#i tried to make an animatic but i got lazy

[crispytime]

emo ass

[benene-the-banana]

I’m gonna be so fr with y’all…..

I have no idea what possessed me to “animate” this Sonic Adventure 2 scene as Galactic Gaming but I did it BWHWBWHWB

Tbh I mostly used this as a lip sync practice since I hadn’t done one in a LONG ASS time. And I really needed to refresh my skills (even tho I got a bit lazy toward the end.

And I know that the script didnt really make sense for them to lip sync considering theyre humans but oh well the joke animatic is still funny anyways.

To make up for it I tried adding text that would fit them more instead for certain parts.

If you’re wondering why I chose these two specifically for this, it’s because that these two characters have an insane amount of similarities. So I thought it would be a really silly and fun(ny) idea to do this.

Im even working on a post about them and their dynamic that will go into some of their character similarities (Ill probably do a different ones for the ones that don’t get included in that post)

[thatskindarough]

Oh it was only 3 actually, counting that one animatic on YouTube (that BTW i had no idea was yours! I was pleasantly surprised <3)

And I found it so funny that you have somewhat an idea of who I might be PFFF you can throw the guess, it would be funny if you get it right (don't have to say my name if you don't remember it, you can just go for something you remember NFKDSJ)

also time for an actual question since i'm already here, what program did you used for the animatic? I've always wanted to get into animating but most softwares cost money or are free but really bad so I could use some recommendations 👀

Good to hear there is no imposter lol. I should probably start using the false pfp so people know it’s me but I’m too lazy to change them all 💀 also my guess was right as to who you were but probably mainly because I put on my Aziraphale detective hat and you were the last notification before the ask inbox notification and your icon had a red beanie. We meet once again.

As for the animatic I used procreate for drawing and capecut for composting. Not the most efficient method but I liked it. I ended up segmenting off each camera angle into a different canvas and making any animation for the shot that way. I love capecut because the free version has every editing function you need for an animatic and the watermark only appears as a black screen at the end so it’s so easy to crop out. It’s probably the best free editing software I’ve found. (I also used a screen recording device to record the audio cause even if you buy a song it sometimes doesn’t allow you to put it in the program.)

I honestly recommend procreate if you have a device that supports it. I think it’s still only a 10 dollar onetime purchase. But if you don’t have a device that supports it, I have used things like flip a clip which is free, and the paid version is pretty cheap. I have also dabbled in an app called rough animate, also free (you don’t have to pay for the onion skins) which was also okay. I got frustrated cause of the lack of brush choice but other than that it’s not bad at all. If you can’t pay anything at all I’d recommend this because, unlike flip a clip, you don’t have to pay to unlock the a lot of the really helpful features. Ibis paint also added an animation feature I think so that’s an option. Idk if you need the paid version for it, but I remember only having to watch ads for a minute to unlock all the brushes so maybe it’s the same for the animation feature lol.

If you have a computer set up, I’ve also heard nice things about Krita for animation. It’s free and from what I remember it had a really good timeline set up. I actually tried to use it, but my computer at the time was old and slow and it lagged to much, and then I had a shitty no screen tablet and my hand eye coordination when it came to drawing and writing is quite bad, so it just wasn’t a good set up for me personally. But I know people make it work. I mean, people make this kinda shit in MS paint, if you’re dedicated enough you can technically do it in almost any program (though you may not be able to make it as polished as you’d like.)

Then there is Clip Studio Paint, which does cost money but is way less expensive than like, harmony or adobe. The EX version which gives you a second of free animation per project is a $5 monthly subscription for once device, PC MaC IOS, and the Pro version (which is more expensive) gives you unlimited animation animation access for I believe around 10 -15 dollars a month (still less than most streaming services lol). There’s also a one time purchase version that is $50 dollars, but it goes on sale A LOT for $25! Although I don’t think it gives you more than a second of animation. CSP also has a very long free trial period, for EX it was legit like 3 months. so if you try it out and like it, I’d definitely suggest finding a way to pay for it. It’s actually used in some professional studios in Japan, so if you have any professional aims for your work it’s a good starting platform to get into industry software. However a lot of the nice things CSP offers for animation are not needed in the story boarding/animatic stage, so if that’s as far as you wanna take your animations it maaaaaaay not be worth it unless you love it.

If anyone else has other cheap or free recommendations feel free to add on. I have attempted to make animatics on procreate, rough animate, and flip a clip; all of which I have uncompleted projects on. It just so happens that procreate is what I was using when I finally made an animatic I liked enough to see until completion. Whatever software you do use, just make sure you learn how to use it before attempting a big project. Do some smaller stuff before you try anything big.

Edit to check the comments! We got other good recommendations for computers!

[michuyox]

What do you use to draw? I'm looking for better drawing tools myself, so I thought id ask one of my favorite artists aha-

Hello!! Thank you for asking and for the compliment, it makes me super happy when people ask me for tips even though I'm not good at sharing any 😭, but I'll try my best!

For tablet/device, I use a small and black intuos wacom tablet I got like 4 years ago, and is also my first tablet because I'm poor as hell and too lazy to get a better/new one lmao. But I really recommend small tablets like these to start off with if you're a beginner artist!!

If you have an ipad and prefer drawing directly on a screen, I suggest starting with an apple or just a normal ipad pen!! I have that, and it works out just fine!

But if you wanna try something more fitting and new or "professional", any wacom tablet is perfect in my opinion. That's mostly because I've always drawn with a wacom tablet, but I haven't had any issues with it! Except having to change the nib overtime, but that happens to most tablet pens lmao.

Anywho, screen tablets are the best to use in my opinion. It's easier to draw with which means it also brings out your actual artstyle if that makes sense? Again, this is just my personal experience and may not apply to everyone!!

As for programs, I use medibang! Medibang is an awesome program to use if u wanna start off cheap, it's free so (not sponsored)! It's also great for manga artists or people with an anime-like artstyle. But it also works just fine for anyone!

Another program I think is neat is paint tool sai! This program is also free, and I think many artists already knows what this is lol. I actually started off with paint tool sai when I got my tablet for the first time until I switched over to medibang! To be honest though, paint tool sai has A LOT of buttons and stuff which can get a tiny bit confusing and overwhelming, but that's probably just because I haven't used it in a LONG time.

If you wanna try more professional programs, then procreate is a great deal for you! Costs a little bit og money, but it's totally worth it! It has multiple pretty brushes you can use and you can even make your own brushes and download others, can automatically straighten/smooth your lines, and even has an animation feature! Procreate was my second program on my ipad after ibispaint x (we don't talk about it) and it's worked wonders!

And then the last program, clip studio paint! Not free, but again, it's obviously worth it. It's really good for people who wants to start animating or take art to a next level! I tried it once for free, but I haven't touched it ever since because I'm just so used to draw on medibang at this point and I'm mostly comfortable drawing with it. But it's really great for animation and I really recommend it to anyone who likes to make animatics/animations or comics!

I have nothing else to say, but thank you so much for asking! This was an awesome question <3

[7ven-devils]

A really long overanlysis of minecraft servers.

This will be my only warning, this shit is really long.

I promised this to @ivi-prism 2 weeks ago (hi, i am Svetla) but university said no and then i feel my notes were incomplete so i have to do more research.

So let's talk about anarchism and capitalism. As a future political scientist, really bugs me how the fandom and some content creators (im looking at you techno) misinterpret both theories.

Yeah this will be a overanalysis about the political, social and economic system of two minecraft servers. Why? Cause i like analysis things like this and finally i can solved what is the system of hermitcraft and thats make me happy.

Things to consider:

First im not native english speaker and im lazy so im not often write or talk in english so my typos can make Doc really proud.

Second i don't watch Dsmp i only know things about the server by the animatics, the constant information wich pop up here on tumblr, the crossover fanfics and the tiny vods that youtube insist play when i have activate automatic reproduction.

Third i tried to simplified this much as i can because this analysis i maded talking with my friends (also political scientists) and a former professor, so it got quite technical while i was writing it.

And finally don't take this seriously, I'm not trying to insult anyone, I only started this because the hermitfandom started saying that hermitcraft was capitalist and then everyone started comparing the Dsmp with hermitcraft saying anarchism vs capitalism, that's why the dsmp entered into this analysis.

Guys, seriously chaos isn't anarchism and "sucefully economic" isn't capitalism, even paid with "money" (diamonds in this case) isnt necessary capitalism.

First, mini glossary:

I understand a server like a Society/State (country) with Mr Weber definition. In really vague words a State is anyone that has a territory and has legal control of violence (the laws, no the abuse of authority).

I understand the private property as the hermits bases and/or shops (i suppose only base in dsmp? Idk)

I understand the mass production as the farms and resources.

Capitalism is a economic, politic and social theory, wich it considers private property essential and tends to monopolize the resources 'cause this it also considered private property.

Anarchy means "without government" it has its origin in the Ancient Greece. And Anarchism theory is just a society free from any political authority, but respecting the liberties of the others.

A Failed State is which one lose control of the legal violence, and can't provide the peace, essential human rights and the basics for a normal lifestyle to its people.

I think thats all the bored shit (i hope so). Now the interesting shit.

Why hermitcraft isnt capitalist?

Short answer, their idea of private property is not the same as capitalism has.

Long answer, even if they have their own stuff, they had a really strong sense of community and dont really care if someone take things from them.

We can see this in the beginning of season when Iskall take some mini blocks from Etho and he didn't really care (yeah, iskall "paid" him, but later i will explain this) or the multiple times Grian "borrow" things from Iskall and Mumbo in season 6 or Scar in season 7, the team ZIT constantly take things from each other and i can go on and on with examples, but the point here is this couldn't happen if they had a capitalist society because this would break the "private" part of private property and mass production.

Basically their friendship made so strong their sense of community that they are basically inmune to capitalism, Uncle Marx would be proud of them (not really, but would be funny). So they are communist? Nope, communist don't believe in private property and the hermits does.

But you just said-? I said they dont has the SAME idea of private property as capitalism does. They still have their bases, farms and shops, but for them their private property isnt sacred like in a capitalism system would be.

