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amoveablejake · 1 year

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Album of the Week: ‘Cracker Island’ by Gorillaz

Stand out song: ‘Tormenta’.

Making a band formed of cartoons was a bold and new move. Sure, there had been creations before that were similar or at the very least played around with ideas of the same nature but the Gorillaz’s formation was its own thing and what it did was give birth to one of the most exciting bands of the twenty first century. The Gorillaz did feel like a band for a new millennium and a different time, in a literal sense Damn Albarn used the band as departure of the artist he was as he looked forward to the artist that he wanted to be. And yes, whilst he has returned to Blur in 2023, he is perhaps more famous for being the founder of the Gorillaz which considering that was meant to be a secret at first that is quite something. This is all to say that the Gorillaz are at their core a ‘new’ band no matter how many years may pass. They are always viewed as creating something different and making bold moves. They have done it with all of their albums, their self titled debut album is perhaps the clearest calling card for this because it was the band’s inception but ‘Demon Days’ also moved the band forward and ‘Plastic Beach’ further confirmed that you never know where the Gorillaz are going next. Yes, there is a through line and some vague lore that occasionally rears its head but really the Gorillaz are unpredictable. Sometimes, this can be to their detriment and in recent years it seems they have focused far more on experimenting than anything else. There was always a level of cohesion with the ‘classic’ Gorillaz albums but ‘Humanz’ stepped away from that before ‘The Now Now’ did attempt to take it back right before ‘Song Machine: Season One’ blew it apart. That is not to say that these albums didn’t have moments of shining Gorillaz glory, they did, but they never seemed to quite get into the gear that we had gotten used to as Gorillaz fans. When I first saw that ‘Cracker Island’ was coming out, sure I was excited because it is a Gorillaz record but I wasn’t overjoyed. In fact, I was a little hesitant. I was hesitant because I was fearful of the direction the band was moving in and even though yes, they are always achieving their mission statement of striving towards the new they seemed to be losing themselves a little in that quest for the future. What ‘Cracker Island’ does is work together all of the Gorillaz experimentation from recent albums, what they established from the outset of their music and still creating a sound that still feels like it is looking forward. With ‘Cracker Island’ the cartoons have done good. Very good.

I have been spoiled over the weekend as on Friday Logic’s ‘College Park’ was released with his first independent album being another wonderfully worked piece from ‘my guy’. Alongside this Gorillaz ‘Cracker Island’ was put out and it has taken me a few days to get to it. I was lost in ‘College Park’ and I didn’t really want to come up for air but I felt that I had to with ‘Cracker Island’ out of loyalty to Gorillaz. When I first heard the opening track ‘Cracker Island’ I felt that my fears surrounding the album had been met and that this record was not going to be what I was hoping for. ‘Oil’ continued this hesitancy for me before ‘The Tired Influencer’ started to bring me back on board. By the time we reached ‘Silent Running’ I felt a feeling of familiarity flow through me as the Gorillaz that I grew up with came flooding back through my headphones. ‘Silent Running’ feels like a song that could have been lifted from Gorillaz records of days gone by and it really went a long way for me in getting me to get into rhythm with ‘Cracker Island’. But really, the song that has worked itself into every fibre of my being is ‘Tormenta’ which for me is a shining example of the band being at their best. 2D’s vocals teamed with a guest appearance this time in the way of Bad Bunny has created a song that feels like it might have been better suited to a summer release. ‘Tormenta’ is the Gorillaz in 2023, not trying too hard, not trying to blow us away but instead taking a moment to sit back and relax and in doing so offering up the space to reflect on the road of albums and tracks that has led us here. ‘Tormenta’ is not the last track of the album nor is it the final Gorillaz song but in a way it sort of feels like it is. In its three minutes and thirteen seconds run time it has managed to incorporate everything that makes the Gorillaz so unique and special. ‘Cracker Island’ is not what I would call a masterpiece of an album and I’m sure to many Gorillaz fans of late it will feel like they’re playing it safe but for me, it feels good to have an album where the Gorillaz are playing to their strengths and it won’t last. They’ll be on to the next thing before we know it and the next step forward so for the moment I think its time to sit back and enjoy (the now) now on this island.

-Jake, a man who has very similar angular legs to 2D, 27/02/2023.

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iamvoid0 · 1 year

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Does Megaman 11 deserve to be the best-selling game in the franchise?

Megaman 11 brought the classic blue bomber back to new heights, and with that, it took the title of best-selling classic Megaman title. Capcom had pre-emptively purchased the domains of Megaman 12, 13, 14, and 15. With the glaring success that Megaman 11 has, there is still a demand for classic Megaman. That raises a question, though, Does Megaman 11 deserve to be the best-selling game in the franchise?

Short Answer: Yes. But let us dig deeper as we prepare for Capcom's announcement for Megaman 12.

An Evolution of form

Megaman 11 was a return to form for the blue bomber that harkens back to the old school days while modernizing a notorious, mechanically demanding game for audiences of all skill levels. Megaman 11 simultaneously invokes nostalgia while pushing every aspect of its design, audio, gameplay, and art to new heights. It not only separates it from the mega man clones of today but also prevents it from being another hollow Megaman clone.

It is easy to view Megaman 11 through the lens of pure nostalgia, a cash grab, stomping on the cold dead corpse of a long-dead franchise for an easy payday. What is hard is accepting the fact that the team that took Megaman 11 from idea to product outdid themselves.

Another Dimension

Megaman 11 takes the classic game out of its 2D roots and into a new 3D space; though at times it may look like it's 2.5D, I have a sneaking suspicion that it is a full 3D space that is 2D in the viewport.

The art direction of this game is stellar. I cannot begin to describe just how gorgeous and warm this art feels. Every character and background is just bursting at the seams with personality and life. From Roll, Auto, and Dr Light to the various enemies you encounter, many of which are callbacks to the original Megaman 1, to the new ones that blend so seamlessly into the world of Megaman that you will question if it had always been there. Megaman is expressive, clear, and concise in his actions and animations.

Dynamic lighting effects breathe life into every nook and cranny of this gorgeous hand-drawn environment. The stunning illustrations that wash the backdrops are often reminiscent of old 90s cartoons, although that might be my nostalgia bleeding through.

Despite that, however, the game continues to be a breath of fresh air. We rarely get such a visually distinct game from a large publisher. It was clear from the get-go that Capcom needed – no, wanted – Megaman 11 to be an evolution, the springboard for the next generation of Megaman.

Lessons from yesterday

Megaman 11 takes a vast array of cues from its predecessors. From its punishing difficulty to its ease of access. The deceptively simplistic level design hides brilliantly crafted sequences that encourage experimentation while also providing a challenge for those willing to take it on.

One of the strengths of Megaman 11 lies in how it carries its legacy while also being distinct and new. The previous two Megaman games, 9 & 10, felt more like the recently uncovered Nintendo Entertainment System games that were lost media than they did a proper sequel for a new generation.

The previous games introduced a shop, which is brought back for the ride in this new entry. The game also comes preloaded with multiple easy-to-hard difficulty challenges.

The game makes excellent use of the various bosses' gimmicks to give Megaman a new way to interact with the stages. Megaman controls much better than I anticipated. The game was responsive and kept the old-school feeling of Megaman in this new perspective.

I mentioned before that the game could be unforgiving at times, and it is very unforgiving. Several passages throughout the game will give even seasoned Megaman players a challenge.

It is hard to describe how Megaman plays and controls, and it is ultimately something you will have to experience to understand Megaman 11 at its core gameplay.

Listen

If it's one other thing Megaman is known for, it is the absolute jaw-dropping, iconic soundtracks of the past. Megaman 11 is no slouch in this department. Every single stage gets a theme song that fits the environment, matches the scenes' intensity, and pairs well with the various bosses.

Marika Suzuki shines as Megaman 11's composer, having attained experience in various games across multiple genres. She clearly understands what made the original soundtrack so appealing, and she carries much of the soundtrack to its logical climax.

The soundtrack is more electronic-based, but Marika Suzuki masterfully makes every single instrument sing a dazzling array of notes and phrases that matches everything surrounding it.

Marika Suzuki's soundtrack was so rendered that it beautifully tied all the extremities of the game into an even more closely knit experience that all provided a sense of cohesion that ultimately elevated the experience of Megaman as a whole.

Conclusion

Whatever you think about Capcom's business practices, Megaman 11 is truly one for the history books. A fun-filled experience with a visually unique art style and a lavish soundscape that perfectly blends all parts of Megaman into an experience worthy of the franchise.

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The Void Calls, Will you Answer?

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fireflyhwufanficwriter · 7 months

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My thoughts on Dr. Stone’s S03E11 (“With This Fist, A Miracle”)

(Safe to read for anime-only folks.)

My thoughts after watching Season Three, Episode Eleven:

01. Kohaku has a lot of skill and confidence to be about to maneuver in unfamiliar territory, at NIGHT, like that! :O

02. The platinum is so, so close! :D

03. This last-for-now episode's title is "With This Fist, A Miracle!" :)

04. I think we've seen Kohaku panic more in this half-season than the previous two seasons combined XD

05. But HOW could they have made a ball of concrete inside the Soyuz? Did they put all the science goodies inside, and then fill it up with concrete? But... that would be a huge risk... HOW is there a perfect concrete sphere inside the Soyuz?? :O

06. Yup, just like the glass record! It was up to Kohaku in the past, and now, it's up to Kohaku once again! :)

07. Oh, she's so close to what will save EVERYBODY... so very close...! :O

08. This is adorable! Senku's talking about something that's literally deadly, and he's holding out his arms to show how much damage he can do, but he's being cute about it, and Suika decided to copy him and stretch her arms out too, which is super adorable! :D

09. Soyuz cowering and covering his head reminds me of when Suika was scared about the chemicals that Senku was mixing for the antibiotic, way back in Season One! But this time, somebody else is very scared, while Suika is just a bit worried and her head is turned sideways in (sort of) Senku's direction. She's not nearly as scared as she was back then! :)

10. Plaster acquired! Uh, the island looks weird... maybe because of its 3D-ness on top of the waters 2D-ness? XD

11. Amaryllis is so good at distracting the guards! Before, it was her marveling at their muscles, and now, it's her asking them to watch her dance XD

12. Initially, I was disappointed that they made Ginro dance in that goofy way. I really should have known better, though, because the animators of Dr. Stone have been so careful, and they've been so faithful to the manga. I should have believed in them! :)

13. Senku called her "lioness Kohaku!" :D And she, of course, started to protest, as usual! :D

14. And this is were Ginro's "spear dance" comes in! :) Twirls and jumps and poses and intensity! :O He gives a slightly different explanation here compared to the manga... I think... but "I always need to be ready to escape without putting up a fight" sounds very much like him, too! XD

15. Amaryllis is both very impressed and not very impressed at the same time, hahaha! :)

16. Okay, so one set of vials has emerald green sulfuric acid, and the other set of vials has anhydrous calcium sulfate in the form of white powder... Basically, sulfuric acid and powdered seashells... oh, Senku didn't finish the explanation. Wow, that might be the very first time he HASN'T finished a scientific explanation in this series XD

17. You just need to mix those things and the plaster that forms will eventually... three hundred kilograms per square meter - THAT much force?? Ah... silent bomb acquired... for sure! :O

18. "Still, someday... Science will quietly break stone." This is so true...! :O

19. "No... This sand itself must have value. It's how Senku's always done it. He's always made use of fragments of the stone Earth. I've really found my place in the Kingdom of Science, haven't I?" Aww, Kohaku...! :)

20. A special delivery from the spy team to the science team! :D

21. There are only 0.001 grams of platinum per ton of earth... And sifting through a river for platinum would take DECADES... :O

22. They did the cartoon animation thing of two random people digging for materials really well. The small tree turned into a big tree; the whale had two whale children; the two young digging people turned into two old digging people... this was quite well done! :)

