Donna Tartt, from The Goldfinch (2013)

You need to make art that nobody else likes. You need to make art that speaks to you alone. You need to cradle a serpent that eats its own tail and you need to love it until it loves you back

Perspective my detested

endless ghifs 11/? ⛧ source — "I don't wanna end like this—"

Is it possible to like Someone not from your Universe?

Mob barnaby by @clownsuu !

idk if i'm way off the mark on this, but the way some people are responding to that Guillermo del Toro interview about the decline of studio animation is a bit frustrating to me. specifically the bit where he talks about "emoji animation" and how everything is over-animated and pushed too far and things are rarely allowed to not be ultra-cartoony (y'know, because animation always needs to be marketable to children who are never trusted to have attention spans, right?). like, i think he's generally correct about it! but some folks are taking the wrong message away from that.

i've seen people going off about how "soulless" and "corporate" various recent examples are, and talking about these pieces of media as though they're the result of some kind of personal failing or lack of skill/range on the part of the animators, and it's just like. do people realize that's the only animation you're usually allowed to DO in the industry, unless you get incredibly lucky and land yourself on a project/studio that's unusually cool?

when i was in college for animation it was literally drilled into us nonstop that everything had to be pushed more, that exaggeration was not a guideline or a sometimes-treat but a hard rule that always had to be applied regardless of what was going on, because the viewer couldn't be trusted to pick up on subtlety and we sure as hell couldn't be trusted to convey it. you ever wonder why there's such a specific vibe to a lot of self-directed student films, particularly ones that are focused on character acting/interaction or deep emotions and introspection (especially when there's minimal/no dialogue)? it's because for a lot of young animators, they haven't had the freedom to experiment with realism and subtlety up to that point and they're likely not going to have it again for a while (or at all, unless their career path leads to higher positions where they might have more creative direction over the things they work on. which also becomes a lot less likely if they're anything other than a cishet white dude, for what it's worth).

i would LOVE to see more nuanced, realistic, understated motion and acting in animation. i WANT more characters to be able to express what they're feeling through natural body language and facial cues and for scenes to allow me to breathe instead of spelling everything out in giant bold flashing text all the time. what del Toro wants to see changed in the animation industry sounds great, and i hope others join him in seeking to revamp what modern animation is allowed to be.

but as things currently stand, and as they've stood for a long while now, most artists doing the grunt work on the shows and movies you see are completely at the mercy of corporations and networks who have a vested interest in producing a very specific kind of marketable and cost-efficient media all the time. (and by extension that style is ALSO what's taught in most animation schools, because their job more than anything is to grind you down into a perfect little sweatshop worker who will bend over backwards to meet quotas and get your work approved and not question the higher-ups, even if you have little to no personal investment in the projects you're working on, so that the studios who employ you can maintain their good reputations or whatever)

anyways idk what my point was here, this really just sorta became a rant and my views have undoubtedly been coloured by my own personal experiences (this kinda shit is largely why i dropped out before my last year of animation school, for the record).

i guess just be kind to folks in the animation industry? they've had it fucking rough nonstop for well over a century (the majority of them are still not unionized and there's HUGE pushback against doing so in many places). i assure you they are doing their best to infuse the latest uninspired illumination flick or weird spinoff kids' show with literally any amount of soul they can. you don't have to like the stuff that gets produced by any means! be a hater! i'm certainly not gonna stop you. just remember where these creative decisions come from and why these conditions exist, and consider that when YOU watched something and thought "hmm that could've been done better", you can bet your ass someone actually working on it probably thought the same thing but couldn't do anything about it. these things WILL change as the industry itself improves, but in the meantime folks have to pay their rent, and that usually means doing what they're told and working in a way that will minimize revisions and meet quotas so they can keep their jobs. it sucks, but it is what it is.

2 am thoughts about roommates

so i've had a lil fic idea floating in my head for a bit. it's fun to think about!

Something so ineffable about exhaustion that comes not from a lack of sleep but from a lack of rest

i am nothing better than a monster. touch the locket and the argentine of fondness will kill me.

franz kafka // evelyn waugh // miles j. johnston // franz kafka // clarice lispector // charles baudelaire // albert camus // skip liepke // susan sontag // @anouri

just updating that the kittens were picked up by their new family today!!!! using tumblr as a kitten distributor prevails once again! I'm gonna miss them so much BUT... they're going to a great family w (older) kids, so they're going to get lots and lots of adoration. finally.......... the mission is over. I took some pics of them today!! so enjoy the Final Pictures of mr Twitch and miss Chat.

Had the sudden urge to draw him for some reason💚🍃🐛💚🍃🐛💚🍃🐛💚🍃🐛💚🍃🐛💚🍃🐛

Oh yeah, and in the line of caterpillars,

I swear the paper was green, my phone camera is absolute garbage 🥲

Reading and dreaming

This drawing is based on this cute photo of Kermit and Robin! I saw it and knew instantly what I wanted to do, haha.

Uh...

22/10/23

does it count as a criminal record if his only crime is having way more fun than the navy allows? (insp).

x

Not the heartbreaking amount of affection in their voices