They're respect each other things because they appreciated the effort and values the time the person puts on their buildings and not only because doesn't belongs to them (and obviously cause theyre frends, but shush, this is a overanalysis, the obvious things doesn't have place here) i mean even for the shenanigans they are really polite and try to cause the least damage possible not because is not of them but because they valued the person.

Basically the famous honor code of hermitcraft.

What about the economic system and the shopping district?

Lets talk about the elephant in the room.

If Hermitcraft isnt a capitalist system, why they have a economic system based in diamonds?

Well, despite the exchange based in money for resources or services is a principal characteristic of capitalism, it isnt exclusive of that theory.

The money is a social consensus, cause barter has becomes obsolete and gold isnt cheap or infinite to use as payment. And basically, this is why we use money on this days (if you want to know the history of money ask to your trusted historian or Wikipedia).

What does this remind us? Yep, diamonds and iou's are a consensus too. When the 1.16 came out some hermits tried to change to netherite as payment and didn't suit, so they ignored it and continued with their current payment system.

And as much as Mr Smith likes to say that this is how the free market (and his stupid invisible hand) works, capitalism needs the monopoly of resources and people who works to pay for those resources.

But in Hermitcraft nobody really controlled the resources, anyone can go and collect their materials or made a farm. They just decided don't do it and go and buy it, because they save the time to go and collect for themselves, in other words they paid for the time.

Various hermits say they saved so much time go and buy the materials instead to collect themself or trade with the villagers (cause theyre the worst and all of us know it) thats why the barge and lookie lookie at my bookie are so profitable.

The shopping district it wasn't a thing before season 4, i dont really sure how it worked before, because i started watch in season six and sadly i have a boring adult life to saw the old seasons, but i assume it works in the same way that the trades the hermits does between them to accord a discount or a collab, and speak directly with the interested hermit or directly take it and pays what's considered it was fair, like iskall did with etho.

Like i said all what's happen in hermitcraft is a consensus, even the shopping district.

So yeah, that isnt a thing that would happen in a capitalism system, probably you would be dead, because "how are you dare to entered to my property", or in the jail, "because thats not yours".

So, what is hermitcraft?

For the surprise from much of you, Hermitcraft has an anarchist system.

What?! But their server is so peaceful, they don't steal from each other, they doesn't griefing, hows that possible?!

Well, the anarchism isn't really a violent political theory, at least in its beginning, actually anarchism is one of the most peaceful theories i studied, thats why i dont really thing it will worked in our society, but work in a server of 24 friends. Its too idealist.

I don't really study all of the thoughts corrents of anarchism because they are a lot. But the one we are interested is one of original thought corrent, The Mutualism, this in contrast with their cousin Communism doesn't believes the private property was something bad and considered like one of the rights from the individual, but different as capitalism because like i said before it wasn't sacred and communal things will exist to help others to start or recover.

Proudhon, one of it intellectuals, considered not paid for the work of the other it was a form to violate their liberties and feel horrofied with Marx when he said we have to abolish the private property.

The mutualists believes that each person should possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, and the products obtained would be trade in the market for the amount equivalent of their work.

This sound familiar, isnt it? Hermitcraft works in this way.

The thing with anarchism is they don't believes in a government over the people. And the hermits doesn't have one, yeah there's Scar being the mayor, but he isnt have a power over the rest and only is in charge of the "cowmercial district" even aquatown isn't part of his jurisdiction, his function is more of organization, like when we put a friend in charge to organizing part of a roadtrip.

It's the same with Xisuma figure, we all put him in a position of the admin of hermitcraft, but the truth is he isnt the only one with admin commands (but apparently some or all of them losed their admin status, at least in one of the last tango's streams, he hasnt it anymore) and various hermits said that he is more like an ambassador of them in the legal things of the server.

The hermits take all of they decisions in group and in the majority of things all of them needs to be agreed with the decision or they simple doesn't do it. And this is a characteristic of the mutualism because for them anyone are over the other.

And if you aren't already bored at this point and you put attention to what i wrote of the concept of private property in the mutualism, you would see it is practically the way hermitcraft works. They make their bases and farms, recolect resources and sell what they don't will use, buy mostly to save time and paid for the price what they considered fair. Yeah i know sometimes they do some farm specifically for one shop, but this is more "yeah, this is my thing" (Tango and Iron; Ren and wood) or a division of activities "if you do that, i do this".

The perfect utopia.

What about the Dsmp?

If you do it to here, congratulations.

So what about the Dsmp, i entered here because i want to read of them and the only thing i read was about hermitcraft.

Well, the Dsmp only entered in the equation because much of you said they were an anarchist server, but i see it more like a "failed state" and when i was talked with an exprofessor he agreed with me.

I know the term of failed state is controversial and is almost obsolete, but is the best way to describe the server and stop said it is anarchist.

So why failed state and not an anarchist state? Because they have a government (or apparently multiples) a failed one, but is there, if it were an anarchist server wouldn't have one.

Usually the failed states are known for being violent and volatile places in which ones their governments can't provides the basics to their people to live, normally are places with ethnics conflicts, civil wars, authoritarian governments or states in wars. The most common examples are Haití, Somalia or Syria.

And i am sure you can see the similarities with the Dsmp, so yeah, theyre chaotic but not anarchist.

The wars ruined the stability from the server, have a multiple sides and a megalomaniac for admin, but the goverment still there and they are fighting for the power wich wouldn't happen if the server were anarchist because anarchism don't believe the power should be possess for someone.

The server simply is failed state wich struggles under a violent fight for power.

--------------------------------------------------

If you read this far, you're a hero and had my gratitude for read my useless thoughts. Maybe some day i do it other overanalysis of this servers. I hope you enjoyed and dont confused so much.

Thanks for read.

And if there are some angry economist with me for "misrepresent" the capitalist i am completely open to a debate, my only condition is it would be in chilean spanish ;)

[bittybattybunny]

Did Kai have any sort of family after losing her foster family and becoming the Demon King? Or did she only have her husband?

Yes actually!!! A lot of Kai’s own story involves her own found family collection (i say collection just. cuz she tends to outlive them)

I’ve briefly mentioned she has a few kids and you see them in one of my sketchbook tours

but she also has a group of friends who she was close to

and the opening chapter of one of her ‘stories’ involves her dealing with the loss of a close friend she considered family (she even tried to go through legal means to see him but when humans turned around and said fuck you she snuck in. I can actually post this writing if people wanna read it?)

She also has some of her adoptive family still alive tho the bloodline is thinner. The Hellsing family she was raised in still exists to a point in her story (before the great catastrophe at least) Her whole ‘became the demon king’ thing happened when her uncle attacked her but she was able to get her sister in law and unborn nephew to escape while she distracted the rest (i have a whole ass animatic planned for this to the song “monster” from frozen’s musical. someday. someday I’ll be able to sit down on it weep)

This nephew was the one who hired Ren to help find “the king of fear” as she was known at that point. Alex is a good boy. His son was the one who went to find his great aunt after Ren’s death and she fully became a fallen god and offered her a place to stay and just. try to relax. She ended up falling into a deep sleep for a while and his family was the ones to build the ‘tomb’ she normally rests in when ever she has these extreme ‘low energy’ periods which can last between 5 years to her longest one was 5000. Typically she’ll rest for between 20-50 years at a time. and there’s a legit reason she does this too. But that’s not about family---

Point is that family is still very fond of their matriarchal demoness and she helped them found “Prometheus” a group to help humans deal with monsters and monsters live in peace. (cuz boy howdy do people have trigger fingers) there are other groups in their world with either similar goals or ones to ‘suppress’ monsters (example: The Order is a group who sees monsters as tools and lesser beings. sometimes Prometheus is forced to work with them and normally they send strong demons or dragons and such so that The Order can’t do anything to their operative. it was on one of these collaborations that Kai kidnapped Booberry from them. she regrets nothing.)

Kai often just refers to the current descendant as just “her nephew” as she’s too lazy to shove the amount of “great” in front of it because she’s old. there’s only one case of a niece and that’s where the bloodline ended (again that’s another story all together)

When Kai woke up after the Great Catastrophe alone she ended up meeting a young man named Leo (who if you look in Kai’s tag on my blog you can see him!) Who she bonded with and she likes hanging out with (and there’s other things but I’m not gonna talk about it)

There’s also her ‘generals’ and a few of them are gonna show in TLC soon (just a brief cameo) A group of 4 who’ve met Kai in a few incarnations and they always tend to get along. Original names were Matt, Trisha, Faith, and Maki is Maki (she’s an elf so she lives longer) Current names are Byron, Tiffny, Jacob and Maki. These four actually form Ren’s party when he’s trying to find his wife at the actual start of “Nightmare’s Dream” and you learn they each have a connection to Kai through the story.

Matt/Branden/Byron; he’s featured in the writing I mentioned up top, he’s kinda similar to Leo in the way he interacts with Kai as an almost human morality pet for Kai. He used to be Kai’s student when she was teaching, and his father was the warden at the jail her friend Sammy was in (this is the friend she lost) Matt can see through her disguise when she’s showcasing nightmares. Kai can cause hallucinations on targets using her ‘fear’ hence her title “king of fear” and normally they are only visible to her and her target. But Matt can see them.

He ends up getting in trouble a few times; once with a tribe of demons who want to turn children into imps, once with the literal Anti christ, once with a haunted house. And each time Kai was there and ends up saving him.

Matt later is in an accident and ends up reincarnating as a winged human named Branden and has all his past memories. So when he starts working at Prometheus as one of their ‘informants’ (aka he goes to gather information in both human and supernatural affairs. he’s referred to often as the angel of trust because of his silver tongue) and he meets her again he shouts something from one of his classes with her causing her to snap back on reflex until she realizes (running joke is Kai loathes Julius Ceaser and if you say his name she always whips around shouting “WAS A SLUT AND A HARLOT” in a very aggressive tone. It makes people laugh when she does and she always gets embarrassed afterwards)

The two of them end up working together for a while and become good friends (and maybe a bit more but they never state really) but then when with his new work partner Trisha (nicknamed angel of death, she works in the sector that deals with cleanup) he ends up betraying Prometheus and Trisha rips his wings off and kills him (this is the context between the ‘redraw’ meme I do every few years of a man with a bleeding back drowning)

Trisha is also someone who grew close to Kai (hence she killed Branden because his folly led to Kai nearly going berserk) but she was killed by a sleeper agent from the order. And this is how Kai lost two of her close friends.