23. Did Byakuya's dedication and love make me cry when I first watched this episode? Yes. Did all of it make me cry AGAIN as I'm writing this? Also yes. Byakuya... I don't even know... I don't even think I need to say ANYTHING, because his incredible determination to work for the future of humanity as the last astronaut on Earth, and his absolute faith that his son, Senku, would break free from the petrification and find the fruits of his decades of labor one day... :O

24. The way he said, "I don't mind not being the one looking up," and the fact that Senku's name was the very last word he spoke... So much faith, and so much love... Byakuya is AMAZING :O

25. And I love that they showed the International Space Station up there! It's so fitting, in more ways than one! :'(

26. That's SO MUCH PLATINUM! And Senku, his eyes are shining - he knows EXACTLY how hard, and how long, his father must have worked to get that much, to give it to him someday... :O

27. Senku is biologically Byakuya's friend's child... but he's Byakuya's son, ten billion percent! :)

28. I wish that instead of saying, "in the way that you never buckle," they instead translated that to, "in the way that you never give up" XD But "buckle" does highlight the "never break under pressure" aspect, as opposed to "never give up," which focuses more on the "continuing no matter what" side of things, so I can see why they chose "buckle" :D

29. Just like in Season One, Senku thanked Byakuya again - but this time, it's for his many decades! :) And, platinum acquired! :O

30. Kirisame realized the connection between the boat and the Soyuz; Ibara declared in a really creepy way that they have an intruder... and Mozu's just relaxing with his axe on a tree branch, just hanging out XD

31. Super complicated-looking science setup acquired; nitric acid acquired! This is going to be exhilarating! I love that Senku was facing towards the light in the last scene - the light of hope, the light of the past, and the light of the future! :D

32. And the end title card thingy says, "Next Episode, The Kingdom of Science Strikes Back, Airing in October!! See you then!" :O

33. The scene I would have hoped they would end this sort-of-finale with didn't take place in Season Three, Part One, Episode Eleven after all, but that's alright! I am SO happy that they did such a great job animating the first part of my favorite arc in the Dr. Stone series! And, I won't go into detail because I want to keep this post spoiler-free, but I saw what the animators did in this episode, and I appreciate it! :D I'm super looking forward to watching Season Three, Part Two, Episode One, which will be airing three hours and and ten minutes from now - and there's a ten billion percent chance that it will be exhilarating! :D

https :// fireflyhwufanficwriter . tumblr . com / MyDrStoneEpisodeMangaThoughts

#dr stone #ishigami senku #kohaku #dr stone kohaku #dr. stone #dr. stone kohaku #ishigami byakuya

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doodle143 · 10 months

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What Is Motion Graphics Video?

What does motion graphics video mean?

Motion graphics videos are defined as graphics in motion. The text serves as a key element of a motion graphics video, which are essentially animated graphic designs or infographics. A graphic design that would otherwise be static can be given the appearance of motion by moving certain visual elements over time.

When it comes to Motion Design, there is more opportunity for creativity in the way that forms, fonts, and characters move. As a result, motion designers look for inspiration in a variety of movements, accelerations, and speeds. Combining all of those characteristics enables designers to give design elements a more human quality, encouraging viewer connection.

Why use motion graphics video?

Identity

On television, information is introduced with bumpers, lower thirds, and other tools, such as at the start of TV programs and as the channel's video brand. Additionally, it is included in the virtual surroundings and the projection screen used for the news. subsequently the beginning of television, motion has been used to help make channels and shows memorable. It has subsequently become an essential component of television's identity.

Before Motion graphics video saw opening sequences attempting to do more than just showcase names one after the other, cast names appeared to be almost static in the early years. Nowadays, the purpose of the credits is to set up the plot, develop the tone of the movie or television show, and establish a lasting relationship with the audience.

Versatility

Many different audiences like the aesthetic appeal of motion graphics. Motion graphics video may effortlessly combine fun and complexity so that the subject at issue is presented in a more mature way than styles like 2D cartoons, which may come off as overly childish in a corporate setting.

Any industry can profit from a motion graphics appearance that can present a beautiful and elegant image.

Due to their extraordinary adaptability, may add character and humor to any marketing campaign, regardless of the sector. Digital motion graphics have become popular for a number of reasons, including their capacity to make ideas more clear and visually appealing for viewers to consume.

Visual appeal

When it comes to graphically representing complex ideas, motion graphics video may be the most adept animation technique. This animation technique will be useful for you if your video has a lot of statistics because it can transform even the most boring facts into interesting and lasting content.

The best visual aids for any complicated topic are motion graphics.

Trends in motion graphics

You may test out variations, distinctive fonts, transitions, and other effects. When filling out your motion graphics-based content, even combine standard 2D and live-action videos. Major Hollywood blockbusters, for instance, have popularized the usage of layered and Kinetic typography.

The use of color palettes has changed significantly as a result of the evolution of motion graphics. Its appeal stems from the fact that it was able to transform the crude and childish characteristics of animation into entertaining videos.

Conclusion

Whether you regularly read our other blog pieces or not, it is no secret that animated explainer video is quite popular on the internet. The underlying result is that videos in general produce better engagement, traffic, and conversions, regardless of whether you select motion graphics video or other kinds of animation.

#animation #character design #doodle #digital illustration #graphic design #infographic

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digitalkorbaxllc · 1 year

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Initial Logo Design Trends: A Look Ahead to 2023:

Initial Logo Design

Not everything about life after the epidemic has gone as planned. Climate change, conflicts, and economic difficulties have left many of us feeling disillusioned. As a result, some of us are turning to individualism, anti-establishment politics, and spirituality in search of meaning and purpose. Despite this unpredictability, though, the creative sector is offering welcome relief. In the world of design, we're seeing trends for an Initial Logo Design that transports us to other worlds, both past and future. From sci-fi references to retro throwbacks, these designs capture our yearning for a better tomorrow. Designers are using their past experiences to inspire new and innovative creations, and the future looks bright as a result.

Old-School Flowing Mercury Fonts:

The liquid mercury typography trend in design has become popular recently and resembles a font style from the turn of the century. Mercury was commonly used in thermometers and other products, and at room temperature, it's a slow-moving liquid that tends to ooze rather than flow. The unevenly distributed weight, rounded corners, and general sense of organic oozing into letter shapes give the font a contemporary feel. It lacks symmetry and feels funky and metallic, almost otherworldly. As a throwback font, it's nostalgic, but the play on depth, texture, and letter formation provides it with fresh energy with an Initial Logo Design. Overall, the melting mercury logo trend feels lively, exciting, and free. If you're familiar with the Y2K style, you'll recognize this font immediately, but it still feels relevant and modern.

Playfully Drawn Doodles:

Escapism comes in different forms and doesn't always require a futuristic approach. In the current climate of the world, designers are finding ways to create positivity through playful line drawings and casual humor in their work. This trend is all about finding joy in simplicity, and the style feels like the playful doodles we used to draw in our science books as kids, adding a sense of mischief and innocence. As the world faces a variety of crises, designers are turning to nostalgia to fuel their creativity, bringing back a sense of comfort and familiarity. This trend highlights the importance of finding joy in everyday life and looking for the positives in our environment, even during difficult times. It's a reminder to take a step back, embrace simplicity, and find happiness in the little things to create an Initial Logo Design.

The Joyful Energy of Red in 2023 Logo Designs:

As we move into 2023, monochrome logo designs will feature the color red more frequently than black, particularly when the Initial Logo Design incorporates a character or mascot. The color red is known for its ability to grab attention and convey strong emotions, as well as being a symbol of luck. By utilizing red in their designs, designers can bring out the personality of the brand they're creating for. These logo designs draw inspiration from comic strips, evident in their 2D line drawings, Real Estate Logo Maker exaggerated expressions, line grids, and speech bubbles. In a world full of tension and negativity, designers are finding positivity by referencing the childhood memories associated with these styles of illustrations. The color red plays a key role in cartoon-style characters by adding an energetic and charismatic vibe that the audience can't help but absorb. This trend is all about infusing joy and lightheartedness into the designs and reminding us to embrace the lighter side of life.

Blending Tradition and Innovation in Logo Design for 2023:

As we head into 2023, design is reflecting the need to cope with the reality of our ever-changing world. Adapting to the "new normal" of 2022 has required innovation and fresh perspectives, and one-way designers are achieving this is by incorporating traditional cultural imagery into contemporary Initial Logo Design. This trend involves blending old-school aesthetics with modern color palettes, abstract patterns, and minimalist design elements. By simplifying ornate details into line drawings or transforming traditional logo shapes into vector art, designers are creating unique and striking visual identities that bridge the gap between past and present. The result is a refreshing take on traditional cultural imagery that feels both timeless and current.

Conclusion:

The world of logo design is constantly evolving and adapting to the changing times. As we move into 2023, we see a continuation of some of the trends from 2022, as well as new ideas emerging. From playful line doodles to throwback liquid mercury fonts and the use of red in monochrome designs, designers are finding inspiration in nostalgia, humor, and cultural imagery. The key is to stay flexible and open-minded, to innovate on what we know and what we've experienced in the past. As with any creative field, Initial Logo Design is about finding the balance between tradition and innovation, between the familiar and the unexpected. And ultimately, it's about creating designs that speak to the personality and values of the brands they represent, designs that leave a lasting impression on their audiences.

Reference

#3dlogodesign #initiallogodesign #bestlogodesignideas #realestatelogomaker #monogramdesignonline #customlogodesignservices #custombusinesslogodesign #graphicdesignservicesinUSA

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seoforindiam · 2 years

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Top Benefits of Motion Graphic Video for Your SaaS Business

New Post has been published on https://www.justwebdevelopment.com/blog/top-benefits-of-motion-graphic-video-for-your-saas-business/

Top Benefits of Motion Graphic Video for Your SaaS Business

Unlike other product or service-based companies, SaaS products need more effort in marketing and sales. This is because their functionalities are unique and the target audience is less aware of these new solutions. And how is the customer going to purchase your product if they don’t understand it?

Sounds like a nightmare if you are a B2B SaaS Marketer, right?

Don’t worry, motion graphic videos are here to save the day (or should I say product). While other forms of content can also explain these products, videos are ultimately much better.

After all, would you prefer reading a 10-page manual about how the software works or prefer learning the same through a 2-minute video?

For me, the answer is always going to be video (unless we discover an even better alternative in the future). And I’m sure most of you would agree.

Video marketing has been helping SaaS businesses to increase their revenue more conveniently. And it has proven to be a conversion rate booster with effective video presentations. This is why SaaS businesses like Upsend, AWS, and Salesforce use motion graphic videos to promote their products.

By the end of 2022, 80% of consumer Internet traffic will be coming from videos. Hence, this makes motion graphic videos are an excellent way for brands to leverage this traffic for their brand.

What is A Motion Graphic Video?

Motion graphic videos include moving objects, elements, icons, and animated illustrations that visually explain a concept and help viewers understand complex topics. Motion graphics are usually done in 2D and 3D.

These videos illustrate factual data while keeping the audience engaged and informed.

Benefits of Motion Graphic Videos for SaaS Businesses

1. Ideal for Unique Products

The probability of closing a proposal for SaaS firms that contains video is 41% higher. (Proposify, 2020)

To close a deal, you must ensure the target buyers know how your product works and fulfills their needs. But, if you have innovative technical products, chances are the audience won’t understand them most of the time. So, how do you get them to purchase your product? The answer is motion graphic videos.

Motion graphics explainer videos define every detail to potential clients. With scripts tailored towards pain points, these videos work perfectly for brand awareness and engagement stage.

Eye-grabbing visuals, text, highlighted data, and voice-over of motion graphics explainers catch the attention of your buyers. And the simple illustrations and drawings make the concepts simpler and more understandable.

2. Easily Combined with Other Video Formats

Another significant reason why motion graphic videos are ideal for SaaS-based companies is the freedom to combine and reuse them with other formats across channels. For example, you can easily merge video formats such as cartoon animation, whiteboard animation, live action, and 3D animation with motion graphics.

In addition, you can tell stories about the products and their journey or pitch the potential users with a back story of how the product was developed.

