A. Regina Cantatis's Blog, page 20

Live-action manga

Well, here I am again as promised - with the first of several gifts for you. For the last few weeks I've been working on MC-themed photomanips. This is the first one I did. It's my attempt to create a live-action version of a manga MC scene, complete with huge, cloudy eyes and ridiculous body proportions. Fortunately, Bianca Beauchamp had some of those ridiculous proportions already. All I had to fiddle with was her face.

Next week I'll share the first of a two- (so far) image set based loosely on Big Trouble in Little China. I've dreamed up a Mistress who keeps a harem of both sexes - thus explaining my recent Google hunt for naked men. I finally found the right source for handsome male submissives and expect to mine it further as I continue the series. There are just so many places I could go with it.

Speaking of which, I'd love to find a good source for pictures of beautiful women in submissive poses - ideally clad in latex and/or corsets. I'm only interested in softcore shots, and natural-looking breasts are a must. If you have any favorite pictures or recommendations for sites to look at, feel free to drop me a comment or an email.

Slowly stockpiling

In my last post before Christmas, I promised I'd be back with gifts. Well, I'm working on them. I could post a couple of them today, but since it's still the holiday season and a lot of people are away on vacation, I think I'll just give you a teaser and save the  goodies until everyone's back home.

I'm not feeling the bite of the writing bug right now, but the manipping bug is biting hard, and I've been having fun with Gimp: making the kind pictorial mini-stories that a lot of other EMC fetishists have been doing for years. What you see today is just one piece of a much larger puzzle, but I'm sure some of you can guess the overall shape. If you're having trouble figuring it out, I encourage you to study the eye makeup. ;-P

On a related note, I plan to do another manip today that will include a man, so last night I went Googling for pictures of male porn stars. It was quite an education. I saw more dicks in one hour than I'd seen in my whole life previously, and had no idea that ball sacks came in so many different sizes.

But I didn't quite find what I was hunting for. I like to look at men, but I have a particular type, and it seems that male porn stars aren't that type (As a matter of fact, I wondered how a few of them could be anyone's type at all). Then it hit me: I was looking in the wrong place for my images. I like latex, rubber, and leather; but these guys were either naked or dressed like construction workers. Instead of wasting my time on them, I needed to be looking for fetish models. Well, once I figured that out, I realized I knew just the right fetish fashion designer to start with. Now I'm off to check it out, and if I don't find the right kind of guys there, I know a few other places to get them.

And on that teasing note, I wish everyone a Happy New Year and a happy anything else you're celebrating.

Push, push

Here's a post I've been meaning to make for awhile. Way back when, I blogged about an upcoming movie called Push, starring a then-unknown Chris Evans (who went on to become Captain America, as I hope you know ;-P). The plot is fairly nonsensical but revolves around a bunch of people with psychic powers fighting each other. Evans' character is telekinetic; Dakota Fanning's character is a precog; and most importantly for this blog entry, Camilla Belle and Djimon Hounsou's characters have the power of mind control.

Here's the last section of the movie (which is available in full on YouTube, if you're so inclined), so beware of spoilers - if you still care about spoilers for a movie from 2009 that sank almost without a trace. ;-)

It would take too long to set up this video in any detail, and even if I did, it still wouldn't make much sense; so I'll just say this. Chris Evans is the hero. The young woman with long brown hair is Kira, his MC-powered girlfriend - only she herself has been MC'ed by Djimon Hounsou's character into forgetting she's his girlfriend, so she's fighting on Hounsou's side. Meanwhile, a third group of guys with psychic screams (don't ask) are fighting everyone who isn't them. See, I told you it didn't make much sense.

Anyway, the reason I'm sharing this section with you is because of all the delicious MC action. I especially like the bits where Kira turns several of the screaming guys into robotic bodyguards who move around her in total synch, like a school of fish.

Enjoy, and I'll see you again after Christmas, when I'll have gifts for you. :-)

Hotter?

I finally finished the new cover for Sleepwalkers I was blogging about last week, so this is my chance to show it off. I'm curious to know what people think. Just please don't give me any grief about the body angles! ;-P If you knew how long and hard I worked to get them this far, you'd gladly give me a pass. I have completely lost track of how many different images I composited for this cover, or how many times I reworked Hawthorne's arm and torso. Paul's arms turned out to be easy compared with that!

Edited to add: I made this post earlier in the afternoon, then had a brainstorm about how to reposition Hawthorne's arm and decided I couldn't leave well enough alone. I think this version is better, but again: if she seems awkwardly posed, that's because it's the best I could do. I'd still like to know what you all think about the rest of the cover.