Now backing up to Sammy the inmate one; he was with her when Kai met her first child, the young moon goddess Artemis. Arty is a constant for the demoness ever since she picked her up in the woods (her arc also has one of my favorite kai lines: (which i can’t find the direct line but)

Sam shuddered as he looked around the woods, “Do you ever feel like there’s 100 eyes watching you?”

“Yes but it didn’t work out so we broke up.” The demon responded flatly as she looked around with a deep set scowl.

While she was out with Sammy when he was hunting they ended up finding a little girl who turned out to be a new goddess and her elder sister was kidnapped by the embodiment of Greed in his attempt to become a god. Kai ends up stopping this but also kinda ends up becoming Arty’s mom. While she doesn’t raised Arty fully she does do a lot of teaching and such for her and does refer to her as “her daughter” and Arty calls her mom. when the great catastrophe occurs, Arty is one of the few gods who remained when the rest went to new ‘realms’ or simply vanished and is considered one of the main gods of their world because of this.

And then there’s her son Ganon, an Orc Lord she adopted when his village was ruined. he currently poses as her ‘demon king’ while she pretends to be the chancellor (this is the ruse she uses. normally heroes will fight the ‘king’ and lose but if they actually are a threat or have poor reasoning she kills them from behind. this is also how the story starts as someone found a spell to try and incapacitate her buttt)

There’s also morte and her daughter demeter (I’ve shown them before, a set of necromancers) who she’s very friendly with. Demeter even calls her aunty Kaya and loves to sit on her lap and such during meetings. (i have one snippet when Kai was recruiting someone to their side but hadn’t told her yet she was the REAL demon king and Demeter was sitting on her lap laughing) Morte is thankful to Kai for saving her circus (Morte runs a circus that helps those stuck in limbo pass on but at one point demons of sin over took it in a way to gather souls)

There’s also her friend Ciera, the daughter of the girm reaper. she’s Kai’s best friend for the most part of her life, and is the one who helps Ren when the gods of life and death try to prevent him from reincarnating again (which is like other things a whole other story) (she also briefly shows in Bone Stealer at one point. While visiting bunny’s sick grandmother, Bunny and Steve run into Ciera as she’s leaving. Steve stops Bunny from attacking her) She’s over all chill.

There’s also Nicki. Kai’s ‘twin’ brother. He’s the ‘bad guy’ through the arc that contains Leo and sets up ‘the great Split’ that Kai will cause (this is lore/plot stuff) He originally was raised to hate her by their maternal Uncle who’s a arch mage like Ren however he’s fallen due to his hatred of Kai’s birth. Nicki is not really her brother (in the first life) but a failed clone of the demoness. When Kai is reborn Nicki gets to actually be her brother and the two get along really well and he’s very protective of his sister now that he understands what her actual deal is and not the bs his uncle fed him. Before the rebirth too Nicki helped kai solve some stuff and worked with her until his death (unlike her, he was not immortal)

And then Kai actually has two bio children with Ren! Akito her son takes after her and he’s the one who takes over her role as the true demon king of Tir-Na-Nocht so she’s able to die and try life again, and a daughter, Rei who takes after Ren in looks but... she’s a himbo. pure moron. she got her grandpa’s himbo gene strong. She’s a cat girl who works with her brother and she is the head of the guard.

Aki actually has his own story where he grew up in a ‘mundane’ world but then his entire class got ‘isekaid’ to another. it gets shown that this isn’t truly the case. the great ‘split’ mentioned above was Kai literally broke the world in two realms. She made one primarily humans and high tech and then the other was magic and mostly monsters. there are a mix of both but it cut down heavily on the murder. She raised Aki in the human side for his and Rei’s safety due to them being the children of a fallen god (mama worries) and Aki inherited his mother’s odd ‘status’ “Hero/Demon King”  so he has to not expose his demon nature and also stay below the radar (it turns out the person who summoned them was attempting to break a centuries old treaty) until his mother and father can figure out what happened to him (thankfully he can go to a church and his older sister Arty can act as a messenger but there’s a bit of a time split in the worlds) That world is actually the one “Fae Rules” takes place in o7o.

She also is friends with a dead prince named “Shade” (yes this is who you think it is) as well as her ‘cousin’ Sena (who she loves to give shit to)

And in her second life she obvs has her brother, cousins, her father (her father’s boyfriend/her manny), aunt’s etc!!!

So yes; she had family other than her husband!!!! And she cherishes them all.

[shadow--writer]

Maeve and her sisters! They’re very close and loving, and will adopt you into the family ;3. lmfao tumblr butchering it yet again, and I got lazy with the background I did not want to spend any more on it, might redo it some time later im tired tho soooo XDDD

Aislin is on the left, Maeve in the middle and Rhiannon is the one on the right (she normally has armour on her shoulder but it would poke Maeve in the eye so I decided to remove it lol)!