For instance, if you are promoting financial software that helps companies to manage payroll. Your video can start with cartoon animations introducing characters and their day-to-day problems.

Then, from showcasing the headache of managing payroll to presenting the solution as your Software, you can experiment with the graphics as much as you want to.

Finally, the last segment could be a revisit to how your product has made management more effortless.

3. Highly Engaging & Easy to Recall

Today, the audience usually watches content on either Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube or any other social media . The best thing about motion graphic content is its ability to engage modern viewers with cartoon-looking images. Unlike live-action videos and tutorials, motion graphics or any style of animated explainer videos are highly suitable for small devices.

So, motion graphic explainers would be the way to go if you want social media marketing to promote your SaaS service. In addition, consistently doing these videos easily build the brand recall value.

For example, you can make the content memorable with engaging characters and background music. And when content is memorable, 80% of the people remember it. According to Wyzowl, 80% of the viewers remember an excellent video for up to 30 days after watching it.

4. Suitable for Quick Marketing & Sales Efforts

Regardless of the skills of your sales team, sometimes it’s impossible to explain the whole idea behind the Software. However, you might guarantee that the prospects have complete information about your product, the power of visual presentation is unbeatable.

With short motion graphic explainer videos, the sales team can increase the chances of getting a conversion. For example, a 1-minute video explaining the software and touching on the customer’s central issue can save hours of effort on talks.

And the perks of using motion graphic video don’t just end with sales. With professionally created videos, investors can also understand the product’s features quickly and decide to invest time and money in your business.

5. Creates Brand Identity

You perceive what you see, and the memory works better with the visuals. SaaS-based companies must create brand awareness before launching a technical product in the market. Your branding style says a lot about your organization’s professionals and skillset.

You can efficiently make people recognize your brand at a glance by using the right brand colors, marketing jingles, and animated characters with a unique tone in the video.

See this video by Starbucks, for example. Starbucks: Coffee Perfection

The logo and brand colors of Starbucks stay on the screen throughout the video. This helps in setting up a brand identity in the viewer’s mind, improving the chances of brand recall.

Final Word

When it comes to video marketing for SaaS, there is a wide range of options available. From website landing page videos to how-to tutorials and animated explainer videos, motion graphics can do it all if done by professionals. So, ensure you know how and where to promote these videos to get solid leads.

Justwebdevelopment can also help you in... WordPress Development | WordPress Theme Development | PSD To WordPress

#Benefits of Motion Graphic Video #Motion Graphic Video #Top Benefits of Motion Graphic Video #Top Motion Graphic Video #Web Development

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doublerainebow · 3 years

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Artist Resources (Part 1?)

This is basically just going to be a bunch of resources I have found to be useful. I can’t say that I’ve used all of them, but I’m sure they’re all worth checking out.

I’m also gonna try to put a detailed description for most of the links so you have a better idea of what you’re getting. I apologize in advance if some of them are redundant lol

(I put “Part 1″ if in the case I make another one)

~Links to Tutorials, Tips, Resources, etc~

Another Resource List -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Apparently, the post isn’t mobile-friendly, so it’s suggested to view this on Tumblr browser. Has a bunch of other links. I’ve checked out a few of them (mainly the copyright stuff lol), and it seems that some of the links may be a bit outdated. Still, it doesn’t hurt to check out the links.

Arms and Legs -- Leads to another Tumblr post. A handy tutorial on elbow and knee placement.

Art & Game Dev -- This leads to my personal playlist of a bunch of YouTube videos. Has a bunch of tutorials and interesting videos that I’ve collected over the course of a few years lol.

Blamblot -- A website that contains resources and tutorials on comic lettering. This is primarily in reference to western comics, but it doesn’t help to take a looksie.

Commission Calculator -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Helps artists to stop selling themselves short.

Comparing Heights (hikaku-sitatter) -- A height comparer for centimeters.

Comparing Heights -- A height comparer for feet and inches.

Mouth Shapes and Lip-Syncing -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Useful for... drawing mouth shapes.

Reference Angle -- Useful for when you’re trying to map out a face from an odd angle.

Soft Proofing for Printing -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Helps when you’re trying to make prints of your artwork.

Textures -- A website full of different and mostly free textures. While this website is made for 3D texturing, it can also be useful for 2D drawings. Signing up gives you 15 free credits everyday, and you can use those credits to download some textures for free.

The Models Resource -- A website of models ripped from a wide array of games.

The Spriters Resource -- A website of sprites ripped from a wide array of games.

The Textures Resource -- A websites of textures ripped from a wide array of games.

~Links to Stock Images~

Please check out whatever policies they may have for their images before using them!

(not sure if any of them are active anymore as I followed some of these accounts a long time ago when I used to be more active on Deviant Art lol)

adorkastock (formerly senshistock)

anatoref -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Has a bunch of hand photo references

charligal-stock

HumanAnatomy4Artist -- Does contain nudity

null-entity

PhelanDavion

RobynRose

~Links to Other Artists~

Akihito Yoshitomi -- Yoshitomi is a mangaka who has tutorials on manga making. He also has an insightful series in which he drafts and draws a 30-page manga in 18 days. Remember that every artist works differently and his process may be different from another’s.

Drawfee -- Drawfee is an improv drawing show of four artists: Nathan Yaffe, Jacob Andrews, Julia Lepetit, and Karina Farek. While they don’t have tutorials in a sense, their videos explain the different processes they go through as they draw. They also occasionally provide tips, tricks, and resources in their videos. They do have another channel and a Twitch channel where they host drawing classes in addition to other fun shenanigans.

EtheringtonBrothers -- Has a bunch of useful and eye-catching tutorials called “How to Think When You Draw”.

Mark Crilley -- Mark is a comic artist, specializing in manga, who has a bunch of tutorials about anatomy, perspective, comic making, and other things.

Miyuli -- Miyuli is an artist who posts tutorials on their Twitter. Their tutorials range from anatomy to clothing to other things. They even have a few books of art tips. Currently (as of the time of posting this), their 2018 version is free for download, so I highly recommend you download that. Some tips may be outdated, but they should still be helpful.

Whyt Manga (Twitter/YouTube) -- Odunze is a comic artist, specializing in manga, that has a bunch of tutorials on manga making and drawing characters of color.

~Links to Free Programs~

Blender -- A free 3D program if you’re into 3D modeling and such. I also personally haven’t used Blender (I use Maya lol), but I know it’s a respectable program.

Krita -- A free painting program if you can’t afford Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint. I personally haven’t used Krita, but I have recommended it to a few friends and they have positive reviews about it.

Paint Tool SAI -- Okay, this one isn’t free, but it’s a significantly cheaper painting program where you don’t have to pay a subscription. It’s 5,500JPY (~50 USD). I’m not sure how well it still works on modern computers (the last update was 2016), but I still use it here and there because I love the pen tool feature it has, and it still works like a charm for me.

~General Tips From Raine~

Raine admits that she’s guilty of not following her own advice, but Raine hopes that the tips that she does know will be beneficial to someone who will follow them. She’s also going to keep all her tips under the cut so as to not make this post a huge wall of text (even though it technically already is lol)

Also, if you have some resources, tutorials, tips yourself, please feel free to send them to me and maybe I’ll make a part 2 to this post!

ALWAYS LOOK FOR REFERENCE. This should really go without saying. You can’t draw from life if you refuse to observe life itself.

If you can’t find the exact thing you need, MAKE YOUR OWN REFERENCE. Time and time again, I can’t find something exactly that I need. So instead, what I do is that I take pictures of my own reference. Sometimes I even grab a friend and take pictures of them doing whatever it is I need.

Have a mirror handy when you’re drawing. Sometimes what you need is actually right there in front of you.

Having trouble drawing something? Do some studies. Take the time to understand what it is you’re drawing. I can’t remember the exact story, but I heard that the people who were working on Tarzan were having a hard time drawing his hands. So, what they did was spend a few hours looking at hands to try and understand how they work.

IT’S OKAY TO STUDY THE ART OF OTHER ARTISTS. Just as we look to the old masters as a reference, it’s definitely okay to look at modern-day artists for reference. Just don’t go copying exactly everything that they do, or worse, trace what they do. Just don’t do it... at all.

Not every line needs to be realized. The viewer of your work will automatically connect the dots.

DO NOT TRASH YOUR OLD DRAWINGS. Please, never ever do this. Your old drawings have value to them, even if they look terrible to you. Old drawings may hold ideas for things you could do for the future. They also serve as a way to see how far you’ve come as an artist.

GETTING BETTER AT DRAWING TAKES TIME AND EFFORT. You’re not gonna get better overnight. It’ll take months, or even years, to feel like you’re a competent artist, and even then, you’ll still have room for improvement.

DON’T LOOK DOWN ON YOURSELF IF YOU’RE TAKING A LONG TIME TO GET BETTER. It’ll be better for your mental health in the long run.

Alternatively, DON'T LOOK DOWN ON OTHER ARTISTS EITHER, ESPECIALLY TO MAKE YOURSELF FEEL BETTER. You know the struggles it took for you to get where you are, so don’t go putting down other people when you’ve been in their shoes once.

KEEP DRAWING. If you’re not making an effort to get better, then you’re not going to be better. I get that it’s hard to find the inspiration to draw (I’m very guilty of this), but just keep trying. It doesn’t have to be big or spectacular. You don’t even have to post it if you’re the type who likes to post their art stuff.

Try to find references from real-life. It’ll help you better understand form, lighting, shadows, etc., especially if you’re going for a more realistic kind of art style. Otherwise, finding reference from things like cartoons, anime, comics, etc. are just as good.

Try new things. Try new art mediums. Try a different art style. Switch up the way you do things. Maybe you’ll hate it, maybe you’ll like it. Who knows if you don’t try.

Watch time-lapses (or speed draws/speed paints) of other artists!

Pinterest and Google are your friends if you need tutorials or references or whatever.

If you’re offering commissions, DO NOT WORK UNDER YOUR LOCAL MINIMUM WAGE. You are literally devaluing the work you actually put into a piece.

I like to think I’m an aficionado of Photoshop, so feel free to ask me questions on how to achieve something! I’ve used Photoshop for about 11 years now and know my way around the program. On another note, I do recommend setting custom keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop because the default shortcuts are terrible (in my opinion), and because having custom shortcuts increases the speed of your workflow.

Because I’ve been seeing this a lot lately in Twitter, you’re never too old to start in art. Art is just one of those things that anyone can pick up at any age because the only thing you really need to get good in art is time, diligence, and patience.

Try not to post hi-res images of your artwork to prevent art stealers from selling your artwork in high resolution.

Always, always, always add your signature and watermark on your artwork. I like to add my signatures and watermarks in places that’ll be hard to erase or crop out. I’ve also seen people add their signatures and watermarks in creative ways (ex. on a character’s shirt). You need to protect your work in an era where people will just blatantly steal it and make profit off your work.

Tag List

@reality-is-often-disappointing

#artists #artists on tumblr #artist tips #artist resources #art resources #artists of tumblr #art tips #art tutorial #raine rambles and muses #raine can art

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ceasarslegion · 3 years

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SO I took my sister to Space Jam 2 today, and while I could jump on the bandwagon and talk about how much of a drugless acid trip it is, I actually wanted to point out how it unintentionally highlights the limitations of 3D animation.

I consider animation an incredible cinematic art form that is unfortunately watered down in its potential because most folks associate it with children and childish media. I could go off about how I think children in general should be taken more seriously as a viewing audience and deserve better than the slop they tend to get, but that’s a different post. I think what Space Jam 2 really showcased was how 3D animation can often be a step down from 2D if it’s used for the wrong media.

I was practically raise on Warner Bros. animation. I watched Looney Tunes every morning before school and Animaniacs on the weekends growing up; they’re a fundamental part of what made me love animation in the first place. Because those cartoons are fantastic examples of what 2D animation can be used for: frame-perfect comedic timing, bouncy physical humor, fun visuals, like... it’s not supposed to be realistic! The whole point of animation as a medium is to create something you could never recreate in the real world!

