#creative production outsourcing

[ekcs]

2024 unwrapped: A year-in-review

It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? The challenges facing media companies and publishers have been multifold, from tightening budgets to political change and a competitive landscape. Despite all that, it was a great year for the creative industry. We reflect on the year’s challenges, celebrate the milestones, and look ahead to what’s next...

We’re A Great Place to Work®, again!

EKCS became Great Place to Work® in India for the second year running. Great Place to Work® is the global authority on building great workplaces.

And they should know. They have surveyed more than 100 million global employees. Our offshore team is vital to EKCS, and the award is based on the experience and opinions of colleagues working at EKCS.

And it doesn’t stop there. This year, EKCS also won the ‘Support Team of the Year’ award at The Stevie® Awards. This recognizes our team’s efforts in supporting brands, agencies, and media clients to overcome production challenges and boost efficiency.

New starters

This year we grew from a team of 500 to 600, with some exciting onshore hires in both the UK and the US. We’ve had some great new starters join EKCS. These include Saba Said, who heads up our global communications team. We’ve also had several consultants join us, and we’ll introduce you to these creative brains in the new year.

Conference creativity

Conferences were a big part of the fall. The added bonus was escaping the English winter, albeit for a few days! It’s been enlightening to meet so many industry people at the events we have attended and sponsored this year. It helps to have our people on the ground across the world who can discuss all things creative production. We attended the Association of National Advertisers In-House Agency Conference for the first time. Watching global CMOs share their beliefs and state their predictions was truly inspiring. Keeping sight of the bigger picture while staying focused on our clients’ goals will be more important than ever in 2025.

Leadership in action: Aligning minds, solving challenges, and building bonds

On that note, at EKCS we’ve been doing more joined-up thinking as to how we can better serve our clients and deliver value in the changing world of production. Our leadership summits in the UK and India brought together EKCS’ business leaders from the UK and India. These twice-yearly summits were a powerful catalyst to align leaders, develop solutions to problems, introduce new strategies, and enhance collaboration across EKCS. We would be lying if we said it was all work and no play, as we like to insert a team challenge into the mix. In true EKCS spirit, these challenges were a bit like an India vs. England cricket match—fierce and fun, but whatever the result, they brought our onshore and offshore teams closer together.

AI-driven production power

We embraced automation and engaged with AI, all of which culminated in the launch of Mediaferry AI! You might have seen some of our media coverage. This cutting-edge, cloud-based service streamlines the production process—from briefing to campaign activation—and it is perfect for publishers, brands, and in-house agencies! We’ve received great feedback from our clients, so if you’ve not seen it already, why not book your demo today? 

Resources wrapped up just for you!

This festive season, we’re sharing a little holiday gift—valuable resources to help you kickstart 2025. 

EKCS Blogs: Grab a nutmeg latte or pour a mulled wine and have a read of our collection of insights and blogs covering creative production and creative teams. 

Free Guides: Need to escape a festive full house? Take some time to download our free guides and take some time for reading. 

Inside Jobs Podcast: Inside Jobs has continued to thrive in 2024, reaching a milestone number of subscribers and welcoming a phenomenal lineup of guests. Hosted in collaboration with IHAF, these podcasts provide inspirational intel from in-house agency leaders from some of the world’s biggest brands. Subscribe here and you’ll be inspired throughout 2025! 

[hireanydomain]

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[nokkiart]

As a long time httyd fan who has been heavily involved in the fandom since the first movie and who has spent years working in the animation industry, I’d like to share my thoughts on the new httyd movie. Keep in mind, this is just my personal opinion and it's completely fine if you disagree with me. I just want to say a little something about all this that really bothers me.

The core reason that Dreamworks and Universal made this film is that it’s a quick and easy cash grab for them. Thats it. They don’t care about telling a good story or making a “better” version of the original movie for fans or even having an accurate portrayal of the characters/story. It’s purely about money. They know that fans of the original film will go see this movie, whether it’s good or bad. And those guaranteed ticket sales are all that matter to the studios. And with Universal, it has the added bonus of being a cheap promotional and merchandising opportunity for the new HTTYD land in Orlando that opens around the same time that the film is premiering in theaters.

And to help the studios make even more money out of this, they are using non-unionized VFX companies around the world to make this film, so that they can get cheaper labor and push the artists to do more that would be against American union standards. The same thing has probably happened with the costuming and fabrication for the filming, hence why the costumes look un-weathered and the sets look cheap. They don’t want to pay for the extra time and effort that it would take to make the practical bits of the production look good.

On top of all this, Dreamworks has already announced that they’re shutting down all their in-house animation projects in favor of using AI and outsourcing projects to cheaper international non-union studios.

With all this in mind, I just can’t support this film and I will not be seeing it in theaters. And I hope that others will do the same.

The only way to stop all these horrible “live action” remakes (which are actually just realistically animated remakes) is to not buy tickets to see them. Money is all that matters to these studios, and if they don’t make any money off of it, then they will stop and try something different. Maybe they'll even go back to focusing on original stories!

That’s the power that we hold as audiences. Our wallets help drive the decisions that the executives make. So support unique storytelling and gorgeous cinematography in movies. Support indie films. Support animators as they're fighting for fair pay and better contracts. But don't support a mediocre shot-for-shot remake riding on the coattails of an already successful film.

And I just want to wrap all this up by saying I have absolutely no hate towards anyone that has worked on the new film. Toothless looks incredible and I know the artists and creatives involved in this project did the best they could with what they were given.

But I also know that those same artists have so many more brilliant ideas that they would’ve loved to be given the creative freedom to do. I just wish hollywood would be willing to take a chance and let them do it.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Beauty in Splash Art 3

League of Legends splash art is, on the face of it, perhaps an odd place to go looking for beauty. These are JPGs whose first and primary function is to hawk video game cosmetics for a free-to-play game, it's not exactly the sort of thing you expect artists to particularly flex their creativity for.

