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Hey Cassidy, can you tell us anything about the people who worked on your cartoons? Were they nice?

"Especially the head artist...and the founder...they were probably the nicest..."

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Video essay by Jellybox about what's good and bad about indie animation!

Wanted to share this in case it's helpful to anyone wanting to pursue making animation independently. It's also for fans of indie animation who may want some insight into how an indie studio works, why indie cartoons are always selling merch, why release schedules are often erratic, etc.

I also wanted to clarify the video's context, because it seems to have been somewhat misconstrued in some circles. Not long ago, WGA and SAG strikes, followed by TAG negotiations were very much in the news, shining light on the struggles the artists, writers, and actors in the Hollywood studio system are facing. In response, the words 'just go indie' have been tossed around quite a bit lately.

Gene and Sean at Jellybox approached us a few months back explaining that they were planning to make a video about the realities of running an indie studio/producing indie animation, largely in response to that 'just go indie' attitude. They were curious if we'd be willing to share our experience, including information about actual costs and the various difficulties and complications we've encountered. We said yes! We'd like for people to know what it's like. As much as it might look appealing next to the currently very broken studio system, indie has its own set of problems, and we think it's a good idea to be transparent about that because talking about problems is how you begin to address them.

Of course, while you get creative freedom and you have no shareholders to appease with indie production, the primary struggle you're always going to face is funding…and funding avenues are limited. Banks aren't eager to hand out business loans to freelance artists making cartoons, for instance. Social media algorithms reward frequent updates you can't swing with hand-drawn animated content, so you can't rely much on things like AdSense. You can't really insert sponsored ads into your animated videos without being too obtrusive. You can take on client work, but that interferes with your ability to focus on own animated project. Crowdfunds can be great for seed money, but they're also a ton of work to fulfill, and fulfillment itself will tend to eat up a considerable amount of the funds you've raised. Once your animation is produced, there is no well established way to sell the animated episode itself like there is for, say indie games sold on Steam. So, while we consider ways to try to make the terrain a bit more hospitable to indie creations, if nothing else, let this explain why productions rely a lot on merch drops!

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And hey, if you're an animation fan, consider supporting the independent productions you enjoy, whether you're tossing a few dollars their way, buying their merch, or just mentioning them to friends:

The Far-Fetched team is launching a crowdfund very soon to help them complete their pilot!

The Monkey Wrench team is killing it lately, and they deserve so much more fanfare than they've gotten!

And of course, thank you to the excellent folks at Jellybox for starting an important conversation!

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So if your shorts were in the 30s and 40s, did you guys ever meet any of the other animated cartoons stars?

"Well, there was this one time Sweet Pea got mistaken for some singer and got sort of kidnapped..."

"And that one time some rabbit arrived in town with some man, and the rabbit and Cassidy had the time of their lives pranking him..."

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Uncle Hades and the RBF

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Discord has added generative AI features to servers.

Here are THREE THINGS you need to do today.

1️⃣ YOUR SERVER

Go into server settings -> roles -> Default permissions

Search for "external apps" and disable it

2️⃣ YOUR FEEDBACK

Access Discord support -> https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Go into Help & Support > Feedback/New Feature Request

Denounce generative AI and request the feature be removed. Bring up privacy concerns for yourself, your data, and for minors.

You will get an automatic reply to this request- PLEASE REPLY TO THE EMAIL TO PUSH IT TO THE TEAM or else it will get discarded.

3️⃣ ON MOBILE

Access your app store

Leave a 1 star review and publicly denounce generative AI and Discord's use of it

Reblog this to spread the word, I'm tired of the enshittification of the things I use in my day to day life.

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So, Discord has added a feature that lets other people "enhance" or "edit" your images with different AI apps. It looks like this:

Currently, you can't opt out from this at all. But here's few things you can do as a protest.

FOR SERVERS YOU ARE AN ADMIN IN

Go to Roles -> @/everyone roles -> Scroll all the way down to External Apps, and disable it. This won't delete the option, but it will make people receive a private message instead when they use it, protecting your users:

You should also make it a bannable offense to edit other user's images with AI. Here's how I worded it in my server, feel free to copypaste:

Do not modify other people's images with AI under ANY circumstances, such as with the Discord "enhancement" features, amidst others. This is a bannable offense.

COMPLAIN TO DISCORD

There's few ways to go around this. First, you can go to https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/requests/new , select Help and Support -> Feedback/New Feature Request, and write your message, as seen in the screenshot below.