And characters like the Looney Tunes rely on squash-and-stretch rules to fully convey who they are to the viewer, which is relatively easy to do in 2D and feels natural when you watch it. I know we’re all memeing on Wile E. Coyote in Mad Max and Yosemite Sam in Casablanca right now, but artistically speaking, I actually preferred the getting-the-team-together montage to the basketball game. At least Wile E. Coyote felt like himself when he was committing ritual spray paint suicide in a last-ditch effort to catch that goddamn bird.

And 2D animation doesn’t age as badly as 3D does, because 2D has a lot more years and development behind it, and doesn’t hinge itself on being as close to reality as possible. The old Animaniacs cartoons still hold up because it’s all one uniform style that you don’t expect to look realistic in the first place, and if you look at the 2020 episodes for a second:

youtube

Sure, their designs and colours and what have you have been cleaned up and polished quite a bit since the 90s, but you can still see in the animation style how fluidly they move and bounce around when they walk. Warner Bros-style animation relies as much on the movements and visual style as it does on the characters themselves. And to be honest, the 3D Tune Squad felt incredibly stilted.

They looked undeniably like themselves, but there was no spring in their step or impossible physical comedy because of how 3D animation functions so fundamentally differently from 2D. It’s not better just because it’s newer, sometimes the old traditional methods are that way for a reason.

Plus like, the phasing out of 2D animation I feel would be an incredible loss for cinematic art that we should resist as much as possible. 3D shouldn’t replace it, it should be developed alongside 2D.

I think the Jim Henson rule of puppets applies to it: the latest CGI will look dated in 10 years, but good drawings will always look good

#having thots tonight #shut up dames

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aviculor · 2 years

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Okay, I have thoughts about Legends Arceus leaks and I am going to put them under a cut.

The starters are....eh. They didn’t change the issues with Samurott and Typhlosion, and despite Decidueye being the best of the bunch, its wings are short which is an odd look. But really, Samurott is still a quadruped with the only changes being black and red shells and wavier facial hair, while Typhlosion remains massively underdesigned with just a different expression and a collar extending out of its back coloring. Fan designs were way better than what we’re getting.

Electrode is somehow worse than you would expect. The top has Voltorb’s wood grain, its eyes are sunken inside “angry eye” depressions that are still wood colored, and its mouth is a 2D cartoon frown. I’m guessing the whole idea is that Voltorb and Electrode swapped who’s angry and who’s happy, and Electrode foreshadows Voltorb’s attitude change when it becomes the regular Kantonian one.

Arcanine looks cool, I will admit. The charcoal grey looks great with the red-orange. Of course it looks like a foo dog, everyone knew that was coming.

Sneasel and Qwilfish both look neat but are basically reskins of the models aside from Qwilfish seeming to be missing its tail unless that’s just the angle. Their evos are just larger versions of them, which is lazy and bad compared to the likes of Kleavor. I mean, I do like the Qwilfish evo, but it just looks like a bigger Qwilfish with a smaller face and spines so long they’re cut off in the image. That could just as easily have been Hisuian Qwilfish itself. Same with Sneasel’s evo if you accept that it got taller.

Avalugg’s chin looks like the model is glitching out, it’s just a big object. I don’t have much feeling one way or the other, but it did fail at the purpose of making me care about Avalugg.

Lilligant....okay. Bit of a tomboyish ballerina vibe and it’s got shoes. I’m not excited over it, but this is the sort of major design change that a lot of the others were cheated out of.

Blue Stripe Basculegion (or whatever it’ll be called) is pretty nice, actually. I can’t complain. It’s got a goatee.

Ursaring’s evo looks good. The grey patches on its face are odd, but it’s supposed to look like a sun rising with clouds.

I was expecting something good out of Sligoo and Goodra, and I’m let down. Sligoo is inside a solid grey shell and Goodra’s tail is blown up like a balloon into a “shell”. It’s really fucking underwhelming. They look sad because they know they got fucked over.

Dialga and Palkia’s alternate forms....fuck you. Centaurs? Fuck you. They’re supposed to be merged with Arceus? It looks terrible. This is Calyrex’s “forms” all over again.

The new genie is...a bit of a departure from the first three design-wise, since it’s not a muscular man but a “”””seductive”””” woman. Its therian form is actually one of the few things I like here, being a shoftshell turtle. That is the kind of zoological liberty that I employed with my own take on the Four Seasons from forever ago. Not quite sure what sort of weather this hot pink Grey is supposed to be in charge of.

All of these pokemon are extinct and I’m glad about most of them.

#pokemon spoilers

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ordinaryschmuck · 3 years

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Why I (Want to) Love Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure

Salutations random people on the internet who most likely won’t read this. I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

When I heard Disney was making an animated series based on Tangled, acting as a continuation from the original movie, my initial thought was, "Why?"

Sure, Disney is infamous for its unnecessary sequels of the story after happily ever after, with the many, many, many failures that follow suit. Even then, though, most of these continuations were movies that kind of have the potential to tell more of a story. But what more could be said about Tangled? Sorry to spoil a movie that's over ten years old at this point, but by the end of it: Rapunzel lost her golden hair, was reunited with her parents, fell in love, and lived happily ever after. Her losing the golden hair is the most essential part of that list because how can you do a series based on a Disney princess when her most iconic feature is gone? Then I found out that the series forced a way for her hair to come back, and my new initial thought became, "Oh man. This is gonna suck, isn't it?"

Despite the hesitation, I decided to give it a chance anyway. After all, I've been pleasantly surprised before. Things like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, and even The Owl House (yes, really), were shows (and a movie) that I didn't think would be that special. Only to find myself enjoying nearly every minute. So after watching Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, I can certainly say I was surprised...but it was entirely for the wrong reasons.

And to explain how requires spoilers. So if you haven't checked the series out yet, I highly suggest you do it to form your own opinion. Just keep in mind that it's a bit of a mess, but it can be an enjoyable mess...sometimes...let me explain.

WHAT I LIKED

The Animation/Art Style: The series swapping from 3D to 2D might have been the most brilliant decision anyone could have ever made with this series. Usually, when an animated movie gets turned into a show, the most noticeable downgrade is always the animation. Whether it’s not as detailed or not as fluid, it's always subjective that the movie is better animated than the series. But by switching up the styles, the contrast becomes objective instead. 2D and 3D animation each have their pros and cons, so deciding which one is better is nothing more than a matter of opinion. So by changing the style, Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure avoids getting complaints of being a downgrade from the original movie. It also helps that the art style of the series is really unique.

The best way to describe how the show looks is that it's like a coloring book brought to life. At times, everything looks like it was drawn and colored in with crayons, which sounds like an insult, but in actuality, it's one of the best features of the series. As much as I love most animated shows nowadays, I will admit, they all look a little too similar at times. Then here comes Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure, which tries to incorporate a whole new style that successfully sets it apart from most shows.

As for the animation itself, it's really well-made! It's remarkably expressive when required, while the movements are really fluid during the correct scenes. Sure the fighting can be a little floaty during some action set pieces (yes, those exist here), but the dialogue and comedic moments are really where the series shines with its animation. I may have problems with the series as a whole, but I give credit where credit is due for the perfectly executed effort that I see in every episode in terms of animation.

Rapunzel and Eugene’s relationship: This was not something I was expecting to enjoy from the series. In the movie, Rapunzel and Eugene were fine. They were the typical Disney couple that worked off of each other enough that it was always entertaining, even if it was unbelievable that they fell deeply in love with each other after, like, two days. They weren't bad, but they weren't anything to go crazy over.

But the writers for the series said, "You know what, let's make these two adorable in nearly every scene they're in." And they are!

Even though I don't believe in their relationship in the movie, I fully believe it here. Both characters have a large amount of faith in one another on top of having endless love for their partner. Like how Eugene knew Rapunzel would be fine when taking out an airship or how Rapunzel couldn't bring herself to say a bad thing about Eugene when making Cassandra a sparring dummy of him. It's legitimately pleasant to watch, to the point where I put Rapunzel and Eugene in my top ten list of favorite fictional couples. They're that good to me, and it's one of the reasons why I don't jump on the bandwagon of shipping the two main female characters together. I'm all for LGBTQA+ representation, but give Cassandra her own girlfriend. Rapunzel's taken, and most of my enjoyment of this show comes from her and her man. So, you know, keep things as they are.

Cassandra (Seasons One and Two): Seeing how I've already mentioned her, let's talk about Cassandra, shall we? Because when making a series based on a movie that had only four prominent characters, with two of them being comedic animal sidekicks, you're going to need to introduce more members to the main cast to write more potential stories. And Cassandra, in Seasons One and Two (I'll get to Season Three), is a worthy addition. She acts as a strict straight man (I know the irony) who interacts well with Rapunzel and clashes perfectly with Eugene on occasion. She was passably entertaining in Season One and developed amazingly in Season Two. Her growing frustrations with Rapunzel's actions lead to a slow build-up that made her betrayal heartbreaking but somewhat understandable. And as for the results in that betrayal...yeah, I'll get into that later. For now, I'll just say that Cassandra was a pleasant addition to the main cast, especially when she was a part of the main trio, and she's yet another good surprise that the writers supplied for the series.

The Songs: The songs are...not going to be for everyone. Most of them are passable yet kind of generic, while others sound like they belong on Disney Junior (Looking at you, "Bigger Than That"). But when Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure makes a hit, MAN, it is a home run. Numbers like "Ready As I'll Ever Be" and "Nothing Left to Lose" are sung phenomenally, orchestrated well, and are songs I can listen to on repeat multiple times. And "Waiting in the Wings" is not only something I consider to be the best song in the series, but it's also something I'd place as high up on Disney's best due to how f**king incredible it is. "Waiting in the Wings" is a powerful ballad that manages to be both tragic yet inspiring on top of how well it sums up Cassandra as a character. The writers may not always be on top of their game when it comes to music, but songs like these prove that they know how to earn that Disney name.

And that’s all I have for the likes...Oh boy. That’s not a good thing is it?

WHAT I DISLIKED

It Peaked at Season One: It did. It really did.

Season One felt like the writers had a grip on what type of show they wanted: A slice-of-life series with Rapunzel dealing with the issues of her kingdom with a meager threat of these black rocks growing in the background. It was all cute and well-balanced for the most part, but that all disappears in Season Two. Because now it's sort of about this adventure, but because Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure set itself as a slice-of-life series, there need to be these small-scale stories that intertwine the grand narrative being told. The issue is that the story comes to a grinding halt one too many times as fans are forced to sit through these filler episodes that, while not all of them are bad, still feel like a distraction. And by Season Three, the series does feel more focused while having some slice-of-life episodes added to the ongoing story instead of distracting us from it. But the writing isn't as strong, there are several plot holes in the narrative (how did Rapunzel's sunstone get into her dress?), and there is way too much time going back and forth on Cassandra's morality. They claim that she's a villain while arguing that there might still be some good in her, and they continue this train of thought for nine episodes when it really could have been settled in two. For me, it's a bad sign for a series when the first season is the best one. Because if it's all downhill from there, what's the point of even watching?

It Tries to be Epic: This might have been the worst decision the writers could have made.

Now, here's the thing: I don't mind grand epic tales of adventure and battles against demons. If anything, I'm all for them...when it's appropriate and fits with the tone of the series.

Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure suffers a similar problem Frozen II has, in which the writers felt like a big, life-threatening adventure was the perfect continuation of a meager, personal story about the relationships of characters. It isn't. If anything, it's completely missing the mark about what the original story was about. And sure, sometimes writers can succeed in telling personal stories through grand adventures. Just look at The Owl House and parts of Amphibia. But with those shows, it's established within the first few episodes that action and peril will be a series staple. With Tangled, while there was some action and peril, it's all very subdued compared to how high the stakes got raised in later episodes in the show. Especially in the series finale.

And, I mean, c'mon. You're making Rapunzel an action hero?