And true enough, a lot of splash art is fairly rote. Here's a character, wow look at their cool pose, don't you want to spend dollars to own this, and so on.

But sometimes, one of the artists working at Riot, or at their outsourcing studios, seems to get a bee in their bonnet, or maybe they just get excited about an opportunity to practise craft, and you get splash art that tries to do something more than simply sell the product, or artwork which displays a real flex of technical skill, often in ways which are functionally invisible at any of the common resolutions that the art will ever be displayed at.

There is genuine reward to be found in those pieces, in zooming in close and marveling at the level of effort spent. So let's spend about an hour doing that!

Splash arts covered:

Odyssey Sona - by Kelly Aleshire

Victorious Sejuani - by Francis Tneh

Aurora - by Jennifer Wuestling

Redeemed Star Guardian Xayah and Rakan - by Ina Wong

Empyrean Vex - by Horace "Hozure" Hsu

Winterblessed Diana - by Bo "chenbowow" Chen

Porcelain Irelia - by Alsie Lau

Toy Terror Cho'gath - by Fortune "Fortuneee" K

[t00thpasteface]

absolutely sick and twisted to see a community get recommended to me for queer people to "express themselves" with ai. politicians all across the globe coordinate plots to eradicate our communities and yall want to outsource your own creative thinking to luxury software products? what the hell is wrong with you?

[swampjawn]

Soooo they made a Rick and Morty Anime and it's… really fucking bizarre. With the skyrocketing popularity of Anime in the US and other countries in the past decade, this show, being published by Adult Swim, is part of a growing trend of hybrid productions that span across multiple industries and give the admins at MyAnimeList a headache trying hopelessly to figure out what is and isn't technically anime. (though, side note: with the amount of outsourcing that's been integral to most animation for several decades, the distinction has really only been superficial from the start, so it was always a pointless endeavor.)

Creator Takashi Sano (佐野 隆史, Tower of God Season 1) went into it with the goal of creating "a story full of American sensibilities from a Japanese perspective." So, did they beautifully blend two cultures and animation styles to create a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts like Scott Pilgrim Takes Off or Cyberpunk: Edgerunners? Oops, nope! They took only the downsides of both industries and slapped 'em together into this monstrosity:

Rick and Morty uses a 2D puppet animation style, in which characters are drawn, rigged, and animated sort of like a 3D character model, with a set of complex layers and bones that warp them so they only need to be redrawn when necessary. This means they can take these simple, almost childish character designs, and digitally put them into very smooth motion with tons of frames without needing animators to draw each individual frame by hand.

This style became popular around the 2000s with online Flash cartoons like Homestar Runner, and the original short, "The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti" even uses a way more primitive version of the same technique.

On the other hand, the TV Anime industry makes pretty much the exact opposite compromise to achieve quality with limited resources: more detailed designs and illustrations, but strategically limited frames - by standard, 8 frames per second for the majority of scenes. (This is obviously a generalization)

So what do you get when you take the simple, cartoony western style and pass it through the Japanese workflow (likely with very little funding)? Well, an uncanny-valley worst-of-both-worlds scenario without the ultra-smooth motion of American puppet animation, OR the detail and creative camerawork of eastern frame-by-frame animation, of course!

And that's not even to mention the cultural aspects, convoluted plot, irritating OP song, and voice cast that doesn't match the original show! I get more into the rest of that stuff in this full video, so if you found this at all interesting, go check it out:

Also, I've been checking on the discussion threads on Reddit and MAL after each episode, and by episode 8, they are GHOST TOWNS. So I truly believe I am the only person still watching this show at this point. But I must see it through.

[youcouldmakealife]

Stuff That Helps Me Write: Procrastination Busting (Novelty Edition)

So, last week I was talking about the interest based nervous system versus the importance based nervous system, and how people with interest based nervous systems are driven by urgency, novelty, challenge/competition, and interest, versus the more common importance based nervous system, which is driven by importance (to yourself or to others), rewards, and consequences.

I don’t know whether ADHD or autism has a larger impact on my life — they often impact different areas, and they frequently compensate for one another in the areas they do overlap, when they aren't forming an unlikely alliance hellbent on my destruction. But my writing process is 100% run by ADHD. So because these tips are the ones that work for me, and my writing process is, top to bottom, ADHD as fuck, they’re probably going to be pretty heavily slanted toward ADHD peeps, though of course YMMV.

Tackling novelty first, because, well, of course I am. This can also appear as ‘novelty/creativity’, but honestly, I think that’s a little redundant: doing, say, a creative version of a task is simply injecting novelty, and I think novelty is a much easier concept to understand for most people than creativity is. Novelty can be boiled down to single words we learn the meaning of at a young age (new! Different!), whereas creativity has fifteen different definitions, every single one of which might spark debate. So for our purposes, I’m sticking with just novelty.

Here are some ways I inject novelty into my writing process:

Roll the dice.

This doesn’t have to be dice, though the 20-sided ones are absolutely great for this. You can use decks of cards, random number generators, slips of paper, whatever — one of the best ways to make yourself do a bunch of shit you don’t actually want to is to attach those tasks to numbers (or colours, or suits, or whatever), and let fate decide. This can work in a lot of ways: you assign each task to a number, say, or you roll the dice on how long you have to work on it, or what order you’re doing them in, or whatever. I tend to be much more chill about doing a task when The Dice are the ones telling me to do it. It’s stupid. It works.

Roll the dice (pt 2)

This is also a fun way to create prompts: say each number is a character. You roll the dice: okay, I’ll write about David. Now I’ve associated the dice with a word, or a concept, or whatever. Okay, David and touch. Insta-prompt, no creative thinking required.

