#my computer was being weird rendering it

[lover-of-mine]

Buddie Countdown to Season 7:

25 days.

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Month 8, day 6

MUAHAHAHA, I figured out how to get my GPUs to work with Blender! Just had to turn off a few incompatible settings and then wait patiently for it to figure itself out lol My stuff renders so fast now, y'all!

Anyway, today I remade the blue marble material that I had before The Great Kablooie, and then just to "stress test" the graphics cards I re-rendered the glass I made yesterday using the Cycles render engine at 500 samples, as opposed to the 50 that I've been doing with all my previous renders

Yesterday rendering that exact same glass material in Cycles at 50 samples would have taken 37 minutes and change. Today with the GPUs in Cycles at 500 samples it took 12 minutes.

So yeah! I'm so happy rn :D Tbh the only reason I did any digging to find out what I need to do to use my GPUs was because my roommate let me know that the local community college is gonna be putting up some 2017 5K iMacs used by their graphic design department up for auction, and I was looking to see if the graphics cards in that model are compatible with Metal (I don't really understand what that is so I can't explain it, sorry), which they are! But in so digging I finally figured out how to read the website I was using to see the capabilities of the various graphics cards, and lo! My GPUs are also Metal compatible. So I did some digging and fiddling and experimenting and found out there's render settings that won't work with the Metal framework (smarter computer people than me know what that is, I promise), so I turned those off, switched to the GPUs and Metal, and...

Waited. Because apparently something had to be recalculated to work with the GPUs rather than the CPU. Waited so long I knew if I tried to do literally anything Blender would crash, and while I was looking to see what I had missed (nothing), it finished doing its thing and JESUS FUCK IT GOES SO FAST NOW. SO FAST. GPU RENDERING GO BRRRRR :D

So yeah, my computer is beefier than I realized, I am now somewhat less of an idiot, and also I might get a newer, more powerful machine if I can get lucky with the auction :D Part of me feels bad about wanting to replace Hera so soon, but upgrading her would be more expensive than the auctioned iMac and I need a machine with more oomph than she can provide anyway. I love her, she's perfect for everyday work. Just... not for 3D modeling and animation lol

To be fair the iMac also wouldn't be perfect, but it would be a lot closer. One day I will be able to afford the perfect machine, though. One day. Or so I keep telling myself XD

[gremlingottoosilly]

König giving his card to reader to splurge with, not on designer bags or clothing, but their expensive ass gaming set up. And it has to be those cute ones too, which are somehow more expensive than just wanting to have a plain setup. Reader definitely wears those headphones with cat ears on them.

Konig would definitely have a discord kitten during COVID-19; you can't change my mind. Imagine this man, being stuck in some half-abandoned mission because covid ruined too many plans and rendered half of the enemy's squad useless while also taking at least a quarter of his soldiers...so, he is stuck at the base somewhere really fucking far away, with nothing to do besides hating on Kortac's higher-ups and liking the fact that him wearing a mask in public finally doesn't look weird. He is still bored out of his mind, however, and he still wants something to do. Anything. Oh, also, he is still a loser and a weeb in hiding, using highly protected internet at base to watch pirated anime and get into arguments with chronically online teens on Discord. This is how he met you, actually. Not a teen, thank god, but surely chronically online. You said he had the charm of an autistic creature. You said that him being a war criminal is kinda problematic but, then again, some of your friends were into self-shipping with characters from war games, so he is kinda forgiven. You're saying words that he doesn't understand, but he is willing to spend hours on Urban Dictionary just so he could fish you into sending him nudes. Konig is stuck at some god-forgotten military base, but he still sends you money - mostly because having your nudes tailored to him and his perverted interests is much more fun than jerking off at some random porn model and also because he likes to think that you depend on him. He makes you send him photos of everything - shiny new computer he bought from the last sniping bonus, those expensive as fuck cat ear headphones that shine adorably in the ring light of your room. Konig who makes you facetime him for a quick e-sex - although he never turns on his camera, he loves to see you fuck yourself on the sex toy he sends you(something definitely too big for you, but he likes to see how quickly you can overcome challenges). If you want that shiny new PC setup, you have to work for it - and unfortunately for you, he found it really easy to get your exact address because of all the purchases. Don't be alarmed when he finally shows up after deployment, okay?

[xx-j4nu5-c4t5-xx]

"An ideal Sims game would have Sims 2's gameplay mechanics, Sims 3's open world, and Sims 4's graphics!"

I absolutely despise this take, and I want to explain why. This is a very long rant and it is full of piss and vinegar directed at everything in the Sims 4. I'm gonna try to keep everything kinda professional as much as I can but I can't guarantee an unbiased opinion.