Judy Hopps? Yes.

Moana? Maybe.

Raya? Most definitely.

But Rapunzel? The character who’s all about optimism and seeing the best of others. That's the character you're going to morph into a hero that fights against an evil demon laid dormant for years? Did you even watch the original movie? Yeah, sorry, but I just don't buy it.

If you want to tell an epic story that gets the blood pumping for fans addicted to adventure, go for it! See where the wind takes you. But make sure to set that tone as early as possible while also making sure that it fits with the characters. If not, the end result is a series that feels like it's trying to be something it’s not.

Eugene is Kind of an Idiot at Times: It should be noted that Movie-Eugene and Series-Eugene are practically two different characters. In the film, Eugene was more or less the straight man, as he often questions the wackiness in the world around him and keeping Rapunzel grounded in reality. For the series, most of that personality got transferred to Cassandra. Thus making Eugene's new role in the series act as the egotistical imbecile. Sure, he had those moments in the film, but not as frequently, and it really pains me when the writers really lean hard into a minor aspect of his personality. Sometimes there are moments when Eugene acts like his original self. But it's all small scenes that are spread apart with entire episodes where he has half a brain cell. I'm sure some people didn't mind this change to the character, but as someone who adores the movie version of Eugene, I can't help but feel disappointed.

The Villains are the Worst: Now, I don't mean the one-off villains that show up, cause some chaos for a bit, and disappear at the end of the episode. Those are characters with fun personalities, occasionally cool designs, and do their job as villains of the week. It doesn't matter if their motivations are laughably simple, as their purpose is to be enjoyable characters above anything else. So I actually enjoy those villains...it's the ones that act as season-long antagonists that really grind my gears.

The purpose behind these types of foes is to build up how evil they are throughout the season. The issue is that the writers try to give these characters, or at least two of them, a point. To be fair, this can work. Just look at Killmonger from Black Panther and sometimes Karli Morgenthau from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. You understand and probably even sympathize with the logic and reasoning these characters have. It's just that their actions couldn't be farther from what you would do. The problem with Varian and Cassandra is that they have the motivation, but it's not written suitably for the story.

Cassandra is a whole can of worms I'll get to in a minute, but Varian is someone I can easily discuss for a brief time. Because while I can comprehend his pain for having his father frozen in yellow rock, I don't think turning evil is the best decision to go with that character. Because A. Everything is his fault. He blames Rapunzel for not helping him, but even if she didn't have a crisis to deal with, there was nothing she could have done to stop it. His frustrations are not only unjustified, but given the fact that this wouldn't have happened if he listened to his father in the first place, it feels like him becoming evil is too drastic of a turn. And B. Varian worked much better as a supporting character rather than a primary antagonist. He was just this hopeful, if not a clumsy scientist who wanted to prove himself, who causes minor catastrophes due to not thinking ahead. Turning a character like Varian into a villain is a bit of a misstep because if the guy acts hilariously incompetent as a good guy, it makes little sense to have him be intelligent and ten steps ahead of Rapunzel when being evil. If he were to become more serious and careful when helping the rest of the main cast, I'd consider that character progression done properly. But becoming a villain is just an overreaction.

However, none of that compares with my issues with the main antagonist of the series: Zhan Tiri. This goes back to my problems with the series making itself too epic. Because if Zhan Tiri existed in any other show, I probably wouldn't have any problem with her. She's built up well throughout all three seasons and is kind of threatening at times. But she doesn't belong in a series based on a movie that dealt with a small, personal issue where it wasn't even the character who killed the villain in the end. It was her love interest and animal sidekick. Even if Zhan Tiri works well as a character, the fact that it doesn't feel like she belongs in the show makes her too distracting to enjoy. And that's why these villains suck. If not poorly written, they don't belong in a series that should focus on small-scale issues. And if you can functionally write an antagonist that appears for only one episode but flounder with ones that show up in several, well, that's just embarrassing.

Cassandra (Season 3): OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH BOY, do I have some words to express with this character. Like with Movie-Eugene and Series-Eugene, Cassandra from Seasons One and Two is frustratingly different from the psychotic IDIOT from Season Three. Basically, just take the issues I have with Varian, multiply them by ten, add them with some bafflingly stupid decisions, and you still wouldn't get how much Season Three-Cassandra frustrates me!

First off, her motivation...what the f**k were the writers thinking? The big reason why Cassandra betrays Rapunzel and motivates all of her misdeeds was that Cassandra's mother was Mother Gothal...EXPLAIN THAT LOGIC TO ME?! Because Cassandra should know what type of woman Mother Gothal was. She should know what Mother Gothal did to Rapunzel in the first eighteen years of her life. So how is Cassandra being abandoned by Gothal the central motivator to cut ties with Rapunzel, who is probably an even bigger victim in this scenario!? Seriously, Rapunzel was cut off from the rest of the world and treated as an unknowing prisoner because she was beneficial to Gothal. Cassandra was adopted into a household with mutual love and got to actually live her life. In no way does it make sense for her to be angry at Rapunzel.

Nor does it make sense that the writers try to play it off as a good thing in the song "Crossing the Line!" Sure, it sounds nice, but thematically, it gives across the opposite feelings that the audience should have. Because if Cassandra cutting ties with Rapunzel is meant to be tragic and awful, why is the music suggesting it's the best possible thing that's ever happened for the character? If you like the song, fine, but even you have to admit that it's thematic nonsense.

But, sure. Cassandra's evil now, and she considers it a good thing. Whatever. I'll take it as long as it leads to good stories...but here's the thing: In the penultimate episode before the three-part series finale, Cassandra asks a question. A question I would have never expected her to ask, despite everything that has happened in the last season. A question that was so baffling, I had to legitimately pause the episode to process the fact that she asked something so stupid. Because Cassandra, the character who is intelligent and grounded in reality, asked, "Am I the bad guy?"

I was honestly shocked to find out she was shocked! How, in the flying, everlasting, cock-a-doodle-doodling F**K does a person like her not pick up that maybe, just maybe, she isn't the hero in this story!? Call me crazy, but endangering the lives of people you once called friends and family, dressing in black, AND HAVING A GIANT EVIL-LOOKING TOWER MADE OUT OF F**KING SPIKES aren't qualities I would give to a hero!

If Cassandra was like Thanos, a character so wrapped up in his ego that he can't even notice how evil he is, I would understand. But she doesn't have an ego. Anger, yes. But for the most part, her personality is based on having logic and reasoning. So turning her into a villain and having her unaware that she's a villain is an act of lunacy that I am incapable of understanding. I don't know who's idea this was, but whoever is to blame...you've got issues.

>Sighs<...This series isn't good, is it?

IN CONCLUSION

I like the animation and some of the characters...but that's not enough. Tangled: The Series/Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure is a mess of a show that tries to do too much for a story that should have so little. Meaning that it's a D+ for me. I want to enjoy it and give it a higher grade, especially with how much I hear people praise this series. And if you do enjoy it, all the power to you. Your opinions are valid, even if I highly disagree with them. Because for me, this is a show that I won't get myself tangled up in again in the future.

#tangled: the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #rapunzel x eugene #tangled cassandra #tangled varian #zhan tiri #what i thought about

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derekfoxwit · 3 years

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Doctor Dorpden’s Critical Tips of Prestige

Note: This post was made with satirical intentions in mind. I’m only emphasizing because I’ve had a couple of comments on previous joke posts I’ve did take it seriously. With that said, here we go.

Tip 1: For starters, remember that when looking at the work, if the Mystic Knee twitches fast enough to punch a hole in a wall, this suggests that the work should be near the lowest of the low. No further development of opinion is needed.

Tip 2: For an equal degree of sophistication, give the warm comfort of nostalgia at least 5 times more chances than the new thing that MAY seem actually poggers.

Tip 3: If you have the anecdote of encountering shitty fans, then use them as a scapegoat for the show they flaunt over being shitty. Clearly, they’re always making the show the way it is.

Tip 4: If you haven’t heard much about a newer film or show you’re yet to watch, there’s an 85% chance that film or show is actually not worth your time. The Father (2020) isn’t as widespread as Joker (2019) for a reason.

Tip 5: At this point, just go for the Asian Artist Dick. I’m actually in the mood to see merit in that because I want to look edgy against cute doodles. Stop attacking Uzaki-Chan, you cowards!

Tip 6: Avoid the electronic tunes. They’ll make you smell like a bum, for there’s no structural in a music album that’s nothing but wubs.

Tip 7: If you see a Tweet that looks dumb, use it as a means of generalizing all the fans of a work as sharing that same opinion.

Tip 8: If the cartoon I’m given doesn’t provide me with mature ideas such as slicing an Arbok in half or fake boobs, then the cartoon might as well be on the same level as Teletubbies.

Tip 9: You know the music is (c)rap when it brings up drugs, regardless of lyrical context.

Tip 10: Raw mood is the indicator of quality cartooning. If you’re quick to assume the worst in the newest HBO Max original cartoon, then you got thyself a stinker. Same thing if you were super bummed out when watching a new thing, regardless of anecdotal context.

Tip 11: When you’re not given continuous throwbacks, ensure you’re as reductive and over-generalizing about the works shown as possible.

Tip 12: If your hazy and imperfect as hell recollection of a children’s film, whether it’s Wall-E or Lilo & Stitch, would describe said film as “too sugary” or “key-waving schlock”, then that HAS to be the case. No meat on that bone whatsoever.

Tip 13: Simpler, more graphic style that isn’t as realistic as old-school Disney or Anime? You got yourself a lazy style with zero passion put into it.

UPA? Who’s THAT?!

Tip 14: Don’t trust anyone saying that western children’s cartoons had any form of artistic development after 2008 (with, like, TWO exceptions). If it did, why didn’t we go from stealing organs in a 2001 cartoon to showing opened stomachs in a 2021 cartoon?

Tip 15: Big booba is always important to the strong female character’s quality.

Tip 16: Only MY ships count, for they provide me with a feeling of intelligence.

Tip 17: “PG-13″ and “R” rating just simply mean you’re not caring for expressing themes in a sophisticated manner. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 18: In this age of smelly radicals, “Death of the Author” is more important than ever. Without it, this’ll imply that a classic like The Matrix was secretly toxic, due to what the Wachowskis have to say about it being an “allegory of trans people.”

Tip 19: Turn the fandoms you hate into your torture porn. Ask in Tweets to Retweet one sentence that’d “trigger” them. Go out of your way to paint all of them as blind consoomers. That’ll show them, and it’ll show how much more intelligent you are compared to those clowns.

Tip 20: Whatever the Mystic Knee dictates upon the first viewing of a work is what shall indicate the full structural extent of the film.

Tip 21: The mindset of a 2000s edgelord is one that actually understands the artistry of the medium of animation. Listen to that crazy but ingenious man.

Tip 22: Because sheer ambition makes me feel manly, the high pedestal you bestow upon a cartoon work should be based mostly on the mere mention or mere suggestion of serious topics. This means that pure comedy is smelly.

Tip 23: Is the new work tackling subjects that you’ve loved a childhood work of yours for covering? Just assume it’s super bare-bones in that case compared to the older case, for there’s nothing the older work can do to truly prove itself otherwise. Seriously, Letterboxd. Stop giving any 2010s cartoon anything above a 4/5

Tip 24: If the Mystic Knee is suggesting that the work is crummy, then consider any explanation off the top of your head for why the work in question is crummy.

Tip 25: Sexual and gender identity is inherently political, so don’t focus on them in the story. It’s no wonder why Full Metal Alchemist has caught on more than the She-Ra reboot.

Tip 26: Since I got bothered by a random butt monkey type character in a crummy cartoon, I’m now obligated to assume that having a butt monkey will only harm the writing integrity of the cartoon.

Seriously, Mr. Enter....what?!

Tip 27: We’re at a point where pure comedy for a kids’ cartoon is doing nothing but dumbing down the children. Like seriously...... I doubt Billy and Mandy would ever use farts as a punchline, unlike these newer kids comedies.

