#Onto Storyboarding and setting up for Episode 2!

[charmfamily]

(SEMI) CHARMED KIND OF LIFE: EPISODE 1, PART XXIII. “AT LEAST IT’S NOT STILL ON FIRE”

Well I take my glasses off when I see a beautiful thing. I see it better, see it better, see it better ... From the "Genuinely Gemma" Playlist: Seabirds ; Pizzagirl.

[yotko97]

My first short film “Full Circle” took over a year to make. Here’s why.

I starting writing the script in June 2021 but I properly placed the initial efforts into green lighting my short film onto pre production around early march 2022 with the storyboards as the 1st thing to do.I organised 1st pre prod meeting and hiring my film friends as above the line crew in July 2022. Casting finished in late April 2022. Outside of my group of friends, I externally hired a film armourer to cover the legalities along with supplying the prop weapons on set and a talented hair + make up artist for the femme fatale character

It cost around $5k in total to make. Some expenses covered by the exec producer and a couple of my mates but mostly from me.

Equipment purchases

Equipment rental costs

Paying crew

Paying cast

Premiere costs.

Merch costs

Film festival fees

I was busy working on other film related projects and other jobs in parallel to the production. The editor and foley artist didn’t start post production until December 2022. The colour grading on my part took a lot of time perfecting as I was compositing the overall black and white grade along with all the reds present in certain shots. The manual process was abysmally slow as I had to manually scan and composite the monotone and reds frame by frame due to quick actions from the cast.I was also saving up for merchandise and screening costs to prepare for the film screening.

The foley artist was taking a long time as well as going M.I.A temporarily (due to being in between gigs at the time), putting post production to a stand still until all the stems were sent to the post sound mixer.

My best friend that helped me immensely on the short passed away during post production. Had to grieve greatly.

I dedicated the premier to my friend. I also donated my cut of the profits to “Epi-awareness” out of solidarity to my greatest friend. Episodic-awareness is a charity currently in development from the parents of my deceased friend. the aim is to raise awareness on the critical dependancy people have on episodic pens for health reasons along with 2 other agendas. One is to use the donations to supply episodic pens for people who need them but cannot afford them and for businesses to equip into their first aid kits in parts of the world where epi pens are optional rather than compulsory.

After the screening, I Submitted Full Circle to various film festivals around the world whilst simultaneously selling Full Circle onto my website and these TVOD (transactional Video on Demand) platforms;

- Koji

- Gumroad

- Payhip

Whilst Full Circle was going through the film festival process, i also dealt with the remaining unsold merchandise from my premier screening via contacting my local clothing boutiques that sell the kind of apparel that my t-shirts matched the style of. I Had 1 successful consignment deal with a local boutique. Came to a 50/50 split agreement. I left my T-shirts in the store for a month and hoping I get a few bites. Any T-shirts left, i will try to sell via Facebook marketplace, Etsy, Amazon, Wish and of course, ebay. Give it a month to try that method and if there are still any t-shirts remaining, i’ll just give to the rest of the cast/crew (assuming i have one for their size).

Once Full Circle has finished the film festival circuit, I'll self distribute Full circle onto all SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand) & AVOD (Advertising Video on Demand) platforms that accept and monetise short films. I'll write another blog with an update If you wish to see full circle there instead. I’ve also added the Full Circle poster T-shirt to my apparel store YOTKO Apparel if you want to grab one for yourself there.

I write this blog to send a message of hope for first time filmmakers that are all pumped up on creating their first project. Good things take patience as good art is never rushed. Whether it takes an hour or a decade to get your art made and known worldwide, do it.

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Adventure Time Reviewed S2E03 - It Came from the Nightosphere

Okay, so fun fact: The above promo art was the VERY FIRST TIME a storyboard artist had made a promotional drawing for an episode they worked on. And it was Rebecca Sugar’s first episode ever, in her first job. Other storyboard artists liked this one SO MUCH that they decided to make their own, even artists from other studios, like Disney’s Duck Tales crew.

This episode also had a ridiculous impact on Adventure Time’s tone, and set the path for Steven Universe’s conception. This is because of the songwriting Rebecca put out for the ep and the more sincere emotional elements it presented. While it’s no Memory of a Memory in terms of feels, it’s a few steps ahead of season 1. 

And what was Rebecca’s first Adventure Time episode like? Well, kind of like a Steven Universe episode. You have a purehearted, innocent Finn helping Marceline with her daddy issues. Except unlike Steven, Finn immediately became more concerned with the end of the world than with the parental issues. Marceline, like any Crystal Gem, cares more about her problems than about human life.  

Adam Muto, future showrunner for Adventure Time itself who carried it through about two thirds of its run, was her board partner for seasons 2 and 3. Together they worked on some of the greatest eps in the series. Rebecca would work with Cole Sanchez in season 4, and had an entirely different synergy with him, because she wrote darker material while Cole wrote comedic material. She strikes a good chord with Adam, who knows how to work a good tone, and their eps don’t have that split-in-half feel of Rebecca’s work with Cole. 

This is the first REAL Marceline episode, where she’s stopped pranking Finn and is showing a bit about herself. Olivia Olsen’s singing is what made her go from a mildly entertaining character to someone that the fans OBSESSED over. Revisiting Marceline and her dad after having seen the rest of the show is so bizarre, but... this episode DOESN’T feel out of place. It does make me a bit annoyed that the other two eps with Hunson are the exact same as this one, but at least he’s consistent! And god, he’s entertaining in this. It’s lots of fun watching Hunson knock around stealing souls. Pretty dark, too. That’s Satan they unleashed on Ooo!!! He’s legit stealing souls. I wonder if everyone got their souls back?

The end of the episode, where Marceline and Finn are lying on the grass together, is so sweet. I can see why people latched onto Marceline now, because up to this point there hadn’t been any characters you could get... emotionally invested in? Other than Finn himself. Certainly not any girls (sorry, early seasons PB). But here’s Marceline, a “teenager”, having teenager problems like not feeling loved by her dad. And if you listen to the original demo, it’s WAY more hard - Marceline feels like Hunson ABANDONED her and doesn’t want to see her. I imagine it was a Pen Ward decision to make the song about fries instead lol, but Memory of a Memory would make even THAT super tragic. 

Altogether, great episode. Very funny. At least two gay jokes in the space of 30 seconds when Rebecca’s second part comes in at the end. 

ADDENDUM: Marceline changed her outfit again in this one and it’s a very nice look this time. From season 2 onwards, it became a staple for the two girls to always be changing their appearance. It became a way for the writers to direct how we feel about them on an episode by episode basis. 

[muchalucha-art]

¡Mucha Lucha! - Through The Past Backwards (sorta) - Episode 14

I'm changing direction on this and starting at the beginning of season 2, because there were some huge changes between seasons.

As I've mentioned before, we creators were pretty much marginalized during the first season. Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network would trumpet their support for 'creator-driven cartoons' but WB Animation did in no way subscribe to that approach.

But after 13 episodes the series seemed to be losing direction and although it was enjoyable, we sensed Mucha Lucha! was limping towards being 'one (series) and done'.  The network - Kids' WB - were also feeling something needed to change, and so Lili Chin and I were summoned to a meeting where we were able to discuss with Kids' WB the best way to move forward in order to help the series achieve its potential.

So for season 2, Kids' WB installed a new story editor, Jim Krieg (I think he came from Scooby Doo) and a new series director, Ken Kessel, who was an industry veteran.  A lot of artists who really weren't that into the show also jumped ship onto other WB shows., and they were replaced by new artists like Greg Colton and Ricky Garduno, who went on to storyboard our best episodes. Ace Artist Roman Lainey also joined the team on props and backgrounds, and Jorge Gutierrez contributed character designs. And so after all the dust settled, season 2 got off to a great start with 'Lone Stars'...

Finally, a lucha libre-centric story, with a good set up, good opponent, and a great storyboard by Gabe Swarr.  This was followed by another in-ring story 'The Littlest Luchadora'.

So things were looking up...

[zkfanworkweek]

ZFAW Fan Content Creator Interviews: HayleyNFoster

Hey everyone! We hope you’re all excited for ZFAW, and to honor (ha!) ZFAW’s commitment to supporting and celebrating fan content creators in the Zutara fandom, we’re going to be rolling out a series of interviews with well-known and widely-beloved content creators over the next few weeks. We’ve got artists and fanfiction authors, some names you recognize as well as a few phenomenal up-and-coming talents, and we can’t wait for you to meet them all!

For the second interview in this cycle, we have our best propaganda creator and this fandom’s hottest new artist/undisputed queen of the animatic, @hayleynfoster!

1. Tell us about how you came to ship Zutara. What does this ship mean to you?

When I was around 14 or 15 and caught Avatar: The Last Airbender on television, I was drawn in by the art style, the humor, and the wonderful characters. I caught the episodes out of order, and the first one I saw and wasn’t prepared to be sucked in by was The Waterbending Scroll. It intrigued me at that age, and the line “I’ll save you from the pirates” combined with the tension between Katara and Zuko in that whole scene was electrifying. I remember my teenage self thinking these two have so much chemistry! And when I saw a commercial on Nickelodeon that featured fanart submitted by fellow Avatar fans, I realized that I could do that to! So I set about making Zutara fanart for myself. I stumbled onto Youtube, practically in its infancy, and discovered that people set clips of Zuko and Katara set to music (And this was still in season 1 days… so people who made these amvs were the real mvps because they were able to make compelling narratives in their amvs with like practically nothing to work with!). The AMVs really spurred my interest in this couple, I remember distinctly one Zutara AMV using the Dido song White Flag utterly capturing my imagination. I found fandom shortly after, getting into deviantart and forums. But the ship really began to mean something to me when, as I was working on my drawings in the computer lab at school, a buoyant presence hovered over my shoulder noticing my Zutara art on the computer screen. The girl was someone I had never really talked to and had only seen from afar but she immediately started excitedly saying she shipped Zuko and Katara too! In this simple shared obsession, I made one of the best friends I’ve ever had and we’re still friends to this day. We would theorize and fangirl over Avatar like it was nobody’s business; we poured over bootleg San Diego Comic Con footage that showed spoilers for season 2 before it aired; we lost our freaking minds when we finally saw The Crossroads of Destiny. We had watch parties every week as Season 3 of A:TLA aired, and comforted each other when the show ended as it did (much ranting was shared). Those are some of my happiest memories from high school… all because this one pairing from this wonderful show. Even though Zutara didn’t happen, we still chat every now and then about it. Zutara will probably be a lifelong obsession, always bubbling under the surface. And without it, I would have never realized that animation was a viable career path. It really did inspire everything including the work I’m doing to this day in the animation industry. I owe a lot to this ship and to Avatar: the Last Airbender.

2. What inspires you to create zutara fanworks?

The resurgence of Avatar: The Last Airbender this year really helped sort of spark that dormant love I had for Zutara. The show’s ending still disappointed me on the rewatch, but Zuko and Katara’s relationship arc was as captivating as ever, so I turned to some fanfiction and looking at people’s pretty Zutara art and AMVs to just revel in fanon instead of getting to hung up on the actual ending of the show. But then I realized, with quarantine and my work load being pretty light, I had time to actually make all new Zutara art for myself, art I was never fully capable of making as a kid, but now could do with my 7 years of industry experience and just… life experience. And I was inspired to do some corrective animatics to satisfy my own desire for a different ending. I just really like exploring these two characters, doing different and interesting things with them, and frankly I’m inspired to make cute, fluffy, romantic art simply by virtue of living in a really sad and depressing world. Things are so crazy right now, creating art about two characters I love being in love, is comforting. And it helps to have inspiring music and amazing Zutara amvs to just sort of stir up my emotions and imagery in my head to make into animatics and art.

3. Be selfish - if you could request one fanwork based on your own art/fanfic, what would it be? What would you absolutely love to see someone create?

Ohhhh… Well, It’s always nice to have people write fanfiction that puts words to my animatics. I am not that great at coming up with dialog myself, so I’ve just chosen to indulge in visuals and emotions for my boards. But when I read things like RideBoldlyRide’s take on my Reunion Animatic, it makes me pretty giddy. (They finally have voices!) :) And this is the MOST selfish thing I could request, but I’m not shy about saying how much I love well done amvs, so I will literally kill for someone to make Zutara AMVs to songs I like… Like, most of AURORA’s songs but especially Exist for Love, Sunseeker by The Naked and Famous, Promises or Take Me by Aly & AJ, Adore You by Harry Styles, Human Enough by ONR, Never Let Me Go by Florence + The Machine, and/or Almost (Sweet Music) by Hozier just… I can see the AMVs so clearly to any of these songs in my head, but I don’t have the tools or skill set at my disposal to make a compelling fan video. When I was in high school, I originally thought I wanted to go into video editing simply because I loved making very crappy AMVs (they were so bad you guys), but I figured out being a storyboard artist was more in my wheelhouse. haha

4. Any words for people who are new to the fandom and/or nervous about sharing their work for the first time?

If you’re new to the Zutara fandom, just have a good time! Don’t waste too much time arguing with people over your shipping preferences. I wasted so much of my teen years having pointless shipping wars with people on DeviantArt, and I’m just so much happier nowadays because I’m just making Zutara art in my little corner of the internet, and honestly, in the politest of ways, I don’t give a shit if people don’t like my art or Zutara. haha I think that’s sort of a key thing for people thinking of posting creative works here in the fandom, just make art for yourself, satisfy your own desires for the pairing, get your creative sparks flying, and create just for the joy of creating. It’s always nice to get comments and such, but simply making the art should be what spurs you on, not the external validation. And have a good time, don’t worry too much - I say as someone who worries about EVERYTHING. But honestly, making art for A:TLA is some of the most relaxed I’ve been because I make it just for me. I’m lucky others seem to like it too!

5. What’s an idea for a fanwork that you have but haven't gotten around to making?

I have an idea for a second generation storyline with my Zutara kids that involves Kya (the eldest firebending daughter) falling in love with an airbender boy (tentatively named Gora in my headcanon who’s a bit of a rabble rouser and one of Aang’s kids he had with a Kyoshi Warrior), and then they start a socialist revolution in the Fire Nation in order to dismantle all of the hierarchical societies across the Avatar world… Together Kya and Gora Fan the Flames of revolution… ehhhhh... Get it?? Oh! Oh, and then Katara, who had put in legit liberal reforms in her time as Fire Lady listens to her daughter after resisting in the first part of the story, but then realizes she can actually play a part in the dissolution of the royalty and is also active in the revolution realizing that moderate liberal reforms are no substitute for a society free of serving royalty (which she had always been uncomfortable with but had rationalized with herself that she was doing good in her capacity as Fire Lady.) I just feel like there’s a lot of cool potential for discussing these ideas and also having some aspirational change in the Avatar world. lol For aesthetics and just happy fluffy times, I can indulge in Fire Lady and Fire Lord Zuko stuff, but really at the end of the day, I take issue with the structures in a society that have to exist for monarchies to exist. Soooo, I kind of want to do my own corrective story for that… if I ever have the time or guts. On a less ambitious note, I would love to do a Zutara sparring animatic to practice doing action, but I need a good story; I am not good at doing fights just for fighting’s sake. Those are just some things I have rattling around in my head.  

