New Animation: Compliance

December 4, 2017

Well, I’m back. Actually I’ve been back, I just haven’t had time to write about it. Its weird.

Last week, I had this sudden burst of inspiration. For some time, I’ve been toying with the concept of doing a manip series that would utilize stock photography. The sorts of photos that business-types throw into power point presentations alongside a graph labelled with words like “Projections” and “Fiscal Year.” Over the years I’ve come across a few dozen stock pics that I thought could work well in a mind control story. I was just waiting for the inspiration to bite.

Which brings us back to last week. I was hunting for something on Google Image Search and one rabbit hole led to another and I stumbled onto three or four images that I really liked. A story began to materialize in my mind. A corporate takeover. Aided by nefarious mind control. I went to my raw material folder and began collecting photos and seeing what worked well together. I grabbed a few naughty images that I’ve had saved but probably wouldn’t find a use for on their own.

I got the Photoshop work underway and immediately moved on to animation. In a couple nights, I had my images finished. From there, I went on to do the writing which naturally lent itself to a vignette-style story. As I wrote on it more, a broader, yet vague, narrative came together that helped to glue everything together. I polished a bit and worked on the pacing, trying to make it feel like its naturally building towards something. And, hopefully, the ‘something’ its building towards feels satisfying once you get there.

And that’s it. A fun little project that was a nice change of pace: just sitting down and doing something rather than spending a lot of time planning and over-thinking it.

The manip itself has been in the gallery for several days. But, literally, as I began to type up this blog post, my email pinged with some fresh work from a freelance client and so I dashed off to handle that. I just grabbed a few spare moments this evening to jot down my thoughts.

Whether you’ve already had a chance to check it out or this is your first peek, I do hope you enjoy!

See you next time.

Compliance

A company's new compliance training software helps the senior officers accept some drastic changes

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Catching Up With Callidus – Nov 17

November 17, 2017

I just realized that the week is almost over and I haven’t posted since Halloween! So, I thought I should sit back down and let all you fine folks know whats going on around here. I’ve been extremely busy with life and work the past couple weeks. So, its been hard to squeeze in time for smut.

However, an idea that I’ve been mulling over for a new series has come together rather unexpectedly. So, I’ve put in a few minutes here and there where I could steal them and I’m making some progress. I may even have it finished before the end of the month.

Its not nearly as much writing (at least not yet) as the 1,500+ word stories I’ve written recently. But its five or more animations that tie this neat little yarn together. Its sort of captured my imagination all of the sudden so I’m pushing it to the front of the stack.

I’ll share more in my next update or…who knows? I might even have it finished by then. We’ll just have to see how productive I am next week.

Hope everyone has a great weekend and we’ll talk again soon!

Catching Up With Callidus – Halloween 2017

October 31, 2017

Hi all, hope the holiday finds you happy and flush with confectionery treats! I’ve been doing a spot of writing the past couple nights on the same piece I mentioned last time. I’m up to a thousand words now and I’ve just finished a rather fun section that fills in a bit of the backstory.

The unique thing, so far, about this piece is that the characters are D/s partners that use mind control in their play. No vast conspiracies, nosy journalists, or latex drones to be found anywhere (at least not yet). So, this is certainly a change of pace in that regard, but a very enjoyable one. Its still pretty stylized and there are darker kinds of things that happen as the story progresses. So, I think it will work its way towards more familiar territory by the tale’s conclusion.

Its definitely been fun drawing inspiration from real life kinky couples like kyle-is-kinky and mind-fucked-megan on tumblr or sleepingirl and cckitten of the Two Hyp Chicks podcast. I’m trying to convey a sense of the fun that I feel when I read about their adventures in EMC play.

The section that I’ve just been working on is largely to do with the sorts of things real life play partners might get up to…if they had the perfect knowledge and unlimited resources that fictional characters are so often blessed with. Specifically, our hypnotic heroine and her Domme have worked together to create a “brainwashing room” to indulge their fetish. And, I’ve spent an enjoyable portion of the evening researching some of the real-life toys, contraptions, and technology that a (probably fictional) person could use to do the same, if they were so inclined.

A bit more writing…I’m thinking five to eight hundred more words…and I’ll show you what I mean.

Happy Halloween!

Catching Up With Callidus – Oct 18

October 18, 2017

Hi again, dear reader. The week has been a productive one for me in both the vanilla and erotic mind control spaces. So, I thought I’d post some quick updates on what’s been going on.