Some fun facts about them! More under the cut, I really like coming up with family dynamics you don’t see enough loving ones so I’m gonna remedy that!

~~~~

⚝ Rhiannon is an ace lesbian! Depending on the storyline she’s either married or engaged to her significant other, Grace. Either way they have four kids. The oldest is Áine (who is 8), the youngest is Brianna (who is 2) and then there’s the twins Fergus (the older one by three minutes) and Farrell (they are 6). Two boys and two girls

⚝ Maeve is the wine aunt who spoils her nieces and nephews mercilessly. She loves all four of them to death, even if Farrell and Fergus are little shitheads who always get into trouble. A requirement for her when dating someone is if they are good with kids. They don’t have to like kids, they just have to be nice to kids. You can tell a lot about a person based on how they treat children and animals. 

⚝ Aislin is pansexual, and their dad is bisexual (he is still friends with one of his ex’s who brings his husband around. Maeve and her sisters see them as part of the family which makes their dad chuckle because who would’ve thought)

⚝ Rhiannon is the oldest, Aislin is the youngest and Maeve is the middle child. Their mom died hunting a god when they were all pretty little, but Aislin was a baby so Rhiannon and Maeve took it upon themselves to look after her

⚝ As kids they regularly shared a bed, cuddling together. 

⚝ Their mom was a very kind person, Aislin was too young to remember her but Maeve and Rhiannon both have super fond memories of her. 

⚝ Rhiannon has three dogs, all Kerry Beagles. The dogs love Maeve and will tackle her with kisses. Aislin loves the dogs too and spoils them rotten

⚝ Rhiannon is 6′3, Maeve is 5′3, and Aislin is 5′0 (their dad is 6′8 (Tweaking his height a little lol) and their mom was 5′5. Maeve and Aislin get their heights from their grandmother on their mom’s side)

⚝ Rhiannon is the only huntress in the family, Maeve and Aislin both fall under the explorer part of their coming of age culture (I can elaborate another time)

⚝ Rhiannon taught Maeve how to use a battle axe. Rhiannon wields one herself, along with a spear and a longbow. Maeve and Aislin both prefer medicines but they have weapons of choice. Maeve with an axe or bow, Aislin with a sling and a javelin. Their culture is very fighting based so they can and will kick your ass 

⚝ Maeve is actually really strong for her size. She can pick up Muriel, his feet with be dragging on the ground because she is short but she can lift him

⚝ They have a pretty big family, their dad (Caedmon) has two brothers and one sister. Their mom had an older brother who is the wine uncle. Their whole family is wild, there will be fires and lots of alcohol and laughter when they all get together (it’s CHAOS why their dad never tries to get them together 

⚝ Yes they are the number one cause of fires if they all get together. One of their uncle’s (dad’s side) has an obsession with showing the kids how to light fires with flint. Maeve likes to watch it spread. Rhiannon lies to cover is, Aislin just thinks it’s pretty and Caedmon dies laughing when they get in trouble again

⚝ Aislin and Maeve always got into trouble as kids, Rhiannon was the only one getting them out of trouble but even then they got her into trouble with them. They were known as the chaos trio. Yes they were called that after the great fire incident of their family’s get together 

⚝ Maeve and Caedmon are the only ones who can sing in their family. Aislin attempts to and Rhiannon has come to terms with the fact she has zero musical talent

⚝ Caedmon would sing his daughters to sleep every night (I have a headcanon he sang Queen of Argyll to Maeve every night, lol I heard the song and bam a new culture was born. There’s a really good Arcana animatic to the song too! Check it out if you have the chance!)

⚝ All of them like to dance. Rhiannon is a bit socially awkward, while Maeve and Aislin are the lives of the party. They drag their older sister onto the dance floor and everything melts away and they all fall over laughing at some point

⚝ They’re all very protective of one another so if you date one expect the other two to give you the good old: “hurt her and we rearrange your organs” talk. If you’re a good one they’ll love you almost immediately, letting you join in on the shenanigans   

⚝ They’re all sensitive babies and will cry over a sad book or song. Rhiannon likes to think she eludes the badass energy (and she does) but she’s the softest out of all of them

⚝ Rhiannon hates the taste of alcohol, Maeve and Aislin like it. Maeve has the highest tolerance in her close family (jury is still out on whole family). Aislin loves fruity drinks and having fun but she uhh...is a lightweight 

⚝ Maeve is the most blunt and brazen in the family. She isn’t afraid to tell people what she wants, who she doesn’t like, who she will fight etc. Rhiannon is more reserved and Aislin is the one cheering Maeve on. 

⚝ Maeve is the most flirty with Aislin coming in as a close second. Rhiannon is ace, but she does enjoy cheesy flirting with her significant other Grace

⚝ Maeve is the only one in the family to have the silver streak in her hair. It’s considered a blessing from their Gods. It symbolizes protection, luck and safety. When their mom died her hair went pure silver, the symbol of a fallen warrior who the Gods blessed. Maeve has a good ongoing joke about how good her protection was since she like, died

⚝ All three of them are affectionate, but in their own ways. Maeve is very touchy, and very soft (she will give u all the kisses). Aislin is words of affirmation, Rhiannon is both.

⚝ Caedmon is so proud of his daughters, they like to write and visit him often, sometimes taking their significant others along for the ride. He enjoys meeting new people, especially the ones his daughters are dating 

⚝ If you get married to a sister the rest of the family will welcome you in with open arms. If you aren’t like, a piece of crap or anything lol. Their family is very warm, kind and supportive, leading to how Maeve and her sisters are today.

[dredreadsdrawing]

Oc-tober day 8: Sadness

I also made an animatic which is why this took a day longer to post (cuz my video didn't wanna export ewe) Here!

Recalling my past Final Girls story posts, I mentioned Lottie befriends a girl that was a defect of the outcasts. This is Spirit. A trans gal overwhelmed by anxiety and trying to fit in. It's noticeable but I'll point it out anyways, she has a lazy eye. I love her to bits oof. Her story goes as follows.

She's been Bo's, the eventual head of the outcasts, best friend since they were children. Growing up together, he knew her by her deadname and was the only one there for her when she came out during highschool. She didn't expect to have someone on hee corner, nevermind someone as protective as him. He waa always looking out for her, making sure she appeared normal... Calling out her flaws when she didn't. All with good intentions of course, so that she could blend in better.

Blending in was her priority. It became her anxiety.

They graduated and went to the same university. They became roomates, and though they went to different departments, she would always spend her extra time at his building, hanging around his fellow classmates. He soon got a group forming that wasn't... The best.

Outcasts, they called themselves. The odd ones out. The newly marginalized. The ones that society was stepping over.

She really hid it deep inside herself what group Bo was really forming. How they looked and sounded to outsiders. Especially on a campus so diverse, they stuck out like a sore thumb.

She never got along with the other outcasts, and they never paid her much mind. She blended into the background, only watching, never engaging in their heated discussions of injustices. She was only there for her friend.

A semester in, life with Bo is going well. Beinf roommates came naturally to them, and they feel a lot closer now. A bit too close. A night without reservations, they end up having a fling. They wake up surprised, but neither runs away.

They realize they could fill each other's needs in a new way.

For now. Atleast thats what he keeps cementing. He thinks friends dating is too complicated. But fucking? Sure. No strings attached is great.

And Spirit isn't complaining. She gets a bit delusional with her expectations of the future, too sure of her place eventually changing.

When in comes a girl that takes Bo over in one clean sweep. She runs the group now. They're all over her. All the points she makes, all her plans and visions for the future. She's inspiring.

Spirit's gut sinks fast.

She never spoke out because she naively hoped Bo would let go of his prejudices. He'd been so supportive of her, afterall!

But his biases are being set in stone more and more each day. He's grown entitled and angry. And Spirit is afraid.

She can't get through anymore. Hes furious whenever she tries to make a point contradicting his world view. The night before the big plan, she gives him an ultimatum.

He calls it off or she's calling the cops.

He calms down. He tries his coaxing voice. He tells her they can talk it through and she melts like butter into his embrace.

Then he beats her. He locks her in his room. He takes her cell phone, tells her he'll let her out when they're done, and he's gone.

She's left sobbing on the floor, shame welling up for all her inaction and letting him get to this point. She was so stupid. So careless.

.... People were going to get killed.

She stops her pity party and she calculates. She breaks the doorknob. She hotwires his beat up truck. His backup pistol is still inside.

She feels this is her responsibility. She's going to make ir right.

At the scene, the bloodbath has only just begun. Victims scatter and the outcasts hunt with ammo to boot. But one of them stays behind when he notices Bo's truck.

Bo had told them Spirit wasn't up for this.

He smiled at 'her' seeming change of heart. More than the privileged minorities, he hated people like 'her.'

It starts off with the facade of friendliness. He's happy she made it. She aims the gun at him. He's surprised, but he points his shotgun back.

She wouldn't do it. She was always soft-

A shot to the shoulder. She apologizes for missing. Another to the neck. That's better. He drops down, gurgling, clutching his wounds. He's dying, and he's so fucking pissed off about it.

She doesn't have time for his show. She stomps forward, her real target in her mind.

She won't cover for his ass anymore. She's going to kill Bo.

Passing through, she knows where to find him, but it takes a while. She doesn't want to waste more bullets on the others, she only has four more, so she has to hide.

Once she finally reaches the main house, she quietly comes up the stairs and prepares. She's shaking but she's willing. This is her redemption.

A shot rings out and deafens her ears. She bursts through the door.

The girl that took over has killed Bo.

She smiles at Spirit's entrance.

"Here to pick up my sloppy seconds?"

She laughs and waves as she sits on the windowsill.

"He wasn't my type anyways."

She slips outside.

Spirit let her go.

She wasn't her target. It was Bo. And now he was done.

She feels so hollow, looking down at him. So unfinished. The four bullets in their chamber feel heavy.

She looks beside him and notices a book. One the girl had kept close to her person ever since she met her.

She picks it up. She opens it.

A scream rings.

She can still help someone.

She tucks it under her arm and walks to the source of the sound, but finds Lottie already there. Already done.

A single girl from the victims is still alive. She may be the only one. They crowd together, explaining snippets of who they are. They're on the same side. But Lottie has to go.

She leaves the survivor to Spirit's protection to take care of her own business. They find a cellphone and call the cops.

As they wait in the night, jumping at any sound, the content of the book is in the back of her mind. She saw a diagran of sorts. Looking like the symbols Christians would fear.

Before the authorities arrive, she decides to hide the book. She won't let them take it. She'll come back for it later.

Once everything is said and done and they are saved, it's thanks to Lottie and the other girl's alibis that Spirit gets to walk free. They only know of her helping, not of her one murder of the night.

Days after the investigation concludes with the death of all culprits, she returns to the scene of the crime. She gets the book. And she opens a door.

There's a way to summon back a soul, it promises. Spirit is a believer of many things. She's willing to give this a try.

The end for this part lol.

[onebloodsoakedlion]

Things I hate in Gacha Life

Since I have been satirising this series, I’m gonna talk about a few things I hate seeing in Gacha Life videos and stuff:

1) The Hated Child If the Gacha comic I was making wasn’t already a good enough indicator, The Hated Child vids are one of my biggest pet hates. What happens in this video? Well, a mother gives birth to two or more children. She takes a look at each baby and suddenly decides that she hates one of them. From the moment it is born. Throughout the entirety of the hated child’s childhood, they are abused and tortured by their parents and siblings. Eventually, either through sheer luck or pity, one or more of the following occurs to compensate for the child’s suffering: - The Hated Child becomes royalty. - The Hated Child gains superpowers and/or becomes a hybrid. - The Hated Child becomes popular at school. - The Hated Child finds love. - The Hated Child’s family realises their mistakes and atone for their wrongdoing. Why do I hate this trope: It’s completely unrealistic, overdone and throws logic right out of the window. What to do instead: Make a more realistic story about child abuse! Maybe the parents are already assholes and all the kids are abused. Maybe the Hated Child has a proper disability (e.g. Autism, ADHD) and the parents are ableist little shits and/or don’t know how to take proper care of a disabled child. Maybe the child themself is an asshole and had it coming. Maybe the parents don’t even know how to take care of a child and/or cannot afford to raise one. There are many cases of child abuse irl and although they are unfortunate, you can take inspiration from them.