Tip 28: The difference between the innuendo in kids’ cartoons I grew up on and the ones Zootopia made is the sense of prestige they give me. Just take notes from the former instead.

Tip 29: Wanna make a work of artistic merit? Just take notes from the stuff I whore out to. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 30: Always remember this golden rule: If the newer work, or a work you’ve recently experienced the first time, was truly great, why isn’t it providing the exact emotions from your younger, more impressionable years?

Tip 31: If the Mystic Knee aims to break the bones of a character doing certain things (.i.e. having body count of thousands; lashing out to character; etc.), that means the character is bad and deserves no redemption.

Tip 32: If you want me to believe there’s any intrigue or depth in your antagonist, give them redemption, for I am in need of that sorta thing being spelled out. Looking at you, Syndrome. Should’ve taken notes from Tai Lung.

Tip 33: In a case where you’re going “X > Y” (.i.e. manga compared to western comics), ALWAYS CHERRY PICK! Use the recent controversies of the “Y” item while pretending that the “X” item has never had anything of the sort.

Tip 34: BEFORE you bring up those comments that shat on the original Teen Titans cartoon back when it was new, whether for making Starfire “more PC” or whatever.......the DIFFERENCE between them and me is that THEY were just bad faith fools that couldn’t see true majesty out of blind rage. I, however, am truly certain that calling any western TV cartoon from 2014-onward a work that transcends its generation suggests a destruction of the medium.

Tip 35: Based on fandom growth, it shows that any newer show isn’t being watched much by kids, but rather loser adults that act like children. Therefore, there’s more prestige in what I grew with.

Tip 36: The focus on children is bad at this point since the children of today have attention spans that flies would have.

Tip 37: A select few screenshots (or even one) of either a less elaborate attacking animation, less realistic game graphics, or a less on-model image in a cartoon indicates EVERYTHING about the work’s quality.

Tip 38: Consuming or writing media where characters go through constant suffering is little more than gaining pleasure out of it. YOU SICKOS!

Looking at you, Lily Orchard!

Tip 39: Whether it’s a sexual awakening story or just simply a romance, focus on a character being lesbian, trans, bi, etc., then it shouldn’t be in a kids’ work. It’s too spicy for them by default. Kids don’t want romance anyway.

Tip 40: The very idea of a western cartoon with no full-blown antagonist (i.e. Inside Out) is a destruction of animated artistry. Sorry, but it’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 41: Unless it’s my fluffy pillow, such as Disney’s Robin Hood, it should be obligated to assume the inserting of anthros is only there to pleasure the furries. Looking at YOU, Zootopia!

Tip 42: With how rough and rash The Beast was, it shows that he was more of an abusive lover. Therefore, I refuse to believe that Beauty and the Beast has any of the meticulous moral writing that most of Disney’s other 90s films has.

Tip 43: When you suggest one work should’ve “taken notes” from another work in order to do better, BE VAGUE! Those who agree will be shown to be geniuses.

Tip 44: Remember how morally grey Invader Zim was? That really goes to show how little the Western Animation scene has been trying since that show. Really should just be taking notes from that series (and of course anime).

Tip 45: Even if I have a radar that clearly indicates such, hiding the item I look for inside an enemy is always bad, for I refuse to believe it would be inside the enemy.

Goddamn it, Arin!

Tip 46: People struggle understanding your gender identity or pronouns? All there is to see in that is a giant cloud of egotism that reads “My problems” zapping another smaller cloud that reads “other people’s problems”. Seriously, kids are starving, so WHAT if you identity confused someone. Grow a spine!

Tip 47: Stop pretending that adaptations should colorize how a story or comic series should be defined. No way in FUCK can a cartoon or film incarnation become the definitive portrayal of my precious superhero idol.

Tip 48: Enough with your precious “limited animation” techniques, YOU WESTERN HACKS! All you’re doing is admitting to sheer laziness and lacking artistic integrity. Now if you excuse me, I’ll be watching more anime, since that gives me a sense of prestige.

Tip 49: If getting five times more detail than the 2D animated visuals have requires someone getting hurt, so be it. No pain, no gain after all.

Tip 50: Yes, I genuinely struggle to believe there’s this majestic level of layered material without having the most immediate yet still vague re-assurance practically yelling in my face. But that’s STILL the work’s fault, not mine.

Tip 51: Every Klasky-Csupo cartoon has more artistic integrity than any of them cartoons with gay lovers such as Kipo or the Netflix She-Ra show.

Tip 52: If Sergio Pablos’ Klaus is anything to go by, we have no excuse to utilize those smelly as fuck digital animation “styles” found on Stinky Universe, Suck-Ra or Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turds.

Tip 53: Stop projecting your orientation onto works of actual talent. Seriously, how does Elton John’s I’m Still Standing expel ANY rainbow flag energy?

Tip 54: Hip hop and electronica have been the destruction of music, especially the kind that’s actually organic and not farting on the buttons of a beeping or drumming gadget.

Tip 55: The audience for cartoons has become significantly less clear over the years. We should just go back to Saturday mornings of being sold toys or shit kids actually want.

Tip 56: PSAs for kids shouldn’t be about ‘woke’ content. They should be actual problems such as doing drugs; not playing with knifes / outlets / matches; or acceptance.

Tip 57: The instant you realize a detail in a childhood work that’s better understood as an adult, you’re forced to paint that work as the most transcendent thing in the world. It’s just THAT simple until I dictate otherwise.

Tip 58: Before you lash out on ALL rich people, remember this: #Not All Rich People.

Tip 59: There’s nothing to gain out of the (c)rap scene other than becoming a spiteful, gun-wielding thug that sniffs weed for breakfast.

Tip 60: Since the Mystic Knee told me to get anal about prom episodes in several gay cartoons, this shows that writing about one’s younger experiences just makes you look pathetic.

Tip 61: Another smelly thing about Zootopia is how it was painting a police chief as stern and exclusive. #Not All Chiefs

Tip 62: Me catching a glimpse of Grave of the Fireflies as a kid and turning out fine shows that you may as well show kids more adult works without worry. No amount of psychological questions being asked will suggest otherwise.

Tip 63: There’s a reason why the Mystic Knee keeps leaning more toward the 90s and early 2000s than most decades. That knee KNOWS where there’s a sense of true refinement.

Tip 64: The BIG difference between rock and electronica? Steward Copeland actually DRUMS. All that the likes of Burial, Boards of Canada, Depeche Mode and several others did was push drum buttons.

Tip 65: One exception to the golden nostalgia is when the work in question doesn’t stuff your face with fantastical, bombastic stories. At which point, there can only be rose-colored blinds covering Nickelodeon’s Doug. Nothing of merit or personal resonance to be found.

Tip 66: Remember that the sense of nuance in the work comes down to there being everything including the kitchen sink, whether it involves multiple geographic landscapes; giving us hundreds of characters; etc. Only through the extremes will I be able to tell there is nuance.

Tip 67: Once you see a joke that has an involvement with sexual or violent content, just ignore the full picture and just reduce it to having nothing to it but “sex, violence, gimme claps.”

PKRussel has entered the chat

Tip 68: With all the SJWs messing up the art of comedy, lament the times where you could be called a comic genius, NOT a monster, for shouting out the word “STAB,” calling a gay weird, painting Middle Easterns as inherently violent, etc.

Tip 69: Guitar twang will always win out over (c)rap beats. There’s a reason your grandma is more likely to listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd than Kendrick Lamar.

Tip 70: Once the Mystic Knee notices a lack of squealing at the video game with linearity, that shows there’s more artistry in going full-blown open world.

Tip 71: Related to Tips 66 and 68, ensure your comedy gets as much information and mileage out of each individual skit as possible. EMPHASIZE if you need to. Continuously spout out your quirky phrase of “STAB” if needed.

Tip 72: Based on the onslaught of TV shows with many seasons and episodes, animated or otherwise, it shows that there’s more worth going for that than simply having a miniseries or a 26-episode anime.

Tip 73: Building off of the previous tip, you’re better off squeezing and exhausting every little detail and notable characterization rather than keeping anything simple and possibly leaving a stone unturned, especially if there’s supposed to be a story.

Tip 74: Playing through the fan translation of Mother 3 made me realize how much some newer kids’ works just try too hard to get serious. Why even make the kids potentially think about the death of a family member?

Tip 75: The fear I had over Sid’s toys from the first Toy Story and similar anecdotal emotions are the be-all indicators of what kind of show or film is fitting for the children.

Tip 76: Seeing this British rapper chick have a song titled “Point and Kill” just further exemplifies the fears I’ve had about rappers being some of the most harmful folks ever.

Tip 77: The problem with attempting to make a more “relatable” She-Ra is that kids aren’t looking for relatability. They want the escapism of buff fighters or something similar. This is why slice-of-life is so smelly.

Tip 78: Based on seeing the rating of “PG-13″ or “R,” I can tell that the dark humor is little more than “hur dur sex and guns.” Given the “TV-Y7 FV” rating of Invader Zim, the writers should’ve taken notes from that instead just so I can sense actual prestige.

Tip 79: The original He-Man has more visual intrigue in its animation than any of those smelly glorified doodles found in the “styles" of the 2010s and early 2020s.

Tip 80: It’s always the fault of the game that my first guess (that I refuse to divert from) on how I have to go through an obstacle won’t work.

Tip 81: Zootopia discussing prejudice ruins the majestic escapism I got from my precious childhood films from 1991-2004. Them kids might as well be watching the news. Now to watch some Hunchback after I finish these tips.

Tip 82: There is no such thing as an unreasonable expectation, and there’s especially no wrong way to address the lack of met expectations! For example, if you expect some early 2010s cartoon on the Disney Channel to be a Kids X-Files, yet you get moments such as some girl getting high on stick dipping candy, you got the right to paint the worst out of that show for not being “Kids’ X-Files.”

Tip 83: Related to my example for Tip 82, if you get the slightest impression of something being childish, you know you got yourself a children’s work that does little than wave keys and has basically nothing substantial for them. In this situation, those malfunctioning robots found in Wall-E are the guilty party.

Tip 84: Without the extensive dialogue that I’m used to getting, how can one say for certain there was any amount of characterization in the title character of Wall-E?

Tip 85: Ever noticed yourself gradually being less likely to expect an upcoming work or view a work you’re just consuming as “the next best thing”? That’s ALWAYS the fault of smelly “artists” (hacks really) and their refusal to give a shit.

Tip 86: It’s obligatory for your lead to be explicitly heroic just so there is this immediate re-assurance that they’re a good one.

Tip 87: Without the comforting safety net of throwbacks, one cannot be for certain that there has been an actual evolution of a series or the art of animation and video games.

Tip 88: Don’t PSA kids on stuff they give zero fucks about. That means no gender identities or pronouns, race, etc.

Tip 89: Don’t listen to Mamoru Hosoda saying that anime women tend to be “depicted through a lens” of sexual desire. He’s just distracting from the superior prestige found in anime women.

Tip 90: If you’re desperate to let others know that your talking points are reasonable, just repeat them over and over with little expansion on said talking points.

Tip 91: 7 or more seasons of art is better than 26 episodes of art. EVERY TIME!

Tip 92: Always remember to continuously talk up the innuendo and mature subject matter of the childhood work as the most prestigious, transcendent thing of all time. With that in mind, there’s a high chance that your favorite childhood work will be better known than Perfect Blue (1997), and there’s likely a reason for that.

Tip 93: An art style that gives many characters relatively more realistic arm muscle details will always shine through more than any sort of art style done for “simplicity” (laziness, really).

Tip 94: Seeing a few (like, even VERY FEW) people show more enthusiasm for Steven Universe over Invader Zim really shows the lower bar that has been expected out of the western animation scene compared to anime.

Tip 95: Electronic music makes less conventional time signatures cheap as hell. REAL music like rock makes them the exact opposite.

Tip 96: If your Mystic Knee suggests that the 90s cartoon being viewed doesn’t showcase a vague sense of refinement or artistic integrity, then every related assumption of yours is right. EVERY TIME!