P.S.: Thanks once again to Lex of Entrancement.co.uk and Hypnodolls for the use of his photography. The "Hawthorne" on the cover is actually composed of about six different pictures he took of about four different models.

Show and Tell

Tell first. ;-) I've discovered that when I take some time away from a particular Virtual Hypnotist session and then come back to it, it becomes more powerful than ever. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe it gives me a chance to forget the fine details of the session so that I can be more surprised and struck by them.

Anyway, earlier this week I went back to my "morning" session after maybe a couple of months away from it. Now, that session does have a section of really useful, positive suggestions for my life; but it's mostly just about pleasure. It's also extremely powerful. Even when I use that session frequently, it takes me so deep that by the time I get to the suggestions, I'm just sagging there with unblinking eyes, almost perfectly mindless. Afterwards, I don't even really remember that part of the script.

I do remember the bit before that, though. "Mistress" commands me to look at the screen and tells me that it holds my attention completely and I can't look away. And long before that, the first time I hear my trigger, my eyes roll up automatically into my head. I imagine it pleases my Mistress to know how quickly and fully I fall at her command. My The rolled-up eyes represent the offering up of my mind to her.

Now, as I said, I hadn't run the "morning" program for a couple of months; and I've learned that when I take time away from a program and come back to it, it's even stronger than usual. That happened to me when I ran the "morning" session not long ago. I think I have the trigger in the script again just before the suggestions start, but I'm not really sure and don't really want to go check because I like being hazy about that part of the script. Anyway, even though I was supposed to be focused on the screen, my eyes suddenly rolled up and I just could not bring them down. I'll admit that I didn't have the will to try very hard hard. ;-) I didn't have much will at all by that point.

I knew that Mistress had commanded me to look at the screen, but I also knew that my rolled-up eyes were a sign of my submission, and they felt like they had rolled up further than ever before. So knowing that (and not knowing much else at the time), I felt myself falling even deeper. My head sagged down all the way to my shoulder and I hung there, blinded and stunned like a deer in headlights, wallowing in the depths of my enthrallment. It was glorious.

That's the "tell" piece of this post. ;-) The "show" piece is closely related, since it features another bit of real-life (I think) deep hypnosis. The subject in this video is wonderful in so many different ways. She's beautiful, she drops very deep very quickly even though this seems to be her first time under hypnosis, and you can tell she's a natural sub. She doesn't speak even before the induction starts. All she does is smile and nod. Then the induction begins, and there's a wonderful, wonderful moment when she realizes how deep she's fallen and she cries a single tear. It seems to be a tear of joy or maybe gratitude. She loves what's happening. Maybe it's something she's always wanted.

Then the hypnotist starts giving what sound like more sinister suggestions. She doesn't seem the least bit nervous, though. She's already gone too deep, become too submissive, to resist what's being done to her mind. Or maybe she has reason to trust the hypnotist. But I, watching as an outsider with an EMC fetish, prefer not to trust him. I like to imagine that sometime after the end of this clip, this pretty young woman reopens her eyes, and they're not green anymore. They're perfectly white, and she's perfectly mindless: a drone for all eternity.


Green Eye Girl Hypnotized by DarthSheelal

I'm a dingbat

The reason I couldn't get "Mirrored in Your Eyes" to publish on Amazon is that I'd forgotten to fill in the "author" field! Gah! O_o

This, that, the other, and a new e-book

This is kind of a complicated post.

First, as you can see, I've just published a new e-book: Mirrored in Your Eyes. As usual, I'm offering it to my blog readers at a 25% discount if you purchase within the first month. Just go to Smashwords and use the coupon code SZ96S.

I've submitted the book to Amazon as well, but it's still in "pending" status 24 hours after I posted it, so I think their reviewers might be on Thanksgiving vacation or something. Eh, who knows? It'll get out there eventually, and I'm not desperate to make you buy anything. ;-) That's one reason why this post isn't just about the "Mirrored" e-book.

You know by now that I enjoy fetish art, and I assume you like it too since you're visiting my blog. I'm sure some of my readers create their own art, either for private enjoyment or for posting on places like the Hypnopics Collective. Well, this post is really a Peek Behind the Duct Tape on cover art - both for "Mirrored in Your Eyes" and for a reissue of Sleepwalkers with a much hotter cover.