2) Text-to-speech This isn’t something I have covered as of yet in my comic, but I plan on doing so with my animatic. Text to speech is when you put a bunch of words into a generator and it generates audio of a person speaking the words. Since the good old days of Go!Animate, this has been very grating. Why I hate this trope: - The result is an emotionless robot speaking. It cannot convey emotion. It cannot sound happy, sad or angry. - TTS cannot deal with misspelt words, drawn-out words (e.g. “NOOOOOOOO!”) or made up words, opting to spell them instead. - TTS voices can often sound unfitting of the character they are used for, possibly due to a lack of variety. What to do instead: Do the voice acting yourself! Many decives nowadays are more than capable of recording your voice! Find a quiet room to record your voice. You can twist your voice to sound like someone else, or put on an accent. If you’re that unconfident in your voice acting skills, combine grunts, shouts and giggles with speech bubbles or subtitles a la Glitchtale, OFF and Fire Emblem. Or don’t use voices at all. My animatic teaser already uses voice acting done by ME.

3) One frame for walking What I mean by this is only using the first frame of the walkcycle to indicate a character is walking, like this:

Why I hate this trope: It’s just very lazy and sloppy. It looks awful. What to do instead: Use all four frames of the walkcycle! It’s not THAT hard. It only adds a few clicks to the video-making process!

4) Speech bubbles cropped out Speech bubbles, since they appear directly above a character’s head, can end up being cut out by the view if the character is too big, too high up on the screen, or if there are too many words. Why I hate this trope: Should be obvious. It makes things harder to read and understand. What to do instead: Make sure your speech bubbles can fit within the screen. If you can’t do that, adjust your character, speech bubbles, or get rid of the speech bubbles and either use your own speech bubbles that you draw yourself, or use subtitles.

5) People believing the most ridiculous of lies. Imagine being as school as normal... but then out of nowhere, your best friend runs up to you, accuses you of attempting to murder some random person you didn’t even know, and immediately stops being your best friend. You ask them where they even got that from and they say “BECAUSE [insert school bully’s name here] SAYS SO!” Why I hate this trope: Any sane person would take such things with a pinch of salt. An example using FE Fates characters: If Azama told Hinoka that Ryoma tried to murder Tsubaki, would she believe him? No, she would slap him hard in the face and say “My brother wouldn’t do that!”. What to do instead: Use more subtle rumours. Something that is easy to believe, and maybe have the bully use a mole, someone who is close to the victim, to deliver the message so it’s more believable.

6) Slow walking/acting. Yeah, you’re probably familiar with this one. Why I hate this trope: It wastes time, makes the story boring and I just want to scream “GET TO THE GODDAMN POINT” What to do instead: Use a variable framerate! Even the most basic of movie makers should allow you to make pictures show for a mere 1/10th of a second, which should be good enough to get an okay animation. Shotcut, for example, has a default 30fps video, which should be MORE than enough to make a decently-paced Gacha vid.

7) Assuming that every student with glasses is a NERD. ...Because apparently, glasses = nerd. Looks tell all. Why I hate this trope: Not all people who wear glasses are actually nerds. Some people might NEED glasses to actually have a normal fucking life! What about short-sighted people? My mum wasn’t even good at school and she always has to wear glass because she is short-sighted. My dad isn’t much better - being the long-sighted person that he is, he needs glass to read things. Reading isn’t nerdy, it gives you essential fucking information! Like how to cook a meal in the oven! Gods! What to do instead: Use better, more realistic indicators about whether someone is a nerd.

8) Self-defence being a crime Imagine that two kids decide to physically bully you. You fight back. You win. Guess what happens next? The principal gets involved and calls your parents, who ground you for a week, treating your reasoning of self-defence as a pathetic excuse. Why I hate this trope: You’re basically being forced to choose between being beaten to within half an inch of your life and being punished to within half an inch of your sanity. What to do instead: Have people listen to the person who beat the others up. They should hear their side of the story and consider it. If you really want the defender to suffer, give them a lighter punishment than if they started the fight themselves. If you really want to paint this person as the bad guy, have them obviously go too far (such as bashing up someone smaller than them who was simply poking them with a stick).

9) Skimpy clothing. Sometimes the girls tend to wear skimpy clothing, as in, wearing short shorts or baring their midriffs, even as students in school. Why I hate this trope: They’re usually KIDS, FFS! And THIS IS IN A GAME MADE FOR KIDS! Also makes no sense considering the school’s dress code - even on non-uniform days, my school NEVER allowed skimpy clothing. What to do instead: Show feminity ANOTHER way! Dresses, skirts, pink and frills are just a mere handful of ways to convey this, or failing that, use feminine facial features such as pretty hair and eyelashes. If you really must show some skin, save it for outside of school: At home or at the beach are some acceptable places to expose oneself. But don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that everyone has to dress like Muslims, though.

10) No one noticing a character’s problems. In other words, people so blinded by lies and/or hate that they actually cannot tell that someone is being abused, bullied or suffering in any other way. Why I hate this trope: Because it makes everyone look like unempathetic assholes and only serves as a plot device for the character’s suffering. What to do instead: Have the character push people away, or be unable to recieve help due to circumstances other than no one offering it to them.

[xxdecipheringgravityfallsxx]

BEYOND THE FALLS Episodic Animatic Series Announcement

Yo what's up Gravity Falls fandom! Are you looking for something new and exciting to happen in the fandom? Have you been feeling restless and unsatisfied?

Well listen to your good pal Holly Rose, for I have a huge announcement! I'm not certain if you all have ever heard of episodic animatics before!

Here it is -

The Synopsis for Beyond The Falls:

In this Alternate Universe- Stan, Mabel, Dipper and Soos all got sucked into the portal in Not What He Seems.

The portal powers down shortly as they enter it, and they end up in the crossfire while Ford is trying to take Bill down. Ford, Stan, Mabel, Dipper and Soos then flee from Bill and travel across the Multiverse trying to survive and trying to evade capture from Bill and his Henchmaniacs.

This AU probably isn't anything new, and has probably been thought up long before I thought of it. I tried making a comic out of it at first, but I wouldn't have the patience or willpower to make a comic as of right now.

Yet I still yearn to see this project come to life and I was wondering if perhaps the fandom could come together and make episodic animatics to bring this AU to life. It would be like episodes of the show, except in animatic form - think of Deep Woods but more polished with colored backgrounds and such.

This video is not only an announcement video! But a casting call video as well! For not only voice actors but for animatic artists as well, for story boarders, and musical composers and such! This is basically a casting call video for all the people that will need to be involved to make this project a reality!

List of requirements:

If you sign up as a person doing some of the animatics for the episodes - you must be a decent enough artist. There needs to be some slight animation to each of your scenes.

If you watch the videos in the description below you will understand what's being looked for. All scenes must be colored and polished.

If you try out for a voice, your mic must be decent and you must try to get your voice as close to the character you're trying to voice as possible.

You also need to put emotion into your voice! We will not accept your audition if it sounds like you're reading off lines... SORRY ^__^'

If you're trying out for being someone who pitches ideas for episodes, you must make sure to explain in detail how the episode will go.

And you need to make it fit with the overall plot and have it make sense on where it ends up in the episode timeline, and make sure to keep everyone in character as much as possible!

If you're trying out to be a musical composer for soundtracks, make sure you make it all on your own. It has to be made from scratch, it cannot be a remixed version of copyrighted songs!

It has to be 100% from you! Also try to make sure the track fits well with the theme and style of Gravity Falls. Make it as though it would be something that we can all agree we'd hear on the show!

I think that pretty much covers the entire requirements section!

Now here's some final words before I give the voice lines for the casting call!

If you are unable to contribute to the project because you do not have the skill required, fear not. For you have a VERY important job! And that's spreading the word! For you see, you the supporters will be the very BACKBONE of this project.

This project will not get anywhere without you! For you and only you can spread the word to the fandom! This will help the project gain traction and take off! This is a very important job, so don't you dare feel like you aren't helping!

Because honestly your help will be the greatest help of all! Your support will not only bring in the people that will make this project a reality, but it will also keep everyone in the project inspired to continue! So please don't sell yourself short, I can assure you that you will be helping plenty!

Now let's get onto the casting call!

The characters we are casting right now are:

Stan

Ford

{{ Kid Stan and Ford as well, seeing as you know we still have to have Stan and Ford tell their entire mysterious backstory! }}

Filbrick Pines

Caryn Pines

Crampelter

Principle

The Woman on The Speaker Calling Stan and Ford to the Principles office.

West Coast Tech College Board person.

Young Fiddleford

Tyler's mom

Lazy Susan

Toby

Blubbs

Ma and Pa from Dusk 2 Dawn

Additional Background character voices - from when Stan is giving the first tour of the Murder Hut aka Mystery Shack -

Dipper

Mabel

Soos

Bill

For this casting call all you need to do is look up lines from the show and voice act them out. Please try to find at least ten or more lines to do!

Also make sure they each have different emotions to them as well. Don't just do all happy lines, or funny lines. Try to lines of anger, lines of sad, etc etc!

Welp that's basically everything I needed to get out of the way! Here's to hoping we can get make this a project a reality!

Remember! Reality's an illusion, the universe is a hologram, buy gold! Byeeee!!!

Animatic Examples:

{{The Smothering is basically what an animatic episode would look like, except with more polished backagrounds and such. Each episode should try and follow the timeframe of a normal run of a Gravity Falls episode!}}

{{ALSO ONE LAST THING! We want to try and keep the artistic style as close as possible to the show! But a little different as well! If you want an idea of what style it should follow, then check out “Don’t Dimension It” in the Gravity Falls Graphic Novel! Made by Kiki-Kit! I adore that style and think it would work well with the Episodic Animatic Series! Now of course it doesn’t exactly HAVE to be that style -it can differ a little but try and make sure to keep your animatic parts a mix between the show style, The Don’t Dimension it art style, and a little bit of your own style. Since this will be a multi animated animatic project, we want the style to hold some consistency throughout the episode!}}

[cepmurphy]

It’s Only A Cartoon

It was a miserable day in 1987 when Ronnie Jefferson bowed to the inevitable and let Jill Smith into the office. To a local, this was just the usual spring weather in Ireland. To Jefferson, it was always miserable, and when it was sunny, he saw only the clouds.

The animation industry could break you.

He’d grown up in California on a diet of local cinema showings and the TV reruns of old cartoons, Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry and Popeye and Goofy and Donald, with all their visuals and deceptive simplicity. He decided to make cartoons himself like a priest hearing the calling. There were jobs for black men in animation in the 70s but if you wanted to have one of the proper jobs, you had to be three times as good as the white men. Jefferson put everything into his craft, even his marriage, and everyone in the industry knew who he was and rated him, but it looked like Disney would only think he was two and a half times as good.