If you'll let me talk your ears off for a moment, I'd like to explain, from my own experience as an artist and a casual player, my issues with the art style and direction of The Sims 4 compared to The Sims 2. (I'm not really going to comment on 3 because I've never played it.)

I want to start off by explaining the difference between better graphics and higher resolution. The Sims 4 absolutely blows Sims 2 out of the water when it comes to textures and polygon counts on sims, no contest. But I'd argue that the graphics themselves... aren't better. They're worse, even, so much fucking worse. The biggest problems come from the stylization and the animations, in my opinion, so I'll explain what I mean.

Have you ever felt like the Sims in 4 just look... weird? Not quirky, not kinda strange, but off. Distressing. Uncanny. Whatever the fuck the kids call it nowadays. When you strip away the packs and the CC and the shaders, the sims in the base game look bad. They're very close to being human; they walk like us, talk like us, have families like us, but they don't look like us, not exactly. There's always something off about them, no matter how close you try to get. Proportions will be a bit off, or your eyelashes will be like three polygons for some fucking reason, and the jig is up. The illusion is gone.

This is one of the instances where a higher resolution and more detailed models and meshes work against you. You aren't making believe. You are beyond the point of pretending that the pixelated shapes are real clothes and bodies and faces, because at this point, they're close enough that you don't need to. There's no gap to bridge. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're lifelike, at least, not enough to be completely human. In some ways, they're still tethered to being cartoony and plasticky and fake. Just enough to frighten you. Enough to put you off. They're not using it to their advantage anymore, and instead, it's holding them back.

When the Sims 2 came out in 2004, the developers knew that they weren't going to make a perfectly accurate life simulator. They physically couldn't render every wrinkle in the face or fold in the clothing. In some animations, things clip strangely or the facial expressions are sort of janky or there's just some form of roughness around the edges. But that's okay; your brain doesn't need a perfectly accurate representation this time. That's not what you're here for, anyway.

The Sims 4 is basically Icarus-ing itself into disaster. The entire game sacrifices style for complete realism, a goal that was unachievable ten years ago, and is unachievable now.

The Sims 2 never thought of itself as a completely realistic life sim, though. It has cartoony, low poly meshes and exaggerated proportions and wild, raunchy storylines that would never occur in real life. BECAUSE IT ISN'T REAL LIFE. And it isn't like real life, not because it's failing to be, but because it doesn't want to be!

The Sims 4 is not ever going to completely replicate human looks or interactions or dynamics. And if it's trying to, it's doing a shit job of it. That shouldn't be the goal in the first place. If I wanted to watch a lonely college student talk to himself in the mirror to try and get better at interacting with people, I'd close the computer and go look at myself. It somehow highlights the most mundane parts of life without any of the whimsy and goofiness that the earlier installments had. It takes itself too fucking seriously for its own good, and it's killing both the gameplay and the art style.

The other point I'd like to bring up is the animation. The Sims 4 allows for much more customization of both sim and environments, but at the cost of dynamic animations. How many times is that grab animation reused? How many times is the same set of animations used for sims with wildly different personalities? Your sims barely feel alive with how little they express themselves.

Now, look, I'm a digital artist. I've dabbled in animation, but only briefly, and only in 2D. I've got no clue how 3D animation works, much less how it worked 20 years ago, but I can see the passion in every single animation in the Sims 2. The more niche interactions allowed for more expressive animations than in 4. They could afford to have a distinct animation for mean sims throwing the football extra hard to be assholes, rather than every sim using the same generic football-throwing animation to save time and money. I get where they're coming from. I get the idea. But in one move, you've both made the art style stiffer and less expressive, and you've made the personalities of the sims seem meaningless. Everyone acts the same, regardless of what their moodlets or their traits say. It's hollow. It's stifled. It's a waste of potential.

But for what Sims 2 lacks in polygons, it makes up for in smaller animated details. Quality over quantity. The sims have hair physics, they open the door before they get in the car, they take utensils out of the counters when they cook, they jump on the couch and the cushions smush under their weight. When they dance, the weight is realistic, and when they smile, it tugs at every one of the few dozen shapes that make up their faces. The sims are lively. They dance and sing and love and hate just like humans, and rather than being some strange attempt at mimicry, it's almost a tribute. They were made with love. You can tell that they were drawn up and rigged and animated by a bunch of people working together, studying each other and making faces in the mirror for reference and watching their kids and neighbors and dogs and hands for reference. The sims are not human, and not trying to be, but they're taking the most human parts of us and making them their own.