6. Are you participating in ZFAW? If so want to give us a hint as to your plans?

Yes! The most I can say is I have one animatic almost finished and one that’s still being thumbnailed. The rest are probably going to be comics or emotive single pieces based on the fanfics I really like right now. :)

[katyatalks]

Animestyle 2019/12 - MP100 Interview Translation

The December 2019 issue of animestyle contains ~50 pages of interviews, and I was lucky enough to be sent every page to read through. Interviewees include Tachikawa Yuzuru (director) & Kameda Yoshimichi (character designer). Contains a bunch of information regarding characters & topics like season 3, so please enjoy!

[Note that this Tumblr compilation misses out quite a few things from the original Twitter thread. If you’re curious, that thread is here.]

TACHIKAWA YUZURU (Director)

Wanted to go for a darker colour scheme for the characters and settings to fit the more dramatic themes in MP100, but Kameda disagreed, wanting to go for something more colourful

Considers S2 more ‘focused on humanity’ than S1

S1 was made without expectation of S2

When cutting bits of the manga from the anime adaptation, a “the viewer will still understand the point of the scene without these lines” approach was used

Considers S2 as having two parts; the character focused part, and claw arc. The decision was made to squeeze claw arc into 4 episodes as Tachikawa hated the idea of sacrificing content from the earlier part for a half-half split

He's well aware of how loved Reigen is; fans tell him so at mob events all the time

Considers the “who exactly am I” question that many of the characters deal with; finds it most impactful with Reigen, as he simply pretends to have powers, whereas Ritsu Mob Teru etc. actually have them

He holds Reigen arc dear to himself, in particular the “be a good person that’s all” conversation that gets put into the anime more than once

He considers Reigen’s growth one of the core themes of S2, alongside Mob’s own

Episode 8 was not in the original plan - S2 was meant to be 12 episodes much like S1.

The omake in which Tsubomi comes to the office was actually drawn for the purpose of giving the team something to put into ep 8 of the anime - team was struggling to find something from the manga to put in (“S&S team doing something for Mob”) so ONE created it

The reason why all the characters in Mob Psycho are so lovely is likely because ONE is a genuinely lovely person so it’s a reflection thing

In response to Reigen’s rant at Mob in ep 6 that causes their rift, Tachikawa says; “we’ve all had moments in which we know saying anything else would be the worst thing to do but we haven’t been able to stop ourselves”. It’s why the scene leaves an impression

In the manga you don’t get to see Reigen’s face after Mob tells him he’s a good person. They added it into the anime, and Tachikawa states that Kameda had a lot of trouble trying to figure out exactly what expression they should give Reigen

Discusses American highschooler Weilin Zhang (of ~17 years old), who drew up around 1800 frames for the purpose of S2E5

Reigen’s website was designed with the brief of it having to look cheap and shoddy

Considers Mob Psycho 100 as having the message “its okay for you to do the things you’d like to” at heart

Mention of not only Japanese fans but international fans increasing with S2

Describes Serizawa as becoming handsome after his haircut in the final episode of S2

On the topic of animating what’s left of the manga, says he’d like to give it a go

KAMEDA YOSHIMICHI (Character Design)

Slightly more time pressure on S2 than S1, which meant there was a bit of detail lost with the drawings for S2

Describes Shinra as a charming character

Goes on to say that he SUPER loves Shinra and really likes drawing him. Discusses how people tend to love attractive characters in anime and as a results there’s not many chubby characters, so he latched onto Shinra

Found the thoughts & feelings of characters a lot easier to read in S2 compared to S1, which made drawing their expressions easier. The more he worked on mob the more he found he understood the characters

Small discussion of Reigen’s behavioural shift from Ep3,4,5 to 6 & complexity of his character. Makes him hard to understand. But he understood Reigen’s feelings of regret in Ep7

Reigen shirt scene segment in Ep6 intended as fanservice

ONE has described Reigen & Mob’s relationship as being similar to that of the main character and the kid from the film “About A Boy” (Will and Marcus)

Compares Reigen to Sakai Masato’s character from “Legal High” (リーガル・ハイ), in that they both do bad things but aren’t ‘bad’

Regarding the choices they made with character shading (blurry on skin, but sharp-edged on hair & clothing), this was inspired by Disney (Aladdin, specifically). Originally they went for blurry-edge on clothes too but decided against it ultimately

Describes how each mob character is pretty distinct and it’s easy to recognise who is who; ie. if they have bobbed hair + no eyebrows, mob; a standoffish countenance, Ritsu; blond hair, Reigen

Describes how in contrast to the simplistic character designs, the atmosphere they’re surrounded by is complex

Amount of young animators working on mob psycho increased from S1

Final manuscripts for S2 were compiled in 2017

States that when he read the manga, Reigen Arc really touched him and it’s the main reason he decided to work on MP100. he was very upset that S1 ended without reaching Reigen arc, and he’s glad they got to tackle it in S2

He considers the growth that Reigen & Mob go through from S2E3 - E8 a principle part of what mp100 is all about

When asked about parts of the manga that haven’t been animated yet, Kameda says there’s a LOT he’d love to bring to the screen. He wants to finish off the anime as “we’ve gotten this far already”

Regarding a potential S3, Kameda is asked if there's really enough material left in the mp100 manga to fit 12 episodes... he agrees that there's probably not, so they could go for 10 episodes much like Attack on Titan S3 Part 2, or a movie. (This is not the first time Kameda has implied S3 could be a film instead.)

If/when they proceed with animating mp100 is dependent on director Tachikawa's schedule, as it's looking a little busy right now

TSUCHIGAMI ITSUKI (S2E11 storyboard, production)

Lead animators for MP100 tended to be young; mostly in their 20s, 2-3 people in their 30s, no one in their 40s

Never felt like he was in an atmosphere where he was under hellish time pressure to get things done

On being asked his thoughts on mp100 S2 as a whole, Tsuchigami says he enjoyed it but felt like it could've been longer. He was happy w the pace of E1-3, but felt dissatisfied with E4-5. Was happy with E6-8, but then with E9 onwards felt a bit dissatisfied

Felt like the story-related elements had to be cut down in order to fit the length of the season they were given; this is where his dissatisfaction stems from. Regardless, he very much enjoyed S2

OGASAWARA SHIN (Animation director, animator)

The staff working on MP100 were allowed a lot of creative freedom

Animation director for S2E3, and animated for E3 (from Reigen repeatedly pressing the doorbell of the stalker to Reigen saying let's go out for soba) and E11 (around the Justifiable Self-Defence Rush)

Reigen's Justifiable Self-Defence Rush was animated with the intention of giving it a manga-panel-like feel

S2 was completed without any huge blunder happening

UCHIDA NAOTO (Animation director, animator)

Originally did work for S1, but felt like nothing but a hindrance and wanted to crawl into a hole. But the workplace atmosphere was great and everyone was very kind, so it ended up being a good experience

Animation director for S2E4, and was split animation director with Nakamura Hayate for S2E10. Did animation for the opening, E1,4,5,10. E1 animation: around when Emi + pals are with Mob at the embankment. E4: from 'Nakamura's flashy explosion' ((Reigen cut by glass scene?)) to when the espers are being kicked around. E5: when Reigen and Dimple are having their back-and-forth. E10: layout of the awakening lab.

Found season 2 very enjoyable. Being an animation director was excellent. Character design? Godlike. Felt incredibly lucky that he got to take part

NAKAMURA HAYATE (Animation director, animator)

As stated above Uchida & Nakamura worked on S2E10 as animation directors. Uchida covered the first part of the episode, and Nakamura the latter half

Nakamura animated for S2E4 + E10. E4: around when Mob attacks Minori attempting to exorcise Mogami from her, E10: Suzuki + co's entrance, when Mob possessed by Dimple & Shibata exit the building, Telepathy Club scene, and from Mob + Body Improvement Club's parting to the final scene

Felt like he could've done a little better for S2. And on a personal level wishes he got to draw more action scenes

ETC.

We've had confirmation from ONE already that REIGEN is complete with a single volume, but we've got that confirmation again here too with the way the sales description is written

Thanks for reading!

[the-awful-falafel]

Rick and Morty - S4E10 “Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri” Podcast Summary/Breakdown

I said I’d keep doing these breakdowns if people were interested, but I was also waiting for a podcast that gave some good analysis/trivia on the characters and writing process. And what better podcast to summarize than the one about the season finale? I recommend watching it yourself if you have time.

(Link to full podcast video here!)

The interviewed staff this time are Erica Hayes (director), Anne Lane (writer), Brent Noll (lead prop designer), Steve Levy (associate producer)

The way episodes get scheduled/made is that the writers try to break as many stories as possible and see what sticks within the production time they are given. If they have to rewrite an episode a lot it can possibly get pushed to later in the season than they originally intended

This episode wasn’t necessarily always going to be the season finale during the early writing process, although it was always intended to be in the latter half of the season

Star Wars is so big in our culture that there is seemingly an obligation to trope it, which the writers are kind of exasperated about, so that led to the type of referential humor in this episode

Justin Roiland was the one who wanted Rick’s internal organs to be partially cybernetic/synthetic, and it wasn’t initially in the storyboards. It’s also meant to show that Rick’s enhanced and able to take more punishment than a regular human

The placeholder music for the Phoenixperson VS Rick fight was heavy metal, which made it feel almost DBZ-ish, but they toned it down once the actual track had to be composed because they wanted to focus on the brutality of the fight

The writers try to never force characters/plotlines to come back early, and their idea is that characters should only be brought back when it’s the right/optimal time to use them

They’ve been discussing whether or not Beth is a clone in the writers room since early in Season 4

Anne Lane points out how the show—and, in a way, its take on continuity and its own internal canon—seems to be predicated on “nothing matters”, a viewpoint often shared by Rick, but that philosophy is constantly called into question and shown as not true by characters such as Morty, because things do matter to them on a personal and emotional level. Family matters, their experiences matter, humanity matters. If this was the “Rick” show, it would probably be entirely episodic, but a canon exists regardless because no matter how much Rick tries to deny it, he himself is also human and cannot help feeling human emotions.

The invisible garbage truck gag was originally going to be a part of the main episode as a culmination of Morty and Summer’s plotline. It was planned to get teleported onto the Federation ship, driven by Jerry, and brutally crush guards into a gory pulp while they couldn’t even see what was killing them. The gag was cut because it didn’t help the story enough, but everyone was still really attached to the concept, so it got moved to the post-credits scene instead

The original episode title they came up with was “Star Mort: Bethisode 2: Ricktack of the Clones”. They chose a different Star Wars title to riff on since this version was obviously too spoilery

Space Beth’s spaceship was intentionally designed to look like Rick’s spaceship, as he originally built it for her when he sent her off into space and she’s been making upgrades to it ever since

The Gromflomites’ insectoid ship designs weren’t created until season 2 despite the species originating since the pilot

The interviewed staff are absolutely aware of the fans who idolize Rick, and they believe that viewpoint has become less popular in the fandom as the show went on due to the show increasingly highlighting Rick’s flaws and making it clear how terrible he truly is. Pickle Rick and Dr. Wong’s speech was brought up as an example

The writers didn’t actually go into Season 4 planning “this is the season where Rick is taken down a peg”. It was more of an organic result of the writing as they broke the story for all the episodes, as well as coming from an interest in telling stories about Rick that focused on the side of him that he doesn’t want expressed, rather than focusing on the “badass smartest man in the universe” schtick that we’re already familiar with

They were still aiming to be consistent with depicting Rick’s character in Season 4 as someone who, following Beth taking control of the family back in the Season 3 finale, is trying to not “rock the boat” too much while still attempting to find ways to get away with what he did in the past. They were basically looking at Rick as someone struggling to find his place in his family and the universe this season

Despite the huge episode order and having 60 episodes left to go, they don’t really plan ahead or focus their energy further than a season-by-season basis (10 episodes at a time). So they probably don’t have any massive character arcs set in stone this far in advance, they mostly play it by ear

Rick and Morty is an incredibly difficult show to make from an animation standpoint compared to other adult/”edgy” cartoons due to how high-concept and ambitious its environments, characters, and camera shots are. It’s especially stressful because they said that they reached a point recently where they juggled 3 seasons at once, which has never happened in the show before.

They try to cope with the high demands of the animation by reusing background characters and environments whenever possible. They try not to reuse background characters that got dialogue and then got killed off, though, for the sake of continuity. They also try not to use stock aliens that have gotten recycled too much in past episodes.

A lot of the gun assets are reused throughout the show. The weird organic bug-gun Beth used in this episode was a new design, and it apparently gave Brent Noll a lot of difficulty in the prop design phase

A caller asked what Roiland and Harmon were referring to in a past interview which heavily implied there was a Season 4 post-credits scene which would lead into Season 5, and all of the interviewed staff were confused (since no such scene exists and they don’t recall any from development) and came up with different theories about what they might have been talking about. They also point out that most post-credits scenes are written as jokes and that the only real plot-related one was the Tammy and Birdperson one back in Season 3’s premiere episode. They prefer to keep implied future plot elements within the episode itself. “They’re not like Marvel post-credits scenes.”

The Wrangler jeans joke came pretty late in the process and wasn’t an actual paid advertisement. It was given to the Gromflomite ship as its weakness because the Gromflomites are very corporate and they were already parodying the Death Star trope so they wanted it to feel hackneyed

The Zeus fistfight and the Phoenixperson fight weren’t meant to be parallels to each other despite how brutal they were in episodes released back-to-back. Initially the planet-fucking episode was placed earlier in the season so it was mostly a coincidence. Also, the Zeus fight was meant to be more of “a dick measuring contest between two idiots” rather than anything impressive or epic

The reason Beth turned the clone decision back onto Rick is that she realized the choice he gave her was, once again, him stepping back from the responsibility to care about his daughter. So Beth attempted to force Rick to choose for once in his life whether or not he wanted her around, and he failed to commit to even that, which was the cowardly action needed for Beth to move on from her father’s emotional neglect.

Steve Levy dismisses the allegations that only the first and last episodes of the season advanced the plot, as the staff consider character growth  to also be part of the canon and something that is advanced throughout this season (using Morty’s character as an example). They also have pointed out that they’ve done canon-heavy episodes in the middle of past seasons before, such as the Ricklantis Mixup in Season 3, and it was only by coincidence that Season 4 had the major lore episodes be the bookends.

They also point out that some episodes that fans consider “filler” can be called back to later, retroactively making them important to the canon, so there’s always an implied level of continuity going on unless they explicitly call out an episode as non-canon (like the story train episode)

The interviewed staff don’t know when Season 5 is coming out, but they do believe it will be sooner than past seasonal gaps

Many of them are currently working on Season 5, and some of them are even working on Season 6

Erica Hayes is currently working on a different show because the board artists/directors are usually first in the process, meaning they wrap up work first and have to find other work in the meantime. She’s wrapped on Season 5 and expects to be back for Season 6 once the scripts are ready

And that’s it! Hope this was comprehensive enough for y’all to enjoy. (And now, I wait for Season 5′s podcasts.)

