Airy Tales

Posted By Inflate123 on June 27, 2009

Welcome to Airy Tales!

This is not what it was supposed to be. Airy Tales, it turns out, has its own tale to tell. It’s rather long. Once upon a time…

Once upon a time, meaning about two and a half years ago, Cyndi Irresistible and I came up with A Big Idea: Digital storybooks of inflation fairy tales. The source stores were public domain, and I had fun writing Cindairella way back when, so let’s take that concept to the next level: a mix of text, photography, 2D art, and 3D renders, then merge them all into a PDF storybook. Originally I wanted the project to be free, but quickly realized that it would be expensive to do something like this. We should at least charge something to help offset the costs of bandwidth, photography, and manpower. I set up a store on Lulu.com in hopes of distributing the stuff that way.

Since each of those disciplines requires a very different skill, the project would have to be the equivalent of forming a band. Our line-up was, I think, something of a supergroup: Big Horse on 2D art, Pixel Prevert on 3D art, Inflate123 on words, and Cyndi Irresistible handling both the design and modeling duties. Yes, after much cajoling my be, she agreed to finally go in front of the camera…and what’s more, she was willing to morph her own photos. It was a big boost for the project. I also figured we would give everybody galleries for their previous work, so it would have a permanent home.

Everybody agreed to the plan and we decided not to say anything until it actually existed in some form. We got the URL about a year ago and posted a placeholder or two. I wrote the first two stories, Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks. Cyndi shot photos for Red, Goldilocks, and a short teaser Little Miss Muffet PDF that we could give away for free. Big Horse created a character expressly for the site, Merry the Airy Fairy, and set about illustrating the wolf for Red. Pixel — who is is for all intents and purposes, retired from the inflation community long before I asked him to join up — started researching 3D models of cottages and other fairy-tale environs. Cyndi hit Photoshop hard and started sculpting her own image into everyone’s fantasies. Meanwhile, I mapped out future stories, managed the project, and talked to the press. The adult magazine Forum UK came calling, asking about inflatable fetishism in general for an upcoming feature, and I managed to sneak a plug for Airy Tales into the article. We were so close that I figured we could break the silence. And rather than launch yet another forum into the world, Luther Kane agreed to give Airy Tales its own forum section at BodyInflation.org.

The Big Idea got bigger…and bigger…and…well, you’re an inflatable fetishist. You know what happens next.

Pixel realized, wow, this was way more time and effort than he could realistically offer, and politely bowed out. I was sad to see him go but not angry, because I knew what he was facing. Big Horse and Cyndi said they could pick up the slack with 2D art and stock photos. Then Cyndi, still quite nervous about showing her face and her pneumatic rack to the community, got even colder feet. She was happy to help with design tasks or voice-overs, but she just wasn’t comfortable showing herself off like this. She’s done a lot for me and for the community so I wasn’t going to push her into doing something she’d regret. Girl’s got a good career going; this could have put it at risk.

There was another factor that had to be faced around this time. I didn’t think selling content would actually happen. You might sell one or two PDFs, maybe five — but then it gets posted somewhere and everyone copies it, because they think everything on the internet is free. I had already seen Bambi Blaze, Taylor, and Johnny Swell try to fight back against the pirates who were distributing their work, and I realized…this is a losing battle, especially for a hobby project — we were never going to try to get rich or make a living on Airy Tales, but the hassle I would have to go through to try to control our content led be to feel I shouldn’t even try. The community that wants high-quality material but refuses to support its creators gets no high-quality material.

So it was down to two, with no business plan to compensate anyone’s efforts. I looked at Big Horse and said “I don’t blame you if you don’t want to continue.” I think he was secretly relieved. I was asking a lot of people to do a lot of work for little more than creative satisfaction. And it wasn’t their idea — they got roped in by mine! It was just too much too fast — too ambitious to work the way we were trying to do it.

So that’s what Airy Tales was supposed to be. Here’s what it will actually be.

The stories I wrote (and plan to write) will be posted here. I still like the humorous concept of inflatable takes on fairy tales, and text files don’t require anybody else’s input. Some of those stories may be illustrated; I will be contacting artists to see if they are interested or inspired. Some of the stories will be offered as read-along storybooks. Cyndi has offered to do sultry readings of the stories as MP3s. If we can one day get to the point where the original, ambitious concept can be achieved, I’d still like to do it.

I’d still like to post some permanent galleries. Obviously my stories and Cyndi’s MP3s will be archived here, but I’ve invited a few more folks too. Also, Merry the Airy Fairy lives here. Big Horse created her and she says she’d like to stay. Say hi, Merry. Say hi, boys. Her eyes are up there.

Everything will be free for download. That’s good news on one hand, but on the other hand it’s pretty lousy when you consider why. Since it’s all free and an extension of my hobby, updates and new stories will be posted on personal whims.

And since I’m paying the bills for it anyway, I’m just making this site my home. I have wanted my own site for pervy stuff for a long time, so that’s fine with me. The video vault was always in motion without a permanent host; now I have FTP space and bandwidth to share things properly (but I am not going back into the video biz — that was in fact never the plan). AOL shut down its user webpages unceremoniously last year, so even my original “welcome to the community” billboard site is no more. I have a page on DeviantArt and a blog on Blogger. The blog’s here now; I was able to import all the old posts, thank heavens. I will add pages to the site with downloadable stories, projects, and media on the topic. WordPress will get the job done.

Not exactly a happily-ever-after ending. But I just tried to start too big, and things like this need to start small. So here’s small…and here’s to getting bigger…and bigger.

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