Catching Up With Callidus – Mar 22, 2018

March 22, 2018

Greetings once again. I’m typing furiously so I don’t have change the title of this update to the twenty-third! So, here’s what’s going on: The Black Room episode 15 is here! Madam Kistulot and I had a great time, once again, and its a super-sized two-plus-hours episode as we discuss a terrific mind control manga, the legendary Eye of Serpent, and why photo attribution matters for derivative artists like yours truly. A very fun show to record, and we both hope you enjoy listening!

Oh, almost forgot. Right at the front of the show, Madam Kistulot shares the terrific news that she’s created a Discord server for the Garden of MC community! If you’re not aware, Discord is an app for communicating via text-and-voice-based chat rooms. It was created for the video game community but its so versatile, easy to use, and ubiquitous that all sorts of people are using it to keep in touch. Install Discord on your computer/mobile device (or just run it in a browser!), then stop by and say hello.

I’m wrapping up work on that series I teased last time. Ten images, brainwashing laboratory, nekkid ladies…its going to be pretty fun. Writing is complete and I’ve just got one more tiny bit of animation to finish up before its ready for posting. I’ll probably finish it up tonight and have it out Sunday evening. So look for that very soon!

And, I think that’s all I’ve got for you this evening. More story ideas are are simmering (including a very juicy one that I’ve just started on), more manips are being created, more photos are being acquired. I’ll be back at the controls next week, hope everyone has a terrific weekend!

Catching Up With Callidus – Mar 15, 2018

March 15, 2018

Happy Thursday everyone! Lots of stuff going on in my world recently. Vanilla life is getting busy again after a brief hiatus during the holidays but, I’ve managed to be productive despite. If you haven’t had a change to check out episode fourteen of The Black Room podcast, its a proper in-depth discussion from thrall and myself on the Natalie Portman film Annihilation. A great sci-fi flick, though sadly a little lacking on mind control when compared to the novel its based on.

If you were hoping for a more traditional episode (smut discussion galore) then you’ll want to be sure and check episode fifteen! This is another show with myself and Madam Kistulot where we’ll be discussing some more Eye of Serpent, a really terrific Hentai Manga that’s packed-to-bursting with mind control, and some other fun. I’m almost finished editing that so look for it next week!

This evening, I’ve also been doing some Photoshop work on a new ten-image series that I’m really excited about. I’ve got a couple images already finished and the basic story outlined. So…just a bit more work on the photos and a bit more typing…it should be done soon. Fans of brainwashing laboratories, VR goggles, and pretty redheads strapped to tables are gonna be happy!

And that’s all that’s happening with me. One of these days I’ve got to get back to finishing the projects I’ve already teased but I keep getting sidetracked by these new photo sets and this damn inspiration! Hopefully, you all will have some fun stuff to peruse either way!

Farewell for now.

The Black Room – Episode 014

March 7, 2018

On this special episode of The Black Room, I’m joined once again by thrall to make good on the promise made during her last appearance: review the film Annihilation! The novel features insidious mind control woven through its pages and we were anxious to see if this film adaptation would follow suit…

The Black Room – Episode 014

On this episode of The Black Room podcast I'm joined once again by my friend, the prolific author thrall aka A. Regina Cantatis! This show will feature our in-depth discussion of the film Annihilation starring Natalie Portman. We'll share our thoughts on the movie as well as the trilogy of mind-control-laced novels that inspired it.

Listen Now

The Black Room – Episode 013

February 17, 2018

We’re back, emphasis on “we!” I’m joined, once again, by the magnificent Madam Kistulot to discuss a host of erotic mind control goodies…

The Black Room – Episode 13

We're back, emphasis on "we!" I'm joined, once again, by the magnificent Madam Kistulot to discuss a host of erotic mind control goodies. We'll take a look at some delicious artwork by both Sleepymaid and Mute Alice; highlight the audio and written smut of Ally Brinken; discuss issue 12 of Tabico and Uzobono's amazing CORE comic and bring you part one of an on-going discussion into the amazing and formative fiction of the venerable EMC author Eye of Serpent!

Listen Now

Catching Up With Callidus – Jan 18, 2018

January 18, 2018

Hi all! Hope everyone had terrific holidays. I’ve been sick, out of town, busy, sick again, and now I’m furiously writing away on a new series that I hope to have ready next month.

I’ve had this idea rattling around that one day I’d work on an ongoing manip series. It required a couple of things though. Firstly, a story concept that would support ongoing developments or, at the least, a lengthy enough narrative to justify not all of it being told in one sitting. Secondly, I’d need enough photo material that I actually could create new manips to further the story.

That would mean lots of material featuring the same model or models and, hopefully, in enough different kinds of situations to follow the story wherever it went. Conversely, the story concept would need to be fluid enough to accommodate whatever pictures or animations I’d have available.

So, logistically, its always seemed like a fun but challenging idea.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve had some story ideas begin to solidify and I’ve been searching through countless photo galleries to see if there is enough material floating around that I could use to pull off my ideas.

Right now I’m leaning towards this being a more long-form kind of story that gets rolled in three or four parts. I have a pretty good idea of the beginning middle and end but there’s room to play if I want to throw in some additional things.

So stay tuned. I’m eager to share more with you once I’ve had a chance to polish things up a bit.

That’s it for now! Welcome to 2018 and I hope everyone is doing great!

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

View Manip

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!