[myreyloheartisshowing]

Here’s the Thing(s)

So, I’ve mentioned a couple of issues I had with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but this is the first time I’ve really sat down and tried to articulate everything that rubbed me the wrong way about this film. 

Now, was this movie entertaining? Yes. Much explosion, many lightsword, guau. And, honestly, I walked out of the theater feeling generally okay. 

And then I thought about it a little. And then a lot. And then spent days obsessing over the devastation I was feeling. And why I’ve been unable to even venture onto AO3 and browse through fanfics. 

So, here’s a list, starting from the beginning. I may be missing a few things, but these are my hot takes. Please note that this has detailed SPOILERS:

The opening scrawl just gave too much away. It gave us the entire plot of a movie that never preceded TROS. You could have taken literally 2 minutes to actually show Palpatine’s broadcast instead of just tossing us into Kylo Ren’s acquisition of the (first of many) McGuffin(s). 

The reintroduction of Palpatine as the Big Bad. J.J. Abrams could have gone so many interesting directions. Explored the implications of a fanatical, fascist regime that is basically (as Zorii Bliss later alludes) enslaving the children of the universe. Highlight the dangers of power vacuums and the machinations of power-hungry generals.

The dialogue between Palpatine and Kylo Ren. My first level ESL students could have written a better exchange.

The fact that Palpatine, ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS, demands Rey’s death. Not “bring her to me and kill her in front of me so I can enjoy the death of the last Jedi,” but rather “I’d really love it if you just killed her out of my sight and maybe spaced her corpse.” 

The reintroduction of the McGuffin(s)

WHERE THE FUCK IS ROSE???? WHY IS SHE SIDELINED? (oh, right. pandering to fanbros)

Having Rey stare longingly at children before receiving an ancestors’ (i.e. fertility) necklace, and then never actually taking this symbolism any further. In retrospect, this feels like the sort of meta foreshadowing that I so enjoyed from The Last Jedi, but it’s completely wasted in the end.

The Force Bond - rather, how Rey seems to have totally regressed back to her complete and utter abhorrence of Kylo Ren. Now, part of this could be contributed to good old-fashioned feelings of rejection (Kylo Ren rejected a life as Ben Solo with her and it fucking hurts), but really it just seems like an attempt to erase the emotional nuances gifted to us by Rian Johnson. 

The convenient fall into a pit where they conveniently find a SECOND McGuffin which will, presumably, lead them to the COPY of the FIRST McGuffin (for fucks’ sake). And the convenient appearance of an enraged and hurt sand worm that Rey heals for the sheer purpose of setting up the idea that she “gave it a bit of” her “life force” (i.e., making it totally believable that, instead of utilizing Force Healing, she’s making use of a life force transfer, again trying to justify an ending that the majority of fans HATE). 

The THIRD McGuffin, which is the guy who can unlock C-3PO’s ability to decipher the stupid dagger.

The introduction of Zorii Bliss, a character whom I view as a blatant attempt to: a) be a sex symbol and pander to more fanbros; and b) prove that Poe would never even remotely entertain romantic feelings for another male-character. I don’t really mind Poe’s (surprise!) background as a spice runner, but I’m a little confused on the timeline. Like, was he doing that when he was still a pilot of the New Republic, in the early days of the Resistance?

I’m torn over the Force Bond scene in Kylo Ren’s quarters. On the one hand, he’s spent an unknown amount of time searching for his space girlfriend, only for her to appear in his rooms (perfect fanfic plot). On the other hand, their interaction, again, feels like an emotional regression.

Rey Palpatine. How lazy. How stupid. I really liked the idea that a simple nobody from Jakku could move the universe. That a non-legacy character could become the future of the Jedi. That a simple scavenger from Jakku could be one half of a powerful Dyad. Lazy, Lazy, Lazy. And clear pandering, yet again, to the whiny fanbros.

The idea that Rey’s parents SOLD HER to “protect her,” and again establishing that it was because Palpatine wanted her, inexplicably, DEAD. 

The fact that Palpatine more than likely got freaky when he was Emperor? The implication being that it was, more than likely, rape, is huge and very alarming. And the fact that my space babies never got to roll around in the sand but Emperor Palpatine got laid instead?

That Hux was the spy and he did it just to stick it to Kylo Ren? Honestly, I just loved the HCs that made Hux much more intelligent. But I do, however, believe he could have been that petty. 

THE DAGGER CONVENIENTLY HAS A COMPASS that points to the exact location of the Wayfinder on the wreckage of the Death Star. Like, do you realize this means that whoever made the stupid dagger did it after the destruction of the Death Star. UGH. Lazy. Lazy. Lazy. 

I have nothing to say about the fight on the Death Star except that I wish they had made it more obvious that Rey was wrestling with the Dark Side after the revelations of her past, her encounter with Dark Rey!, etc. Otherwise, it just feels like more retconning of the wealth of emotions brought about in The Last Jedi. 

Surprise! Palpatine didn’t want Rey dead, he just wanted to possess her body???

The fact that the Knights of Ren really only ended up as a side note. I would have loved to see more.

All the sacrifices made by the legacy characters - Han, Luke, Leia - are cheapened by Ben’s Death. Those three characters spent their last breaths hoping to reach Ben Solo and bring him back to the light. And, admittedly, it did happen. But for him to die? 

Oh, and the fact that both Luke and Leia apparently knew about Rey’s heritage and just decided “hey, this girl has the potential to dive deep into the Dark Side, but we’ll guide her through it” even though they completely gave up on their own flesh and blood ... Even though they were aware that Ben had been manipulated by Snoke (Palps 2.0) from the womb ...

Rey doesn’t mourn. Not one bit. Nothing. Literally the other half of her soul is gone and Ben Solo is never thought of again. 

Rey lives out her day on Tatooine, regressing to the little girl in the desert once more (they even show her sliding down the sand dune). No family is around her, no hint of communication with Finn, Poe, Chewie, anyone. 

This movie tried to do so much in so little time. It was filled to the brim and the quality suffered for it. J.J. so obviously tried to pander to fanbros and appeared to be directly retconning many of ideas and threads from The Last Jedi. There also appeared to have been no cohesive storyboard for the Sequel Trilogy before they started production of Episode VII. And it shows.

That’s just what I’ve managed to remember from the film. 

Now, in the interest of fairness and balance, there were things I enjoyed:

The visuals. Gotta love good old-fashioned space fights

Finn is FORCE SENSITIVE!

Jannah and the other ex-Stormtroopers. There’s so much potential there.

While I was acutely aware that Leia’s scenes were leftover bits from other films, I thought that her inclusion in the film was very tastefully done. Her final sacrifice to reach Ben was quite moving. 

The droids. The moments with C-3PO. Just. I love them all so much. 

Poe’s fed-up attitude with C-3PO. Much needed humor. Much needed.

While I HATE that Ben Solo died, I also liked the implication that he thoroughly gave himself over to heal Rey. It’s a direct mirror image of Anakin. I like this symbolism. I really, really do. It was just poorly executed.

The Dyad. Again, this had so much potential, I just think it was completely and totally wasted.

The fight on the Death Star

That Rey didn’t kill Palpatine by taking the offensive. Instead, she lived up to the Jedi spirit of defense over attack.

Rey’s lightsaber at the end.  

[famedbasearchive]

OUR SONGS: EPISODES 7 & 8

Timeline: November 9, 2020, to December 12, 2020

On-Set Filming Dates: November 9, December 12

Deadline: December 10, 11:59PM KST

Those involved in the main cast of Our Songs this month may earn up to 13 points total for writing, by the end of December 10 KST:

Completions of the two interviews included in the in-character prompt. (1 point for the first interview & 2 points for the second, up to 3 points total)

Up to three solo paras of 400+ words based on filming for episodes 5 & 6. (2 points each, up to 6 points total).

Up to two threads of six posts (three per participant, including the starter) with another muse in the main cast based on the Our Songs episodes 7 and 8 schedule. (2 points each, up to 4 points total)

Please remember the number of the above tasks completed by each muse will factor into the final rankings. These do not count toward monthly limits or toward normal schedule points. All posts for this task block should be tagged with #fmdos4.

All muses in the roleplay (excluding remaining main cast of the show) this month may earn up to 4 points total for writing, by the end of December 10 KST (please read the information in this post for context!):

Completions of the two celebrity audience interviews filmed during the finale included here. (4 points total; both must be completed)

All posts for this task block should be tagged with #fmdos4.

IN-’VERSE INFO

Following the performances on November 7, everyone will have a little under an hour off-camera while the audience is instructed to vote for one song they liked the best. These votes will be calculated and combined with online track votes based on a weighted formula, and then the competitors are brought back out. They are first told the cast members that got the most votes in the live voting and the online voting as follows:

- Live audience vote: Jaewon (Wei) - Online vote: Joohwan (Aera)

The final rankings are then announced as follows to announce the safe competitors from third place to first:

3. Taeyong 2. Jaewon 1. Joohwan

Choi Jihoon congratulates the three safe competitors and dismisses them from the stage to bring the three remaining competitors on stage (Suji, Youngjoo, and Sun). The competitors currently on stage represent fourth place that will go onto the finale and the two competitors who will be eliminated and he reminds everyone of that. After building suspense, he announces that Suji has placed fourth and will be safe to go onto the next episode. This means Youngjoo and Sun have unfortunately been eliminated from the competition and the final overall ranking for the latest round is ultimately as follows:

1. Joohwan 2. Jaewon 3. Taeyong 4. Suji

On November 9, the remaining four idols will once again return to the “recording studio” set they first met at on their first day of filming. Competitors will once again be seated based on their rank (first place in seat one, second place in seat two, etc.). Basic pleasantries will be gone through on camera recounting the last round and reminding everyone of the rules and structure of the show before host Choi Jihoon will inform them of their third songwriting mission:

“The four of you sitting here with me represent the final four of the competition. You’ve been through three rounds of this now, showing your abilities to write to represent your own identity, to fit an assigned concept, and for someone else. For the final round, you’re free to write what you want to share with the world. There’s only one catch. You’ll be writing two songs for this round: one paired up with a fellow competitor and one solo song.”

Choi Jihoon then announces that first place and fourth place from last round must write and perform a duet together and the middle places must do the same. This means Joohwan and Suji have been partnered up, as have Jaewon and Taeyong.

Choi Jihoon then adds, “For your duet, you’re expected to embody both of your unique colors while finding a way to compromise and find a middle ground. For your solo song, you are expected to show whatever you want your final statement to the audience to be. For the first, and only, time during the run of the show, you’ll be releasing a music video for your solo song. Think about how you want the song to be represented, as you’ll be expected to talk with the directors and production team about how your song would best be expressed.”

The competitors are given time to react to the prompt before they are dismissed from the set. After this, each musician will film a talking head interview in a private room with a small team of cameras and producers where they are asked the following questions:

You’ve made the final four of the competition. Looking back on the competition so far and your performance, how do you feel about making it to the last round?

You’re required to work on a duet with one of the other competitors this round. What are your thoughts on who you’ve been paired with and how you think you’ll work together?

What are you current thoughts on what you want to do for your final solo song?

Which one of the other competitors do you see as your biggest competition for winner of the whole show?

From November 10 to November 23, all competitors are given time to work with their assigned partner on their duet song. They will be asked to do most of the work in one of the two competitors’ company studios so that they can be filmed on the stationary cameras set up, but both competitors will keep their self-cams as well. By November 24, the song should be fully produced, recorded, and mastered and submitted to the show’s production team.

On November 29, the final version of the duet songs will be released onto streaming sites and voting will open for online audiences. 

From November 10 to November 30, all competitors are also given time to work on their solo song. As has been the case for the rest of the competition, there will be stationary cameras in their company studio and they’ll also be provided with a self-cam. All competitors will receive a visit from the host Choi Jihoon some time during the period of working on their solo song and he’ll talk to them one on one about their journey on the show, where they hope to go after it ends, what they’ve learned, and about their song. (admin note: This can be written out and muns are given permission to write Choi Jihoon’s actions and words as long as they are not major changes or departures from his established professional character. He should generally remain professional but personable as a normal competition show host. Things like deliberate rudeness, outbursts, or favoritism by him should be avoided, please! If you’re unsure whether something oversteps, please ask the admin.) A mostly complete draft of the song must be finished by November 23, as they will film the music video for their song as their schedule allows from November 24 to November 30. They are allowed to continue to fine tune the song during this time as the final mastered version is only due on December 1, but they won’t be allowed to make major changes that will clash with the music video.

All competitors will meet with a director some time before the filming of their music video to discuss the message, themes, and story line of their song in relation to a music video. While they will not be able to contribute extensively enough for any kind of credited production role on the project, such as coming up with the whole concept, creating a storyboard, contributing to filming or directing the MV, doing all of the styling, etc, they will get to discuss how they want to convey the song and will have power to veto the production crew’s ideas.

On December 6, the final version of the solo songs will be released onto streaming sites and the music videos will be uploaded to Youtube. Voting will open for online audiences.

On December 12, all competitors will go to same building as last round with with the same performance set, where their songs will be performed and voted on. 

For the finale, each competitor will be given a certain number of tickets that will allow them to invite their group mates and celebrity friends to watch during the finale. Each company will also be given a certain number of tickets to allow additional artists in their rosters to attend for potential screen time. Idols attending as guests in the audience will not be given live audience voting privileges, but will be asked for their opinion on the performances in talking head interviews before and after the filming and possibly from the audience during the show.

The competitors will first perform their duets:

Joohwan & Suji - “Heart Stop”

Jaewon & Taeyong - “City Lights”

As each duo is performing, the other duo will be seated on stage watching. After one duo’s performance, the other will be asked to comment on the performance. Some members of the celebrity audience may also be asked for their opinions.

After the two performances, competitors will be given time to change and prepare for their solo stages as necessary. During this time, the audience will be asked to vote for with duet they preferred. After about an hour to an hour and a half, the solo performances will begin, which will be done in order by ranking from the last round:

Joohwan - “Love Me Harder”

Jaewon - “Jasmine”

Taeyong - “Nowhere”

Suji -  “I Go”

For the solo performance round, the three competitors not currently performing will sit in the audience in the celebrity guest section instead of onstage. After each performance, the other three competitors will be asked for their thoughts, as will some of the celebrity guests in the audience.

Another break will be taken following the conclusion of all solo performances where each competitor will film another talking head interview (admin note: please wait to complete this interview until all songs have been chosen and listed above):

What was it like working with your partner on your duet? Do you feel you successfully showed both of your colors as performers and songwriters?

How does your solo song embody the final statement you decided you wanted to make as a competitor?

Do you have any regrets about either of your performances tonight? Do you have any regrets about your performance on the show as a whole?

How do you feel you’ve grown during your time competing on Our Songs?

Which of the other songs/performances caught your attention the most?

How will you feel if you win? How will you feel if you don’t?

