#and the post was like. stop remaking the god movies (lion king for example) and remake the scrap movies instead

[cinnabeat]

there was a post i just saw like a disney post and op had the fucking audacity the gall the sheer nerve to call oliver and company one of disneys scrap movies and im feeling so incredibly violent over this

[lavenderek]

Ok so like. So few people know off the top of their head what a snowflake ACTUALLY looks like. Not to mention, that thing on the movie poster /isn’t a snowflake/

i mean, you’re not wrong. but i stand by my point. like sure, lots of people wouldn’t be able to design a realistic snowflake off the top of their head. i could try, but odds are in your favor that i’d fuck it up. and like, maybe they’ve even somehow never seen ice before. 

but they’re still able to recognize how things work believably and it’s more fun that way. 

this is gonna be long because i don’t feel like editing it’s been a bad day 

in this post i will make the following points: 

you don’t have to be a scientifically educated pedant like neil degrasse tyson to find something believable

things that are believable are more immersive

things that are rooted in real life are more believable

believability creates the fantasy

i will be making these points by naming a bunch of movies. 

take my example of treasure planet. 

that’s a pretty detailed ship. and take the ship in pocahontas 2. there aren’t a ton of details in there. they didn’t have much budget and were banking on the kids watching it to not know anything about ships. 

and i mean, the ship in pocahontas 2 doesn’t not work. i don’t know anything about ships. i think i am a part of a majority when i say that i couldn’t look at a ship and be like “oh yeah that’s the fuckin stays and starboard, i know where the ropes go.” but i know which one feels real. i know which one i can immerse myself in. 

or like, scifi: 

more fleshed out and detailed versions of scifi (”here’s how the black hole would work, whooooaaaa”) are more interesting than handwaving the sciency stuff (”idk they got sucked in or something, nobody’s even seen a black hole before”) because it feels real even though im not buzz aldrin. 

or the shape of water:

i never even saw this movie. and i’ve also never seen two people getting it on in a glass tank before. but i’ve seen large containers of water and i’ve seen people in water and that feels real to me. 

or cartoon dudes with roller blades on their hands: 

this is actually something i learned in one of my life drawing classes that really changed the way i looked at illustration and animation in general. i was doodling some dude with roller blades on his hands because i wanted to doodle some dude with roller blades on his hands. 

my teacher came over and tweaked the anatomy slightly. he’s like, “here’s how the underside of the chin would be shaped.” 

it doesn’t matter. it’s still a cartoon dude with roller blades on his hands. but it made it cooler to look at. no i do not still have this drawing. 

or even rob liefeld!:

to contrast with pocahontas 2, he puts in a lot of details. he spends a lot of time drawing his garbage. but that’s not how the human body works. 

i was terrible at learning to accurately depict anatomy, it was my worst subject. but i can still look at it and know that’s not a believable human body. that doesn’t seem like it should move like that. that looks broken. 

and pixar’s even done it before:

woody moves like he’s made of fabric. merida shoots like a real archer and her mom bears like a real bear. the house in Up moves like a house that’s been lifted off the ground. have i seen a house fly up off the ground? probably not. but look at what the foundation does. that feels real to me. they paid attention to explaining how he did the things he did so that you could enjoy the things he did. 

disney’s done it before:

lion king is one of their best movies, bar none. i’m an american and have never seen the sun rise above the african savannah. that feels real.

this is what people mean when they say shit like “you need to know the rules before you break them.” (”you spell ‘science’ with a Y. and what bothers me about that is i don’t think YOU know! that that’s wrong.”) it’s not necessarily just pedantic gatekeeping. if a thing is built on a foundation of reality, the stylized version is more interesting. 

it’s not about realism for the sake of rigid accuracy, it’s about being able to immerse yourself because it’s rooted in realism. i’m a big fan of believability. 

olaf is a talking snowman, but he’s a talking snowman who makes believable snow crunching noises when he walks. if he didn’t make snow crunching noises when he walked, it wouldn’t be unfun. but it wouldn’t be as fun. it’s those moments of realism that makes the fantastical so fantastical. 

if there are moments of believability, when the magic happens, it’s all the more magical. it removes that wall between the viewer and the story. 

like i always feel like im making the same point over and over in slightly different words because i’m never sure if i’m making myself clear. 

im not pixar, but if i had the resources they did, i’d want to make a story that feels impressive and rad. like, it’s a $150 million project. 

not that it matters. i’m not a money guy, but they’re gonna make bank on it anyway and you and i and neil degrasse tyson all know it. 

THAT BEING SAID:

yes, i do think there’s a point at which is stops adding to the story and just becomes pointless rendering, lion king the live action remake. 

no, i do not think that is a snowflake.

yes, if misused it sometimes does create the uncanny valley. 

no, i am not the authority on excellent writing and design. (but aren’t i though?)

i still agree with neil’s point. 

oh my god queue management has emailed slightly different status updates like three times in the last ten minutes is he bored or something. i want to go home