Prompts

Speaking of prompts and lack of creativity: I have tricked you all. Oh ho ho. You think you are getting a fill to a prompt you want to see (and, admittedly, you are, as long as I haven’t wandered off course, which cannot be guaranteed), but in return I am getting writing ideas without actually needing to have them! I don’t think I would be able to write 100+ stories a year if I had to think up every single idea myself, but if you outsource the creativity — well, win-win. Someone gets their prompt filled, and I get the spark of inspiration I need to fuel my writing.

Obviously this one needs to be adapted just a bit for other scenarios, but you can gather inspiring things (lines from books, poetry, lyrics, whatever) for future inspiration, you can look for online writing prompts or tell yourself you’ll write to fill a category (senses, say, or seasons, or elements, etc etc). Basically, if you don’t know what to do, forcing yourself to respond to a prompt, or follow a theme, often provides just enough constraints for creativity to happen.

When you’re stuck, move on to something else

It’s very common productivity advice to focus on just one thing and do it start to finish before you move on to the next. Don’t do it.* It’s a trap.

I do agree with the ‘one task only’ advice inasmuch as multi-tasking… doesn’t actually exist (if we’re talking something like ‘writing and listening to music’, or ‘doodling during a lecture’, that can go great, but that’s not really multitasking, so much as adding complementary stimulation. If you’re trying to, say, write an essay during a lecture, at least one (and probably both) of those tasks will suffer.) but beyond that, no.

It’s probably great advice if you’re neurotypical but I genuinely cannot think of a worse suggestion for anyone with low frustration tolerance and fucky dopamine. I hit an obstacle in that ‘just one thing’ I am doing? Cool, great, guess it’s time to stop doing it forever.

If you’re working on several different things (especially if those things use different skills and/or headspaces), when you get stuck on one, you can pivot to work on something else and let your subconscious do all that cool underrated stuff in the background, and maybe when you return to it you’ll have figured out a way around whatever your obstacle is. And even if you haven’t, at least your frustration tolerance will have been reset.

If the project you’re doing isn’t working for whatever reason, especially if you’re growing frustrated (nothing good ever follows after the point you snap at your blameless computer), do something else, and come back to it when you’re in a better headspace. Some things you have to muscle through for various reasons: say, you procrastinated on it and it’s due tomorrow. But most things you don’t. So don’t.

*I’ll straight up say I can ‘do just one thing’ for longer periods with less stress now that I’ve been medicated, but it was an awful, painful process when I wasn’t, so I still don’t really recommend it for those who have fucky dopamine.

Do! Multiple! Projects!

Yes, this can bring us to the ‘start 17 projects and finish none, don't you dare look at my WIP folder’ ADHD trap, but there’s a pretty good place between extremes. The main reason I work on multiple series at a time (plus outtakes!) is so that if I’m stuck on one, or it’s not inspiring me, or I’m just not in the right mood, I don’t have to stare at my blank screen feeling like a complete failure, I can just scoot on over to work on something else that's calling to me. Do I always do the most important thing? Or the one that’s due next? Or even the one I want to work on? Perhaps not, but I do spend the vast majority of my writing time actually writing, which is more than a lot of people can say.

It helps to have projects in different areas of your life and different stages of completion, for extra variety (and therefore novelty), just beware the ‘I have 5% left of this project to do, shouldn’t take more than 7 years’. When you do reach that final stage, that is when it’s a good idea to get laser focused on ‘just one thing’.**

**Big caveat with the above tips on NOT focusing on 'just one thing' is that I’m specifically referring to ‘typical’ tasks, not hyperfocus. If you’re hyperfocusing on something, and it’s not hurting you (ie keeping you from feeding yourself, basic self-care, sleeping, genuine obligations, etc), you ride that high as far as it takes you, baby. The ability get 5 days of work done in 5 laser focused hours would cost a fortune if they could replicate it, by all means use it to your advantage. But you do need to rest and recharge after: it drains the hell out of your mental resources and cannot be depended on indefinitely. It’s the very best tool in my toolbox. If I use it without allowing myself to recharge I will lose access to it indefinitely.

Change something about the process

It doesn’t need to be a big thing. I can switch from using my laptop to writing by hand. Or write in my bedroom rather than my office. A lot of my internal resistance to tasks is ‘this is boring’ — I’m lucky that doesn’t often happen with writing, because it’s inherently interesting to me, but sometimes you’re just stuck, and a change of scenery, of tools and equipment, of context (say, go write the POV of another character if you're stuck on a scene) is enough to shake the blah. I’m going to go into that in a lot more detail when I hit ‘interest’ and ‘challenge’ because those are both great things to inject when things have gone stale, but a lot of the time, it doesn’t matter what the change is: the fact there was a change is enough.

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Hello, folks. This is your Oldie Chinese Diaspora Anon™️. I am starting to feel like I sound like bad news bears, so I would like to make my stance clear here. I have nothing against blind box dolls – heaven knows, I have a couple of them, too. It’s just unfortunate that I keep on encountering troubling news when it comes to blind box dolls, it seems. Please bear with me, would you?