OUT OF ‘VERSE INFO

As with past rounds, the rankings for the third round were determined by random generation for spots among who completed the most tasks. All main cast muses had completed all tasks for the third block, so the rankings were decided entirely by random picker. The only exception here is that the admin’s muse is not be eligible for the overall first place ranking. Proof shots of the name picker can be found here.

The winners for separate live voting and online voting were determined using weighted selection based on the randomly generated overall rankings. Rank one got six submissions into the generator, rank two got five, rank three got four, rank four got three, and the two eliminated muses got one submission each, and then names were drawn. Proof shots of the name picker for the live audience vote and online vote winners can be found at the link above.

For this task block you will need to submit two different forms, one for the duet and one for the solo. Please note that only one person from the duet has to submit a form, but everyone has to submit a form for their solo.

The following information will be requested for the duet: the song you would like to claim for your muses to create and perform for this round’s task as agreed upon between partners (and a performance reference if one is available) and the creative claims on it. 

The following information will be requested for the solo: the song you would like to claim for your muses to create and perform for this round’s task (and a performance reference if one is available), the creative claims on it, and a link to the MV.

The form links will be uploaded here at 12AM KST November 14/10AM EDT November 13, twenty-four hours after this post goes up. The form for the duet song is here and the solo song form is here.

A reminder of the limits of creative claims on each muse for the show can be found here. If you think there is a mistake or if a song has been released that leads to a necessary update, please contact the main.

Songs Claimed:

WOODZ - Love Me Harder

Kei - I Go

Taemin - Heart Stop ft. Seulgi

DPR Live - Jasmine

TVXQ - City Lights ft. Taeyong (U-Know Yunho Solo)

Jung Jinwoo - Nowhere

SONG LIMITATIONS/REQUIREMENTS

There is no specified theme for this round other than to create a song in a pair and a final solo song. Please read the above prompt in the in-’verse info for full details on this round.

For all rounds, a song must fit all general rules of music claims (i.e. matches muse position, is not too explicit, must be by an artist in the Korean music industry, etc.) and must receive admin approval.

For this round, these are the additional limitations and requirements on songs that can be chosen:

Duet song

The song must involve two performing artists. The original song can have two artists equally credited, a solo with a feature, or a duo act, but it must have two performing artists.

In real life, the song must not be a title track according to Melon and cannot have an official MV. Special clips, live clips, and minimal production lyric videos are acceptable, but the song will have to be re-released on an album in the future to claim such videos as canon to the universe.

In real life, the song cannot have charted higher than a rank of 50 on Gaon’s Weekly Digital Chart at any point.

You may claim songs with choreography, but choreography creative claims are not available. As usual, songs with more emphasis on complex choreography should be reserved for muses with dance positions.

Both muses must have some kind of creative claims on the song.

Solo song

This song must be a solo song. This means it cannot be a collab or have a feature.

In real life, the song may be a title track according to Melon, but it doesn’t have to be. It must have an official MV. Special clips, live clips, and minimal production lyric videos do not count and the release of any different M/V versions beyond the main video will require the song to be re-released on an album in the future to claim such videos as canon to the universe.

In real life, the song cannot have charted with the top 100 on Gaon’s Weekly Digital Chart at any point.

You may claim songs with choreography, but choreography creative claims are not available. As usual, songs with more emphasis on complex choreography should be reserved for muses with dance positions.

[burnouts3s3]

Bloom Into You, a Blu-ray review

(Disclaimer: The following is a non-profit unprofessional blog post written by an unprofessional blog poster. All purported facts and statement are little more than the subjective, biased opinion of said blog poster. In other words, don’t take anything I say too seriously.) Just the facts 'Cause you're in a Hurry! Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP): 69.98 USD How much I paid: 45.99 USD , the pre-order price Animation Studio: TROYCA Licensed and Localized by: Sentai Filmworks Audio: Japanese Audio with Subtitles and English Dub available.   English Cast: Tia Ballard as Yuu Koito, Luci Christian as Touko Nanami, Shanae’a Moore as Sayaka Saeki, Amber Lee Connors as Akari Hyuga, Brittney Karbowski as Koyomi Kano, Patricia Duran as Riko Hakozaki and Samantha Stevens as Miyako Kodama. Number of Episodes: 13 Episodes Length per Episode: 25 Minutes on average. 21 Without Intro and Ending song. Number of Discs: 2 Blu-ray discs Episodes per Disc: Episodes 1 through 9 on the 1st Blu-ray Disc. Episodes 10 through 13 on the 2nd Blu-ray disc. Does this come a digital voucher to redeem?: No. This only has the Blu-ray discs. Are there plans for a DVD release: Not as of the writing of this review. Also on: HiDive, Sentai Streamwork’s Streaming Service. Bonus Features: Clean Opening Animation, Clean Closing Animation and two Japanese Promos. Notable Localization Changes: For the most part, Bloom Into You sticks as close to the original Japanese script as possible. Which Edition are you reviewing: The Standard Edition, that comes with just the Blu-rays. What does the other Edition come with: The Premium Box Set comes with a Special Book, Storyboard Book, Original Scriptbooklet, 6 art cards and Rei’s receipe for cheesecake. (Yes, really). It is priced at 149.98 USD. My Personal Biases: I’ve seen Kannazuki no Miko, Strawberry Panic, Maria Watches Over Us, Kase-san and Morning Glories, Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl, Simoun, Citrus, Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Yurikuma Arashi, Sweet Blue Flowers, Whispered Words and others. To say I’ve been waiting for something like Bloom Into You would be an understatement. My Verdict: Not only does Bloom Into You stand amongst the pinnacles of Yuri anime, it outshines some regular romance shows in the process. Yuu and Touko feel like fully fleshed out characters instead of the usual stock types and gives ample amount of time to not only developing the main girls but the rest of the cast as well. My hopes is that the success of this show will spawn a 2nd season. Buy it! A/N: SPOILERS for this show and other Shoujo-ai shows below. Bloom Into You a Bluray review

I honestly think many newcomers to the Shoujo Ai genre don’t know how good they have it nowadays. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Before the 1-2-3 Punch of Strawberry Panic, Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl and Simoun in 2006, Kannazuki no Miko was considered the pinnacle of Yuri Anime. But in 2018, Yuri anime seemed to make a comeback in full force with the 1-2-3 punches of Kase-san and Morning Glories, Bloom Into You and, yes, Citrus. The three adaptations of manga titles managed to be an oasis in the desert after titles such as Simoun failed to find an audience, Sweet Blue Flowers ending on a cliffhanger and Whispered Words bombed so hard, it was rumored to have killed the Yuri anime genre for years. Even titles after that such as Yurikuma Arashi and Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid didn’t manage to find a larger audience other than the converted niches they were aiming for. But then, Bloom Into You came onto the scene and became a revolution, for both longtime fans of the genre and newcomers. Bloom Into You didn’t just manage to be a critical success, but also managed to be a commercial juggernaut, spawning a stage play, multiple light novels and having numerous books of its manga sold. Freshman high schooler Yuu Koito has always loved shojou manga, so she is aware of what she ought to be feeling if she were to receive a love confession. But when a junior high classmate confesses his feelings for her, she somehow does not feel anything. She delays her response, and ends up entering high school, still unsure of how to respond to those type of feelings. While there, she happens to see the student council president, Touko Nanami, elegantly turning down a confession. Yuu is inspired to ask her for advice. She finds out that Nanami has never accepted a confession because none of them has ever made her feel anything in particular. The two bond over their similarities. Nanami realizes that she could be falling in love with Yuu, so she suddenly confesses her feelings to her. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the upperclassman and lowerclassman (or the Senpai and Kouhai) relationship. We’ve seen countless pairings with Sachiko and Yumi or Shizuma and Nagisa or Amane and Hikari or Utena and Anthy or Asuka Rei and Nanako or… you get the idea. (I watch a lot of Shoujo ai). Even when it’s established both girls are of the same age such as Kannazuki no Miko’s Chikane Himemiya and Himeko Kurusugawa or Kase Tomoka and Yui Yamada, there’s a notable class difference between the popular girl and the unpopular girl. But Touko and Yuu take all those past pairings and put them to shame. Yuu actually does feel like a fully fleshed out human being with her own agency and thoughts (a far cry from the naïve Himeko Kurusugawa and Nagisa Aoi). Yuu isn’t sure if she’ll ever be in a relationship and we’re treated to her inner monologue of whether she is capable of loving Touko the same way Touko loves her. At the same time, the more we see Touko, the more the outer exterior falls apart. Interior voice-over is said to be a lazy storytelling technique in fiction, but Yagakimi uses it to explore the very real and unsure feelings of Yuu. Yes, the trope of ‘the popular girl isn’t perfect after all’ trope has been done to death with Chikane, Shizuma, Shizuru, Asuka and others, but Touko feels particularly tragic as she’s locked in arrested development. Touko’s been trying to live in the footsteps of her deceased sister who was also Student Council president, only to find out that her sister wasn’t the image she always had in her head. It’s up to Yuu to find a way to save Touko from herself. Also, no one rapes or tries to rape each other. So, you know, progress! Also a breath of fresh air are the additions of other queer characters such as an older lesbian couple living together and Sayaka Saeki, Touko’s classmate who also harbors romantic feelings for Touko. Sayaka has been a fan favorite in the franchise and even has a Light Novel adapted after her. (Though spoilers indicate she’s to join the ranks of ‘lesbian best friend who is friendzoned by love interest’ alongside Strawberry Panic’s Tamao Suzumi and Yaya Nanto, Hajimete no Gal’s Ranko Honjou and Cardcaptor Sakura’s Tomoyo Daidouji). Sentai Filmworks did the localization of the show and for the most part, it has been a very solid translation to little or no changes. Luci Christian (who’s voiced Honey-sempai in Ouran High School Host Club and other lesbian characters such as Himiko from Shattered Angels) really brings a lot of range to the character. But Tia Ballard (who performed Teruhashi from the Disastrous Life of Saiki K, Marron in Dragon Ball Super and Lady Rain from Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid) manages to wring out real depth through Yuu. Her performance is subtle, slow and has enough energy to make it feel real. Rounding out the cast are familiar voice performers. Amber Lee Connors (who voiced Mei Aihara in Citrus) is nice to hear and Brittney Karbowski turns in a surprisingly toned down character, a far cry from some of her more energetic performances. JAPANESE AUDIO WITH SUBTITLES IS ALSO AVAILABLE. CAVEAT:  Through Shoujo-ai’s vast, incredible and at times, problematic, history, we’ve seen milestones and steps being placed into BiY’s direction. Slowly but surely, the path was being placed as every woman love woman anime placed its mark to getting here. From the tragedies in the past, to the slice of life shows to the shows pandering to titillation, Bloom Into You is not only an accomplishment in its own right, but a climax to every other shoujo-ai show out there. My only hope is that we get the much deserved 2nd season and adapt the rest of the wonderful manga. Verdict: Full Price!

[skruttet]

I wanna do some season 2 speculation (aka ramblings that don’t actually reach a set-in-stone conclusion lmao)!! I’m gonna assume that all the sneak peak visuals and audio from this video are from season 2 episode 2 and are all gonna be in the final cut (even though really we don’t actually know that), just to make theorising a bit easier for myself!

Please feel free to add your own thoughts if anything I say makes the cogs in your head turn! :D

Alright, so the first thing we see is four animatic frames of Snufkin holding a red, flame-like object. In the first frame, it is partially hidden by what looks like a cloud (or mist? fog? a wave? but I’m personally going with cloud), and through the cloud there is still a faint spray of the red colour, therefore we can assume that the object glows, the red colour being its light. Snufkin seems to be happily talking in this first frame, then has stopped in the second but is still slightly smiling as he lifts his head to look at Moomintroll, who we next see look at the object in shock, then up to Snufkin. As I have said in the past, my only theory as to what this object could be other than a normal flame is the King’s Ruby - here is a description of it from Finn Family Moomintroll: “At first it was quite pale, and then suddenly a pink glow would flow over it like the sunrise on a snow-capped mountain - and then again crimson flames shot out of its heart and it seemed like a great black tulip with stamens of fire.” If this is truly what Snufkin is holding, then we know that the King’s Ruby is a symbol of Thingumy and Bob’s queer love - beautiful, precious, something that is all theirs and that they only show to those they trust. So is this tableaux the creators sneaking in more Snufmin subtext? Or am I being too hopeful?

We know that we will be seeing Thingumy and Bob in episode 8, The Trial - so why would Snufkin be holding the King’s Ruby this early on, and in what appears to be a dream or vision that Moomintroll is experiencing? In Finn Family Moomintroll, Moomintroll actually hears about the King’s Ruby before Thingumy and Bob are on the scene - from Snufkin (who in turn heard it from the Magpie), who tells the gang about the Hobgoblin, ending with how unhappy the Hobgoblin is until he finds the King’s Ruby (”It’s almost as big as the black panther’s head, and to look into it is like looking at leaping flames.”). Therefore, it’s possible that Moominvalley Snufkin has also told this Moomintroll about the King’s Ruby, although episode 2 is still super early on and it seems like Snufkin isn’t actually in the valley yet in this episode (based off of the lines in this video where Moomintroll is clearly pining for him). Perhaps this vision doesn’t explain what the King’s Ruby is yet, only shows it, and we find out in a later episode what it is and start putting the pieces of the puzzle together then? Who knows.

Onto the audio that plays on top of this storyboard; assuming that it is in fact what should be playing during these frames, it seems to support the theory that this scenario is playing in Moomintroll’s head, and at sunset (which is super romantic imo). Unfortunately for us, we don’t get to hear the end of the sentence as he gets cut off by Little My presumably kicking him, telling him that she is trying to sleep. Moomintroll appears to not have even realised that he was thinking out loud, making this situation seem even more gay, as if he was thinking something very private (like, say, imagining a romantic date with your best friend?). The fact that Little My is sleeping is interesting - is this daytime, and she’s just napping somewhere near him, or is it nighttime? In which case, she never slept in the same room as him in the first season (to our knowledge - I wouldn’t put it past her to have crawled into a nook or cranny without him knowing lol), so where could they be? We know that 3 episodes of season 2 take place on the lighthouse island; are they there already? It seems a little too early in my opinion, though I can’t imagine where else they’d be.

Moving on, we hear the end of a Moomintroll(?) line: “...amazing adventures”. There isn’t really much we can go off here - he could be referring to anyone’s adventures (his own, his father’s, or Snufkin’s seem to be the most likely), and at any time, past or present or future. We also hear Pappa say something but I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is, it may even be the end of a line again (sounds like “killjoy” or “old boy” but I’m probably completely off). Then there’s laughter that at first I thought was one of the creators watching but I think it might be one of the characters, probably Little My.