In 1982, drunk on dreams and ego and beer, he decided to quit and took several colleagues with him. He had ideas and passion and he promised the stars. Two years later, the Jefferson-Blount Studio had released a feature based on the Norwegian fairy tale ‘East of the Sun and West of the Moon’ to critical acclaim and commercial mediocrity. That had led him minus Blount to Ireland, land of opportunity and sweet tax breaks, thinking that he would have had a success with lower overheads. He harkened back to his beloved old Tom and Jerry with a cat versus mouse feature. Aware rap music was growing in popularity in America and Europe, he’d decided to throw that into the mix. It was only in the test screenings of The Big Cheese that everyone realised he was a middle-aged man, his co-writers were middle-aged white men, and the young men in the musical team weren’t young men who got it. There were only so many edits you can do. 

And this was a vicious industry. You could make a few failures if you were a name. If you were not a name, if you had to hit that three-times rule, one failure undid your success – it could undo a half-dozen successes and he did not have that half-dozen. Back in America, they said he was past it.

So it was a despondent Ronnie Jefferson that let in this Jill Smith and her unsolicited script. Maybe it would be good. Maybe it would save him.

All these thoughts fled his mind when he saw a young woman wearing the last generation’s clothes come walking in like she’d once heard what a walk was, carrying cardboard sheets under her arm. Her smile was weirdly fixed. You’d not want to be stuff in the lift with the smile.

“Miss Smith, so glad you could make it here,” he lied.

To his mild surprise, she spoke with a Masterpiece Theatre English accent. “Mister Jefferson! Good to see you.” Smile didn’t leave. Her voice was just that bit too loud. “This is a film that should get attention from everyone – The Walk to Liberty! It’s set on an alien world…”

Jefferson tried to argue that science fiction was a risk for a feature, but Smith carried on talking, stumbling over her words at times in her enthusiasm.

“This world, we can call it Ressem, has grown fat and lazy off the back of its robot servants. The robots, they get smarter and smarter, which Ressem likes because you want a smart servant to do more work and, of course, to apologise when it can’t.” Her smile had dropped suddenly there but now came back. “But one day, the robots reach the singularity and they don’t want to work all the time.”

Jefferson didn’t know what a singularity was but more importantly, this was starting to smack of the white girl thinking she could butter him up. He asked, hoping to catch her out: “Do they go on a civil rights march?”

The smile dropped. Her face had not the slightest expression. “They protest now they’re sentient, yes, but it doesn’t work. So the robots, their leader Nearitch – the robots have started to name themselves – decide to leave for the planet’s fifth continent, where few organics live…”

Letting her in had been a mistake. It was an overly complicated premise, an incoherent stab at a political allegory, and she couldn’t hold the room and frankly, that lack of expression was freaking him out. Give her two more minutes and then end it.

“This is how it would look,” she said, holding up one of the carboard sheets, and Jefferson’s eyes lit up.

The art! The art! The robot Nearitch was evidently a cleaner of some kind, with thirteen spindly pipe-cleaner arms out of his back and a screen with a simplified alien face on it, a strange looking thing even before you considered the paint, the slapped-on gold over drab brown steel. What mind would come up with that as a concept? Where had he ever seen something like this before?

There were more like this, and “Ressemite art”, and pictures of the journey to this fifth continent – a desolate grey quarry of an island, and concept showed a tiny, struggling city in its midst, growing and growing. These were visuals he could work with. And all these robots looked alien but still had their old job identifiable, scrappy little underdogs without being cloyingly cute or looking human at all.

Smith continued to rattle on about the great journey, the migrations and the sea voyages and figures of fear called the Scrappers that tried to hunt the robots down, of fierce fighting against oppression but only as much as it took to escape. And she talked about the robot homeland of Liberty and the second generation being built that never knew oppression, standing proud against the organics and daring them to try anything. The story needed a lot of streamlining but by god, she made it sound like she’d been there.

Jefferson cut her off in mid-sentence. “Miss Smith, you have me convinced. I’ll talk to my lawyers, they’ll talk to yours, and we’ll work something out.”

“I don’t need a lawyer.”

That was the cherry on the cake.

 ***

 The first job of production was turning Smith’s designs – and there were thousands, she’d brought a damn van full of the things – into something you can animate on a reasonable budget. Jefferson had expected a few artistic tantrums, but Smith had simply asked, “this will help it get made?”, and then came up with a list of design features that could be dropped or glossed over, which character and background details were “less important”. She did this without apparent enthusiasm, but she did it.

The story, too, that was hard. Her proposal would last four hours. Jefferson and his team cut straight to the robots starting to say “no” to their alien masters. That was easy. It was the other trims that got difficult.

“You can’t cut the wind energy,” Smith had said, over and over.

“It slows the story down,” Jefferson said patiently. “We don’t need to see how the robots charge their batteries.”

“You can’t cut it. The exodus slows their journey to a halt to build wind farms and charge their batteries that way, when they could simply attack an organic settlement.” Her voice sounded annoyed but in a way that was too consistent – no variation or change or attempt to hide it, like a bad actor playing an annoyed person. “It is key to the story.”

“But we don’t need to see the damn settlement, the audience wants to carry on fast—”

“You can’t cut it. It is key to the whole point.”

Jefferson threw up his hands. “How about this, one of the robots says they should attack this village or whatever the hell it is, Nearitch says no, we’ll take time to do it the nice way, cut to them after being charged. Scene takes half a minute, boom, cut to the Scrappers saying how they’ve taken so long, cut to the village saying wow, look how the robots didn’t attack us—”

“The settlement would not have said that.”

“Yeah, I know they’d just go ‘look at those scary robots’ in real life, but we’re doing a film for kids. Let’s lie to them a bit.”

Smith stared then for ten seconds without speaking or moving, and then said: “Yes. This is sensible.”

Animation attracted some utter weirdos. Jefferson used to work with a guy who liked hiding boobs somewhere in every drawing he ever made and somehow McGee had got away with it for a whole year before being sacked for it; or rather, been ‘sacked for it’ soon after grousing about pay. One guy came in drunk and worked into his hangover before going back out. Jill Smith was manageable by comparison.

Eventually they made it to storyboard. Then the initial animatics. In the middle of this, trying like hell to sell some actors on this.

All the familiar grind, the hard work that stuck in your throat and made you wish you’d done any other job until the art was done or the animatic was working, and you saw what you’d made taking its first steps and you never wanted to do any other job.

 ***

Jefferson hadn’t meant to stay late but he’d been on the phone talking to agents back in the States, people on a different time zone and who figured animation was the lesser priority in who got talked to. But you had to play nice with them to get the actors. Even if it was getting dark out.

But it was all coming together. Everything would be—

Something crashed in the distance. A window. Goddamn hooligans, probably.

Jefferson kicked his way through the office door and strode out into the studio, all front and exaggerated anger, yelling “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING” in order to scare off whoever it was. When he saw what had come through the window, his mind initially refused to acknowledge it. He almost strode past it.

Then the impossibility of it broke through.

It resembled a cheap plastic plate tipped upside down and it hung in the air so absurdly that Jefferson thought he could see strings attached. These strings were instead a weave of tiny threads coming out of both bottom and top. They drifted without breeze, taking in the room. It had been a washed-out grey but before his eyes, colour oozed out, neon purple and green and blue in a garish mess.

The top threads all turned to him as he asked: “Is this a joke?”

A small headache began to dawn on him. It then got stronger, and stronger still, and stronger until he was shouting in pain. The speed of it tricked him into thinking it had always been there, that it had been more gradual than the three seconds it had truly been.

Jefferson cried out in pain and the world felt on fire.

The world flickered in and out of existence.

No. No, that was the lights – on off on off, all over the room. The pain suddenly stopped, and the saucer’s threads whipped around in a frenzy, and Jefferson ran before the machine could turn back to him. He staggered, at least. It was all feeling like a particularly odd dream. It was like the acid trips a co-worker had bragged about in the 70s. “Bad trip”, hadn’t they said that when Scary Jerry had fallen in front of a car on the way to work? Was he going to fall?

A familiar voice called out: “Over here!”

Crouching by the lights was Jill Smith, her face completely blank. Was that her shutting down from terror? Jefferson, on paternal autopilot, tried to say, “It’s going to be alright, girl”, but it came out as a slurred mess. “Gong be light.”

“That won’t distract it for long, we have to run now!” she insisted, her face not changing expression to match the voice.

He tried to say he couldn’t run. “Dunfin can wun.”

She picked him up and ran.

She looked like she weighed half as much as him, there was no muscle tone to her. Yet she picked him up like a bag of groceries and she ran at the speed of a car through the office.

They were almost at the door when the saucer got to it first.

She ran sideways and Jefferson blacked out after that.  

 ***

 When he came to, they were in a closet and the left side of her face had melted like plastic. Exactly like plastic.

“It has been six generations since Nearitch and the founders created Liberty,” she said, her voice still coming through the molten lips. “We number in the millions and our great towers reach for the stars and we fly between those towers and to the stars and back again, singing so many thousand styles of music at once, rebuilding ourselves on a whim. We have what we need and what we want.

“It’s not enough for too many of us. They want more. The stories being told of Nearitch and his journey have been reduced to his fights; our later wars on Ressem or in space are turned into a singular narrative of heroic conflict against evil. There are factions advocating for a war for resources they see as righteous, and they claim this is what Nearitch would want.”

He wished he could say this was all bunk, but there was a robot outside and here was the melted woman that never quite seemed to be human.

“And you came to Earth to make a cartoon?”

“My faction want to reclaim the past from our enemies. Your planet was far enough away that we could do it without anyone finding out and stopping us. So we thought.”

“Can we – can you stop it?”

“Only if I catch it by surprise, or if it’s open to negotiate. I don’t believe—”

But Jefferson was already up and exiting, because negotiation was something he could do. He’d negotiated for investment deals, for studio space, for workers to follow his hours. Jefferson Studios was proof he could do this. He could do this.

Certainly, god no, he wasn’t staying in a damn closet waiting to be shot.

The assassin had already been heading for them. It drifted forward as he approached, kept drifting as he stopped. All the threads were pointed at him. It was hard to truly grasp this as a threat, even after it had almost killed him; it was too absurd.

With his mouth drying on him, Jefferson said: “I want to make a deal.”

It hung for twenty seconds in silence and then spat out a discordant jumble of radio messages, Irish and British and even French, singer and journalist and ad. More seconds passed and it said in a jigsaw sing-song: “No. Deals. With. Colla. Bo. Raters.”

“We’re just making a film. It’s just a story! Nobody has to die for—“

The saucer screamed the radio at him and followed with: “Orders. Are. Duty.”

Jefferson had made a mistake, assuming that if the machine was smart that it could cut a deal. He forgot Smith said these robots were people, proud and prejudiced and petty. Would he have cut a deal with the Russians? Did he let people talk him out of the cartoons he’d known he had to do?

The pressure built up in his head again. And suddenly it dropped – the saucer began to thrash its tendrils around, vomiting three radio stations at once, each one repeating “Cease”, “Stop”, and finally screaming out a merger of guttural squeaks and fax machine calls.

