#and I don't think any of the panels should be too complicated to paint except for maybe one of them

[trans-xianxian]

we got half way through the exorcist and then he had to go to bed lmao I yam going to take a little baby nap and then it's back to the comic >:)

[lilhawkeye3]

I don't know if they thought curly hair was too complicated to animate or something, but for some reason, ALL the clones in TCW have straight hair. It comes off as a simple stylistic choice with the standard crew cut, but then you have characters like Tup and Hunter. And since Trace Martez exists, we know they CAN texture curly hair now, and it doesn't look like it was all that complicated either. I guess in the case of Tup and Hunter we have to chalk it up to mutation in-universe.

Alright. Here’s an image of Trace and Rafa Martez.

I’m gonna say this kindly as a curly haired individual: I would not say Trace has textured curly hair in the show. She has a textured hairstyle meant to represent curls.

Rafa has some waves in her hair that do end in a little curl, and while in real life I would say she probably has one of the “B” classifications for curly hair and appears to have a stronger curl pattern than Temuera Morrison. That said, the animation is still fairly blocky and only represents her having curls.

This gif even shows it: Trace’s hair just... doesn’t move. It’s completely fixed. At least Rafa’s has a bit of sway and bounce at the bottom ringlet.

My honest opinion? The actual animation program itself is not designed to handle curls. What we see with both Martez ladies is that the CG part of their hair is very blocky, but the “texture” comes more from the hand-painted look.

This is something Filoni pushed from the start: CG animation was the new thing in 2005 and George Lucas wanted to use it for the show, but Filoni was a hand-drawing artist. He worked on Avatar the Last Airbender, for example. The way he could keep that feel with Clone Wars was to paint each “panel.” Thus, you had a merging of the two. Here’s a segment of a direct quote from Filoni, taken from this article.

“I wanted it to look like a painting— you see a textured, hand painted style on every character. I have texture artists who literally paint every character right down to their eyeball, because I wanted that human touch on everything.” -Dave Filoni

I actually looked into what program they used (at least for the earlier seasons). In 2008, it was produced by a company called Autodesk, and here is the announcement of them using the software. In the announcement, it mentions that one of Autodesk’s first (and main) developments is AutoCAD, and that their programs are meant to simulate real-world developments. Yeah... AutoCAD is an engineering/architechtural program. It’s very formulated and rigid because so are the materials it needs to simulate.

Here’s an example of a plant designed using a more recent version of AutoCAD (from the Autodesk website). Even with basic colors, it’s clear to see how its older versions would be best for a show full of armored troopers, ships, destroyers, walkers... pretty much every part of Star Wars except for the people, tbh.

The program, and thus any later ones developed off of it, was not equipped to program curly hair. It’s not in their coding.

The other problem is Lucasfilm was outsourcing the animating for most scenes to a team in Asia (as per the linked announcement). That’s not cheap. When you introduce a character like Tup, who is a smaller supporting character, it’s far easier to just use the already developed clone CG model and have his hair tied back so it lays flat. It’s logistically not worth figuring out curls for him.

Hell, look even at Anakin or Obi-Wan’s hair in the first seasons (just search gifs on tumblr tbh). It moves together in chunks, if at all. The last season does have more improvement, but by then 1) it’s ten years later, so animation programs have evolved significantly, and 2) they’re at Disney.

I may hate on Disney for a lot of things, but Disney and Pixar have pioneered so much for digital animation, including hair actually (i.e. Tangled & The Incredibles). And... it’s Disney. They’ve got some of the best technology out there, even if it’s just for a TV show. 

But, back to the clones. Take a look at any of the Sideshow collectible figures available for the clone troopers from the show. Even the short haired troopers have wavy definition to their hair, and for Tup it’s pretty clear he has a curl texture, just that it’s been tightly combed back into a bun.

To help, here’s a trio of images: the left is Temuera Morrison around when he was in Star Wars. The top right is the Showtime collectible of ARC Trooper Fives. The bottom right is Fives in the show. It’s clear they attempted Temuera’s curl texture on the figurine. If you look closely at Fives’ hair from the show still, it still attempts to show that but flat painted on the CG hair panel.

And here’s the clearest image I could find of Tup’s hair. Again, they tried to show his texture with the flat hand-painting.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ They tried. Kind of. It just doesn’t translate well.

