Author's commentary: Part 2 + bonus
One of the things that surprised me of the positive feedback was the fact that I made some creative choices that I thought would not be popular. Until this point, Bruna has been what I could call "The forgotten crux legend". Sure, she is the most beloved actress of Ramon and among the other big names, but the limited things one could do with the films she was in and the absolute nothingness of information about her made Bruna a crux legend that is kind of on the sideline. However, this point may not be as true as I thought, once you take out those two things, especially the gigantic task of taking her out of the dark indoors of her film, Bruna is quite a good pick for photomanipulations.
The other creative choice I thought would mean shooting myself in the foot was the cheesy elements of the story, but that was more of a me thing, since I'm not used to writing this style of stories, that turned out to be better than I give it credit for. Also, you may have noticed that what the story is very toned down for what is usual in this kind of stories (not too cruel, little to no sexual topics or cursing, etc. etc.). My tastes in this topic are really moderate, so I thought that maybe it would turn down that the most violent I could get was slapping someone with a napkin (in comparison, I don't have a manip of Bruna being slapped with a napkin... what the hell am I writing).
Then we have the elephants in the room, first the loincloth. The loincloth v nude discussion is one where we have to be honest, we can assume about 2/3 of the folks here prefer full nudity. The idea of taking off the loincloth of Bruna was one that made me
really uncomfortable, oh and also, photoshopping what is under the loincloth, I don't know and, yea, still uncomfortable.
And the last elephant in the room, a thorn in the shoe (no pun intended... again...), it's the infamy of:
Oooooh boy, I picked a detail to like that sparks discussion, since I got to admit, the rope + nail combo is a match made in heaven for me... heaven? Why it feels wrong to say heave-AHEM.
Among the most common things in this forum, the nail position debate is one seen quite often. In an nutshell artist paints nails on palms, artist depiction not historically/physically accurate, the whole shebang. Now that I think about it, it's a weird paradox that this forum is mostly fantasy, yet we question how historically / physically accurate some things are.
Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting talk, I'm just overthinking things.
Where was I? Oh, right, the wrists.
Besides personal preference, I thought that adding the task of photoshopping the hands and wrists to an already big list of tasks (if you want to read a checklist to feel my suffering, just ask) was going to be not just shooting myself in the foot, but maybe in the whole leg, it would have added around 30 minutes to each manip... mental note, I could calculate how much time I spent working on this, don't forget to remove the mental note from the post justarandomguy.
So, the nails stayed on the palms, but just that also got into my nerves. I understood the limitations of Ramon's film, but adding the ropes would hopefully ease the debate a little and also hide some stuff in the manips that would be a headache to fix.
And yet, you guys still showed your support... you just don't stop surprising me.
I don't deserve you guys
So, the bonus I told you guys yesterday, there is one thing where I can deliver fan service... sorry team nude, I can't remove a loincloth of Bruna
...but I can experiment on what if she was crucified in the more accurate nailing places
(at least from the little I know).
Surprise!!! Hope y'all like it.
That's all I got to share before my loooong rest, this project took way more time of my life than I would like to admit, and while I really REALLY enjoyed making this, I need to be more organized with my time. If I eventually made another one of these, I would definitely take the advice of not going nuts on the pictures.