Now, I need to introduce you to an... old friend. While we all know the resin recaster and his myriad of companies, I think I have brought up the vinyl recaster, DBS, a few times before as well. As a refresher, DBS is a toy company that specializes in vinyl and ABS toys. They bill themselves as the creators of “proudly MiC” toys for the next generation. However, their dolls have been found to be “recasted” from resin into vinyl and they have been plagiarising from several different companies, from Koreans to down-home Chinese. The MäyTrëë line of blind boxes were rejected by the BJD community because while the original designer was independent, the dolls were made by one of the DBS companies and was thought to be one of their subsidiaries. (more information here: https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/727751969206304768/hello-anon-this-is-your-oldie-chinese-diaspora )

With that as a preamble, let me introduce you to the “Inedible Rabbits” dolls (Well, these ones: https://www.kikagoods.com/products/moon-jumping-time-bunny-series-1-12-action-figure-bjd-blind-box?variant=44766128931050 ). Similar to the “Escape Plan” dolls, they were created by a team of newbies who first 3D-printed their designs and pitched them to what’s akin to a Chinese-version of a Kickstarter called Modian. During the crowdfunding period, people can pre-order these dolls while the team running the KS maintain regular updates, chase goals, changes to the designs, etc. The final production is usually outsourced to a factory. The team is, in theory, working with the team all the way until delivery. I still vaguely remember someone asking “why aren’t there KS campaigns for dolls?” Well, you’re about to find out why… it wasn’t the price or the long production time, There’s a lot more to it.

As with the “Escape Plan” team, there’s a gap between the final products when compared to the samples (https://the-bjd-community-confess.tumblr.com/post/756541155738615808/一万次出逃计划开箱-避雷快跑哔哩哔哩bilibili ). One of the problems that was encountered by the buyers from the Escape Plan Team was that they have gone AWOL when people started to receive their dolls and started complaining. With the Inedible Rabbit Team however, my sources reported worse issues with communication. The creative team was not only unresponsive most of the time but they would block anyone who even asked benign questions. We also found out that the creative team behind the Inedible Rabbits did not apply to become a company prior to establishing their KS. It means that all of the transactions are considered personal (think F&F). With their frequent and wilful blocking of people, there are a lot of donors who are worried about how shady their behaviour is.

This is the latest expose from a Chinese source: https://www.xiaohongshu.com/explore/66e00cce000000001e01903f?app_platform=ios&app_version=8.52&share_from_user_hidden=true&xsec_source=app_share&type=normal&xsec_token=CBUsqAi70IwpfK_-OZEZS28zESD2e88FIMRgVnkEaN3D8=&author_share=1&xhsshare=CopyLink&shareRedId=ODlFNzlGND02NzUyOTgwNjg5OTc7Szk8&apptime=1725972303&share_id=49435c4b26604cbe8cd6fd49fc41db11 And this is a summary by a Taiwanese proxy: https://www.plurk.com/p/3gac0e1qck (please feel free to use a Google Translator to help you)

The Taiwanese Plurk mentioned that the clothes of the dolls were made by the infamous DBS. This was discovered from a video that the Inedible Rabbit Team posted on their social media showing the interior of their outsourced factory that made clothes for them. (can be seen here: https://www.xiaohongshu.com/explore/66e26d2a000000001e0193cc?app_platform=ios&app_version=8.53&share_from_user_hidden=true&xsec_source=app_share&type=video&xsec_token=CBaBewvBjppksg843In6KcCKwy5e3Tbv8rN-f9ARvjXks=&author_share=1&xhsshare=CopyLink&shareRedId=ODYzRUU9PTw2NzUyOTgwNjY0OThISEtL&apptime=1726233161&share_id=189d6a99974941f899342c780b0e8890 ) At the 0:12 timestamp, a box with the DBS logo was shown very briefly in a pan-over shot. (seen here: https://www.xiaohongshu.com/explore/66e283db0000000027002ca0?app_platform=ios&app_version=8.53&share_from_user_hidden=true&xsec_source=app_share&type=normal&xsec_token=CBaBewvBjppksg843In6KcCK1D4UzhNUD8Fm5_7tph_yA=&author_share=1&xhsshare=CopyLink&shareRedId=ODYzRUU9PTw2NzUyOTgwNjY0OThISEtL&apptime=1726233089&share_id=9de63adea9b14bd191309c996ed2bc29 ) Thanks to this discovery, a lot of the collectors and donators who also own resin BJDs are asking for refunds because they do not want to be associated with DBS in the fear of being seen as pro-recast. Thanks to people pulling out of the KS, the proxy has informed me that some of the unlocked stretch goals would most likely be rescinded. She is afraid that if too much of the funds get pulled out, the creative team may just pack up and do a rug pull with the money. Thanks to the fact that they never registered as a company, if they run, there’s basically no way to get that money back.

I do not want to be seen as someone who stands in others’ way of having a good time and earning money. But I also cannot stay quiet when I know that blind box dolls are a lot of new collectors’ gateway into resin BJD. This is akin to me knowing that something is a recast but fail to warn the new comers ahead of time. If anyone gets looked down upon or rejected from a group due to association with a doll that uses DBS clothes, I don’t think I can quite live with myself. So… thank you very much for lending your ears to me once more. I know full well that I do not have the ability to change anyone’s mind, but at least I can sleep better knowing that I have tried my best to tell you what I know.

Post Script: On September 14th, the creative team behind Indedible Rabbits posted their first public apology: https://www.modian.com/project/update/detail/161340 They promised to create a business account and becoming more accountable. They also stated that despite the factory video they are not in collaboration with DBS. It's up to you to decide if you want to believe the team. end!)

~Anonymous

[prokopetz]

Thank you for the explanation! ❤️ now I’m intrigued, though: Where can I find information on why 4E was published under a more restrictive license?

(With reference to this post here.)

Before we can talk about that, it's necessary to understand what an incredible shitshow 4E's commercial launch was in general. I go over that in some depth here.

Understanding the sequence of events outlined there is important because it dispels one of the most widely accepted wrong answers to your question: that Hasbro and WotC cooked up the 4E Game System License (GSL) because they didn't want a repeat of Pathfinder.

