mc-related, and I particularly like seeing the creativity that goes into spinning a non-obvious pic in an mc way. This piece also calls to mind a great story by 8-bit called Safeword, which I highly recommend.

Edwinracine is a Collective member who just recently began posting, but his work shows great promise. Again recalling my maxim on unique images, I really like the flavor of his work. His source material calls to mind corporate stock images, but twisted in a delightful way. His images contain no nudity, but are erotic nonetheless; an excellent study in less is more. Subtle, reserved, and innovative, I really like the direction this artist is going.

ooae10 likes voluptuousness and I don’t blame him/her at all. A casual glance at this artist’s gallery reveals a predilection for curvy and, refreshingly, natural women. ooae10’s work has a very classic feeling, as I’ve said before, and never fails to recall William Lee, Maddy Rose, and the other early legends of hypno-manipping that so influenced me. While the methods may vary, the theme running throughout this wonderful artist’s work is just how beautiful an entranced lady is.

My biggest problem with Jasmine is picking just one or two images from her extensive library to try and represent the broad range of her talent. While her images run the gamut from minimal and erotic to shocking and overt, her captions tie everything together in a style that is all her own. With a strong emphasis on BDSM, D/s, and humiliation there’s lots of fun fetishes accompanying the mind control in her work. Another artist who finds images I’d never think to use and spins them in a wickedly mc way.

While not trying to play favorites, I’ve got several pieces from this last artist to talk over. Although I’ve seen the name around the Collective, I’d not actually had an opportunity to check out SilverSurfer’s catalog before today and it was a very pleasant surprise to see such a talented artist with such a comprehensive gallery. A man after my own heart, there’s a bit of MD, FD, a nice selection of TTT, but the initial thing that drew me in was a gallery that contains a healthy selection of manip series, each presented as a Flash slideshow.

His work is wonderfully erotic and he makes use of graphic elements and special effects to great effect. Another artist with great source material, some of his work makes me just a bit jealous; I’d love to have a crack at some of his images. One series, that I’ve had filed away waiting for some inspiration, SilverSurfer has turned into a wonderful little spy-genre mc series. His story telling ability is obvious in these larger series and honestly I don’t think I would have done as good a job as he has. Its fantastic to see really good source material live up to its potential in the hands of a really good artist. SliverSurfer is definitely someone I’ll be looking forward to seeing more work from.

And speaking of manips…I’ve got a small animated series that I’ve had sitting on the shelf for a while now that I think I’ll finally be able to put up, so be on the look out for that later this week. Until then I hope you’re all doing well and I’ll see you (sooner rather than later this time).

Callidus

Mind Control Fetish Art