Let's start with "Mirrored." Lex of Entrancement.co.uk and HypnoDolls.co.uk has kindly allowed EMC writers to use photos from his shoots on our e-book covers. All he asks in return is proper credit on the copyright page. Well, I used three different images for the cover above. The "Marina" in the foreground is a model named Portia Victoria. She was wearing stockings and chunky high-heel shoes in the original picture, so the first thing I did was turn her legwear into thigh-high latex boots. I'm more comfortable with Gimp now, so that bit wasn't too hard.

What was hard was changing the model's hair. Portia had on a wig in the original shoot, and it was a short, straight bob. But it was important to me to keep Marina's long, curly black hair (because, hey, I love long, curly black hair. I even gave it to Paul in Sleepwalkers!). So I had to borrow and "dye" hair from another of Lex's models...only Lex had shot her from a different angle, so there wasn't enough hair visible on the crown of her head to cover the top of Marina's head. I ended up giving Portia/Marina the cyber-equivalent of a weave: I layered in about four different copies of the other model's hair, putting sections here and there until I got the final look.

Then I had to do the slave-face behind Marina. I didn't care whether that model was the same one I used for Marina or not, since the slave could just as easily be Karen; but I was lucky enough to find another shot of Portia that worked perfectly - sans wig. It took me about a day to work up a decent robot effect (I won't outline the steps here, but if anyone's interested, just say so in the comments section and I'll lay it all out for you). The eyes were even harder. I ended up just "painting" them, like a real digital artist. I have to admit I'm proud about that. I took art lessons as a kid and used to love drawing and painting, but I haven't used those skills in decades. It was nice to put them to use again.

Below are the three images I composited for the "Mirrored" cover (Just a reminder: these are Lex's photos and I'm using them with his permission. If you want to use them, you need to get his permission too.). Now you can see what came from where, and how far I took it all.





Now here's a little taste of what's to come for Sleepwalkers. When I'm done with the guy at left, he's going to be Paul. This is just part of his image; I'm not ready to show you all of it yet. And as a matter of fact, I'm not even able to show you what I want to show you right now. I've actually finished blending and darkening his hair, and erasing the stray marks; but Blogger won't show it in its high-quality glory, so you're seeing kind of an intermediate stage. Well, maybe that will be interesting to you in a way that the final version wouldn't.

I got the original image from Dreamstime.com. The model had long, straight blond hair, and his hands were clasped together across his forehead; so that should give you an inkling of what I've done to him so far.  All the hair, the position of his shoulders, and his entire head above the eyes are my work. The eyebrows and forehead weren't too hard, but repositioning his arms was fucking murder. That's part of why I'm not showing you the rest of the picture yet. };-P

I did his hair much the same as I did "Marina's," by layering sections from another model until I got the look I wanted. And I'm going to tell you what look that was, even though it's kind of embarrassing. I always imagined Paul's hair as being a lot like Orlando Bloom's in The Pirates of the Caribbean - only Paul's was shorter in the beginning. When Hawthorne made him grow it out, that was really me giving him the hair I preferred on him.

Quite naturally, Hawthorne herself will appear on the finished cover. She'll be looming behind Paul, wrapping her arms around him possessively and holding a hypospray gun. I'm using another of Lex's models to portray her, and as a matter of fact, the best shots I've found use Portia Victoria again. Fortunately, she has a lot of wigs and a lot of different personas, so you won't recognize her unless you remember this post when the time comes.

"Oo," not "Pooh"

When I found latex fetish model Winnie Oo on Facebook, my immediate reaction was, "Why have I not heard of this amazing woman already?!" I think you can see what I mean by looking at the pictures in this post.

Thankfully, since Winnie likes to cover herself head to toe in latex, there's no nudity for FB to have a hissy fit about. All the pictures below came from there. But for those so inclined, Winnie Oo also has a website where you'll find stuff FB won't allow.

As always, enjoy.

Freeware to fuel your fetish

I thought I'd devote a post to some of my favorite freeware, all of which can be used for both fetish and vanilla purposes. But before we go any further, please note that while I've had a lot of fun with these programs, and while they're safe to use as far as I know, I'm no expert. Anything you download, from anywhere on the net, is at your own risk. You're doubly at risk using freeware.

Now, with that disclaimer out of the way, let's move onto the good stuff.

1. TrueCrypt - If you've got anything on your computer that you want to hide from snoops, you need this program. TrueCrypt segments off a password-protected area of your hard drive (or of another drive, if you prefer) in which you can store files you want to keep to yourself. Anyone who doesn't have that password can't get in; they can't even see what sort of file(s) you're hiding, or how large the partition is. Now, some other freeware programs can do something similar, but in my experience, they always limit the size of the drive they encrypt. TrueCrypt doesn't limit the size. That comes in handy when you want to save, for instance, a great big EMC video. ;-) Another major advantage of TrueCrypt is that, compared to some of the other freeware in this post, it isn't too hard to learn. You will need to read the tutorial, though.