In truth, the 4E GSL is what caused Pathfinder; Paizo was one of a handful of third-party publishers who'd taken advantage of the D&D System Trademark License (STL) to produce officially branded D&D products, and they'd likely have been perfectly happy to continue doing so if WotC hadn't come to them and said "hey, if you want to remain STL-compliant, you need to throw away all of your 3E material and re-develop it for 4E, under a more restrictive license, with zero notice – that's cool, right?"

(It was not, in fact, cool.)

As for why the 4E GSL really happened, there are a variety of opinions on that – a lot of it ultimately comes down to internal office politics, so there may never be a clear answer. As far as I've been able to gather, however, the problem is that the OGL had always served two masters. By all accounts, several of the OGL's principal architects genuinely believed in establishing a creative commons for D&D – but that's not how they sold the idea to the suits at the head office.

Internally, the pitch in favour of the OGL was that it would allow WotC to delegate the creation of D&D supplements and adventures to third parties, allowing WotC itself to focus on core book sales. (i.e., the PHB/DMG/MM trio and the main setting hardbacks.) Core books were always the more lucrative side of the coin, with supplements and adventures serving less as a profit-making enterprise in themselves, and more as long-tail support to drive further core book sales. The prospect of being able to get that long-tail support for free was very tempting, and is likely the main reason that corporate agreed to publish the Third Edition under the OGL in the first place.

The OGL accomplished that, to a degree, but it also resulted in a lot of publishers lifting D&D's rules text wholesale – remember, the OGL allows verbatim copying-and-pasting of rules text, which was its main draw from the perspective of third-party publishers – and stuffing it into their own standalone games. This sort of thing was fairly small-time prior to the Pathfinder debacle, but there was enough of it going on for WotC's new owner, Hasbro, to see it as a thorn in their side.

TL;DR version: in all likelihood, 4E's GSL was an effort by Hasbro to rein in the OGL and return it to the purpose for which it had initially been sold to WotC corporate: an instrument for outsourcing D&D's long-tail support to unpaid third parties while reaping the benefits of that support in core book sales.

(Of course, as outlined in the linked post, what was actually accomplished was to shrink D&D's third-party support practically to nothing while simultaneously creating its own largest competitor; it's a fair question how much of this was due to the GSL itself, and how much of it was due to all the other corporate incompetence and general fuckery attendant to 4E's rollout, but either way, the result was WotC and Hasbro pulling the plug on 4E early, and reverting to the OGL for 5E. It was a learning experience all around – though the present business with the OGL 1.1 leads one to suspect that they didn't learn the right lessons!)

[anythingforstories]

Things I do not like AI for:

-Making images

-Making music

-Writing

-Doing anything artistic

-Thinking or drawing conclusions for me

Things I would kind of like AI for:

-Identifying the font used in an image (there's a couple places that do this, but nothing that's been super helpful to me) or video

-Making reverse images searches more efficient

-Allowing more specific, tailored searches on stock image/video sites beyond what just the image tags and alt text can help with

-Helping me find primary sources I've been unable to locate out of my own efforts during research

-Being able to ask my GPS more specific questions about which lane I need to be in (but only if it was going to be SUPER accurate)

Most common ways people seem to use AI:

-Making images

-Making music

-Writing

-Doing anything artistic

-Thinking or drawing conclusions for them

-_-

I don't mind the concept of AI as a tool. If it would help me find the resources I needed to be creative or information sources I might not have found even after extensive searching, that would be amazing!

But when people outsource creativity or critical thinking, that's when it's not okay. That's embracing "good enough" instead of excellent, generic products instead of masterpieces, and bland content instead of genuine excitement.

And when, instead of finding ways for AI to make life easier for creatives, the internet is instead buzzing about how great it is that you can just type in a few words and you get an image, or feed your vague ideas to a machine to have it spit out something resembling a story...

Isn't it sad?

[greatwyrmgold]

In a recent bout of malaise, I binge-watched Geoff Thew's worst anime (plural) of the year videos, and have thoughts about his picks for each year's worst anime (singular).

2018: My Sister My Writer

A good start for the series. I mean, it's not a good anime; those have no place in these videos. It's a brother-sister incest anime with countless technical failures in its artistry. But Geoff isn't just picking this anime because it's gross and incompetent; it also half-asses the incest, and Geoff makes a point about how that makes it even worse than normal gross incompetent anime.

Conception at least commits to its bit so that people who, for some reason, want to watch an anime about magic threesomes can kinda enjoy it. But My Sister My Writer wants to have its cake and eat it too, to "be trashy without being seen as trash". This alienates the people who actually like that flavor of trash, while still indulging in the trashiness enough to alienate people who don't. It's "an anime for no one," which makes it worse than other bad anime almost by default.

2020: Gibiate

(I will get to 2019 later)

In contrast to prior years, there's not really a "point" to highlighting Gibiate as the worst anime. It's a massive failure of plot construction and technical artistry and showrunning, but not in any way unique to Gibiate. All four of the other anime on Geoff's list were bad in distinctive ways; Dragon's Dogma's clumsy political screeds, Peter Grill's entire premise, Shiraneko Project's homeopathic pacing. Even Hatana Illusion's lazy character writing and sloppy worldbuilding stand out more than anything Gibiate does wrong.

Gibiate is just poorly constructed. It's a high concept with bad animation and a worse script, but they're bad in ways that a lot of animation and scripts are bad, just more so. Its most distinctive mistake was hiring Yoshitaka Amano as a character designer, but most of its problems are unrelated to that mistake.

I kinda wish Geoff let his grudge against Hatena Illusion's phantom-thief bait-and-switch overwhelm his objectivity that year. In principle, there's nothing wrong with highlighting an all-around stinker, but it seems a bit silly when it would be so thoroughly eclipsed right after Geoff aired that video.

2021: Ex-Arm

"Some things are obvious because they are right."