Then, we get a male character saying “well, at least there’s some use in that old volcano.” I assume it’s Moominpappa saying this, as in Moominsummer Madness it seems to be only he and Moominmamma who know about the volcano. I’m not sure what this “use” is they’re referring to - in the book, he wishes he could have a paperweight made of real lava from it, though the volcano itself is mainly referred to as a “nuisance”. The volcano is located on a “black little island [off the coast] where nothing grows”, so theoretically they could be mashing it up with the lighthouse island but I doubt it. In Moominsummer Madness, the volcano and the ash it spews are the early warning signs for a storm and flood - will there be a flood in Moominvalley season 2? Obviously it can’t be the same as the one in season 1, but there are at least 3 floods in the Moomin books & comics (The Moomins and the Great Flood, Moominsummer Madness, and Moomin Falls in Love). It wouldn’t be the flood from the Great Flood so that would leave Moomin Falls in Love, though nothing else we see here seems to come from that story, and neither does it seem that another natural disaster happens, so I’m crossing “flood” off the potential plotlines list. But then, there must still be a reason as to why the volcano is mentioned, mustn’t there? I still haven’t quite figured that out, though.

Whilst these “volcano” lines play in the video, a few more frames of animatic are shown - depicting Moomintroll in the foreground, and Snorkmaiden slightly behind him with her hand on his shoulder. He looks back at her before she walks away. I’m not sure whether these frames are actually the ones that play during the volcano lines, since I just find it strange for Snorkmaiden to be all “volcano!?” but then immediately walk away from the conversation. Though I guess I don’t know the full story of what’s happening in the scene (ofc my shipper mind tells me that maybe Moomintroll gives her a “please don’t touch me” look and is the start of them realising they’re not cut out to be a couple but there’s nothing standoffish about their behaviour at all so that’s clearly not what’s going on lol).

Finally, we get the last pining line from Moomintroll: “we’ll soon be cutting the long winter grass by the stream where he pitches his tent”. This seems to be referencing, yet again, a line from the beginning of Moominsummer Madness: “And then summer came, and long grass grew all over Snufkin’s camping place by the river, as if no one had ever lived there.” This is another indication that Snufkin is late to the valley for at least the first two episodes of season 2, which I find a little strange for him to do considering the soul-searching and self-realisation he did in the season 1 episode The Spring Tune. Maybe the volcano mentioned earlier has something to do with his delay?

Before Moomintroll says this, you can hear a female voice sighing; it sounds like one of Little My’s rolling-her-eyes huffs to me, and during his line it sounds like someone is sniffling and/or sneezing?? Again, it’s hard to tell which noises are from the characters and which are the people in the room watching, but if it’s the former, then that’s quite interesting. Is it cold wherever they are? Is the person crying? Or are they huffing still at Moomintroll’s pathetic longing for his best friend?

As a summary, it seems that this episode will definitely be at least partly based on Moominsummer Madness, with perhaps a sprinkling of Finn Family Moomintroll, and Moominpappa at Sea if any of it ties into those episodes. I haven’t caught anything I recognised from any of the comics, though.

Whatever happens in this episode, clearly at this point, Sophia Jansson was NOT happy with it, and judging by the phone call she has with Marika, it seems that she felt as though the characters’ motivations/emotions/problems were not clear enough or there hasn’t been enough development for those things to make sense yet. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how different the final result is compared to these snippets!

[love-takes-work]

Steven Universe: Art and Origins (Outline & Review)

Steven Universe: Art and Origins is not just an art book--it's also a collection of early material, a reveal of many initial concepts, and an amazing experience to sort through. 

Finally getting around to importing my review to Tumblr. I wrote this on the release day.

In my review I'll give you a description of the structure and overview, while also collecting notable information for fans. Obviously just about everything is "notable" with a book of this magnitude, so this may get long, but I'll try to include anecdotes that have some unique insight or perspective on the main source material--with as little of "OMG this was the original idea for this!" as possible.

This is illustrated with some low-quality pictures of the book and it gets super long, so I have to cut. But please read. :)

The overview:

After a foreword from Rebecca Sugar and an introduction from Genndy Tartakovsky, we get:

Part 1: Origins. This contains some narratives about Rebecca Sugar's early life as an artist--inspiration, family, college projects--all illustrated, of course, with childhood photos and early art. Rebecca mentions having wanted to bury her femininity for a while, but coming back to draw female forms and include dancing after she learned to sort through her issues using art.

Her college education and connections with other artists are discussed--some in interview format, some in narrative--and there is some background regarding her time on Adventure Time. The story moves on to talking about developing the pilot and what went into her character and plot ideas. Character design is discussed in depth, with Rebecca giving initial sketches to a design team and developing the characters' initial pilot look. 

Some really slick promo art is shared--posters, sketches, great concepts that were designed to bring in new viewers and make them curious about the show. The pilot succeeded in getting the green light to develop it into a TV series.

Part 2 discusses the show's Green Light and Development. Rebecca and some of the other crew, in interview format, talk about getting the team together and allowing for both nailed-down character essentials and flexibility for the writers to explore and collaborate. Developing the setting was also a big part of the to-do list; coming up with Beach City itself, its businesses, its residents, and also the creatures the Gems would fight. 

Some cute stories are shared about the early Crewniverse hanging out at a cabin and talking about the show all the time, hashing it out. There are some great, loose character model sheets for early versions of Greg, Connie, Sadie and Lars, and the four main characters.

Part 3 is about Character Design. They discuss how the pilot got released and fans grew attached to what they initially looked like, only to be "outraged" by the changes, making tons of assumptions about who was controlling the process. 

Rebecca shares some thoughts on her development process and her philosophy on letting different artists draw the characters differently while gripping onto specifics she set. Main, palette, and distance models are discussed, with some technical details of what different artists do on the team and how they handle props or special poses. 

There are many sheets of how to draw the Gems on model (with pointers on what NOT to do), and then there are some Homeworld Gem ideas that didn't get used, and finally, some sketches and concept art for Lapis Lazuli, Peridot, Jasper, and Bismuth.

Part 4 is on Writing and Storyboarding. More Crewniverse interviews provide insight into the process, including how much is revised from the early days and how collaborative everything is. Some specific episodes, like "Ocean Gem," "Monster Buddies," and "Island Adventure" are put into perspective with how they were written by the group. 

There's heavy discussion of how the process works and why processes that work on other shows wouldn't work here, and what "rules" are firm and what's just a suggestion, and what's changed as the show's plot became more complex and important. Steven still having access to the "side" stories, the ones that involve Beach City humans and non-world-shaking stakes, is still very important to the story that the original Crew wants to tell. Cute images from the Crew's thumbnail storyboards, Gem designing, and technology designing workshops are shared too.

There's some good continued discussion of concepts in Part 4, especially about fusion and relationships and the larger message the show is sending. How do you tell a story and why? There are many answers to that, and sometimes it's about fun and sometimes it's about a message and sometimes it's about wanting to make an episode about something you've never seen a cartoon do before--something specific to you that other people can suddenly see represented. 

One of my favorite parts of it is when they discuss Steven discovering the Gems' weaknesses over time and having that NOT make him think less of them--more like he admires them for being strong enough to shoulder the burdens he didn't know they were carrying before. Storyboarder Lamar Abrams talks about the importance of growing up not just being about becoming bitter, and I really like that.

Part 5 is on Sound and Vision. There's some history of how they found the voice actors for the major roles, and some of the actors give perspectives on their relationship and experience on the show. 

Aivi and Surasshu, as the composers, discuss their process as well, with some anecdotes and discussions of why musical palettes work better for characters instead of assigning them themes. Places and objects have their own sounds too.

Part 6 covers Background Design and Painting. Steven Sugar takes the stage and explains general background thoughts as well as specifics for certain settings. His focus on detail is really fascinating to read about--it's really him who nails down the locations in Beach City and where an outlet is in a house on the wall. 

The directors and other Crewniverse folks discuss the use of color and background items in the show, and how they use it to create mood or feel changeable enough to be real.

Part 7 discusses Animation and Post, with a spotlight on the work they do in Korea at animation studios Sunmin and Rough Draft. The process is described--how and when the material is transformed from animatics to animated cartoons. 

Nick DeMayo discusses timing and adding the sound effects and whatnot. There's also some design instruction that's provided to the animators in Korea. 

Some special highlighted drawings and pieces, like the "C.L.O.D.S." zine or some keys for Ruby and Sapphire, are included. 

Even the bumpers and end tag animations are discussed here. And of course they had to mention a couple very special episodes, such as when Takafumi Hori from Studio Trigger came in to do "Mindful Education," or when they did the musical episode, "Mr. Greg."

And Part 8 is called "Onward." The intention of the section is unclear at first based on the title of the chapter, but you can quickly see they're discussing the forward-thinking message the show has--how its representation of its creators' experiences has also struck a chord with people who wanted and NEEDED its diversity. 

Zuke says a very wise thing when they state that they want the show to provide "insight . . . not a solution." That's one thing this show does well; it spotlights problems and situations and feelings, but only shows you how those things can be dealt with, not necessarily how they SHOULD, in all cases, be dealt with.

Representation matters, and seeing evidence that you are a part of this world when you're from a marginalized or underrepresented group is valuable in a way that you can only know if you DON'T have it. 

The show's writers also weigh in on good vs. evil and how it's too black and white; that we needed a show with nuance, and has a message of love and tolerance. Kat Morris acknowledges that there are more important things than making a feelsy and entertaining piece of media, but as she says, the point is to let people see themselves in something and be challenged. 

And the creators are able to see at conventions and online that people are responding emotionally, viscerally, to their work. It puts a lot of pressure on an artist to do it right, but in the words of Dogcopter, "Just be true to yourself and people will appreciate your honesty."

The book closes with some photos of the Crew and a few more pages of art. And it kinda leaves you with a squishy feeling. :D

Notable:

1. I was relieved to see Rebecca state it plainly in the foreword: the items you see from the development phases of this show are not to be taken as canon or as "real" insights into how you should interpret it now. She specifically mentioned that she does not consider the Gems "girls" or "goddesses," and that was particularly important to me. 

Throughout, you're supposed to see the contributed bits and in-development pieces in the context of what they were: early drafts, embryonic. We all become different from what we were even though we grew from it and may have roots in it still, but that doesn't mean you can point at the seed and say its flower is meant to be understood surrounded by dirt.

2. The original designs for the Gems fluctuated a lot, and in a couple cases even names flopped around. An early name for Garnet was "Onyx," and if you've seen the pilot, you know Pearl got her signature nose later and Garnet's hair took a while to become the splendid square afro. Amethyst seems to have changed the least. 

Themes were given to them initially (like Amethyst being "flora and fauna," which you can sort of see in her pilot intro with her lying on big cats). You can still see some of the original intentions in how the ideas manifested, but the first ideas do not gel particularly well with what the show became. 

This is particularly interesting because non-creatives commonly think creative people simply receive inspiration and birth their creations into the world wholesale. Inspiration exists, but it's much more common to take an inspired idea and REALLY WORK ON IT. This book's origins section does a great job showing how that works.

3. Some early sketched-out ideas for episodes seem very far from what would fit into the show now (such as an idea for an episode where Pearl is obsessed with the pizza guy??), but one seems to be the roots of "Bubble Buddies," which implies that Steven's original crush was "Priyanka" instead of Connie. (That's now Connie's mother's name.)

4. The pilot's title was "The Time Thing."

5. Initial notes for Garnet say she should have the coolest shoes of the three, that she's commanding and outer-spacey and also weird, and that she's inspired by Grace Jones, boy Michael Jackson, and Estelle in "I Can Be a Freak." 

Initial notes for Amethyst insist on the "fanny pack" pouch and suggest her clothes are cut, her hair is in chunks, and she should have an animal theme with a wild texture. 

Initial notes for Pearl indicate a desire to have her opposite Amethyst in her formal way of dressing and needing to have an outfit that would allow her to be hung upside down, possibly with a pearl stone theme for baubles in her hair. (Rebecca indicated she needed the most help with Pearl.)

6. Early versions of the show included the idea that the Gems might be trying to hide being Gems in public, and that they kept magic away from Steven for the most part instead of encouraging him to use it. 

A "lost" episode about Steven summoning his shield (later incorporated into the episode "Gem Glow") had him saving Greg with it and dreaming about his mother, and having Pearl drive a crappy old car (later incorporated into "Last One Out of Beach City"). Rebecca and Ian reveal that the dream Steven had in it was used a little in "Rose's Room," and that a song called "The Meatball Sub Song" was involved which could have contributed to the show getting picked up despite that we never got to hear it. (Imagine that, Steven singing about food!)

7. There's a note in the early character design section that says "the girls can all turn into Steven" with an accompanying illustration of Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl shapeshifted as him. 

Cute, because we actually got to see them do this in the episode "Keep Beach City Weird" with the exception of Pearl.

8. Rebecca Sugar shares an anecdote about thinking there was a "best" way to draw that was objectively correct (influenced by some art-school stuff), and through that she arrived at the idea that Pearl was a cone, Amethyst was a sphere, and Garnet was a cube, because all of those things say something about who they are (pointedness, fluidness, stability). 

She evolved from that idea to a more flexibile idea of how drawing works for different artists, but that was part of what helped her nail the characters down. Steven, eventually, was fixed to having a heart-shaped face.

9. The Tiger Millionaire and Purple Puma flyer shown in the episode "Tiger Millionaire," presented as something Steven drew, was actually drawn by Lily DeMayo (daughter of Nick DeMayo, animation director) when she was seven.

10. Guides are made for the Crew to use featuring reminders on drawing the characters. It's kind of adorable to see common drawing errors or misconceptions or inconsistent details discussed in a how-to format for the people who actually work there.

11. A timeline exists for the show and it encompasses TWENTY THOUSAND YEARS of Gem and human history. It was too spoilery to be in the book, but there is a LOT of lore that is laid down, and this tool mentioned in Part 4 established that this document is referenced often to make events make sense in the timeline.

12. It's been established before, but Amethyst's origin in Earth's Prime Kindergarten was not initially known as part of her character when she was invented, and that was discussed in Part 4 of this book--how the writing retreats the Crew takes to discuss the story sometimes result in huge revelations like this. "Oh, that makes sense, that's why we wrote her like that" is one of those things I recognize as a writer--you know a character has a certain vibe, but you don't know what explains it. You just trust that something does. And eventually, sometimes you find out what it is and it all makes sense. Interesting to know they did this with Amethyst.

13. "Lars and Sadie make out even though they're not together" was the basic idea for making "Island Adventure." And the original idea for "Onion Friend" had a "Grandma Shallot" character. 

The writers sometimes play writing games to brainstorm, and those were shared. Some ideas for a story which was later used in "Future Boy Zoltron," covering Mr. Smiley's romance/comedy partnership with an old flame, were shared with more emphasis on the characters being lovers. 

Garnet's part in the story was more explicit too, with her giving people future predictions that are not at all nice or gently delivered, and they have to shut down the business in the wake of Garnet's badassery. Weird. 

Other ideas were used but not as they're presented, like one where Greg learns about fusion from the Gems (but witnessed the fusion of Pearl and Amethyst, not Pearl and Rose), and a complicated one where cross-Gem fusion is a new idea in a flashback and Rose wants Garnet to fuse with her to teach her about it but she's too unsure of her own fusion relationship as such to risk it. The idea was that Pearl would be jealous and Pearl, Rose, and Garnet would actually fuse in the episode. This has not been done in the show.