For the message, here's some points you can bring up:

Concerns about harassment (such as people using this feature to bully others)

Concerns about privacy (concerns on how External Apps may break privacy or handle the data in the images, and how it may break some legislations, such as GDPR)

Concerns about how this may impact minors (these features could be used with pictures of irl minors shared in servers, for deeply nefarious purposes)

BE VERY CLEAR about "I will refuse to buy Nitro and will cancel my subscription if this feature remains as it is", since they only care about fucking money

Word them as you'd like, add onto them as you need. They sometimes filter messages that are copypasted templates, so finding ways to word them on your own is helpful.

ADDING: You WILL NEED to reply to the mail you receive afterwards for the message to get sent to an actual human! Otherwise it won't reach anyone

UNSUSCRIBE FROM NITRO

This is what they care about the most. Unsuscribe from Nitro. Tell them why you unsuscribed on the way out. DO NOT GIVE THEM MONEY. They're a company. They take actions for profit. If these actions do not get them profit, they will need to backtrack. Mass-unsuscribing from WOTC's DnD beyond forced them to back down with the OGL, this works.

LEAVE A ONE-STAR REVIEW ON THE APP

This impacts their visibility on the App store. Write why are you leaving the one-star review too.

_

Regardless of your stance on AI, I think we can agree that having no way for users to opt out of these pictures is deeply concerning, specially when Discord is often used to share selfies. It's also a good time to remember internet privacy and safety- Maybe don't post your photos in big open public servers, if you don't want to risk people doing edits or modifications of them with AI (or any other way). Once it's posted, it's out of your control.

Anyways, please reblog for visibility- This is a deeply concerning topic!

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Inspired by the patch notes for Shipwrecked 64, here's Duncan getting rehomed.

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Me: Alright, I suppose I should rework Vlad's redesign to be more fit-

Brain: Plasmius is a gremlin, and he has an episode before the "Bitter Reunions" and that reveal where he and Sam cause problems like Beetlejuice and Lydia cause Sam misunderstood what her dad meant about one of the abandoned houses and Plasmius offered to help.

Me: And Danny is...?

Brain: Confused mostly, but he gets a rival at least.

Me: Yay?

So the plot bunny is committing to the bit of the redesigns and exploring ideas, so we'll see more of this world lol

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like i'm sorry but we as a fandom have to stay firm on our anti-AI values. we cannot suddenly start giving AI a pass when it's something we "want to see" like destiel kisses. it's not suddenly fine. we're not going to start using AI to make fanfic scenes come to life or audio AI to make characters "say" stuff we want to hear. you have GOT to be firm on your anti-AI stance. if you start making exceptions then suddenly anything will fly. fandom is for real art and creations made by real people. no AI fanfics. no AI art. no AI rendered "bonus" scenes. no AI audio. none of it has a place here.

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Ended up doing Vlad and while I'm probably going to do another attempt at designing him, I did get a kick of the "Me at 40 vs The Email I made at 16" energy I gave it XD

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"Hello there everyone! Our Post Office is now open for all sorts of letters and packages if you'd like to drop us a line!"

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Yo, Danny Fenton was just 14 when he straight up Mc-Kinda-Died-But-Not-Really-Jury's-Out

Brain worm decided to try my hand at designing Danny. Maybe I'll do more in the future, but we'll see.

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how to wave magic wand by 街头尬术师【魔法披风】

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Since it sounds like the shorts aren't running anymore, what do you guys like to do nowadays?

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Pearl and her kitty, c. 1924.

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Sleepy time/cuddle puddle doodles are always so fun to draw bc they’re always so adorable,,,

Also someone mention that their ship name could be “study trouble” because they’re all struggling with grades and I think that’s. Hilarious

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Cirrus - The Graveyard Angel (April 8th, 2024)

I'd been wanting to customize Rochelle Goyle for a while, so when a friend of mine hosted an Angels and Demons collab, I decided, sure, why not try it here? Cirrus is an angel that's lived most of her life as a statue, guarding a graveyard. As one might expect from me (given how I draw Auran and Sammy), I couldn't resist having a little kintsugi in there in the parts where she'd grown cracked and weathered. This doll is very striking yet simple, but she's difficult to photograph given her silhouette. But when she has a good angle, she's gorgeous. I was glad to get to use so much blue, this isn't a shade I get to play with much.