Tip 97: Doing everything and the kitchen sink for one series or movie shows a better sense of refinement and prestige than any form of simplicity. THIS includes character design as well.

Tip 98: The advent of that Star Wars: Visions anime really shows just how stinky western cartoons have become.

Tip 99: For those wondering, no, Europe isn’t being counted in my definition of “western animation”. Doing so is a complete disservice to prestige.

Tip 100: If even less than half of these tips aren’t being considered, you can kiss that prestige badge goodbye. After all, I SAID SO!

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embryos-first-heartbeats · 3 years

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so... I tried salvia

Yup, I finally did it. I smoked something for the first time. After a lifetime of not being a smoker, I inhaled that shit. It wasn’t easy, I coughed, a lot. I still don’t like smoke. But what I do like is salvia. Damn. People aren’t fucking around when they say that salvia is strong... and weird as hell.

My first experience with salvia was actually chewing it, the taste sucked hardcore and I really didn’t find the effects to be strong enough (granted, I only used a small amount to test how my mind and body would react to the new substance), it went well enough but I wanted to move to the next level: smoking.

It was a few days to a week later that I was finally able to try smoking it, and I had to look up videos on how to even use a bong. I had this tiny cheap thing that I bought off of Amazon because I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for in a bong. I started by putting some plain leaf in the bowl and smoked it, it was truly awful from a physical perspective. Mentally, I definitely felt... different. I tried a few more bowls and closed my eyes and in my head I got some interesting faint 3D tunnels formed out of static. They were spinning. But I also got an image of some evil face grinning maniacally (tbh it looked kind of like the jerma sus meme but it wasn’t super funny because I’ve gotten an evil grinning figure before, off morning glory seeds)

I wanted to smoke more but there was another person in the house, she was going to leave for a few hours soon though so I waited until after she left to continue my experiment. I put on a long YouTube compilation of music from one of my favorite artists. I smoked a little bit more plain leaf but I quickly decided I wanted something more intense. I have a gram of both 10x and 20x, so I got the 10x out and put a pinch of it it into the bowl, lit it, and decided to put my mind into the hands of this new substance. I wasn’t expecting much... but then it hit me. Yeah, it hit me and I was pretty amazed by how quickly I went from mostly sober, to diving into deep hallucinogenic water. It was like DXM and nitrous all at the same time but way stronger than either one.

I kept pulling my hood over my eyes to block the light out, and I took my glasses off, which felt amazing and natural, like scratching an itch and that it was exactly what I needed to do at that moment. I pulled my hood over my entire face but I kept thinking I didn’t want to somehow make it hard to breathe. My entire vision morphed into this three-lobed formation of the little bit I could actually see, repeated on continuous lines in a clover shape. I felt a little overwhelmed, like I had done something that I wasn’t really supposed to do, since I told the other person I wouldn’t try 10x by myself. But at that point I could feel myself sink back, and I felt like I was on a boat in the ocean being rocked gently by waves. I moved my hands back and forth in front of me, mimicking the feeling.

At the end there were these faint 2D panels with these cartoon ape characters looking back at me, like I was supposed to follow them. It started to fade and I opened my eyes, sat up, and the first thing that came into my mind was some nonsense about “hairy gorilla soda bottles”. After it faded a bit more, I looked at the bong just thinking “holy shit!” I felt really good but it was way more than anything I’d experienced before that point. I knew immediately that I wanted to do more.

The second time around, when I started to enter I got a faint vision of a purple cartoon hippo looking over a book that was also a farm with a sunrise, I was a part of a class but I kept disturbing the class by moving around too much. The vision changed and became a lot more vivid, there were these purple and white teddy bears made of hollow rolling tubes, and I was one of the tubes. The tubes were rolling but also moving like on a conveyor belt or something. I was going to get pulled into the “inside” of the teddy bear and I was annoyed by this because I knew it was going to be too dark to see anything in there, and I wanted my “outside” time to be longer.

After I was sucked in there was this version of a house made of those rolling tubes, it was flat, and two of my family members were in front of it, they were also made of tubes and their arms, legs, and bodies were super thin and featureless, I don’t think they had distinct faces either, and they were both reaching into the middle of the front of the house with their “hands” touching. I just wanted to go inside the house. Then I was on this pinched oval type thing, I could see the whole thing and one part looked closer than the other, where there were repetitions of the room I was in, linked to this bicycle chain structure, with gaps between them, on a black background. This was all I could see, but I was also on/in it and it was my what I felt my face was. It kept looping over and over and there was this word/sound/concept that kept repeating and it was really frustrating for some reason because I had to keep repeating this loop. I felt stuck during this part and didn't know when it was gonna stop.

The final scene was this neighborhood of cartoony 2D houses made of thick, round, rubber looking tubes. They were soft and squishy looking. There were families in the houses and grey metal doors underneath each one. I called this place Book Land because it reminded me of a children's book, where everything is gentle and pure and bright. I talked to the dad of the first house and he told his wife about how I wasn’t able to get through because I had to pee too much, but my door was open a little bit. I asked him if he could see me and he said no, he had never seen me even though he knew about me before because the door is open sometimes. There was a close-up of a cartoon purple kid, who looked like from a child’s drawing, but made of the round tubes. She was smiling and looked happy. I was able to open the door enough to get my hand through, it was all purple and blobby and made of tubes like everything else. It stretched across all the houses and I felt like I was doing some kind of educational lesson about sharing “my kind” with the people of this world.

After I came out of it I had to piss really, really bad, so I rushed to the bathroom as quickly as I could, I’m not sure if I just drank too much water while trying to smoke or what, but it was way more intense than usual for me. In the bathroom I was still pretty in it because I kept thinking about Book Land like it was a real place, and I wasn’t sure if me using the bathroom was real or just a particularly normal/realistic part of the trip.

I went back to my smoking spot to go in one last time. I knew I was reaching my limit, though, so I didn’t want to go overboard. Very shortly after smoking it, I got up to pee, I don’t even think I had to at this point, I think I was just unconsciously repeating something I’d done several times before. I kept thinking about Book Land and I also felt like I was in a weird cycle and that everyday life was just a weird cycle and getting up to pee was a part of it. I could see repeating rainbow fractals on the carpet as I walked to the bathroom and I was super happy about it and thought it was totally normal. I remember when I was in the bathroom I kept trying to talk to myself, but it was pretty much only mumbling and partial words that came out.

When I was done I sat down but got up again right after to look at the carpet, because I could see this 3D simple three-lobed snowflake like pattern repeated on the carpet wherever I looked. I kept moving around to see it at different angles and it looked totally, convincingly 3D no matter where I looked. I loved this to no end and just kept looking at the patterns for several minutes. I thought that I should put my glasses on to see the fractals better, but when I did they simply disappeared. At one point an advertisement came on since the video with the music I was listening to had ended, and I became really angry and paused it, saying “NO!” really loudly. I thought to myself that “the children in Book Land cannot be exposed to corporate propaganda like advertisements. The children in Book Land can only be exposed to pure information.”

After that, I admired the carpet patterns a bit more, then I wanted to go outside. As I went to go outside, I kept looking at the floor the whole time, searching for more patterns, and when the flooring switched from carpet to a flat, wood patterned floor the fractals disappeared. So I was a little annoyed at this and continued making my way outside. I saw one of the cats and thought she was cute, but she didn’t have any fractals on her so I wasn’t super interested in that moment. Then I saw a clover leaf and said “Yes!! There it is!! That’s it right there!!” and sat down on the step to admire this leaf, which really did resemble the three-lobed vision from the start of my adventure, and it looked like the patterns I saw on the carpet as well. I sat there looking at the leaf and looking around, thinking to myself as the salvia wore off more and more.

Over the next couple hours I sat down, thinking about my trip and how intense everything was. I felt really good and at that point I knew exactly why people said that salvia was weird as hell. I kept thinking about the visuals, the feelings, and about Book Land. I hastily wrote some notes down on my computer, which I referred to when writing this, as despite the typos and weird wording, it had the most raw translation of my experience that I could get. In all honesty, I felt pretty accomplished for trying something new and not shrimping out over smoking for the first time, or shying away from how daunting salvia can seem. I knew what I was getting into before I started and I wasn’t taken by surprise at any point.

I know I’m going to try it again at some point, but I’m definitely not going to rush my way into it and push myself too far too fast. I have a huge amount of respect for this drug and the last thing I want to do is screw myself over by getting cocky.

#salvia #divinorum #salvia divinorum #drugs #trip report

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serpenttailedangel · 3 years

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Holy crap. High Guardian Spice was actually still in production. It’s got a trailer that actually gives you information about the characters and premise now.

I’m going to try and... set aside... my feelings to do with how this show was first marketed, how its surprise reveal has kept me from trusting Crunchy with subscription money, the histories of some of the people billed as being involved... and try to judge this trailer on its own.

I hope it had a low budget.

Like, first off, everyone knew this was probably going to be the case for a while, but it doesn’t look like an anime. It looks about as close as Steven Universe or maybe, if I want to be really generous, Teen Titans. It looks like a western cartoon that borrowed from anime aesthetics to inspire some of its still western looking designs. And from what I’ve heard of the pilot, I expect it to feel like a more progressive Disney Cartoon than actual Disney will provide.

I do more sub than dub because I’m impatient, and because its less embarrassing to read cheesy subtitles than hear a cheesy dub line. And also because Funi has had multiple scandals changing lines in their dubs to insert their personal politics or take badly dated digs over culture flashpoints. So maybe I just forgot what English VAs sound like. But the VAs don’t sound that convincing to me, and the animation looks awkward. It’s not bad. It’s better than my hobby attempts for sure. But the overall quality looks less like something a professional studio spent years on and more like something an indie team operating a business on youtube put together. Like the 2D version of early RWBY or something. It gets some stuff right, but enough is stiff or otherwise off that you can’t help but notice it wasn’t done by an experienced studio with a solid budget. (Which is weird, because I feel like some of the staff they advertised before were experienced.) I would expect any show to have moments where the actors weren’t in prime form, or moments of animation that didn’t warrant the budget of big scenes, but I would also expect the trailer to highlight the best animation and dialogue--spoilers notwithstanding.

I think its the faces that really get me. Something about the way the faces move looks wrong. Anime can be really cheap with its animation when it’s done on a crazy schedule or budget, but something about the faces just feels Flintstone level corner-cutting. I don’t know how else to describe it.

Other than that, the target age looks pretty young. Not a judgement. Just... I feel like Crunchy’s audience... isn’t young? I guess they’d know their metrics better than me, but between the sheer number of times they talk about being good guardians rather than any other sort of plot, and the general actions of the cast, it looks more like it belongs on Disney Channel than a streaming service that offers a lot of ecchi anime. I think they were also going to offer it on some other streaming services that Crunchy partners with, like VRV or something, so maybe the audience there matches up better.

#high guardian spice

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canmom · 3 years

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Animation Night 49: ‘Tradigital’

G’day, mateys! It’s time for Animation Night!

So, we’re coming up on #50 next week, which I’m planning to use as a big celebration of stop motion in all its diverse forms! More on that to come...

And what of this week? This week, I’m going to bring together two recent films unified more by technique than theme: both are using combinations of digital and traditional animation in fairly novel ways. Plus we’ve met all these creators before... which gives me a chance to witter on about animation and how it’s changing!

For one, we have Wolfwalkers, by the renowned Irish studio Cartoon Saloon - whose films we encountered previously on Animation Night #14. Their latest film, Wolfwalkers, is now out, fortunately returning to their safe ground of Irish history and mythology rather than their more dubious attempt to tell a story set in Afghanistan.

This film is notable for plenty of reasons... but one of the big ones is the beautiful ‘wolf vision’ sequences, which were accomplished by building forest layouts in Blender, printing them out on paper, and then drawing over them with pencils. With this method, enormously complicated camera moves could be drawn that would be nigh impossible even in Disney’s heyday, but with the kind of texture and elegant linework that computers can’t yet match.