You could never have a game with the Sims 4's graphics and the Sims 2's gameplay. The gameplay and graphics are inexorably connected, and the Sims 2 just has so much glorious detail baked into it, that you could never really make it work underneath the limitations of the later games. The developers of 2 knew what their limits were, and they worked tirelessly to make the game as full and complex as they could within those limits. The developers for the Sims 4 just did not have those guidelines, and thus, the drive to bend the rules was no longer there. They didn't go wild in rebellion because they were never told they couldn't in the first place. They spent the entire time chasing a goal they couldn't meet, and lost sight of what made the series fun to begin with.

It wasn't the realism you came for; you had realism already surrounding you. It was the caricature of it that made it interesting.

[kbs-and-fds]

Yo, Welcome to my photography blog!

This is a photography project with a focus on older digital cameras sold before the mid 2000s. I've been working with these sorts of cameras since 2022, which grew from my interest in retro computers that I have had since 2020 or so. Here, I'll introduce you to my cameras, my computer rig, and try to convince you that this is a cool hobby.

General Q & A:

Whats in the name? - Kb refers to Kilobyte, all of the photos I take with these cameras only take up a little over 100 Kilobytes of digital storage per photo. FD refers to the physical media the photos are stored in, currently one camera uses floppy disks (FD), the other two use compact flash (CF) and smart media (SM) cards. unfortunately, their shortened forms do not rhyme and so they do not matter.

What can I expect from this blog? - amateur photography using old cameras, I guess. I'll say some nonsense below each photo but you're free to ignore it. I don't plan on reblogging anything here, so don't expect that. I am the star of this blog. me me me. I tend towards finding weird buildings/architecture, "liminal spaces", sunsets, and generally trying to see how well I can make a photo look like a blender render in a Kane pixels video. don't expect any consistency, though. the medium will remain the same but the vibes will absolutely fluctuate with my mood. I'll try and tag things correctly if it's off putting.

Are you a cool person? - I tend to be! I don't want this place to be alienating for anybody but assholes who don't deserve to see the stuff I do. being a tumblr blog, I follow a lot of the standard stuff. jerks are not welcome and I'm not gonna give you the pleasure of an argument if you do turn your head round these parts.

who are you? - trans pan girl. takes pictures. listens to Femtanyl. much unlike Peter Parker.

My Cameras

Mavica FD-7

released in 1997, this was the second of Sony's "Digital Mavica" line of cameras. it records photos of around 50Kbs in size to a standard 3 1/2" floppy disk. it has some standard features like a manual focus wheel, 10x optical zoom, and exposure control. I haven't found a strict source but I believe this camera is less than one megapixel. I actually have a few different Mavica cameras (a fd-71/75/83/85/87 and a cd-1000) but they aren't different from the fd-7 enough to justify being used often. I'll make note on individual posts if I use 'em at all.

Kodak DC220

released in 1999, with a quality of exactly one megapixel the DC 220 is a weird little thing. it has custom software, connects to a computer via com ports with a transfer speed of ~11,000 bit/s. (roughly 30-60 seconds per photo in my experience) you can add custom text to your photos in the cameras built in software, and attach custom audio to each photo. it is a pain in the butt to get working, but it's quirks make it worth the frustration.

Olympus E-10

made in 2000 with a quality of a whopping four megapixels, the Olympus E-10 is the newest addition to my collection, and possibly the nicest camera I'll ever own. it's a fixed lens DSLR camera capable of 4x zoom, you can easily adjust the aperture and exposure on the fly, it's photos tend to be a whole 100kb in size (1/10th of a megabyte!) and to be entirely honest I have no idea how to use it. but I will eventually!

My Computer

I try to use all era-appropriate tech to transfer photos and do any edits, this is the computer I do all that processing on! its a Dell Optiplex gx1- the daddy of pretty much any computer used in public schools (Chromebooks don't count) It's got a Pentium 3 CPU clocking at 500MHz, 512mb ram, running windows ME. it has all the original Kodak DC220 software installed, and I can't really access the Kodak's photos any other way. I've also got a few other weird bits attached to it -an HP sketch pro cad tablet and an external data cartridge SCSI device. both work, but I don't really bother to use them, they just look neat.

that's about it. have a good one! thanks for reading this all, if you did.

[winxwannabe]

Winx Season 9/Reboot Leaks

Okay here's the tea: earlier today a twitter user by the name of Cataclysm_Power started posting a video they claimed was from the new Winx season/reboot. When pressed for further information, they linked to a telegram chat with what appeared to be assets from Rainbow (17 screenshots/2 videos). After some C-grade internet sleuthing, I am here to give my (worthless and possibly wrong) opinion on which ones I think are real and fake.

A note before we jump in: I'm not posting full images on my blog, because again I do think some of these are real and if the leaker is to be believed, they hacked Rainbow to get them. You can look yourself through the telegram link, or others who've posted them on the Winx Club tag. I also think the leaker themselves is scammy because they've tried charging for Miraculous leaks before. Do NOT give them any money if they ask.