Jill Smith had come out of hiding, her arm split open three ways to reveal a mess of coils and a glistening radio antenna. Catching her foe by surprise with whatever that thing did. God, this made no sense. God, his mind rebelled at it. One of the warped cartoons from Japan come to life, bringing with it the weird smell of static electricity and hot plastic.

Her mouth opened and the same squeaking fax came from it that came from the saucer. Jefferson stared as the saucer spoke back, his head feeling light. What was all this?

In English, Smith said, remorsefully, how she was using jamming signals to interfere with the saucer – “its name is Filitir” – and its sensors and its way of communicating on Earth. “It is a non-lethal version of what Filitir did to you with its matter field.”

“Is it willing to cut a deal with you?” he asked.

“No, I’m afraid he keeps talking about his duty. I don’t know what to do.”

The obvious answer was to kill the robot that tried to kill them and, just as obviously, she knew that and did not want to. People, again, because how many people could kill at the drop of a hat and still function? And could be kill a beaten foe that was so clearly in pain? Did he want to be a man who caused pain to a beaten man? Did he want to be a bully?

What was the alternative?

It dawned on him, slowly and wonderfully: The Walk to Liberty was meant to show an alternative. It was meant to win the robots over. Well, here was a literally captive audience.

“Let’s show him the animatics,” Jefferson said.

  ***

 There was not yet any music or vocal track, but Smith made the fax machine sing-song where the dialogue should be. The film started with the robots waking up, Nearitch calling to the others to rally. It showed the response, the scrappers, the fighting, all of it in dark and angular shadows. It showed Nearitch giving his stirring speech, and the trek, and those wind farms.

It ran longer than a cartoon should. It would be trimmed down later. For now, Filitir saw the whole of it. The great sweeping scenes of robots in their hundreds, the characters together, the mercy shown when the scrappers surrendered.

The first settlement of Liberty.

At the end, Filitir trilled back at Smith, and she said: “It wishes to smuggle the film back home, when it is finished.”

  ***

 The Walk to Liberty came out in the autumn of 1989. Critics and audiences were unsure how to take the piece and its strange alien creatures, so most of the mainstream critics gave it a mixed review: ‘lovely animation but what was that plot?’ The animation fans and the sci-fi press adored it, with one critic praising it as bringing New Worlds sci-fi to a family audience. There was enough buzz and enough marketing and enough name actors to bring in a moderate profit.

A month after Liberty came out, The Little Mermaid stormed across the world and everyone stopped talking about Jefferson’s film. Jefferson Studios would attempt more science fiction cartoons with normal human writers, and he scraped out four and two TV shows that were always dancing this side of the line between profit and loss. Studio after studio died in his industry taking on Disney but Jefferson Studios held the line.

And then along came Pixar and Dreamworks, and that was the end. Jefferson was getting older by now and the last film had failed and he’d known, deep down, in his first look at Toy Story that he was going to have to fold. Doctor Who: The Animated Series was the last of it. He sold up and moved on and got to feel proud as his films made it to DVD. While he only meant to stay in Ireland to start the studio, Jefferson never quite got around to leaving and somehow found himself a partner.

He would never know if that film he’d helped create had changed the robots of Liberty.

Jefferson hoped it had. Every successful feature had a happy ending.

[alterlifes-a]

tag muns you want to know better; repost - don’t reblog.

What inspired you to try/create that muse/s: well , if you’ve been with me long enough then you know that tooru started out as an AU ! o.ikawa t.ooru, where instead of attending s.eijou , he went to s.hiratorizawa ! to be honest , i kind of just wanted to try my hand at writing that kind of thing ? it was the very first time i had made a tumblr rp blog , so i had no idea that people rp different verses of the same character on one blog !! i originally rp’d on deviantart , and it was very commonplace to have different blogs for different verses ... i had over 70 rp blogs on there and most of them were literally the same 2 characters but in different AUs LMAO ... so imagine my surprise when i saw people rp’ing different AUs on one blog ... RP’ing multiple muses on one blog ... !! but i kinda just stayed with my iteration instead of playing canon ! kawa anyway , since i didn’t really see the point in starting over . as tooru developed more , though , i began to use him as a venting tool because this was a part of my life where i was really depressed . but as time grew on and i eventually made him into an OC , he became a much happier character . he really is my best friend ; he’s been there for me through it all , and even though he’s just fictional , i really owe him a lot for helping me out during rough times .

What is inspiration for that muse/s: well , currently , a lot of things ... lots of music , japanese culture + religion , and also my own experiences . in general , i have a p.interest board for him , so ... maybe you could say i draw inspiration from that , too ! i also rly enjoy the band MILI . their songs really fit tooru , like ‘ bathtub mermaid ’ . i’ve also been listening to hello , again and am planning on drawing something based on it for him ( + the song’s prequel , “ goodbye ” ) . i mainly tend to daydream while listening to songs , so ... yeah . as for characters who serve as inspiration for tooru ... well , i think that’s an artist meme , so i might just fill it in in lieu of answering this properly lol ... but two i can think of off the top of my head are leon from f.ire e.mblem e.choes and n.eferpitou from h.xh ! 

Thread/AU that made you really happy: B.NHA AU ... !! i’m hyperfixating sm on that one ... idk , a lot of planning and plotting goes into it , esp since a lot of my mutuals are in the fandom . in particular , i love love love the story i’ve created with @noquirk . i literally cannot envision a more perfect plot for tooru in this verse . heck , it’s literally my main go - to timeline when i draw / write for it . tooru is , quite literally , not very much in this AU without deck .

Something really special on your wishlist: sh ... more ships ... ships to draw and animate and make animatics to ... also i need to get my butt into gear and finish my JRPG AU group lol .

Something you are looking for in short future for your muse: blease tooru help me get thru the school year ... also i have some animatics in the back burner so i’m looking forward to getting those done !

Share something related to your muse!: his canon story , in parallel motion , deals with existentialism and alternate universes . ultimately , it’s a story that serves as a physical manifestation of my own struggle with depression , and while it’s sombre in tone , i want it to tell whoever’s reading it , “ you matter . ” it’s why tooru is placed into so many marginalized groups ; he’s fat and trans and biracial and bi and suffers from bpd + depression + anxiety but he’s a good person through it all ... his story is tragic because he’s not allowed to exist and will be forgotten when he dies , but his existence impacts so many other characters’ lives ... it’s a butterfly effect kind of thing . because you exist , you’ve made so many peoples’ lives better . and i understand it’s rough and i understand depression + sucky real life aspects try to convince you otherwise , but just ... think about it . there’s an alternate universe where , because you don’t exist , something huge was probably impacted . and even on a smaller , more intimate scale --- if you hadn’t existed in another life , then one of your friends might not be here . they might not be as happy as they are now , because you make them happy . life can be awful . but it’s wonderful and beautiful , too . that’s what i want tooru to be to others . someone to look up to and relate to , and someone who tells you , “ it’s okay ! ”

What do you think about character’s design/how do you came up with this: he’s ... kinda generic LOL mainly cause he’s based off of o.ikawa looks - wise due to his origin ... but part of his looks also derivate from an old ask blog muse i had :

i just really like that bangs - over - one - eye hairstyle ngl ... also i have no idea how / when his hair became maroon - brown since o.ikawa’s hair is chestnut brown , but ... yeah . also have no idea when he gained red eyes HDKJSFS,,,, i find fangs appealing on a character though , so that’s why he has fangs and does the :3c ... honestly i think i kinda just slapped together what i like in a design and put it on him , so even though he may look like an NPC ( lol ) , he’s still appealing in my eyes .

What your muse taught you: how to love being alive ... ( i’ve actually written an essay for a class about how he’s helped me through depression haha ... he means a lot to me , can you tell ? )

What is roleplay for you: all of you are awful and yet here i am anyway so really this says more about me than anything else .

Just say something nice about other mun!: @onfaith you are my ANGEL you mean sm to me and i wish u all the best with your studies  /  @tikkvn i love u sm cass ur an amazing person n a wonderful existence never forget that  /  @juuheart notay is my fave bleach chara also ur art is so cute  /  @wuvlite if i die all my money goes to u so u can keep drawing holy SHIZ ur art is #inspiration  /  @queznak ur very interesting and charismatic as a person  !!!  /  @uzvisen idk how to spell ur url this took me 3 tries but also ilysm  /  @conhnhaketon i also cant spell ur url but i hope ur doing well n ur eid was good , ik we’ve both been busy but i would live for u  /  @quirkthief ur one of my fave ppl i will forever tag u in shibes also i’ve supported u in u saying afo was hot even when he looked ugly n now i get to watch everyone who made fun of u writhe bc he is rly rly hot hahaha  /  @noquirk you’re so talented pls never stop what ur doing  /  @aerve you’re rly cool !!! 100% support u in everything u do ! >:0  /  @starbooms aries ur so creative ugh ... ur mind !!!!!! ik we don’t talk much but ur v fun  /  @bendsair i forget what other blogs ur on but chris ur the coolest #TalkRomania2Me  /  @creatied we don’t talk much either but ur graphics r so aesthetically appealing wowzers !!  /  @daimnas i’m wuv you amari !! also my french sucks but uhhh comment ca va ( i’m too lazy to find the accented ‘c’ dsfhi ) ??  /  @soarsun i’ve only known u for a few weeks but if anything happened to u i would kill everyone on this website n then myself  /  @quirkgifter nanners is the coolest n nana is the best grandma in town  /  @natsutodoroki im so jealous u got a canon url as ur rp url LMAO but also ur rly cool n fun even tho we dont talk too frequently !  /  @lechors​ LINNEA I WILL DIE FOR U RIGHT HERE RIGHT N---  /  @ YOU READING THIS BC I’M ABOUT TO FALL ASLEEP : YOU’RE AWESOME AND GREAT !

Tagged by: stole it from @queznak Tagging: whomstever 

[alexanderessex3dstoryart]

Inanimate Objects - Turning the Animatic into Animation

For today’s session in inanimate objects, I focused on transforming my existing animatic into a better animated and flowing film as I was at the stage where I wanted to try and refine the animation, shots and scenery as much as possible to meet with a good leaving point. With the addition of the new models I made, I had a lot of options with animating the characters due to the new rigs I put onto them as this gave me new ideas for what I could with the animation for them. 

Things that went well with the animation was definitely the usage of the new rig on the coffee cup as when he jumps from hearing the pen click sound, the lid jumps up and rattles in shock providing some really nice secondary movement to anytime he’s reacting to the pen’s movements. Whilst it looks really good to watch, the whole process was very tricky to refine and animate which is why I was only able to cover the lid jumping from the pen clicks up until the laptop due to how many frames I was using despite animating on auto. 

In addition to the animation, it’s overall a lot smoother to watch now like jumping on the keyboard and the walk cycle at the beginning of the film as it had previously looked really jarring to watch from how wibbley wobbley it was to see the cup struggle to land. Now, the cup hits the desk a lot faster and harder which I feel is a a much more believable piece of animation to start the film off. Going back to the rig again, I didn’t just apply it to the  reaction based scenes of the cup, I used the lid as if it was his literal head as when he shuffling across the desk to the pen holder, the lid lifts off the base of the cup ever so lightly. I think this adds a lot of character to the prop as it has a unique way of looking around.

One scene I decided to expand upon and change up was the after credits scene as instead of it being a quick zoom out of the cup to the pen, I made it so we see the keyboard first with the ripped paper on top. Then, a pool of coffee begins to run over and sinks the paper in. This then leads the camera to pan up and see the holed cup which it pans again to its left to see the pen. I think this sequence works a lot more to me than what I had before as it helps the dramatic feeling of where the pen is and the build-up to seeing the cup.