2. Virtual Hypnotist - I've blogged about this program so often that I've given it its own tag. Not only do I use it for recreational hypnosis, but I also use it to help me get to sleep every night because I have pretty bad insomnia. VH comes with a bunch of preloaded scripts, some recreational, some therapeutic; and you can customize them and/or write your own scripts once you get comfortable with the program. VH does have a steep learning curve, but thanks to my fetish, I took the time to really master it - and then I wrote a multi-part tutorial which you can find in the sidebar of this blog. It should help a lot if you decide to use this program.

3. Audacity - I'm guessing a lot of you are already familiar with Audacity because it's the freeware of choice for a lot people who like to edit music. It's great for making bootleg albums; I can tell you that. ;-P From a fetish standpoint, it's also great for making backing tracks to go with your customized Virtual Hypnotist programs. Using the stereo option with different mantras on each side is especially effective.

4. Photoscape - This is the first of two Photoshop-like programs I'm discussing today. Why two? Because GIMP is a fucking monster to learn. If you don't want to pull too much hair out, try Photoscape instead. The website is packed with handy video tutorials from the program's creators, and unlike the people behind most freeware programs, they actually know how to explain things. You won't have to Google "Photoscape tutorials" or poke around YouTube to learn how to use this program. Unfortunately, it isn't nearly as flexible as GIMP, which I'll get to in a minute. Photoscape only lets you draw square/rectangular masks, and you can't make areas transparent. Those are major drawbacks when you're trying to manipulate images for an EMC scene. Still, you can do a lot of other great things with Photoscape, and it's perfect for retouching ordinary pictures.

5. GIMP - This is, as far as I can tell, the closest you can get to Photoshop without shelling out a bunch of money. If you're doing complicated photo manipulation, or even if you're just making exploitables for use in memes, this is the program for you. To see an example of what an intermediate-level user can do with GIMP, take a look at my covers for "Love in a Silver Socket" and "Octopus Vulgaris," in the sidebar on this blog. Unfortunately, as I said above, the learning curve is practically vertical. It took me two or three weeks to reach the point where I could make those covers, and even then, I spent several hours on each of them. But again, I'm just at the intermediate level! I'm still learning! If you're interested in trying GIMP for yourself, the best place to find useful tutorials (as opposed to frustrating and impenetrable ones) is YouTube. You'll find a lot of great one-off videos on the use of various functions, but I've found that this user and this user are good at explaining a lot of different topics. As for whether you want to go to the trouble of learning GIMP or just stick with Photoscape, that depends on how much photo manipping you want to do...and probably also on how hard your head is.

Well, I hope this post will give you some good ideas. If anyone else has experience with these programs, or if you have others to recommend, feel free to leave a comment. Remember, I've set up my blog to allow 100% anonymous commenting, and I won't delete anything that isn't spam or trolling.

Have you found Entrancement UK and Hypnodolls yet?

(link goes to uncropped, NSFW version)Lex is a professional hypnotist based in the UK. He runs Entrancement UK, where he posts videos of his entranced subjects doing various very enticing things in different stages of undress; and he has a Tumblr called HypnoDolls where he posts photographs from the same sessions and others. A few of the shots are staged, but in most cases, the subjects really are very deeply entranced, and you can see it in every line of their faces.

I found Entrancement UK once a few years ago and posted a video which I'm embedding again below. It's still one of the hottest real-life hypnosis clips I've ever seen, even though Nikki is fully clothed. Then I rediscovered Lex on the MC Forum when he offered to let e-book authors use his photography in return for proper credit. I plan to combine elements of three different pictures for my own next e-book cover, and I'm happy to give Lex even more credit than he asked for, because his stuff is just that hot. I know you'll all enjoy it.

The first clip below, "Nikki Frozen and Kneeling," is the one I found before and still love. You'll see why immediately. The second video is a preview of a full 2+ hour set Lex did for Entrancement UK. It's got something for everyone: nudity, doll/puppet action, sexy lesbians, blank-eyed mindlessness, bimbos (not my thing, but I know some of you enjoy it) and even a moment of genuine drooling (which is my thing, because of the depth of control it represents). And if you look closely, you'll see that Porsha is so deeply entranced that her pupils are huge. That's not a special effect. It's real, and it's hot as hell.