14. Rebecca Sugar apparently just pops up with concepts she wants the writers to work in. Like "I want Steven to be in a mushroom forest" (which hasn't happened yet) or "I want Steven to have cats on his fingers" (which, obviously, happened early on). Rebecca gets little concepts that are sort of dreamlike, and they figure out which episode they can put them in. Working those things in sometimes seems like as much of a priority as getting plot elements in!

15. I like that they dish a bit about the fan reaction to Garnet's Fusion status. They thought they were being a little too obvious to not get caught, but Ian said the fans figured it out and then got bored of the idea and decided it must be even more complicated than that. People were apparently worried that Garnet would be replaced by her component Gems in the story if she were to unfuse, but obviously since Ruby and Sapphire want to be together, that doesn't happen.

16. Kat Morris's "rules" as discussed in Part 4 are "Garnet never asks questions" and "the story has to stay in Steven's perspective." I love how strict they are about Garnet not asking questions (except in the episode "The Answer," though there have been a couple ~technical~ questions from her; she usually just finds a way to ask a question with a statement, like "tell me what you saw").

17. A great quote from Zuke on the incidentally queer content of the Gems' relationships and gender: "Personally, I'm happy to not have to think, 'I'm writing a character based on my queer experiences.' That would be so hard! I'm just writing from my perspective, and I happen to be queer. I think that's what makes the show feel natural when it comes to that. It's a fine line between defining something so that people are aware it exists, which is so important, but also letting it breathe, so it's not forever contained in a box labeled 'queer media.'"

18. In Part 5, Michaela Dietz relates her experiences as an adoptee to relate to what Amethyst deals with as an "adoptee" into the Crystal Gem family without knowing where she really came from or what it means to be a part of that. She's said this before in some other interviews and panels, so it's not new in general, but it's probably new in print. Deedee Magno Hall, who plays Pearl, obviously relates to Pearl's maternal nature.

19. Tom Scharpling and Charlyne Yi were voice actors that Rebecca specifically had in mind for her characters (Greg and Ruby respectively). Rebecca's illustrated letter to Charlyne explaining Ruby and Sapphire's relationship and Ruby's role on the show is really adorable.

20. Music nerds like me will very much appreciate the photographed notes on music motifs--the Diamonds each have a solfège syllable and a chord (White is F#M7/Sol, Yellow is BM7/Fa, Blue is EM7/Fa, and Pink is AM7/Mi), and Steven's powers and modes are coded with instruments and styles.

21. Some world maps provide new possible insights. Greenland in our world is Blueland in theirs. South America is called Pangea. Aqua Mexico is labeled about where Mexico is in our world. India is the Indian Islands. There's an Australia and a New Australia. A big sea in the middle of Asia is called the Tunguska Sea. Rose's Fountain is in Spain or Portugal; the Sky Spire and Strawberry Battlefield are in Norway; the Shooting Star Shrine is in the middle of the drastically different Asian continent; the Galaxy Warp is in the Tunguska Sea; the Lunar Sea Spire is off the coast of Canada; Mask Island is in the Atlantic near Beach City; the Comm Relay is in the Western United States.

22. It was known from interviews that Shelby Rabara (voice of Peridot) is a dancer and provided the foot sounds and coaching to create the short tap number in the episode "Mr. Greg." But what's great is here, there's a visual reference included! Photos of Shelby doing the dance are lined up next to the drawings of Pearl and Steven in the "Mr. Greg" number doing the steps! She poses in dance moves with her husband for the Greg/Pearl dance for "Both of You" too.

23. There's a really cute story in the last section about Amber Cragg ascending from fan to Crewniverse member through posting Pearl art in response to the pilot and eventually getting contacted to take a board test. That is the kind of thing so many online artists dream of!

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]

[alexswak]

From Castlevania to Boruto: Spencer Wan Interview

I myself had all sorts of questions after watching Castlevania, and seeing that Spencer Wan was so active on Twitter I thought I might try asking him, what resulted in a long interview. The scene he is best known for is the abstract black-lines-only part of the opening, but he had remarkable participations in many other known projects despite his young age. Other than Castlevania, where he animated, AD’ed and directed episodes even, he also worked on Boruto and Invader Zim among others. My notes are in bold. Conducted on behalf of AnimeTherapy and originally posted on their website.

 First tell me a bit about yourself and how you started with animation.

Spencer: You know, that might be the only question I wasn’t prepared to answer. I’m not great at talking about myself. Okay, I’m 25 years old and I’m from a small town in the Deep South. I got into animation after seeing Norio Matsumoto’s work on Naruto. I used to watch it with my friends in high school and I’d never seen anything like it before.  I’d intended to major in illustration when I got into college, but I ended up swapping to animation at the last second because I couldn’t get his work out of my head. I thought maybe I could learn how to make animation like that at school.

Where did you start your professional career and how?

Spencer: So after I dropped out of school I spent a year sort of just wandering around and doing very little with my life. I was having a hard time finding any sort of work, let alone artistic work. I ended up working in a tire shop for a while, actually. Dana Terrace was the one who dragged me out of that. She’s the creator of the show I’m working on now(The Owl House). I’d helped her with one of her student films when we were in school, and she was doing way better than me as a professional artist. She gave me a sort of a pep talk and told me about this animation studio called Animation Domination High Def that was looking for animators.

It's worth mentioning that there aren't very many studios in the United States that hire traditional(hand-drawn) animators anymore. We were even told in school not to pursue traditional animation as a career because those jobs didn't exist. Anyway, I applied the next day, they had me do an animation test, and few weeks later I moved across the country to work for them.

The work I did there was very different from the work people expect from me now. It was mostly parody cartoons, and we had to animate 2-3 scenes a day so it was hard to make anything look very good. It was a difficult job, and it wasn't what I wanted to be doing with animation, but it taught me how to draw very fast.

An interesting backstory, really. So you stuck with traditional animation because you wanted to create something like what Matsumoto makes?

Spencer: That's how I started anyway, but he was just my first exposure to this sort of animation. When I got older I came across the work of Yutaka Nakamura, Mitsuo Iso, Toshiyuki Inoue, etc. They're all incredible in different ways, but I could feel that they were also drawing on something similar. There's a sort of feeling I used to get looking at the work of a really talented Japanese animator, and I really wanted my work to illicit that same feeling.

It would've been a lot easier to change tracks to storyboarding or design. I had enough technical skill to do it, and there were many more opportunities available, but I stuck with traditional animation because I was chasing that feeling. I knew I couldn't be satisfied as an artist until I understood it.

Alright, now to more specific stuff. How did you get involved in Castlevania?

Spencer: Well after working at ADHD, I ended up moving away from LA because I couldn't find anyone who wanted to hire me for animation. I went back to my hometown and spent a year freelancing for scraps. I actually tried to go to Japan for work at one point, but my visa was rejected because I'm a college dropout. It was around this time that Sam(Samuel Deats), the future director of Castlevania, had been emailing me to try to get me to work for Powerhouse. Actually, I rejected him the first time and tried to get my visa through again…

Obviously that didn't work out, so I told Sam I'd changed my mind and I moved to Texas to work for Powerhouse. He'd been telling me the whole time about this awesome secret project the studio might acquire soon. I completely wrote him off because as a freelancer you hear that sort of thing all the time and it's never as good as it sounds. That project was Castlevania. It ended up getting greenlit after I'd been working at the studio for a couple months. Sam plucked me off the animation team to work on it and I started storyboarding on the first episode. It was actually my first time storyboarding, so naturally I was given the scene where the crowd gets attacked by an army of creatures in an elaborate gothic city.

I see. Then can you give me a quick overview of the workflow the staff followed while working on Castlevania? From finished storyboards to finished scenes. I'm interested in the workflow you followed since Castlevania is obviously not your run-of-the-mill project.

Spencer: *laughs* Well in season one it was a constantly changing process. Powerhouse had never handled a TV show before, and so we were sort of creating the process as the show went on. We didn't even manage to standardize our storyboarding process until episode 4. Our background team doubled as our incidental and prop design team, with one of the background artists serving as a part time storyboarder. Sam was the director, but he was also storyboarding and designing all the main characters. His brother Adam, who's meant to be supervising compositor, became our editor. It was all over the place, but it allowed for a lot of experimentation. That's how I came to animate on the show instead of just storyboarding.

I'm getting kind of off topic though- the way it would usually work is that we'd receive an approved script and we'd have a few weeks to storyboard it. We didn't have any revisionists working with us, so if there was a problem, we'd address it ourselves and then Adam would cut together an animatic and add sound. It's worth mentioning that we didn't have any voice acting to work with in season 1, so we sort of had to guess at how the actors would read their lines.

After the animatic was approved we would ship it along with the designs and key backgrounds to MUA Film, our outsourcing studio in Korea. And then in some specific instances we would leave a note telling them to exclude a sequence, because Sam or I had planned to animate it ourselves. After storyboarding was done I jumped right onto animation. We were working with a pencil and paper animation studio, so even though I work digitally, I would have to write x-sheets(equivalent to time sheets in anime) for my work as if I'd drawn it on paper. At some point in the process we decided we wanted to do a much more specific compositing job on the show, and so we had the studio ship us back their cleaned and colored animation, and our in house compositing team would polish it with a mountain of after effects work. A lot of why the show looks so cinematic is because of them.

So I take it this is how it went with the average scene. But your scene in the OP, that got a lot of attention, is clearly exceptional. Can you tell me more about how you came up with this style and scene? Personally I have to admit, it’s one of the best and most striking animation pieces I have seen in a while.

Spencer: Thanks! We really slaved over that opening. It actually wasn't meant to exist- there was no time or budget set aside for it. Sam had done the storyboards for it in his free time and pitched them to the producers. They said we could do it if we could somehow find time for it. I think Sam originally intended to handle the entire thing himself, but when the time came to animate it, I was the only one available. So Sam pulled me into his office and showed me the storyboards, specifically the part at the end. He said something to the effect of, "I know I want this to look like fire. You can do it in whatever style you come up with, as long as it's done quickly." Never in my career had someone put so much trust in me. A lot of people like to compare the sequence to the music video for Take On Me, but when I was trying to come up with the style, the first thing that came to mind was one of Yutaka Nakamura's animations. It's from an anime I watched in high school called Soul Eater where the character goes to draw his sword, and the entire scene turns into this abstract looking sort of river of pencil lines on a red background(this scene). I thought maybe I could do something similar to that. It took me about an hour to realize I couldn't do it the same way, and my imitation of it was coming out far too abstract to tell what was going on. I ended up doing another pass on it, but instead of trying to copy Nakamura's abstract linework, I tightened up the drawings focused on the shadows. I thought I could try to mimic the look of how light shifts around on an ember, and that's where I got the shadows that constantly roll across the characters. The finished result still bears a lot of his influence, but I think I managed to put my own spin on it.

I remember that Soul Eater scene! Now that you mention it, I can definitely see similarities. But the Take on Me? Not really. How much time did you spend on that scene, if I may ask?

Spencer: It was something like two weeks? I don't remember that well anymore. I worked entirely through the last four nights, so it felt longer than that. I remember losing an hour to daylight savings time, and that put me in a really foul mood.

I've never mentioned this before, but it's unfinished. I ran out of time in the end, and so the part with Trevor and Sypha is just my rough first pass. I was devastated when we shipped it that way. At the time I considered it to be my biggest failure as an artist. Ironically it's the piece of work I'm known best for now.

Sypha's scene in the 2nd season is also yours right? Glad to see the same style made it into the show.

Spencer: Adam had wanted to have it in the show for a while, and I really didn’t want to do it. I was so upset about the opening before it aired that I swore I would never draw in that style again. But then the opportunity presented itself and I thought, “Well I guess it would only be for a second or so”. I felt the second time I did it it was a lot less inspired though.

Can't complain myself, it was pretty cool.

Spencer: Well I had more experience the second time *laughs*. I didn’t have to feel around for what the style was.

So moving on. The problem with your Alucard fight scene, that you had problems translating your digital motion guides into paper, you said that also happened for the Cyclops sequences. How widespread was this problem then? Did it only affect your work or the work of other animators as well?

Spencer: It would only affect animations that had large camera movements, that we sent overseas for clean up. It was a problem born from the fact that we don’t really do paper animation in America anymore.

When the camera moves around a lot, the field has to get bigger. You have to use something called panning paper in order for the drawings to maintain a proper size for clean up. But there was no one that I could learn that from. I had to teach everything to myself, and so my first instinct was to make the drawings smaller to fit them on the page. The clean up artists overseas fixed this by scaling the drawings up, but then they had to recreate my spacing from scratch and they didn’t have enough time to do it the same way. The result was that drawings would pop anywhere from a few pixels to a few millimeters out of position all the time. Adam ended up respacing everything, but it wasn’t a perfect match to the original, so drawings tend to pop around. Most people don’t notice it though.

Actually I’ve had a similar issue with other productions where if my spacing gets too tight, there’s a chance a drawing could pop out of place too. I’m still learning how to solve some of those problems.

I see! Shame you found yourself in this situation, but this is a nice segue to another traditional project I want to ask you about, Boruto. You worked on Boruto a few months ago, episode #65 specifically. How did you get involved in this project? You were an interesting case because you are not affiliated with studio LAN like most of other foreign animators in that episode, as far as I know at least.

Spencer Wan: *laughs* I could see why it seemed a little out of nowhere. It's because Chengxi and I had already been talking on twitter for a while. I consider him a close friend. He asked me to animate for him and I agreed. It was as simple as that.

Looking at your original work and the final version in Boruto, I see that it went mostly uncorrected. Why is that? Were you just given a lot of freedom in that episode? Because of Chengxi and your aforementioned good relation with him?

Spencer: Oh, it was nothing like that. I was a lot more concerned with doing the work properly than trying to stand out or show off. Chengxi's storyboards and the model sheets for Boruto were very clear. I followed them to the best of my ability, and my work ended up going uncorrected aside from a light fill being added. I should've anticipated the need for that light fill, actually. I wasn't thinking about how it would look in color.

Boruto is more of a traditional animation(paper) show, right? Didn't you have problems with that this time?  I'm not too knowledgeable when it comes to Boruto specifically, so I don't know how much of its production is digitalized.

Spencer: The process was actually very similar to what I used on Castlevania, only this time there was no complicated camera movement to worry about, and I had Chengxi to help me with parts of the paper process that I didn't fully grasp yet. Some of the other foreign animators helped me out too- namely Guzzu. It was my first time not having to figure it all out on my own, and I was really grateful for that. I feel I learned a lot.

You are right, the nature of this scene is different. I thought maybe it was the Japanese industry being more used to this dual nature of digital and paper. So generally working on Boruto, although a Japanese show, wasn’t different from Castlevania and other shows you worked on before?

Spencer: There are differences in style when it comes to x-sheets. For example, the Korean x-sheets I've written list the layer order completely backward from the Japanese ones used on Boruto. Americans will write "truck out" when they want the camera to pull out, but the Japanese shorthand is apparently T.B for "track back" instead. It's a lot of differences like that, but the idea behind them is mostly the same. It was an adjustment, but not a very big one, and I was told I did an alright job writing them... I hope they weren't just being nice.

