#more of an animation industry thought

[seishiroses]

I haven't watched any Blue Lock S2 episodes aside from clips online. As someone who works on animated projects often, any news about animators being overworked or being forced to strip down their vision makes me sad.

I did realise something lately though. The complaints about the animation made me think about how I started reading the Blue Lock manga after S1 because many people said the artwork is way better in the manga than in the anime (which is 100% true). It even made me buy copies of the manga and the spinoff so that I could experience the art on paper and in the original language. I still return to the anime often because I think the voice acting (og, not dub) really carries it, especially for characters like Nagi and Isagi whose VAs I really like. And I like seeing action scenes animated.

On the other hand for an adaptation like Attack on Titan which has received high praise for its animation, I never read the original manga beyond taking a cursory look at scenes or dialogues online that have significant differences between manga and anime, out of my own curiosity.

So lower quality animation actually made me consume more of an IP and spend more money on its products? While higher quality animation caused me to be content with less. Which is interesting to think about in terms of how capitalism works.

Having said that, animators and artists everywhere deserve respect and decent wages and time to be able to put out their best work. Animation is very hard. Those who do it work tirelessly to bring so much joy to people's lives and make stories more accessible, no matter what's going on with the world, and I hope in the future they can have more say over the work they create.

[bmpmp3]

not used to this kind of mascot

[orfisheus]

good day, it has been almost exact 13 months since the last EW episode has been released.

[alternautxyz]

uuhhh in other new that lmk s5 trailer dropped and people are very

mixed

for context the new season is being partly animated by wildbrain i think. flying bark is still working on the show but probably due to all the other projects they've been working on like the atla movie the animation is off.

its understandable that people are upset. lmk has some of the most consistently dynamic and lively animation ive ever seen, and going from that to ok animation kinda sucks. as a culmination of a lot of what the series has been building up to people were inevitably going to be disappointed

at the same time people shouldnt harass animators. like ever. no amount of trying to petition or anything will change the s5, people are just trying to do their job and theres no probably no major changing to the finished product by now. and theres still a lot of that lmk charm in there, and we haven't even seen the whole season yet to judge it. flying bark is still working on it, and even if the animation never reaches the peak of the old seasons it still has the same writers so at least the writing has the chance to live up old standards. idk though we'll just have to wait and see

[fishfacedterror]

need a bdsm relationship where im the sub except instead of sex i am made to practice drawing and animation and with videogames and praise as the reward

[letmesleepy]

Watched perfect blue. I loved it except that twist at the end really ruined it for me tbh... Was truly hoping for a story of confusion and not ever knowing where or when you are. It basically turns it from "being a celebrity can ruin yer mind" to "actually it was all this fat woman with a stigmatized mental illness' fault everything bad happened to this beautiful thin girl". Really sucks :/

[sl33py-g4m3r]

it feels like a complaint but idk~~ hope it's not~~~ i kind of worry me telling anybody about anything is a complaint somehow~~

but saw something on a local PBS channel that I don't understand~~

are so many people into being the omnivores we think we are; to find lampooning a swordfish being hideously barbaric, watching it die in the boat with it's blood everywhere, and then throwing it on ice to be sent to local restaurants.... they think it's absolutely barbaric~~

I forget the word they used, disgusting/disturbing or something of the sort, it was yesterday and I don't remember~~

and at the same time EATING AND ENJOYING IT ANYWAY~~

I don't understand~~ you see that, are revolted by it, yet eat it anyway?

a little light doesn't click on in your head and goes "we aren't supposed to be killing and eating animals if we are disgusted/disturbed by it?"

true omnivores would see a feast of that fish~~ or any slaughterhouse really~~~ and yet humans are so disgusted/disturbed by it that we hide them from plain sight and make the act of slaughter hidden from view~~

if people are so disturbed by seeing their food be produced; then why and how can we see it as food to begin with?

I've been vegetarian so long that I no longer see meat as a viable food source and get genuinely confused when other people actually do, despite the slaughter and bloodshed witnessed....

like how can you still eat it and not be turned off by it? there are more compassionate ways of eating that don't involve taking the sentient life of another being~~

also unrelated thing that makes me feel really old for saying it to begin with; my 24 hour news station had inexplicably been replaced with another instance of a 24 hour shopping channel, and I don't understand... it is the exact same as the one a channel over..... ???

BRING MY 24 HOUR NEWS CHANNEL BACK DARN IT~~~!! WE DON'T NEED 2 OF THE SAME EXACT SHOPPING CHANNEL ON LOCAL TV~~~ I DON'T CARE~~~ I JUST WANT MY NEWS STATION

[orpheusilver]

sooooo fuckinf glad that spiderverse started a cool new trend in mainstream 3d animation of making it look good

[shinayashipper]

I watch the official animated MV for Idol (the opening song of oshi no ko) and mourned over how Very Perfect Found Family anime (for me personally anyway) it would’ve been if not for that plot twist QwQ for me this anime ends on episode 1 and Aqua & Ruby re-learn to be Actual Family with the others and survive in the toxic entertainment industry while still be Family and THATS IT

[demimachia]

more and more lately for some reason ive been considering getting a job w the national parks service or at some kind of state park like a forest ranger

[orcelito]

Someone the other day asked for our bubble tea "vegan option" and I was just like "? ...it's made with a soy-based creamer by default?" But he was like "No, the honey. I don't want honey." And I was just like. "......Ok."