1. I’ve been doing a bit of writing this evening on a piece that I originally teased in July of last year. At that time, I’d finished doing some animation work on the image and was ready to start writing, then the last 12 months happened and I never made any further progress.

But, this piece has been on my mind lately, ever since I came across another photo from the same gallery. At first, I thought I might use it instead of my original source pic. But, after thinking it over, a story idea began to take shape that would use both images in a brief series.

So, this evening, I’ve typed up about five hundred words of a “hypnotic roomate” flavored story. We’ll see how it all turns out once its done, but I’m excited about the direction its heading in.

2. I’ve tweaked the site theme just a tad. The glowing-text on manip captions wasn’t quite as ‘glowy’ on Firefox as on Chrome, so I adjusted things a bit to try and keep it looking properly ‘glowish’ on both browser platforms.

3. More work being done on Pleasure Professionals. Actually, what I’m currently doing is a spot of research. One of the upsides to all the freelance work I’ve been doing this year is that it requires me to use the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. So, I finally have access to the latest versions of Photoshop and After FX.

As it turns out, After FX now includes a ‘light’ version of Cinema 4D, which is a terrific tool for doing 3D modelling, animation, and motion graphics. So, I’ve been re-learning to use the software (which I haven’t touched since the college days) and watching some videos that show off how to light and render photo-realistic interior spaces.

I’m not sure if this is how I will create the room behind the door in the final manip. But, if I can get over a few technical hurdles (and the learning curve), then I just might go that route. I’ve downloaded a particularly nice 3D model of a chair that could be right at home in any mind control fetishist’s fantasies. That is, if I can alter the color of its textures to something more in-line with the rest of the manip. So… we’ll see.

That’s it for this evening, see you next time!

And The Winner Is: Pleasure Professionals!

October 12, 2017

I’m glad that I did the extra leg work to include a poll widget on the site. I’ve considered doing it in the past but, for whatever reason, never actually made it happen.

As for the results of the very first poll, I asked which of my upcoming projects, you fine folks would be interested in seeing completed first. Although it was quite close in the early voting, by the end of the week, a clear winner had emerged: a little piece I’m currently calling Pleasure Professionals. I call it that because that’s what its called, strangely enough.

I don’t quite remember when this image found its way onto my hard drive but I had the foresight to put the title in the folder name for easy reference later. Back in the summer, I ran across the image and had a wonderful surge of inspiration: A woman is returning to her mind controller. She’s tried to keep herself away but she can’t and so she’s back. She knows when she leaves this time, the last of her resistance will have been erased…

Which I was perfectly happy with but, as it turns out, the source material itself dovetails quite nicely into that idea. The original Joybear erotic film is described as such:

Beneath the hustle and bustle of London exists a secret profession of “Executive Relief Consultants”. Professionals for hire to those who want a little bit more from their sex lives.

I thought that sounded quite marvelous as further backstory for my planned manip. So, I adapted (stole) the idea of an exclusive service only available to the wealthy, which caters to their every sexual whim. And, I thought it might be interesting to explore the trope of a high-powered professional who prefers a submissive role, sexually.

And what if, taking it a step further, the protagonist is a mind control fetishist? She can’t possibly reveal this information to just anyone. But, since the agency guarantees absolute confidentiality for their clients, perhaps she’s finally found a way to indulge her forbidden desire: to experience her mind being controlled by someone as stern and authoritative in the bedroom as she herself is in the boardroom.

So, that’s the premise I’m working from. Lately, I’ve been working here and there on a room beyond that shut door. It should serve as a fun way of seeing what sort of smexy fun our submissive CEO has been getting up to. More on that next time!

New Animation: Trending

October 10, 2017

Greetings all, hope everyone had a good weekend. As promised, I’m back again with some new material to share. A four-part animated series I like to call Trending. Check it out then read on for my director’s commentary!

This piece has had an interesting journey to completion. The story taking place in this animation began life as a commission piece from last year. My patron sent me an image and some ideas and this is eventually what I wrote. Which I was quite pleased with, as I thought it was a fun little story that had some hot moments. My patron was kind enough to grant permission to share the text publicly, without using the original photo I’d been supplied. So, I set about looking for some new imagery to go along with the words. Which is the opposite of how the process normally works.

As it happened, I had a terrific gallery, which I’d saved years ago, that I stumbled across during this search. I was able to pull four images with facial expressions that I thought lined up nicely with the story as it progressed. We first see the model with a “bored at work” sort of expression followed by something akin to “Hey, what’s going on here?” The third panel suggests the beginnings of hypnotic fascination and the fourth conveys deep, irresistible entrancement.