So, to sum it all up: the clones don’t have pin-straight hair. The animation makes it look that way because it is limited in its coding. But for the more realistic versions of the troopers, they’re shown to have some hair texture.

I don’t think they were being purposefully ignorant or racist by keeping the clones’ hair straighter. The style of animation chosen really was just not equipped to handle any type of curly hair pattern.

[For those of you wondering why they chose it though, one of the main reasons for the style was because they wanted motion capture for battle scenes. And y’know... after seeing the Ahsoka vs Maul fight in the final season... yeah, valid decision on that end.]

That said, something that was within the animation team’s control that we should be angry about is how they lightened/whitewashed the clones and Boba Fett in the series.

But that’s some tea for another time... ☕️🦅

If you like my research essays, consider donating to my Ko-Fi (18+ art gift included as thanks EDIT: this post was made in Sept 2020 and the gift is no longer available). If you want to be tagged in future Tea Times, fill out this form here!

[qwanderer]

Loki in the Hall of Mirrors

This story is complicated. Not, like, as a plot, not particularly, but philosophically and thematically. It's got that great play of hero against villain that I love about the Loki story in general and that makes it all so divisive and messy. And I love it even more than I did on first watch.

The first time I watched the desert landing scene, I was like, "Wait? What happened to Allspeak?" because the people who live there don't seem to understand him. But on the second watch, I realized it could be a lack of context, rather than a break in translation. These people probably have an even chance of knowing nothing about Norse myth. Like, what if an alien came up to you and said "I am Boogle of Bofgar, I carry a burden"? You would still have questions like "What the hell is a boogle and why are you carrying your shit here?" So the basic dynamic of Allspeak is probably still functioning, and Loki probably understood their questions, but he was still trying to figure out how to answer when he got distracted by the TVA people.

It could even be an innate psychic ability rather than a magical one, as he seems to understand everyone in the TVA, including the man who can't be fluent in all languages like the field agents because he has never heard of a fish and the seemingly nonverbal robot. (Which of course makes me want Loki talking with Dum-E and the other shop bots! But I digress.)

Okay. I want to start talking about the next-level manipulation shit the TVA are pulling on Loki here. Time, as they say, moves differently in the TVA, and one might even assume that they can avoid having to deal with more variants at once than they can handle. And yet we see them dealing with exactly two other troublemakers during Loki's onboarding.

The first, I'm going to call little echo man.

Little echo man is incredibly annoying to Loki, because he does and says everything Loki might find himself inclined to do and say if he wanted to be difficult. Little echo man does these things in little annoying undignified ways, making them look silly and petulant. Little echo man protests and questions and pushes back, in his business suit and his long dark hair and pale skin, and clearly thinks everyone should treat him as important even though every indication is that he is an annoyance and an afterthought.

Perhaps he's a plant, and perhaps he's just a variant of an annoying but predictable regular they see who they lined up at the same time on purpose. But he is on purpose. Everything he does screams directly at Loki, "Don't do this."

We'll get to the second convenient intersection later.

The most obvious layer of manipulation is simply the beraucracy. They put him up against a series of obstacles which he needs to deal with to get anywhere else, and nothing he does can get him past those obstacles except compliance. All of these obstacles have personality, but they are not personable. They treat Loki like a bag of trash they have been tasked with taking to the curb. Annoying, distasteful, but ultimately routine. His silver tongue isn't going to get him anywhere because these people simply don't care.

I think a lot of these he just goes along with to see where it gets him, since at this point he still believes he has his magic in reserve. But the fact that he steps through the robot fryer even though he thinks he might be a robot without knowing (as others have pointed out, he spent thousands of years as a frost giant without knowing it, and he's recently spent time in the control of the being who shaped Nebula) is a testament to how deep they've already got their hooks in him.

They treat the robot fryer like it's routine, but come the next obstacle, they kill little echo man like it's routine, too. Because he didn't comply.

Loki is slowly being ironed flat to thread into their compliance mill.

And then - I love this, because it reminds me of one of my favorites among the multiplicity of Lokis, GoS!Loki - they put this line in as punctuation between the impersonal, compliance, don't phase of their manipulation and everything that comes after it.

When he's set before the judge, someone actually paying some attention to him, this is his chance to use his silver tongue on someone who will listen. But, although the judge listens, she treats him the same as all the other obstacles have - like listening is a distasteful chore she would like to be done with.