The second example is Klaus, by Sergio Pablos Animation Studios - notably the studio that James Baxter landed in after he left Dreamworks (see Animation Night 43...). Sergio Pablos is another of those ex-Disney guys who were left to do their own thing after Disney shuttered its 2D animation department, and spent the years after working on CG films like Despicable Me. At some point, he rebranded his company ‘Animagic’ as ‘SPA Studios’, and set out to make a new traditionally animated film, Klaus, for Netflix.

In interviews, Pablos talks a big game about bringing 2D animation forwards - trying to imagine what it would look like if 3D hadn’t so completely taken over. In practice? This mostly seems to mean doing something pretty experimental with compositing/photography: feeding the drawings of 2D animators like Baxter into a complex digital shading process that makes them look more akin to 3D models. “How exciting!”, you might say, “this looks so much better than the usual attempts to automate shading in tools like After Effects! So how did they do it? What’s the algorithm?” The answer is... apparently completely proprietary to a certain French company, and so secret that he can’t divulge it to anyone. Boo. (All he says is that no 3D geometry is involved, and it depends a lot on the skill of the animator.)

SPA have a youtube channel with a lot of brief clips of what seems like a very interesting James Baxter lecture, and breakdowns of various shots from roughs and tiedowns through to the composite... but ngl, something about Pablos’s whole affect is very smug and corporate in a way that annoys me! The idea that a fancy compositing process is some giant leap forward for traditional animation is pretty dubious (Makoto Shinkai is right over there...). Still, still, it looks like a gorgeous film, riding as much on the absurd level of refinement that Disney-style full animation reached at the end as on the technical tricks. And if (as it seems) they’re going to train a new generation of traditional animators, so that those methods don’t die out with Baxter’s generation, that’s a really good thing.

‘Traditional animation isn’t dead’ is to some degree part of the marketing for both these films... but guys. Guys! Seriously. Traditional animation has only been considered ‘dead’ in America - it’s still going very strong in countries like Japan, France, China, South Korea... it would hurt nobody to acknowledge that others have been carrying the torch.

That said, the future does seem to be looking at a convergence of traditional animation and CGI. It’s already long, long been true that nobody paints cels anymore! (Fun historical tidbit: one of the last productions to use cels was the ultra-long-running family drama Sazae-san, which began in 1969 and is still going today with 2500+ episodes! It finally switching from cels to full digital compositing only in 2013.) The precise extent to which people use compositing effects varies, but it’s usually ‘quite a lot’.

More recently, the hot new thing has been 2D-in-3D animation - getting the character of a drawing with the ease of CG perspective. This is why Blender Grease Pencil is such a big deal, enabling films like J’ai Perdu mon Corps. Nowadays fancy shots in anime will almost always composite their characters into CG backgrounds (for example, a shot breakdown of a sequence in Tania the Evil) after films like Mononoke-Hime, GitS:SAC broke that 2D-3D compositing ground and later films Kisumonogatari expanded it into the basis of whole productions. The strength of the effect varies, but when executed well, like in MAPPA’s recently-finished Jujutsu Kaisen, it can look absolutely incredible. (Shame about the work conditions at MAPPA though!)

There’s also been the use of drawing to add a little extra character to CG animation, most notably Into the Spider-Verse (which we watched on Animation Night 21!). Belatedly, it does seem like studios might be getting over the ‘photorealism is always better’ ideology, and experimenting with more stylised takes - which often seems to mean one of these 2D/3D hybrid processes.

What’s the upshot of all this? Mostly this is all pretty exciting for me because combining drawings and cgi sits pretty squarely in my wheelhouse :p so hopefully it will mean I can get a job once I have something more of a demo reel. But also: visual experimentation, exciting! If computers can be the route to more styles of expression that weren’t possible before, rather than a way to impose an orthodoxy where everything has to look like a Pixar/Dreamworks knockoff, that’d be a really good thing...

OK, I’ve talked a lot about animation techniques - but these films, what are they about?

Much like Tomm Moore’s previous films (The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea), Wolfwalkers takes its setting from Irish history and its look from medieval art, and its storyline plays with the interplay of mythology and painful everyday life.

This time we’re heading to the 1650s, a period of especially violent social transformation as the world plunged bloodily into modernity. It was a time of extreme and brutal warfare, with conflicts like the Thirty Years’ War seeing millions dead to famine and brutal war conditions like ‘push of pike’.

The British Isles were at this time having a series of civil wars, in which the forces of Parliament - led by puritan zealot Oliver Cromwell - fought the forces of King Charles I. Like any such conflict, it was a war of religion (which should be understood as something sort of akin to ethnicity), and a direct contest for coercive power between different blocs, but also a war over economic factors, like who would pay taxes to whom, and also about colonialism, particularly in Ireland, with the majority-Catholic Irish wanting English settlers to stop appropriating their land to build plantations kthx.

Parliament at this time was already divided into Houses of Lords (nobles and clergy) and of Commons (representatives from each town). Their job, as established through the Tudor period about a century earlier, was mostly to legitimise the monarch’s decisions to levy taxes. A strong monarch would have extensive influence and could easily pass the taxes they wanted; a weak monarch, not so much. Kings obviously did not like this state of affairs very much, and would often avoid calling Parliament except when finances were tight (e.g., when a war was going badly).

The instigating event was Charles trying impose a certain body of religious doctrine and patterns of authority known as ‘High Anglicanism’ on Scotland, against the Scottish Covenanter movement of Presbytarians (who are very Protestant as these things go), and throwing his weight around in religion with courts like the ‘Star Chamber’ - and also to add insult to injury, marrying a Catholic. All this was quite a touchy thing for the English monarch to do after Henry VIII, and it upset a lot of the more extreme Protestants in Parliament, especially the highly ascetic Puritan movement.

Well, we’re heading fast for a situation of ‘competitive control’ as the CIA say. Rebellion broke out in Scotland, but Parliament was not keen to levy taxes to support a war against protestants (and suspicious of the King) - so Charles sent them home and fought the war anyway, not very unsuccessfully. To fund the war, he turned to his buddy Tom Strafford, who levied funds from the Irish Catholic nobles. Strafford was also keen to support the King throwing his weight around in general.

But it was not enough cash, especially after an expensive peace setttlement, so after nine years of war, Charles called another Parliament, who wasted no time pressing their advantage and demanding various restrictions on the monarch’s power to levy taxes. Things were extremely tense, and the various factions competed to get each other executed - ultimately ending up with Strafford as the one sent to the Tower of London and executed, Charles signing the order out of fear for his life. For political reasons, all sides insisted they were still loyal to the King, and presented their grievances with an alleged Catholic conspiracy leading him astray - thus giving him a graceful way out if he would just pin it all on Strafford.

Here’s where Ireland enters the story in a big way. At this point, after centuries of complicated colonialism, the population of Ireland is split three ways: you have the ‘Gaelic Irish’, who are mostly Catholic, and two generations of English settlers: an ‘Old’ mostly Catholic one and a ‘New’ mostly Protestant one. All three of them were united by thinking Strafford was an asshole (for different reasons). The Catholics did not like his discriminatory laws, levying taxes without full political rights, and land seizures to make plantations. But the Protestants were in large part Presbyterians who weren’t fans of his Anglicanism. (Got all that?)

With Strafford dead though, the unity didn’t last long, and fighting broke out between the Protestants and Catholics, with massacres and ethnic cleansing - particularly in Ulster, which was part of the land seized for plantation by the Protestants, roughly ‘Northern Ireland plus a bit’ in modern terms.

This news sent the Protestants back in England into a right tizzy, terrified that there would soon be an Irish Catholic army marching around putting Protestants to death. Something had to be done to maintain the delicate balance of colonial power - but Parliament wouldn’t trust the King to lead it, who was more than a little suspected of conspiring with those dastardly Catholics in Ireland, surely wanting to raise an army to enforce his tyranical rule. Meanwhile, said King caught wind of a conspiracy between some members of Parliament and the Scots he’d lost a war against, and attempted to flex his power at a very bad time - and when Parliament wouldn’t give up the guys he demanded, he marched into the House of Commons with soldiers, only to learn they’d already escaped. This was, in such a situation, considered decidedly not on.

At this point that whole ‘monopoly on legitimate force’ thing had broken down. It was time to rev up the civil war engines and the Loyalists and Parliamentarians got out their pikes and muskets to settle it by force. I won’t go blow by blow over the details of the war, but it was a bloody one - the numbers (hundreds of thousands of deaths from disease and combat) don’t register today because the population was so small, but in England at least, 4% of the population died in comparison to about 2% in WWI.

In England, the war was rather decisively won by Cromwell’s “New Model Army” of full-time professional soldiers, and he went on first purge Parliament of the King’s supporters, and then to execute Charles I in 1649 and put himself at the head of a new ‘Commonwealth’. At this point he did stuff like banning Christmas (which at the time was something closer to a riot, which sounds cool as hell, but this was the kind of riot that would sometimes turn into a pogrom). 'Cromwell banned dancing and Christmas’ is the bit they teach us about in an English school. Ha ha, those wacky historical people!

But Ireland was still in rebellion: the Irish Confederates, who had formed a new government, were fighting both Parliamentarians and Royalists, torching fields and such, though late in the war they made an alliance with the Royalists for less persecution once the monarchy was restored. (At one point the Confederates even invaded Scotland - without success).

The freshly purged ‘Rump Parliament’ - now having secured the monopoly on force in England - dispatched Cromwell to conquer Ireland for them. It was a much shorter war, with Cromwell carrying out some infamously brutal sieges and massacres like the ‘Sack of Wexford’ and ‘Siege of Drogheda’. As usual when facing an overwhelmingly militarily powerful invader, the Irish Confederates responded with early guerilla tactics, attacking English food convoys which resulted in outbreaks of disease and famine and brutal reprisals. But ultimately Cromwell was successful in destroying the rebellion and re-imposing English rule.

We’re now well past the point of ‘providing context to Wolfwalkers’, but that anti-Catholic discrimination that instigated the rebellion? Got much much worse under Cromwell, who ordered Catholic priests rounded up under his round of ‘Penal Laws’, and confiscated land from the rebels creating a class of landless former farmers, and generally carrying out a campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Contemporary estimates put the death toll of the whole war from rebellion up to Cromwell’s victory 600,000/1,400,000 (43% of the population), though this has been revised down by later historians to more likely 200,000/2,000,000 (10%). It was massive, in any case, and much much larger than the proportion killed in England.

Anyway... one of the other things Cromwell did was kill a lot of wolves - or more precisely, laws were passed during his rule setting bounties on wolves as a threat to agriculture, leading to the gradual extermination of wild wolves by the 1700s. The early stages of this wolf extermination are the subject of Wolfwalkers, which takes place in a small Irish town at the edge of a very wolf-y forest. As in films like Mononoke-Hime, the wolves essentially seem to play a metaphorical role of ‘native population’ threatened by the advance of modernity and colonial rule. Naturally a kid gets drawn in on the side of the wolves - you’ve seen a Tomm Moore film before probably :p

As far as Klaus is concerned, its connection to history is a lot more abstract - it’s essentially an origin story for the Santa Claus story, in which a layabout princeling falls in unexpectedly with a depressed, grieving toymaker, somewhere vaguely North where Sámi people live. You can probably guess the entire arc of it from there - the pair will hit it off and discover that distriBUting toYs to children is surely the MOst fulfilling thing in life, cuRing all mannEr of Social problems, Healing rIfTs, etc. etc. Along the way there will assuredly be Antics. Like no kidding I am here for the animation above all else! (There’s a reason we’re watching this in April and not December. I reserve the right to be a total curmudgeon about this one thing!)

Animation Night 49 is going to start at about 7pm UK time, aka in 10 minutes plus change. (More like 7:20pm realistically!) As usual the spot will be twitch.tv/canmom. Hope to see you there for some, at the very least, surely enchanting animation!

#animation night #history #hope i haven't left out anything especially important in that rushed history lol

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