Dude came in again today and he stank soooooo bad I literally nearly gagged. Bro apparently runs like a mile or some shit to get bubble tea as part of his exercise routine. & it's just like. OK Bro

[bmpmp3]

i think its really fitting that the "this shit........ is so ass :'') " anime girl reaction image is from oshi no ko because that is also what my expression was like the whole time while reading the entire last third of the story

[rhys-ravenfeather]

I have no idea how to say this without sounding like a boomer so you know what? I'm just going to say it outright--I miss the cartoons I grew up with, and it makes me sad that animation is basically written off these days.

[butterflieswhisper]

precollege animation summer class starts next week. i'm sososososo excited ,,,, i don't think i've been this like. genuinely looking forward to a class ever,,, animation class,,,,, for me ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[headspace-hotel]

I will write this thought about Veganism and Classism in the USA in another post so as to not derail the other thread:

There are comments in the notes that say meat is only cheaper than plant based foods because of subsidies artificially lowering the price of meat in the United States. This is...part of the story but not all of it.

For my animal agriculture lab we went to a butcher shop and watched the butcher cut up a pig into various cuts of meat. I have had to study quite a bit about the meat industry in that class. This has been the first time I fully realized how strongly the meat on a single animal is divided up by socioeconomic class.

Like yes, meat cumulatively takes more natural resources to create and thus should be more expensive, but once that animal is cut apart, it is divided up between rich and poor based on how good to eat the parts are. I was really shocked at watching this process and seeing just how clean and crisp an indicator of class this is.

Specifically, the types of meat I'm most familiar with are traditionally "waste" parts left over once the desirable parts are gone. For example, beef brisket is the dangly, floppy bit on the front of a cow's neck. Pork spareribs are the part of the ribcage that's barely got anything on it.

And that stuff is a tier above the "meat" that is most of what poor people eat: sausage, hot dogs, bologna, other heavily processed meat products that are essentially made up of all the scraps from the carcass that can't go into the "cuts" of meat. Where my mom comes from in North Carolina, you can buy "livermush" which is a processed meat product made up of a mixture of liver and a bunch of random body parts ground up and congealed together. There's also "head cheese" (made of parts of the pig's head) and pickled pigs' feet and chitlin's (that's made of intestines iirc) and cracklin's (basically crispy fried pig skin) and probably a bunch of stuff i'm forgetting. A lot of traditional Southern cooking uses basically scraps of animal ingredients to stretch across multiple meals, like putting pork fat in beans or saving bacon grease for gravy or the like.

So another dysfunctional thing about our food system, is that instead of people of each socioeconomic class eating a certain number of animals, every individual animal is basically divided up along class lines, with the poorest people eating the scraps no one else will eat (oftentimes heavily processed in a way that makes it incredibly unhealthy).

Even the 70% lean ground beef is made by injecting extra leftover fat back into the ground-up meat because the extra fat is undesirable on the "better" cuts. (Gross!)

I've made, or eaten, many a recipe where the only thing that makes it non-vegan is the chicken broth. Chicken broth, just leftover chicken bones and cartilage rendered and boiled down in water? How much is that "driving demand" for meat, when it's basically a byproduct?

That class really made me twist my brain around about the idea of abstaining from animal products as a way to deprive the industry of profits. Nobody eats "X number of cows, pigs, chickens in a lifetime" because depending on the socioeconomic class, they're eating different parts of the animal, splitting it with someone richer or poorer than they are. If a bunch of people who only ate processed meats anyway abstained, that wouldn't equal "saving" X number of animals, it would just mean the scraps and byproducts from a bunch of people's steaks or pork chops would have something different happen to them.

The other major relevant conclusion I got from that class, was that animal agriculture is so dominant because of monoculture. People think it's animal agriculture vs. plant agriculture (or plants used for human consumption vs. using them to feed livestock), but from capitalism's point of view, feeding animals corn is just another way to use corn to generate profits.

People think we could feed the world by using the grain fed to animals to feed humans, but...the grain fed to animals, is not actually a viable diet for the human population, because it's literally just corn and soybean. Like animal agriculture is used to give some semblance of variety to the consumer's diet in a system that is almost totally dominated by like 3 monocrops.

Do y'all have any idea how much of the American diet is just corn?!?! Corn starch, corn syrup, corn this, corn that, processed into the appearance of variety. And chickens and pigs are just another way to process corn. That's basically why we have them, because they can eat our corn. It's a total disaster.

And it's even worse because almost all the USA's plant foods that aren't the giant industrial monocrops maintained by pesticides and machines, are harvested and cared for by undocumented migrant workers that get abused and mistreated and can't say anything because their boss will tattle on them to ICE.

[faragonreblogs]

^^^^ This ^^^^

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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