I was just watching Castlevania and now that you mentioned him, Chengxi did some animation! Also others such as Hero. Were you the one who invited them this time?

Spencer: I was the one who invited Chengxi. Sam invited the others after I’d left the production.

And you inviting Chengxi and working on #7 was after boruto, I suppose?

Spencer: Actually it was beforehand! He had to cut his work short to start working on Boruto. He did such a brilliant job regardless. That guy is a genius.

Aha, interesting. That was the last of my questions, I'm very grateful for the chance you gave me and for your amazing, detailed answers!

Spencer: No problem! I hope my answers weren’t too boring. That technical stuff can get dense.

[entamewitchlulu]

Homura’s Flash Reviews [Spring 2018]

It’s the end of another animu season, so it’s time to give some flash reviews for the stuff I ended up finishing this season!

Under the cut for the length + all the gifs lol

Comic Girls

After having storyboard after storyboard rejected, young aspiring manga artist Kaoruko moves to a dorm specifically for young mangaka, where she makes new friends, has fun adventures, and learns a lot about herself and her craft.

I liked this show way more than I expected to; it’s a very moeblob show and especially in the first couple of episodes there’s a lot of anime bullshit.  It IS a gag anime at the start and tends to default to a lot of the same tropes.  Despite this, I found it ridiculously hilarious, and I could relate to a lot of the #ArtistProblems and other things the girls dealt with regularly.  Not to mention, the characters were generally just really fun, cute personalities.  Despite some frustrations with some general character arcs feeling a bit stagnant, there were actually multiple places where I physically cried because despite the gag manga start, it gets pretty emotional later on regarding things like anxiety, artist’s block, and the feeling of stagnation, which was super relatable.  Also....Kaoruko is absolutely a tiny lesbian and I love my tiny lesbian daughter.  Actually I’m pretty sure they’re all lesbians, except for Rukki who is probably bisexual.

overall: 7/10

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card

Following the events of the original Cardcaptors, Sakura wakes up one morning to find that all of her Sakura Cards have turned clear.  Not only that, but there are more, strange new spirits appearing, and she’s been granted a brand new key from a dream.

Okay so....I have made mention of this one from a few other flash reviews since the first cour took place during last season.  And...my opinion has honestly worsened.  This was 22 episodes of obnoxiously boring fluff and little else. Don’t get me wrong: I love fluff. But I watch specific things for fluff. I don’t watch magical girl shows for 95% fluff, I watch them for sparkly, magical girl bullshit, cute costumes, fun magical experiences, and maybe just a little bit of worldbuilding.  Clear Card gave me next to nothing on all fronts.  When it wasn’t trying to be Cardcaptor Sakura: The Cooking Show, it was dragging its feet with 15 minutes of pointless chatter that did nothing to further characters or relationships, leaving them the exact same static characters they were in the original series.  Syaoran’s greatest draw was nearly completely erased once he became just a sedentary background love interest who did little. At least as a rival he pushed Sakura, but here, he just enabled the boring writing that did nothing to push the envelope.  The formula is nearly exactly the same as the last two series and the arc even mentions it.  Characters are unnecessarily cryptic, hiding things from each other, which only drags the story down.  The main plot is barely sprinkled in, magic stuff usually only happens for about 2 minutes towards the end of the mind-bogglingly slow fluff episodes, and the major plot??  Only appears for about five minutes in the final episode, addresses none of the questions we had and only reveals things we had already figured out fifteen episodes ago, gives no conclusion to any of it, and COMPLETELY ERASES THE ONLY CLIMATIC, STORY-FURTHERING SCENE BY USING TIME MAGIC.

And that’s...it, apparently.  I see no indication of a second season.  I assume the manga is still ongoing, but even if it is, this was an absolutely horrendous ending that did nothing to satisfyingly tie up ANY loose ends, further the world or the characters, or really do anything to add to the previous series.  Even the costumes were few and far between and the cards were almost all the same as the last set.  There was no creativity and nothing added here for the fans.  That brings me to my ultimate complaint: who was this show even for?! It can’t still be for kids, because new young fans of the original demographic’s age group would not have any clue what was happening with these characters, and it’s just lore-based enough to confuse any new viewers.  And it can’t be for the original fan group, who are all much older now and want something with just a little more substance. I’m not asking for a gritty cardcaptors show at all. Just something that respects us as adult viewers and gives us a little more to grab onto.  And that was way longer than any flash review has any right to be, so I will cut myself off there.

overall: 4/10

Lostorage conflated WIXOSS

Though they believed it was finally over, former LRIG and Selector Kiyoi knows that the Selector battles will come again, and this time, they will destroy everything--and she is determined to bring the dark loop of suffering to a close once and for all by bringing together all of the greatest Selectors from every generation to take on the new threat.

Boasting the largest cast of any of the previous WIXOSS series and continuing both the story of Lostorage and the first two Selector series, this is absolutely the most ambitious take on the WIXOSS universe thus far: and it does fantastically with it.  There was not a single moment where I was bored; even during slower flashback and exposition parts, I was hooked.  This was one of the best ways to expand and complete the universe, as the ending here finally does feel like a decisive end to the anime franchise (though, so did the end of the Selector anime, so who knows lol).

As always, WIXOSS has some of the most fantastic character designs, relationships, dynamics, and animation among other anime, making it truly stand out.  The card game is more window dressing than actual substance, but that doesn’t matter, because the power of the relationships and the messages that this story is telling are far more powerful and attention grabbing.  The decision to make Kiyoi the protagonist of this series, while also bringing back previous protagonists Ruko and Suzuko, was an incredible decision and really made for a fantastic story.

overall: 9/10

Golden Kamuy

After being discharged from the army after the Japanese-Russo war, Sugimoto is left with the dying wish of his comrade: to make enough money to support his fallen comrade’s wife and son and pay for their medical expenses.  He stumbles across an opportunity when an escaped convict tells him of a hidden trove of Ainu gold that can only be found by collecting the information tattooed onto the bodies of a group of escaped prisoners. With the help of an Ainu girl named Asirpa, whose tribe the gold was stolen from, Sugimoto takes on the mission to track down the prisoners and find the gold.

This show is absolutely fucking incredible.  I don’t think I can even give it proper words.  Like what a goddamn great season for anime this was??  Not only is the show clearly heavily researched, giving us insight into a part of Japanese history and Ainu culture that is rarely if ever discussed in Japanese culture, the story and characters are all so well done.  The animation can be wonky in places, but the expressions, the character banter, and god the soundtrack are all mind-blowingly good.  Unlike Clear Card, when this show decided it wanted to be a cooking show, I was completely on board, because I was learning something new about Ainu culture and also getting to see our heroes be adorkable and hilarious together.  The characters are absolutely where this show shines, and even though it’s a bit bloated at first, characters quickly become recognizeable and easily separated.  The relationship between Sugimoto and Asirpa, especially, is one of the most wholesome and fun friendships I’ve ever witnessed (I’m hoping, tho, that it stays platonic despite some jokes to the contrary lol).  This was only season 1, and season 2 will air in October, and you can bet I will be waiting at the edge of my seat for more of this incredible show.

overall: 9/10

Hinamatsuri

After a strange girl in a metal cocoon drops out of the sky and onto his head, yakuza Nitta finds himself the reluctant father of a needy young girl with psychic powers.  Shenanigans ensue around their strange new family and the dysfunctional adults and children that surround them.

This show was so much fucking better than it had any right to be; from the initial plot summary I was worried it was going to be awful, creepy-ish moe bullshit...but it was NOT.  This was a gag anime of the highest caliber.  The pacing was amazing, the characters were to a one endearing, the animation was BEAUTIFUL, and god...the punchlines...everything was so fucking funny the whole time.

You’ve got pretty much everything here: you’ve got the obnoxiously needy Hina, who is monotone in everything she does, you’ve got the Worst/Best Dad Nitta, you’ve got poor can’t-say-no-to-favors Hitomi, and the Most Pure and Wholesome Anzu.  There’s something to love in every character and every scene, and it’s ridiculous just how amazing this show is.  I can’t put it into words, please just watch it.  Where my other top shows of the season took awhile to grow on me, this one was hitting home runs from episode 1.  Do yourself a favor and watch it.

overall: 9/10

Megalo Box

In a world where boxing is performed with powerful mechanical rigs known as Gear, a nameless boxer known only as Junk Dog is tired of being forced to throw fights in an illegal underground boxing ring to pad the pockets of his gambling organization.  When he crosses paths with the current champion of Megalo Box, he and his crew take a risky gamble to get him into the world’s first international Megalo Box competition so that he can fight the champion again, reinventing himself as Gearless Joe as he steps into the ring without any Gear.

This show took a while to really get onto my Awesome List, mostly because the aesthetic that it’s throwing back to was never really my thing in the first place.  I’m generally not a huge fan of the muted color palettes, the punkish music, or just the idea of boxing in general (a lack of significant female characters also always tends to put me off).  Despite this, however, the show ended up being stunning.  By halfway through, I was incredibly hooked on the high this show wanted me to ride, by the character arcs that were playing off each other, and I was even coming around to the music.  Boxing may not be my thing, but the character story that was told here was an incredible one, and definitely deserves its place among the Best Anime of 2018, which if it doesn’t win something come that time, I’ll be floored and disappointed with everyone.

overall: 9/10

Overall this was an incredibly strong season: I dropped a few things of course, but what I continued were almost all 9/10s.  I’m super pleased with the spring season and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s coming out for summer.

[frederator-studios]

Meet Gabe Janisz, creator of “Tyler & Co.”

Nostalgia time: I met Gabe in my second week at Frederator. I knew a Gabe was coming in to pitch, and when I went out to see if he’d arrived, I encountered a guy in pajama pants in our lobby. Now, animation is a lax industry in terms of work attire, but the notion of pitching a TV show in one’s PJs was beyond the reaches of my conception; I am too uncool. So my immediate thought was that he was a random dude who’d wandered in off the street - not that he was the guy pitching, let alone already a creator with us, of the GO! Cartoon “Tyler & Co.” No doubt he heard the question mark in my greeting of “Gaaabe?,” but he didn’t let on, because as I’ve mentioned, Gabe is cooler than me. He wears PJs to job interviews and then gets the job. He’s cooler than all of us. “Tyler & Co.” well demonstrates this, but here’s an interview with him for further proof. 

Walk us down memory lane. How did you decide to make cartoons?

I guess… I don’t know if I ever decided. I headed down this road because I used to make games a lot as a kid, because that’s what my older brother and dad do.

Whaaat what’d they work on?

My dad worked on the RoboCop 2 game. My brother still works in games; he was on “Where’s My Water,” that mobile game that blew up a couple years back. The thing with me making games was, I’d spend so long on the intro cinematics and character animations, that I’d run out of steam by the time I had to think about the actual mechanics and programming. So I finally decided to focus on the stuff I actually liked, and that interests me, and that’s story and character.

Where did that interest lead you?

Well, I grew up in Buttcrack, Colorado. There weren’t any real art programs or teachers who could show me the ropes, so I had to go it alone for a long time - not the best route. But I did draw a lot of comics. It wasn’t until I started visiting colleges that someone recommended life drawing, so I took a class on it at a local community college at the end of high school. That’s when my art started improving.

What’d you do after high school?

I went to SCAD for comics and animation. At first, I was in all of these kinda useless foundation classes. So I actually went to the chair, showed him my portfolio and he was like “Well, if you think you can handle it…” and exempted me from them. The next semester was one of the hardest, maybe the hardest, of my life. I was in classes that I wasn’t prepared for, especially this one storyboarding course. Maybe the foundation classes would have prepared me, maybe not - point is, I was totally unprepared to perform at the level expected, and felt unable to make the kind of stuff I was expected to make. I was up until 8am every night. I got really close to quitting animation altogether.

Wow, that’s hectic. What changed?

After that I was in a paper animation class that dragged me out of the pit. I made some good friends who helped me improve. And my paper animation professor liked me and actually wanted me to succeed. I got more confident in my abilities. I’d always seen things in my head that I couldn’t translate onto paper, and I finally could. And I did some cool things like studying abroad in France for a semester. That was amazing because comics there are considered one of the ‘Great Arts’—they seriously respect them. Instead of flimsy paper copies, everything was hardbound and gorgeous. They have a huge range of art styles, but they all feel so unashamed, whereas stuff made in the US feels like it’s constantly apologizing to you for being a comic. I’d been applying to CalArts every year since senior year of high school - it took 3 years, 3 applications before I got in. But I was really glad to have spent time at SCAD majoring in comics, because as much as I love animation, I get so pumped about comics. It was great to do both.

Then you entered the fabled gates of CalArts - and what’d you discover?

A lot of great friends. Who also happened to be great artists I could collaborate with on projects. I was in Character Animation, and because CalArts is so picky, you’re surrounded by people you can learn from, with all different tastes and ways of doing things.

Do you seek a studio gig - or how bout - what do you most want to do with your life?

Once online a stranger told me "your art is like an awkward hug" and I've kind of tried to run with that. If I can make at least one person feel a little less lonely, then I feel like I'm doing a good thing. I’d work at a studio if it were the right project, but mostly I want to be an independent comic maker and cartoonist. As long as I’ve got stuff in the pipeline, I’ll be happy. I was hospitalized a lot as a kid (and adult) and it kinda... broke me in a lotta ways, so it’s nice that me and Frederator found each other.

How did you come to pitch to the GO! Cartoons series?

Eric (Homan, our VP Development) came to CalArts to speak and my professor introduced us. He invited me to come by Frederator and check out the place. And then when I came by he was like, “You don’t have anything to pitch?” And I was like, “No, you said I was just checking out the place.” But I plugged in my flashdrive and just looked for the first thing that was around 5 minutes I could find and showed it to him. It was my first year CalArts film about a bunch of kids making bombs. And he liked it, so we started developing it, and it actually got all the way to the stage of pitching to Sony Animation. But the Sony people definitely couldn’t get behind the bombs stuff, but they liked me I guess. So they greenlit me but not the bombs. So Eric had me go back and make something new. I’d been doing stuff with Tyler for years so I pulled him out and figured out a new idea.

Where did the idea for Tyler come from?

Well in high school, I had Crohn’s disease, so I had the right to leave class whenever. I’d just up and go wander, hang out with the janitors. And one of them loved the Muppets a lot. He hung little pictures of them all over the school and I actually never noticed them until he mentioned it. But they were everywhere. So I started watching Sesame Street and got into that aesthetic, and admired the puppeteers. I’d also had a falling out with my high school friends, which was part of why I was wandering around so much. I started devoting more time to close friends in Canada that I’d met online.

Did you meet them through gaming?

Yeah, gaming and game message boards. It was a found family. I don’t have a large family, I don’t really have that foundation to fall back on. So finding kinship online was huge for me in a time of isolation. And watching a lot of the Muppets.

Did the Muppets inspire those puppet versions of Tyler and Lil G from the title cards?