So it seems like the perfect moment for a dramatic escape. Except his magic is gone.

"It's not your story," the judge says. "It never was."

That hammers in all the worst things Loki has ever believed about himself - that he stands in the shadows of others, that he will never have the central place he was raised to desire, that he is, and always will be, a villain to be vanquished rather than a person with choices and agency.

Enter Mobius.

Mobius is a big echo.

He draws all the attention in a room. He is everything that Loki wishes to be - he is powerful, informed, prepared, in control. Capable of charming the judge. And most importantly, he is actively interested in Loki.

At this point in Loki's journey - both in the show and in his life - that has to be irresistible.

So Mobius is in a perfect position to wrap Loki right around his pinky finger.

He listens to Loki without shutting him down, the way all the obstacles have. When Loki tells Mobius he's going to burn down the TVA, Mobius suggests a couple of places he might want to start. One concrete, small, mischievous. One an indication that he's open to Loki doing larger, more significant things here in the future.

He shows Loki his own past and future - but carefully edited, to paint a particular picture.

So many echoes, so many reflections - Loki is in a house of mirrors. Lost, disoriented. Distorted one way, then the other. Magnified and examined.

Loki snarks, and Mobius comments, "Makes you sound smart." Affirms Loki for that little mischievous bit of personality.

Mobius shows Loki some of the most terrible things he's done, and questions them. Pushes Loki away from them. Then changes direction before he can get too heavy-handed, to basically fangirl over the DB Cooper adventure. That's mischief. That's good. I like that.

Punishes him for a small infraction, just to remind him who is in control and that even looking threatening could be seen as a problem.

I think it was at about this point that I got hard reminded of the dynamics of the show White Collar. It's a buddy cop show on a basic level and sometimes the relationship can be very sweet, but sometimes Peter spends one too many times reminding Neal that he can send him back to prison any time he wants and the power dynamic shows its messed up edges.

Mobius is part of the machine, and the machine is doing terrible things to Loki, but I have at least a sliver of hope that the relationship could gain more balance - more genuine balance, not based on the faux freedom that Loki has gained by the end of the episode. There's something to be said for making changes to a system from within that system, but for that to be meaningful change, Mobius would have to change as a person.

Anyway, this current nastily powerful Mobius pushes Loki as hard as he can, and then is conveniently interrupted by the actions of another variant, leaving Loki alone with his remote.

It could easily have been on purpose. The only thing Loki learns by escaping that room is that the TVA is more powerful than any force in the universe, in his experience.

Let's talk about the other Loki variant for a minute. It took me until the second viewing to realize the symbolism of leaving a small child the only survivor in a place of worship, then giving her something to turn her blue.

Odin said he found Loki in a temple, in the aftermath of a battle.

It's actually frighteningly easy to imagine how a distraught Loki could get to a place where he feels the need to genuinely burn down the TVA, and kill every agent in it. Because the TVA put certain clips in his little future show, focusing on the death of his mother, the way his own actions affected it, and the futility and brutality of his own death at the hands of Thanos.

They don't show him the destruction of Asgard, his own role in helping save the evacuees, and the way Thanos decimated the population of that transport before it could even reach Earth. They don't show him the devastation of his home or his capacity to do good.

A Loki who knows that the power of the TVA exists and that he has the capacity to be Asgard's heroic savior would do anything to get that power and save his people.

But we haven't met that Loki yet. I'm sure we will, and it's going to be exhilarating.

This Loki is being taught the importance of control over little things, and so when he gets his collar off and onto that guard, he toys with her, just to see that he can. They have been toying with him and it's oh so satisfying to turn the tables. But it's still compliance in its own way, the petty little mischief that Mobius has been steering him towards.

Loki has been given just enough freedom, just enough choices, that it seems like his own choice to watch the rest of the slide show and come to the obvious conclusion - there's no "out" to go to. His life has gone on without him, and ended. And there's really no point in his trying to fix it. No putting things back the way they were.

So he admits to Mobius - the person who has listened hardest, probably, besides his mother - he admits that he is small and scared and lashing out. That he doesn't know what to do.

Of course, this is when Mobius introduces the task the TVA has for Loki - to take down his other self.

Oh, I can't wait for the next episode! I want to know where this is going.

(I've popped in some panels from Loki: Agent of Asgard because it's my favorite and the show is giving me feelings about it.)