—Lanipator

On paper, Ex-Arm has a stronger story than most of Geoff's Worst Anime winners, which might be the faintest praise I've ever damned something with. Its story is not good; by all accounts, it's just a narrative framework for cyborg combat, ecchi, and half-remembered philosophy borrowed from better science fiction. But that mediocre, derivative story deserved better than this.

Visual Flight, the studio who adapted Ex-Arm, had effectively zero relevant experience. A live-action TV director was handed a company that did some outsourced model work for From Software and decided that he had a team capable of "declaring war on all the science fiction series of the world." If you're reading this post, you probably know he lost that war without fighting a single battle.

On one hand, Ex-Arm's flaws are almost purely technical in nature; its narrative is weak in ordinary ways. On the other hand, those technical flaws are without peer; its bad animation is some of the worst animation in the industry, its bad storyboards stem from production woes few anime can survive, its bad compositing is almost imperceptible next to those other flaws, like the dark mirror of great compositing.

The sheer hubris of Ex-Arm's creative leads turned mere technical flaws into an object lesson on hubris.

2022: Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer

Geoff doesn't bury the lede about the very personal reason why LBH was both the Biggest Disappointment and the Number One Big Kahuna Worst Anime of 2022 (there was a format change that year). It has bad pacing and worse visuals, but Geoff was mostly pissed that one of his favorite stories ever was turned into an animated piece of garbage.

I don't mind Geoff ranking anime according to his personal taste, but in this case his anger eclipses any discussion of what actually makes the Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer anime so bad. He briefly describes what makes the manga great, briefly describes the most unremarkable set of complaints you could make about a bad anime adaptation, and goes on an unhinged AVGN rant.

2023 part 1: Kizuna no Allele

(Due to a format change, in 2023 Geoff separately named a "worst" and a "most cursed" anime. Also "best," but that's not what this post is about.)

Kizuna no Allele is the only anime on this list I've seen a single episode, and I agree with Geoff's critiques. It's utterly devoid of substance, its style is incoherent at best, and it shills NFTs. But aside from the NFT thing, it's bad in ways that make Gibiate's failures look unique. If it wasn't for the NFT thing and the baffling way it decides to advertise Kizuna Ai (by barely including her in the show), I doubt Geoff would have enough critique to fill an "honorable mention" sentence.

Dull anime make for dull roasts, which might be part of why Geoff did a new format for 2023.

2023 part 2: My Life as Inukai-san's Dog

Geoff Thew identified this as the "most cursed" anime of 2023, and I sincerely hope it deserves that title.

You know what I said about My Sister My Writer not committing to elements that alienate ordinary audiences? This anime doesn't have that problem. I regret finding out this anime exists, and will not force this cursed knowledge on anyone who doesn't seek it out. Google at your own risk.

2019: High School Prodigies Have it Easy Even In Another Life

If I was gonna rank Geoff's picks for the worst annual anime, this would be my top pick.

As you might have noticed, his worst anime picks from 2020 onwards were mostly just bad in normal ways. Leave out the personal despair of L&BH or the...everything of Inuskai-san's Dog, and you've got a handful of anime from different genres with very similar failures.

Almost uniquely out of Geoff's "worst anime of the year" contenders, High School Prodigies Have it Easy Even In Another Life has a strong enough story for its themes to be criticized. And those themes are what Geoff tears into.

HSPHIEEIAL (pronounced hsfeeeal) is about a bunch of high school prodigies (natch), including "the world's greatest politician" and a top-tier businessman (both seventeen years old), getting isekai'd into and fixing a dystopic fantasy empire. That's a potentially interesting premise; I picked up the first volume of How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom because of how interesting that concept is. But HSPHIEEIAL handles that concept even worse than either of the Realist Hero chapters I bothered reading.

The Freyjagard Empire isn't a messy tangle of institutions entangled not just with each other but with the means of production which make Freyjagard's society possible. Ending its reign of terror doesn't require understanding how the different loci of power interact and intersect, or cautious political maneuvering, or even a few instances of surgically applied force.

The politician uses his politician power of "shooting people" to shoot the evil ugly emperor, the businessboy uses his capitalist power of wealth accumulation, and they start working with the nobles who worked for the emperor to build a new utopian society. The implication, intended or thoughtless, is that the Empire was only bad because the guy in charge was an inherently evil dude, and now that inherently good teenagers are in charge, the lackeys and organizations that served the evil emperor can be trusted to work for the greater good?

Anyways. That utopia, which our prodigies create with their prodigious skills and modern technology out of the canvas of a world whose institutions had to be razed to the ground before starting over, is "just another modern capitalist democracy". They were inventing a new society for a world where democracy was a foreign concept, and they didn't reach any higher than the status quo.

Between this high-level overview and some details I've left out (especially the businessboy's part in the plot), it does kinda seem like the story sees institutions of any kind as a morally neutral tool that leaders use to shape society in their own image. Democracy is not good because it empowers the common people or incentivizes certain types of behavior in its elected officials; it's good because it lets people choose inherently good people to be their leaders instead of being stuck with whichever royal brat happened to be born first.

That's not just bad politics; it's mundane bad politics in a context where you could get away with writing just about anything. To quote Geoff:

While other anime [in 2019] have been uglier, and boring-er, and at times even more rage-inducing-er, none of them come anywhere near being that existentially depressing for me. To think that an artist could go to the lengths of constructing out an entire anime fantasy world, and writing out a grand, serialized epic about its utopian evolution...only to end up saying "Eh, this is as good as it gets," because for all that imagination they've failed to dream up anything better... That kills me a bit inside.

