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.

View Manip

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

View Manip

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!

Mid-Week Missives – Aug 30th Edition

August 31, 2017

Hello again, true believers!

I don’t have a terrifically large amount of news to share with you tonight, however what little I have is quite good. The design phase of the new site theme is 99% finished. The bells and whistles have been added, the layout has been tweaked, the divs have been floated, etc, etc. I would call it “100%,” but I suddenly thought a couple days ago that I might like to have a poll function where I could ask questions of you fine folks and get feedback on things, maybe do contests and such.

Who knows?

I’ve got some research and testing to do this evening that will determine if I go ahead and incorporate it now. It may have to be a feature that comes online down the road. It all depends on how easy it is to work with and incorporate into the existing design of the new theme. So, time will tell.

The next phase is extensive cross-platform testing to make sure the experience is consistent. I’m hopeful that Bootstrap will take care of the heavy lifting there. In fact, the headache of trying to design a theme that worked well across the major browsers and keep that code updated was one of the principle reasons I decided to switch to using a framework in the first place. I started on Foundation (as I think I’d mentioned previously) but ended up with the latest release of Bootstrap. Its a long story that I can tell another time.

theme-teasePoint is, I have testing to do next. Then, I need to consolidate a lot of my code and optimize things to be as fast as possible once its live on the site. Then some data-transfer to handle…and then it might just be finished.

How soon? Sooner than it was the last time we spoke. I won’t give an ETA yet but things are progressing nicely given my ridiculous workload. I’m quite pleased.

I appreciate you all hanging in there and being patient. The wait really is going to be worth it. As a thank you, I thought you might enjoy having a sneak-peak at the new landing page. See you next time!

Catching Up With Callidus – August 2017

August 14, 2017

Greetings once more.

There’s some maxim about announcing your plans if you’d like to hear the universe laugh in reply. Despite my optimism that I’d be back in the swing of things way back in May, life had other ideas. However, the good news is that nothing has really changed except the time table.

While work and freelancing and life have been keeping me very busy, I’ve been determinedly working in the small gaps between those things and, at last, I’m close to having something to show for it. I’m putting the finishing touches on my new site theme, which has been in the works for almost a year at this point.

That may not sound all that sexy but the new theme hosts a number of features I’ve wanted to add for a long time and manages to provide a great viewing experience on mobile screens and desktops alike. It will make it faster and easier to access content, keep track of my progress on upcoming projects, and provides a foundation to build entirely new kinds of erotic mind control content and experiences.

At this point, I’ve nailed down all the major design and feature changes. What remains is to add a few minor bells and whistles; optimize the theme for maximum performance; and to test the design on a lot of browsers across a lot of platforms to make sure its a consistent user experiences.

So when is this going to happen? Well, I’ve had enough of the universe laughing as of late so I’m just going to say “as soon as its done.” The good news is that I’ve made tremendous progress this week. The other good news is that I think the best way to celebrate the new theme is to release a whole bunch of new manip content to go along with it!

So stay tuned, fun stuff is on the way.

Catching Up With Callidus – May 2017

May 25, 2017

Well its been another month without an update. Dammit. The problem isn’t lack of effort so much as lack of completion. I’ve been whittling away on a few things but have nothing to show for it…yet. So, I thought I’d post a little something so you don’t think I’m slipping back into the abyss of 2016. Let’s catch up shall we?

Cult
An experienced adventurer crosses paths with the seductive members of a ancient cult.
This twice-teased tale continues to coalesce. I’ve finished four images for it right now but I may end up reworking one of them. I’ve recently come across a photo series that has a similar vibe and may actually work a bit better. But I’ll have to play with things a bit to see if the gains justify re-doing the work.

The story itself hasn’t evolved too much since I last spoke about it. I just need to finish writing the final chapter and then polish it a bit.

Trending
A software engineer working for a social media company discovers their system is infested with a naughty piece of malware.
This is a new story (sort of) that I’ll be rolling out this year. Its an adaption of something I did as a commission piece. The story has been tweaked and updated a bit from its original form and I’ve found a series of images that match with it terrifically. I have some more work to do on the animations but the writing itself is complete.

I’ve actually been using this series to help test the new site theme I’ve been working on. Which leads me to…

New Website Theme
I teased last year that I was going to give the website a modern, mobile-first, facelift. I think I said it would be done by the end of the year. *facepalm* So its not done, although at one time it was 99% done but then Bootstrap put out a new alpha version of Bootstrap 4 and it had some features I really wanted to incorporate. You know how these things go.

So, where things stand now is this: the new theme for manip pages is 95% done. I have some slight design tweaking to do and I want to try out one javascript plugin that might solve a problem I’ve been having. But the design itself is pretty much locked down. Moving forward, manips will read very nicely on mobile devices and I’ve changed the way that series are displayed to make a better and more consistent experience across different devices.

I have a lot of the other design worked finished as well: the front page is 80% done, the blog is about 90% finished. What is still very much in flux is the podcast page and then the design for the individual episodes. I’ve got a slick plugin that I’m testing that will allow me to create a topic list and link to that time index on the audio player. So, say you want to listen to the interview that episode, just click the link in the episode’s description and the player will skip right to it.

I know what I want the page to do, but it needs some work with regard to what it will all look like both on desktop and mobile screens. So that’s a bit of a bottle neck right now. Work continues but I’m hoping for some flash of inspiration for the design. Right now I’m just trying things to see if something jumps out at me and, so far, nothing has.

Interview
I’ve recorded an interview for an upcoming video on The Anax’s YouTube channel. Not sure when it will be posted but I’ll certainly link here once it is. Some good questions and, hopefully, some fun anecdotes from yours truly. I’ll keep you posted.

That’s it for this time. Let me know if you like the idea of this update post becoming a regular thing. Or, if you’d rather I just hold off posting until I actually have something completed. I’m curious to know what people think.