For most of them, there wasn’t much in the way of manipulation to be done. A little fiddling with color, contrast; a bit of business with the eyes. That sort of thing. The fourth image, however, did involve some of the more liberal use of Photoshop that I enjoy.

It occurred to me that all the images are mostly safe for work. So, deviant that I am, I thought I’d try and make the final panel as naughty as possible. So, I stole the lower half of the model’s body from another picture where she was showing much more of what was beneath her skirt. I composited this into the existing photo which turned out far more suggestive than the original had been.

The animation that is revealed over the course of images three through four was a fun exercise in reverse engineering what I’d described in the text. The challenge (as usual) is finding a balance point between conveying this malstrom of subliminal programming while still making it clear enough for the viewer to enjoy.

And speaking of you, dear viewer, what did you think? I certainly hope you enjoyed Trending. As always, your comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome. I’ll be back again later in the week with an update on the current front-runner in my upcoming projects poll: Pleasure Professionals.

Trending

A software engineer for a social media company discovers a strange malfunction in their latest product.

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Catching Up With Callidus – Oct 3rd

October 3, 2017

Welcome back dear readers. Its a bit strange, now, to have transitioned out of “theme building” mode. Although I do have a few minor things I need to fix and/or tweak, I’ve all but taken off my WordPress theme developer’s hat and put it back on its peg. Which I will miss a bit as I do love the development process and all the creative problem solving that comes with it.

But its also nice to enjoy the fruits of that labor. Like people using the new poll widget to let me know which in-development project they’d like to see completed first. That’s a feature I’ve wanted to include for some time and I’m happy I was able to squeeze that into the mix with all the other bits n bobs of the new paint job.

Moving forward, I see that being useful to solicit responses on all kinds of things: podcast topics & interview subjects; maybe site contests of some kind; if I ever do an on-going series it might be fun to do a choose-your-own-path story with you fine folks voting on which direction certain plot twists go.

So, we’ll see how it develops. In the meantime, and in the spirit of soliciting feedback, if you have any ideas for how poll questions could be used in the pursuit of mind control smut, leave me a comment and let me know. I’m always happy when people -leave- their thoughts. Mwuahahahaha!

*has coughing fit; shuffles off for more ice water*

Have a great week and I’ll see you all soon…probably with some new material!

Welcome Back!

September 29, 2017

Greetings all,

I know its taken quite a bit of time to accomplish, but the site’s new theme is finally complete (mostly) and I am, officially, back in the “making mind control smut” business. There’s more to talk about but I’m exhausted so it will have to wait until a bit later in the weekend.

In the meantime: have a look around! There’s several new features to check out. You may also find my first manip of the year is now in the Gallery. I’ll talk more about that next time too. For now, I just want to say that I’m happy to be back with you and looking forward to showing you some of the things I’ve been tinkering with during the hiatus.

Farewell for now.

-Callidus

 

Lady Viper

Lady Jaye is captured by the forces of Cobra and brought before The Baroness

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Mid-Week Missives – Sep 14th Edition

September 14, 2017

Hello again!

While I’m not quite getting these update posts written once a week, I am trying to keep you all updated on my progress with the new site theme. Its going very well. In fact, I’m running out of things to do. Throughout most of the process, its been a very satisfying cycle of designing a feature, researching how to achieve it, implementing it, debugging it (when it inevitably fails to work), and then, finally, checking it off the list.

I left that enjoyable sandbox of discovery a couple weeks ago as my focus shifted to optimization. Not just implementing features but implementing them the correct way: reducing database calls and http requests, combining and compressing scripts and style sheets, and on and on. I’m running out of things to do there as well. I’ve done some cross-browser testing across a number of platforms, devices, and screen sizes. Everything is working and looking exactly as its supposed to. Another big checkmark on the list.

At the moment, I’m in data-migration mode. I’ve automated as much of the process as I can but I’m still manually moving data over for a lot of things. The old theme’s way of posting and managing manips and the new one are so different that there’s no simple way to transfer the data from one to the other. Animations take more time than simple photos. Series take more time than anything. I’m about halfway finished with all of the Animation posts as of right now.

There’s more to do. But not much more. Move the last of the data over. Test everything again. Back up everything before I throw the switch. We’re getting close now. I’m comfortable saying that the transition is weeks away at this point. I’m looking forward to having it done and focusing solely on creating new content.

In both the short and long term, I have a lot of ideas that have been building up and I’m anxious to get started on them. See you soon!