Do you see what I'm saying? HSPHIEEIAL is bad in a unique way. An interesting way. To quote Geoff again, just moments later:

The real point [of the video] is for all of us to have some fun at the expense of anime with problems that I think are funny, and given how my brain works, this is the one that gave me the most to make fun of, by far.

I don't want to say that was lost in Geoff's later "Worst Anime of [Year]" videos; 2020's silver-medal loser, Hatena Illusion, gave Geoff a lot of distinctive failures to make fun of. But it's the silver-medal loser, and it lost to Gibiate, a series that just has a derivative nonsense plot and mediocre production quality. It looks bad, but it's not Ex-Arm bad, you know? It's not bad in a way that you can roast it for twenty minutes, twice in separate videos, and have new stuff each time.

Gibiate is, by my reckoning, ordinary bad. Not "4/10" ordinary, but "bad in the ways many 4/10 anime are, just not all at once". Same with L&BH, aside from Geoff's love of the source material. Same with Kizuna no Allele, aside from that one time it shilled NFTs. Honestly, mostly same with Inukai-san's Dog if we include 4/10 hentai.

[xenodile]

Nikke's Ark is the perfect late capitalist consumerism military industrial complex nightmare because the Big Three, in addition to controlling every major aspect of the city's infrastructure, have gradually introduced Nikkes as a means to phase out jobs and even art. There are restaurants run by Nikkes. Public transit is run by Nikkes. There are Nikkes created to be musicians, athletes, IT workers, engineers, actors, retail workers. The fucking POLICE are Nikkes, owned by one of the corporations, and the public doesn't know it. The in-universe equivalent of Disney has subsidized and controlled organized crime by having the largest gangs be run by corporate owned Nikkes. There are Nikke school children that exist to artificially populate classrooms so students have A Friend Their Age.

Labor, as a whole, is being gradually phased out of the Ark and outsourced to hyperpowered combat robots that can be repurposed to do any civilian job...without needing to eat, sleep, rest, or be paid. Humanity in the Ark is being funneled toward eliminating any creative or productive human endeavor to create a society that exists to be customers for the corporations, with the only outlet being to sacrifice their very lives for the war machine. Being a Commander is glamorized as a heroic and lucrative job, but the mortality rate is obfuscated and pay is given on a per mission basis with no fixed rate, not to mention that Commanders are deliberately underpaid to keep them coming back and encouraged to share their earnings with other Commanders, all to keep them collectively at the mercy of the Central Government. Meanwhile the women who become Nikkes don't get a say in what they become one they're converted, and don't even remember their names or who they were before the procedure, and most end up as literally faceless mass-production models doomed to be cannon fodder for a Commander that doesn't even recognize that they're human. And the longer it goes on, the worse it gets, as fewer and fewer people will be left to remember that this is not normal.

[dextixer]

RT is CRWBY and CRWBY is RT

For a long time now, especially right now i see a lot of people say things like "Roosterteeth is not the same as CRWBY!" "CRWBY is innocent of the things that Roosterteeth is doing!". Of course this is mostly in response to RT being caught up in yet another scandal of abuse or some other sort of fucky wucky. The most recent one being queerbaiting with BB over... Completely unrelated content. Something that most critics could have told you like 3-4 years ago, but the FNDM is only now catching on.

The other times people try to pretend that the problems of RWBY are because "CRWBY has limited resources" and they pretend that RT is some sort of evil overlord hanging over CRWBY and not giving them time/resources to make RWBY.

So, i took some time to go over a few names of people who produce this show for the sole reason of proving a simple TRUTH. That there is almost NO difference between CRWBY and RT. They are the SAME company with the SAME people.

(Directors)

Kerry Shawcross - Director of RWBY from V3 - Core member of RT

Gray Haddock - Co-Director of RWBY V3-5 - Head of Animation at RT

Miles Luna - Writer, Assistant director V3-5 - Head writer of Animation 2015-2018, core member of RT

Connor Pickens - Co-Director V6-7 - Lead Editor of RT

(Producers)

Matt Hullum - Executive Producer of RWBY - Chief content officer and co-founder of RT (CEO - 2012-2019) - His wife is a VO in the show for Raven Branwen.

Koen Wooten - producer / supervising producer 2015-2019 - Supervising producer of RT animation division

Joe Clary - Lead producer of RWBY 2017-2020 - Producer at RT

Nick Todd - Animation associate producer of RWBY 2019-2023 - Pre-production/outsourcing producer at RT

(Voice Actors)

Jack Pattillo - Co-Founder of Achievement Hunter - VA for Junior

Michael Jones - Core member of AH - VA for Sun Wukong

Lindsay Jones - Core editor of AH - VA for Ruby Rose

Barbara Dunkelman - Creative director of RT - VA for Yang Xiao Long

Burnie Burns - Co-founder of RT - CEO - CCO - VA for Taiyang Xiao Long

They Knew

Many of the highest ranking members of RT were involved in the production of RWBY. Heads of animation, Co-founders, Head Writers. People who were the leads of entire DEPARTMENTS of RT creation.

These people KNEW about EVERYTHING that happened at RT. RT is not some foreign entity from CRWBY. CRWBY is RT. RT is CRWBY.

The only parts of CRWBY that are not related to RT management are ANIMATORS and other such workers. And guess what, most of them are now FIRED.

Workers not getting paid, frat boy culture, bigoted culture, overwork etc. Were the fault of the SAME RT members that are a part of CRWBY.

And absolutely NOONE can even try to imply that the reason RWBY had problems because of "higher ups at RT" when those same Higher ups of RT worked on RWBY DIRECTLY. Including the CEO of the company and Co-Founders.

Also, as a note, Blizz fanboys tried to pull the same shit when Blizzard abuses came to light. "Its not the department that i like! My WoW team was innocent! My Overwatch team was innocent". Fucking bullshit, all of it.

