The eMate 300 📟, a personal digital assistant made by Apple 🍎, was a low-cost laptop specifically for the education sector. Launched on March 7, 1997, and discontinued in 1998, it was the only Newton device with a built-in keyboard ⌨️. It had a 6.8" grayscale display, stylus pen 🖊️, infrared port, and Macintosh serial/LocalTalk ports, and was powered by rechargeable batteries that lasted up to 28 hours 🔋. Although less advanced and memory-equipped than its contemporary, the MessagePad 2000, the eMate 300 was faster than the previous MessagePad 130. 🚀
PowerBooks, iBooks und MacBooks aus drei Jahrzehnten friedlich nebeneinander. Ein faszinierender Anblick und verlangt natürlich nach einem neuen Beitrag über die mobilen Macintoshs von Apple.
Der vierzehnte Beitrag in meiner Reihe von Beiträgen zur Neugestaltung der Ausstellung in meinem Computermuseum. Heute und an weiteren 19 Tagen stelle ich die Zusammenstellung meiner Ausstellungsstücke vor. Als ich dieses Fach in meinem Regal mit Exponaten bestückte, stellte ich fest, dass ich hier eine schöne mobile Evolution von tragbaren Macintoshs aufzeigen konnte. Vom PowerBook 180 bis zu…
Ive been rereading @thatsoneginger 's Machines Don't Bleed trilogy and have been getting hit by massive waves of nostalgia.
Its rly weird looking back on the fanart I made for it ages ago and comparing that to now, it makes me that more emotional sjdjkemf :') It really is a special thing to come back to a formative work and experiencing it with a brain that's (mostly) finished cooking.
Thank you for all the memories, Chaos. Your mercenaries will always have a very special place in my heart 🥹
I can not stress this enough, but what is it with the Korean animation on most Burbank-made cartoons produced after 2015 looking so… slow and stiff???
There're LOTS more on 2s animation timing... and less inbetweening, while characters, props and effects are not as loosely drawn as they used to be before 2016.
Look at this example below of what a modern cartoon looks like when animated in Korea:
Bernard Williams ain't selling the acting well now; is he?
That episode of Craig of the Creek, "Creature Feature", was made in 2020; it was animated by Rough Draft Korea Co., Ltd. — an animation studio founded by Gregg Vanzo as a cheaper means for quality animation on none other than The Ren & Stimpy Show (Don't believe me? Thad Komorowski will tell you).
He's moving too slow. This shot is all on 2s. His arms move stiffly, and his head bobs up and down just a little bit. It doesn't sell the specific emotions he's expressing as richly as they could... compared to something like classic Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon shows of the past. The overseas animators should listen to the audio track, the recorded dialogue. That's what they did on on Ren & Stimpy!
Now let's go back 10 years before Rough Draft animated that episode of Craig of the Creek... to the Sym-Bionic Titan episode "The Phantom Ninja":
LOOK HOW LOOSE AND SMOOTH THIS LITTLE BIT OF ANIMATION IS!
This level of Korean animation quality was normal for TV cartoons back in the 2010s.
This one shot has a healthy balance of on 2s animation and on 1s animation.
It's just Ilana Lunis and Octus doing a bit of a... I don't know... a shrug... giving Lance a certain look. Not even talking in this shot, nor is it an action sequence, and this little bit of acting looks far better than Craig of the Creek ever animated in general.
Rough Draft also animates on Spongebob and they're struggling but usually excelling on the animation quality overseas.
This applies to cartoons made and aired before 2016 where post-2105 episode/content are the same quality as most post-2015 cartoons shows these days that're animated in Korea; examples are Uncle Grandpa, Samurai Jack Season 5, The Venture Bros. Season 6 onward, We Bare Bears Season 2 onward, and even later Disney TVA shows as Amphibia Season 3 and Hailey's On It!, though mostly it involves Warner Bros. Discovery-owned properties (Turner ones namely).
May be that Korean animators just need a break. The Phillippines can deliver better animation (a bit roughly but still better than Korea for the most part)! Perhaps the Korean overseas facilities need more money... more direction... more communication (as if we could actually afford that with today's gas prices?)
Why not animate domestically here in America? In Burbank? What about rigging (puppetry in 2 dimensions)?
The future of quality TV/non-theatrical 2D animation may be in the hands of Canada's and Ireland's finest riggers. Mercury Filmworks, Boulder Media, Lighthouse Studios, Snipple Animation, and Jam Filled Entertainment can deliver better animation through rigging than Korea can do for most hand-drawn shows!
That is unless it's the Spongebob Squarepants franchise of course... that and Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? and... pretty much anything animated by Yearim or Yeson (most of which are adult cartoon sitcoms with rather restricted animation so as not to distract from their comedic wordplay, since those shows are more script-driven anyway).
I asked some people about the current condition of Korean animation to see what they think about that. Maxwell Atoms had a good bit to say...
The What's in My Head? podcast interview with Randy Myers largely benefited from a question I suggested about the animation quality differences classic Powerpuff Girls and 2016-2019 PPG episodes.
Ariel Vracin-Harrell tweeted that overseas animators often follow the storyboards "religiously", and tiny little micro-poses in storyboards can result in the animation looking "laggy and odd". (Perhaps those Korean animators view the storyboard animatics as key animation?)
Lauren Faust says that you shouldn't animate you storyboards.
Hits and misses (so far as the conventional wisdom went) cluster on the cover as MacAddict reached its fifth anniversary issue. "The best and worst of everything Mac" covered more than just the five years of the magazine's existence (with David Reynolds's editorial flashing back to being asked whether joining "a new Macintosh magazine" was a good idea in 1996 even as he declared he'd be leaving now); the news section happened to proclaim what the best and worst moments of the magazine itself had been.
listen to me. listen. off book the improvised musical podcast is ending after next episode. you most likely have not listened to it ever, so what youre going to do right now is go to any podcast app with a search feature. you're going to go to off book and youre going to type in marvel. youre going to listen to the 6 part musical set in the marvel universe. you will fall in love with clark and stargazer and britz and spitzz and team baby rattlesnake and also some ducks for some reason we dont really talk about episode 3. you are going to listen to spider-man go to couples therapy. it will be a good time i need you to do this for me ok? kissing you on the lips.
also, and perhaps a bit more touchy and heavy, i am mad they took an openly suicidal character and ended his narrative by having him kill himself. i dont think about that a lot because its easier to just be sad that My Favorite Guy got killed off but way back when it the first time id seen a character getting to just admit that openly and clearly and without euphemism or anything. it just was. and certainly there were problems with the entire narrative at that point that i wont rehash because the feh part of my heart is full of craters, but, man it did not feel great that after four years of struggling with that they just wrote him killing himself off. like self sacrifice is still. uh. self.