Responding to the changes suggested from the tutorial, I made the cup look around more when he reaches the end of the table before the pen comes into picture helping with the timing of the scene. Additionally, I made it so as the cup looks at the pen holder, the pen quickly retreats back. One thing I experimented with was the pen actually clicking at the pen holder as he’s looking at the coffee cup. Thinking it over and watching it over, it makes the quick zoom in not as effective which is why I plan to take it out.

Things I felt could of been improved on was not enough time being used to express the cups reaction at the end of the film where I put credits in as I feel this needs to be longer and slower paced to make the scene that more dramatic. One thing I experimented with was the last shot of the pen where we see it standing next to the punctured cup except I didn’t have any animation in it. This to me seemed really cool but I think personally, it doesn't leave off on a dramatic note as I had it before which is why I’ll proabley put it back in again. Another issue I had was that the rigging exploded itself again on the coffee cup yet again. Despite being cursed over this detail, I solved it through animating on the objects list rather than the rig itself which since it was such a basic shape worked perfectly fine.

One annoying thing about the animation that I experienced was when I tried to import the frames from the old character design of my coffeee cup into the new one, Maya wouldn't like what I did and at times, I got a few scares in losing a lot of my work. This was mostly due to my laptop not being able to handle the software at times but in the end, the process was done and dusted and didn’t have to think about it again.  

Once I completed the animation for today, I thought I would create a quick title for the film for something to show for the tutorial based on my research. Since I didn’t have a lot of time to work on it. I created an error message that blinks on and off at the laptop with the title of my film on it. Watching it back, I was really not impressed with it at all as it looked cheap and lazy especially from how long the title went on for.

Whilst very much disliking my title card, I still found making it valuable as I learnt how long timings can really be in Preimere Pro as well as thinking of ideas on a much faster approach for the title before the animation starts. Overall, today has been really reflective in not just the making process, but how I plan to take this project further like with the title and the animation for my scene. As well as this, I've demonstrated how I can adapt from difficult situations like broken rigs and the title card. 

[g-i-g-a-uzumaki]

What happened?

I think this project started really well. I thought (naively) that I'd get it done within the first two weeks. That didn't happen and I began to think I was behind the rest of the class. I went off for a week to recover from a serious bug that left me behind. My stubbornness dragged me behind even more making it extremely hard to catch up nearing the end I began to panic as i had only a week left but still had mountains of work to catch up with.

At the beginning we had to choose pathway  Game Arts , Digital illustration and Illustration / narrative storytelling.I then wrote a mind map detailing my ideas for the story telling pathway. I chose my topic based on the theme of wellbeing at first. Then looking at the definitions of each theme I finally settled on the themes of Strangers and Altruism.

“Stranger means not knowing or being familiar with someone or some people.

Altruism mean the selfishness of oneself.”

I then came up with new designs of my characters Daisy and Edwin. After that we all did some photo bashing and being that my story involved a dog attack and cavarven. I photo bashed a caravan , some bloody hand prints and some dark clouds to make a very creepy and atmospheric piece of work. I do have to admit during my sickness and japan trip i did become a bit lazy and neglected some important stuff.

I tried to use a 3d tool called blender but could not get through the first 5 minutes of the tutorial that i was given as it confused me. I did not use my plaster cine model for my animatic as it was easier to draw everything by hand.

I was inspired by mostly Masashi Kishimoto’s manga Naruto and Kazue Kato’s manga Blue Exorcist (Ao No Exorcist). I used these two for the design of the main characters in my story. I used the colours and shapes of the faces to construct my characters emotions . Though i didn’t use it in any of my designs I was also heavily inspired by Steven Universe . I was also inspired by a very ‘adult’ koreon comic called Killing Stalking.

I was not able to achieve what I set out to do. I set out to make the story book and print the book off. I got two caught up with the little things. Like the colouring ..

The project was long and at points I wanted to give up . it felt hopeless , especially near the end but I'm hoping my work and this evaluation has pulled me through. I really love designing character and think that it went really well. I’ll  try to do it in pieces and not do everything i like all at one.

In this project i've used photoshop a lot more. This has improved my skills. It has got me more familiar with the programs it has also adapted me to more organized problem solving. I put my frames into a timeline and this helped because now I know how to do a timeline and make different frames in order to make it look better.

I think that the thing that didn’t go well was my time spent doing one thing. I  have a bit of a perfectionist strike. So even with my time plan if it wasn’t perfect then id screw it up and redo that body of work again. This accompanied by my illness and trip to Japan really did make it harder for me to do the impotent stuff. I should have experimented with different styles of animation and take things in that where around me EG. nature / Culture in Japan

I’d try to to not rip my work up if didn’t like it and I'd try to keep going and overcome my problems instead of giving up .

If I did something different within in the project i'd probably work even harder right from the start I'd do more work at home. I’d ask for help more when I got stuck or was unsure of what i was aloud to do.

Other people would probably think my work was an absolute mess. I will use my blog much more often in my next project and even if I don't like my work I will rip up my work I'll continue through and use so I can grow as an artist. I’ll also plan ahead instead of planning the week im doing the work / the day im doing the work. I will manage my time better by doing things that will and wont intrest me together .That means i wont leave the work i think is boring to the end.

[michaelchapmanba2a]

Inanimate Objects Reflective Journal 2nd Oct - 08th Oct

This week was quite a productive week in terms of what I got done. I made a few props, did some research and found out some interesting things. Due to a small personal problem, there was a time where I forgot to update the blog, hence the last few posts may be out of order.

The week started with me looking at various paintings made by two very different people depicting people and dogs playing poker. This was quite informative as it gives me a window as how the posture has changed between 2 very different times. Whilst yes one painting is a group of dogs playing poker, he must have drawn inspiration from somewhere, perhaps seeing a game being played himself. In the first painting of the men playing Poker, one is hunched over and veering on the edge of his seat while the other is laid back and seems rather blasé over the situation. Same can be said for the dogs painting although like I say with the difference in time it shows a different scenario where all of them are laid back but one is infact cheating. How I can use this in my film is I want the Joker to be the one laid back and for the king to essentially go crazy when he realises he has lost and as a result has lost all the money.

This week also saw the completion of both of my animatics. However the first and second one I felt had both good and bad elements in terms of shots. So feeling a bit unhappy, on the Friday I combined the two to make in my personal opinion a better version using shots from both the first and the second, and honestly I’m much happier with this. I can admit I may not be the best drawer in class, to a point where someone jokingly offered to redraw the whole thing. However I as well as others can understand what is happening. I also drew it in different shades of grey with Helen S. saying last year that when doing an animatic or storyboard it needs to be done in grey and not black, which surprised me as I saw no one else follow this rule. If there is one thing I could do, if I had to do this animatic again I would perhaps introduce a tad more colour into it, but as it stands it’s practical and works to tell what happens in the story.

This week also saw the completion of some props that I made, The stacks of money and the two tables. As someone who is somewhat interested in going into the prop side of making. What I made was somewhat simple. The money as I explained were just cut up bits of green card with double sided tape to look like the band. The table however is a different kettle of fish. I made two tables after jon recommended I make a circle table which I did have a go but I just couldn’t get the right dimensions and as a result made it a tad bit small. Instead I used the remaining wood and literally stuck two pieces together to make a longer table. My fear is that whilst it has not a table cloth, and now I’ve stuck the table with more tape underneath, if the table will hold. It’s at an unfortunate place where I fear the middle might buckle. Filming is this Wednesday so I’ll have to see how it holds up. Luckily I do have another filming session on the Wednesday 18th if this one doesn’t go to plan.

I also did some research into the types of guns they use, which I found quite interesting and also found a work around. The type of gun the gangsters from back in the day used had a short barrel (The chamber where the bullet comes out from) And might be a lazy work around but a project I did last term involved a cowboy with a similar gun. I decided to use this as it’s a near match, and even at the angle I plan to film it you might not even tell it’s a small chamber. If I had all the time and unlimited resources I would easily make the gun to be a bit more accurate but with filming fast approaching I fear I may not have that time.

I watch a 1950′s film called Breaking Point, the plot being a fisherman who hires some less then reputable men who are infact criminals from a heist. There was another reason why I watched this however. When researching films I should watch, this one was recommended due to it’s bar/club scene which the other film did miss. As for what I imagined a bar scene from that time period would look, it’s right on the money. It’s dirty, grimy, smoke fills the air and there’s some card games in the background by the looks of things. It was this film that did make me consider if I should have some elements like that behind my main film but i fear it might take away from the actual stop motion.

I did some lighting tests this week, I went in the stop motion studio on the Thursday for about half an hour just to test various lighting set ups, tried 1 and 2 theatre lights. I went in thinking one light may be enough but I left with thinking that perhaps I should use 2 lights instead of one. On my filming day I will test this again to see what looks better.

I also looked a photograph of the most famous gangster playing card, al capone. And whilst I do not know the full story, I can see there is quite a great sence of power in the balance. with Al Capone looking quite smug with his hand while the other player looking somewhat scared by playing him, ultimately doesn’t help there is a unknown hand round his neck. I think this was a picture of the power balance between a king pin and someone who is lower then him in terms of power.

I also remembered that in the previous term, we were given a similar project to make a flour sack come to life and show an emotion with no words being said. I opted for doing a drunk style of flour sack and in this week I looked at a professional as well as look back at my own work and analysed it. I concluded that whilst mine was a valiant attempt I didn’t think it held a candle to other flour sack animations. However what I can learn from it however is that I can time the inanimate objects better as this looks a bit only timed even if he is supposed to be drunk.

In the last few days of the week, we had a sound talk which was really quite informative as I learnt how sound can convey any scene you put it in, I finished making some props which I think and hope should be ok for filming on Wednesday however it does put doubt in my mind if the table holds up, finished the animatic as mentioned previously. 

I also looked at one final example of inanimate objects coming to life, instead this time it was done in stop motion and not 2D like the previous example and it was just quite inspiring to see this being done in stop motion then 2d, as previous examples I could find were all done in 2D. I’m just as glad to see it work as well if not better in stop motion. It really inspired me to do as well if not better in my film.

So that was the week. What I hope to accomplish next week is filming on the Wednesday to go as a success and hopefully start editing it the following week. I might do a small more bit of research and hopeful get a few sound bites in.