[vertebrae-entertainment]

04.11.2024 - Status update!

Hey!! You're being too quiet!! Whats going on over there!! Well, good question- lets get into that:

Things are going slow! There are multiple reasons for that. First, we took on a load of side work this year to keep the lights on. Second, we're moving apartments right now, with very sudden and short notice!! Third, we have two projects and half the team is absent because of sickness! Bad news for project productivity, indeed.

Other Projects

Theres some cool stuff going on here! People who keep up with our Facebook page may have seen that we're currently collaborating with Likestillingssenteret (The Centre for Equality), Ungdom og Fritid (Youth Work Norway) and streamer MarinaaD on the multi-year educational project Trygg Gaming (Safe Gaming) on how to build safe and equality-minded gaming spaces for youths and discourage hateful conduct! This is our second time collaborating with Likestillingssenteret and MarinaaD, and we are supplying the project with some gaming and game design expertise, as well as our knowledge on the queer subset of game and gaming culture. Additionally, we have had the honor of supplying the campaign with its visual design, much helped by the center's in-house media team!

Other than that, we have some updates on the game development scene in our hometown of Hamar! I was invited to participate in a small project group to map out the potential for establishing a new hub for game development studios in the region, alongside the capable hands and minds behind Sarepta Studio, Encircle Games, Raidho Games and Snowleaf Studios. Last week we presented our proposition to the other businesses in town. Big things are happening, and i advice any game developer in town to keep their ears open!

As well, Global Game Jam Hamar 2025 is right around the corner! Like '23 and '24, buying a ticket to the event ensures you an event t-shirt designed by yours truly. Operations here are now in the hands of the freshly established Hamar Game Events... which is to say, its the same group as before but under a new name! Its gonna be loads of fun, and i hope to see some of y'all there :D

Life and stuff

Earlier this year Åge got very sick, and has been unable to regularly join me in the office. This has affected development greatly, as i am unable to work on Fangst by myself- and i can only do so much graphical work before the pile becomes too much to implement for a two person team.

Then a month ago we got an email that our apartments are getting torn down in favor of a new block project!! Poor luck!! So in short, now we're moving. We should be relocated by December, hopefully before the snow starts setting in.

Teknokrat > Fangst

The main point of this blog post, really. So, given that half the team is sick for the unforeseeable future, what are my options? I have little chance of finishing Fangst in any defendable state by myself, and we do not have the means to hire or outsource.

I decided i should focus on giving Fangst a fighting chance by releasing an self-driven project before it, which ended up being Teknokrat.

So here i am, making an unfiltered gay romance sci-fi visual novel. I write, code, make the art and the music. The rawer and raunchier the better. This should help us gain experience with a commercial release, and help us find our audience. Its lack of workforce and budget will be both its strength and weakness. And when its out, we will be readier for Fangst than we ever were earlier!

I'm very excited for this one- its currently resting at a comfortable 15k script length, soon in a demo-worthy state which will get an early playtest run in our Discord before being dropped on Itch and Steam.

If you havent heard about it before, its about class warfare, cyborgs and techno! I hope you'll look forward to it :3

In the meantime, consider Fangst on hiatus until Åge is able to rejoin full time. This doesnt mean their unmistakable creative flair will not be found in Teknokrat, however! Åge is helping me with design, marketing and planning- as well as lending me their video editing expertise. Get well soon, your presence is missed!

Twitter is dead!!

We moved that branch of our social media operations to Bluesky. Hit us up here! We're also here on personal accounts, and are really enjoying our time here so far. Live updates can as usual be found through our Discord.

_______________________________

OK! I think thats most of whats been happening lately. As always, i hope you're all well, and that you know we appreciate your patience and enthusiasm for our projects! Talk soon, when Teknokrat is looking more ready for sneak peeks!

-Hauk

[fruitcd]

listen i get that being beholden to youtube sponsors and ad revenue is extremely difficult, unreliable, and probably soul crushing, and i really dont blame them for wanting to take things into their own hands howeverrrrr i think its obvious to anyone with a brain that watcher have been making some really questionable financial decisions. i knew ghost files was expensive but ryan saying a season can cost upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars is insane, esp when so many of the costs he mentioned seem like they could be mitigated. (they outsource post production????? when they have 25+ employees????? genuinely, why do they need 25 employees?? what could those people possible be doing??) theyve been open abt the fact that even with sponsors, patreon, ads, and merch sales they havent been making nearly enough money to keep the company afloat but they just keep expanding anyways. why do they have a beautiful huge office in the middle of LA and 25 employees and a score of high production shows with interns that they cancel after a season bc they dont immediately go viral?

the "leaving youtube" vid itself is a perfect example of why theyre struggling. this video needed to be a five minute brief explanation of what exactly theyre doing, why theyre doing it, and what they hope to do in the future. instead its a 15 min long vid that opens with establishing shots of someone walking into the watcher office and the hollywood sign, followed by 5 minutes of sad piano music playing behind shane ryan and steven talking abt how much youtube means to them. they dont actually get to the point until around 6 mins in. this vid drives me crazy bc all they needed was shane ryan and steven on a couch talking to a tripod about their new streaming service and instead its a pseudo documentary with 15 people credited in the description. this vid itself was probably way more expensive to make than it needed to be!

the underlying problem is that instead of finding creative ways to do what they want with the budget they have (saw 2004 says hi), they instead want to find ways to increase the budget so they can do everything they want. which i truly sympathize with, it must be hard to invest so much in your dream and then have it not completely work out and depending on youtube ad revenue/sponsors must be awful. but lbr a lot of the problems are self inflicted and the choice to put the burden on the audience to pay $6/month to let them do everything they want instead of finding ways to reduce their bloated operating costs has obviously already pissed a lot of people off.