Yeah - Tyler and Lil G are actual puppets.

(At this point Gabe pulls puppet Tyler and puppet Lil G from a mysterious red duffel bag that’s been on the floor. I didn’t know what it held, but I didn’t expect puppets. Ecstatic, I try Tyler on)

Puppets are in a lot of what I do, but not everything. I’ve made YouTube videos with them too - my roommate is really good at performing with them. So the characters were designed to look like puppets.

If Tyler & co. got a full series, would the puppets be in it?

Yeah, there'd be puppet cutaways. There’s an old Super Mario Bros show - it’s a really bad show, but funny - and they had intros and outros with live action actors playing Mario and Luigi on like a trash covered set. They’d do skits. So that makes me want to cap off Tyler episodes with puppet skits.

So Tyler came first, then how did the other characters come about - like Lil G?

Lil G is a younger, innocent guy that Tyler sees a lot of himself in. He feels like he has this chance to sculpt this younger dude, and kind of save him. He doesn’t want Lil G to screw up his life like he did.

How did Tyler screw up his life?

So Tyler used to be a child star in a show like Sesame Street. But his camera operators, the crew were super abusive to him, in order to get him to perform for the camera how they wanted. Pushed him into traffic, manipulated him, did really messed up stuff. They once strapped cursed swords onto his hands while he slept, and he involuntarily butchered a bunch of people while trying to find help. He got acquitted in trial and got a restraining order against them. But now he’s just trying to pick up the pieces, and his roommates are a huge part of that. The logline has been, “Tyler, why can’t you see that if you’ve got friends like these, you’ll be fine?”

Whose house is it that they’re living in? And what’s the dynamic among these roommates?

Rex’s - he inherited it from his grandma when she passed. Rex and Moe have a shared interest in ghost hunting. There’s another roommate, Rocko, who’s a retired boxing robot. There’s Marky Mouse, he hangs out, doesn’t hurt nobody. Lil G is a nuisance to them—he’s enamored with Tyler because Tyler’s the first person he’s met from out of state. So he associates Tyler with his dream of getting out of the town.

Where does this take place?

It’s set in the River Rouge area, by Detroit, Michigan. It’s where my dad grew up and he’s told me horror stories. Once in school, the river’s surface actually caught on fire. So they could see from the school windows that the river was in flames, burning oil on water. School wasn’t even cancelled. It’s a super heavily polluted river.

Have you ever visited there?

No, thank God.

So why does Tyler WANT to be Mayor of Cerealtown? Why is that of value?

Because they’re kinda losers, and that’s the kind of thing that’s important to them. These guys don’t really have jobs. The house was bequeathed to them. Moe does some tech repair, and he and Rex do freelance ghost hunting. Tyler’s big project is repairing a car, which’ll be his and Lil G’s way to get out of town. That’d be a big thrust of the show’s plot if it got a series.

Where do they want to go?

Anywhere else.

Let’s talk about the music in this, cause it’s great. How’d it come about?

All the music was done by Bo-en, and yeah, he did an awesome job. He composes music for games a lot, which is how I found him. He has this unique, glitchy style. I emailed him out of the blue, not even expecting a response. But he got back to me and immediately sent over a test composition. That was good because he was actually excited about the project. Overall, I went with everything that he chose.

Which cartoons inspire you most?

I’m more of an anime fan, usually. I’m a big Soul Eater fan - it’s stupid in the most creative ways, like I love the moon and sun up there gnashing their teeth and laughing when there’s a heavy emotional scene happening below them. FLCL and Gurren Lagann. Masaaki Yuasa is a big guy for a lot of people right now: his shows Kemonozume, Kaiba, and Tatami Galaxy inspire me, even if they all turn into trainwrecks by the end. That happens to a lot of stuff I like. My favorite scene in animation is from Kaiba; it has a lot of quick worldbuilding and weighty animation that i really like and tried to replicate in “Tyler” a bit. But I get a lot of inspiration from outside of animation too. Games, music.

Let’s hear about those influences, from games, comics, music, everything else?

One game is “Cave Story”, it’s incredible: it was made by a Japanese dude -- all by himself! I think that the more you can do on your own, the more your original soul and vision shine through. The character designs in the “Professor Layton” games are also pretty incredible, like retro anime with a european flair. Those two games are very different, but they both tell impactful stories! 

I was all about Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics for a long time; they ended recently. I probably steal a lot of how I draw slouchy characters from him. Hellboy is probably my favorite character design ever, for a lot of reasons: the asymmetry, his big arm, the sanded down horns... just looking at him tells a story, and it's crazy rare to see a character design get that thoughtful. I like Soul Eater for a lot of the same reasons. Just about my favorite written comic is King City by Brandon Graham, which is all over the place but manages to stay very human at its core. Osamu Tezuka, Naoki Urusawa, Katsuhiro Otomo, Inio Asano, Enrique Fernandez.... I get too pumped talking about comics!!

(Moonkiller, a dope comic and to-be short film)

My favorite bands are probably Gorillaz and Passion Pit, and i think a lot about telling stories that feel like their music feels. I guess it’s mostly about hanging onto the feeling that the music gives you and drawing with that, like translating a language? I do my best work when I can already *see* a show in my head before i draw it. When I made Bombadiers, my old Frederator pitch, i was thinking of this song Beck made for a videogame. They don't like, sync up perfect, but they still ~feel~ the same to me. Beck's composing work in films like Scott Pilgrim and Nacho Libre is really great! I’ve also been into The Postal Service recently because a lot of their music sounds... backwards, almost, and it’s interesting to me. Baths is another cool guy who I almost worked with on Tyler; his music can sound very otherworldly.

On a whole other note: why did they put snakes in the attic?

They put them up there to clear out another infestation. It might have been rats, might have been gorillas… I don’t remember. But they didn’t expect the snakes to breed so fast. They put the rats or gorillas up there too. So it’s really been a series of bad decisions.

Why snakes thoo?

Well once, I caught a baby rattlesnake with a plastic bottle in the Lodge. It wasn’t until I let it go that we realized it was a rattler - and the baby ones are actually the most lethal, because they can’t control how much venom they release when they bite.

What’s the Lodge?

Oh, so at CalArts, you’re assigned a cubicle. And there are two buildings with cubicles, the Palace and the Lodge. The Palace is a lot nicer, but the Lodge is more fun, fewer restrictions. My friend Justin and I - he was the board artist on “Tyler”, and a character designer on Rick and Morty - we built a shanty town out of cardboard boxes in the Lodge. It was our cardboard fortress. And there was one student who was in charge of keeping the other students in line, and he ordered us to take it down. And as we felt that was a violation of our liberties, we started a bulletin called the Lodge Gazette, which we posted around campus to air our grievances and report important Lodge news. I still write for it, when I can.

Tell us about your friendship with Jonni Phillips, which may be Frederator’s #1 most adorable friendship story?

I met Jonni through “Rachel” and offered to carpool with her to Frederator, and we became friends. We have a lot in common! We both share a sort of fatigue over mainstream animation in the west and east, and it was helpful for us to vent about these toxic animation communities, like, realizing that we're not going crazy, haha. I make these comics about us in hell together.

She also convinced me to pitch Grandpa 2.0 to Nickelodeon, which was it’s own whole can of worms. 

(Pls click that link for the Grandpa 2.0 experience, you will not regret it)

Okay, gonna need the whole Grandpa 2.0 story please, stat. 

So Jonni DOUBLE dares me to submit it to Nick’s shorts program because "They'll make anything!!" so I pretty much have to do it. I just submit the website along with the description, "I based this pitch off my own life in which i replaced my grandpa with a robot” and turned it in. First thing in the morning I get a response from them: "When can you come in and pitch the boards???" Boards!!! There were no boards!!! So Justin and I spent the weekend cranking out these rushed but actually pretty funny storyboards for an episode of Grandpa 2.0. But I was suuuper unhealthy at the time, literally bleeding to death (42% of the blood an adult male should've had) and I straight up blacked out and missed my pitch date. We rescheduled, which is cool, but now I’ve gotta fight the 'unreliable' reputation that the first meeting got me. So I start by rifling through flash drives for 10 minutes. The files are actually in the folder "Grandpa 2.0". The last place I'd ever look!! While I'm pitching I get to a segment Justin drew at such low opacity that it’s straight up invisible on the projector screen. And I just have to describe to them whats going on. "IMAGINE if you will, a high tech display screen..." and this other part where grandpa has a guitar solo, Justin copy pasted the animation, like, an obscene amount of times, so even if I held down on the keyboard it still took minutes to chew through them. He wanted me to make the guitar noises. After the pitch was over they were like, "What’s the emotional connection between the boys and grandpa?" and im just like "I dunno.. fear??" And then way later i got an email saying that they were "blown away by how professional the pitch was..." (and I'm like um were you guys in the same room??) "...but the content just wasn't right for Nickelodeon”. That part almost makes me think they actually noticed all the 9/11 jokes and stuff... So that’s how the pitch went, and for now Grandpa 2.0 sleeps, unless I can convince Eric to swing it by Netflix or something, hahaha.

What are you working on now?

I’ve always got a lot of projects going. An animated feature idea, Token Town. And Moonkiller, a comic I’ve been working on that I want to turn into a short. Paper Desperado is a game I’m making - my friend is coding it. We’re fans of the old Paper Mario games, so we’re trying to draw from those - not copying, more like figuring out how they made everything and trying to build off of those techniques. I’m also working on a radio play called Spookwood, about a drug that turns you into a ghost. It’s tough because I’m so used to describing stuff visually, and now I have to get everything across with just words.

When it turns you into a ghost, do you stay a ghost or turn back?

No, you stay a ghost.

So the drug kills you?

Yeah, it kills you, and then you’re a ghost.

Thus concludes our interview with Gabe Janisz! Thanks for taking the time Gabe, it’s always good talking with you. Sure we’ll be working together again in no time!

- Cooper

[sol1056]

she’s not bad, she’s just written that way

The more I see arguments over whether someone is a ‘bad character’ (as distinct from an antagonist or villain), the more red flags go up that tell me it’s a case of bad writing. 

First, some context. This isn’t the kind of analysis I could comfortably make if we were only a few episodes in (unless the treatment is truly egregious). If VLD was a SF book, we’d be about halfway through the sequel. That’s plenty of room to look across and see patterns.

Putting my writer’s cap on, and the rest behind the cut.

From a writer’s POV, I have no doubt there must be a contingent of the staff (producers, writers, and/or storyboarders) who like Keith a little more than they should. The only other character with a backstory implied to be nearly as complex is Lotor; the narrative has not only deepened Keith’s arc, it’s kept him at the forefront even when he’s offscreen for long stretches. 

And then there’s Allura, who began with such promise and now is devolving into a plot device, while her other contributions -- being the general to Shiro’s field commander, helming the castle -- are conveniently forgotten. As @ptw30​ said elsewhere, “We can debate whether or not Allura is incompetent, but it’s the writers/EPs [who] made her seem that way.”

What’s possibly the most glaring part is that Allura's use as a plot device is solely to prompt audience empathy for Keith. Consider these scenes, and the purpose of each in terms of plot and characterization:

1. Dig into the Galra-Altean conflict by having Allura voice the Altean side, and Keith speak for the Galran side. Do this by isolating them (off in the shuttle). Make Allura unwilling to compromise. Bonus: sympathy for Keith because he’s written to sound ‘reasonable’ compared to her.  

2. Introduce tension about BoM galra-Keith revelation. Easiest way: have another character take the news badly. Allura reacts imperiously to Kolivan, but her evil looks are only towards Keith. (Worth noting there’s no reaction shown from Coran, at all.) Bonus: should also result in greater audience sympathy for Keith.

3. Resolve the mini-conflict, because the finale is coming. Have Allura do most of the talking. Time it in such a way (just before suicide mission) to leave open the much crueler interpretation that Allura only acted so if Keith did die, she wouldn’t have that guilt on her conscience. Bonus: write, frame, and animate the apology-and-hug as awkward, and show Keith somewhat uncomfortable, to maintain audience sympathy for him as unwilling recipient. 

4. Show Lance learning to support Keith. Set up the exchange by putting the patently wrong thing in Allura’s mouth, congratulating Keith on a task he’s animated and voiced as clearly not wanting. Allura looks cruel, audience sympathy stays with Keith, and Lance looks cool. 

5. Show Keith as too single-minded to lead well. Make Allura completely unable to handle flying the lion, and Keith uncaring. (Can’t have Lance fail out, because he’s needed to yank Keith back on track.) Pre-empt any audience anger by having Keith apologize (to Lance, notably, not Allura). Bonus: apology swings sympathy back to Keith. 

(extra bonus: we get to see the formerly capable, competent nerves-of-steel character cowering in a hole for several minutes, in a panic, oh yay.)  

6. Demonstrate team is unhappy with Keith’s divided loyalties. Set confrontation directly after a tough mission, so audience sympathy remains with Keith. Bonus: with audience on his side, Keith’s response -- ‘another lecture’ -- gets additional weight, and seen as valid. Bonus: undercut Allura���s assessment by making the rest of the episode contradict her words. 

There’s a boatload to unpack here about gender and race, too, but I’ll leave that for another post. For this one, all I can say is: while not all of their interactions are negative, the preponderance seem to exist to make Keith look sympathetic by undermining or warping Allura’s characterization. (Note: there’s a consistent name getting writing credit for the majority of these scenes, but I can’t figure out whether he wants to destroy any chance of k/allura, or simply dislikes Allura.) 

The thing is, Allura is an amazing character. The Allura from S1 (and most of S2) is capable, competent, and unflinching. This is the woman who had no problem walking right onto a Galra ship to get the information she wanted, bluffed the enemy with total chill, and then tore down a door to get away and was totally nonchalant about it. Where did that character go? 

This is what it feels like to me:

It’s not just that staff sympathies are with Keith, contorting the narrative to keep him in the forefront. It’s also that--on that level writers know, even if unvoiced--they’d written a character who was absolutely positioned to be quite capable of stepping directly into Shiro’s shoes. To fit the nostalgia goggles, and make Shiro’s choice of heir (Keith) work, Allura had to be downgraded.

If a leader should bring a team together, make Allura divisive by being intransigent about Keith’s heritage. If a leader should be capable, make Allura do a one-eighty and doubt her diplomatic skills. If a leader should be competent, make Allura struggle more than anyone, despite having been welcomed by her lion. If a leader should listen, make Allura lecture rather than converse. If a leader should plan ahead, make Allura completely forget to charge up the castle. 

It’s just insult to injury that when there’s possible consequence to Keith’s actions, Allura’s the one voicing that, and the narrative punishes her for it. 

And the only reason I can see to do any of that to such a strong, confident, female character is because it’s the only way to make Keith look like the best option when it comes to possible leadership. Between Allura being downgraded into a narrow-minded harriden, and Shiro torqued into whatever he is in S3/S4, the narrative is setting it all up for a sigh of relief when Keith finally accepts his responsibility and takes the reins. 

Sure, I like to see a character work hard and win. I’m just sick of seeing powerful WoC characters sacrificed in the process.