Real: Bloom, Stella, and Icy's asset sheets, Bloom Full Body Pose

A lot of these leaks are 3d modelling assets, and these 3 are the ones I'm totally convinced are real.

The biggest clue of their validity is the bottom banner. All 3 sheets have them, along with the same episode code and notes in Italian. They're all also linked to the same person: Pasqualino Masciulli is Rainbow's 3D modelling supervisor, and has been with the company for at least 9 years. He's done videos on Rainbow's youtube channel as well, using his shortened first name Lino. My main point is that's way too niche for someone to fake just to make some convincing leaks, and it would make sense for the assets to be tied to him.

Likewise, there's a full-body frame post of Bloom with fucking ugliest denim leg warmers credited to a g.riccobono. This is likely Giulio Riccobono, who is listed on Linkedin Italy as a Rainbow employee.

Probably Real: Tecna's asset sheet, Bloom's detailed asset sheet

Both of these are likely real but have weird things about them that make me pause. Bloom's more detailed asset sheet is missing the name, date and episode reference on it, and the notes are in English. Tecna's is missing the bottom banner entirely, and there's some weird cutting around her head that makes it look like someone hastily made a png and stuck it on there.

Unsure: Computer File Tab, MD Concept Photos, Videos

There's a screenshot of a folder with both 2D and 3D assets of all the girls. in the files. I'm not sure if this is from a computer at Rainbow or the hacker's personal folder, so it goes in unsure. I do think most of the assets in it are real - it's low res but the eyes on the 2D sketches are so similar to the ones on Rainbow's newer images of the girls I think they have to be connected.

There are also some full body concept photos for Bloom, Aisha, and Stella. They all look pretty legit (as they're updated version of images we've already seen) but Stella's has other images for 'possible pallets' included. She's the only one with it and the images look like they came from a flash dress-up game, and it gives me pause.

Lastly, the teaser videos of Bloom are probably real based on the outfit, animation and that stupid fucking Bloom shelf being in the background, but I'm placing it in 'unsure' because of the bandicam.com logo burned into the top. If it really came from Rainbow and everything else was downloaded, there was no reason for the hacker to not get the raw file. I think it's real, but I don't know if it came from Rainbow.

Something Ain't Right: Group Shot

What gives me pause in the fully-rendered group shot (even though its shown in the computer file tab) is it shows transformation we haven't seen teased and has a 'Lorem Ipsum' placeholder text. Aisha's hair also looks like it was done with AI - the back of her wings clip through the hair, and parts of it look copy-pasted. I'm stupid, it's the end of her braids. The 'Lorem Ipsum' thing still stands, but I'm re-filing this under 'unsure.'

Probably Fake: Darcy and Damien's asset sheets

I'm showing things from here on out because I'm so convinced it's fake please let me be right. Unlike the other character sheets, the ones for Darcy and 'new character' Damien have no bottom banner, are marked as 'Winx Club Season 9' with an outdated Winx logo, and have notes written completely in English. Darcy's has a bit of 3D modelling, but it's too different from Icy's. Maybe they're super early concepts for Darcy, but Damien...go home, buddy.

You're in the Wrong Place: Rainbow Pants Girl

I'm convinced this girl is from a different show and was saved to the 'Winx Club' folder by accident. Different clothing, hair, and shading. May you end up somewhere better than this reboot, Mystery Girl.

[archeronfilm]

The Fifth Element (1997)

"I don't care, he should have been a butch lesbian."

In case you don't want spoilers, or to hear my long verbose in-detail thoughts on this movie, here's the short and sweet version:

The Fifth Element is raunchy, corny, and campy in all the right ways, and some of the wrong ones. It's far from a perfect movie, but I really enjoyed watching and rewatching it, and I would recommend it! I guess um, 4/5 stars, maybe.

Okay, now let's get serious. I saw the first 15 minutes of this movie while visiting my mother, found it so intriguing that I watched it with a friend, and then watched it again to write this review. Let's get into the meat of it. Spoilers for a 30 year old movie ahead.

Word Count: 6,082

Okay, The Fifth Element (1997), dir. Luc Besson, is a sci-fi comedy starring such greats as Bruce Willis and Gary Oldman, who I've been in love with since I watched Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1990).

We open in Egypt in 1914, in a scene I can only describe as "Mummy-esque." Seriously, this scene came on in my mother's living room and I thought we were watching a yet unseen installation of The Mummy or Indiana Jones. It contains, among other things, an incredibly hammy and not-at-all-subtle dump of exposition. They go out of their way to gravitate back to this wall of runes several times, to make sure you know as much background lore as possible. A later scene renders this odd choice kind of unnecessary, but I'll concede its existence for one key reason-- the Mondoshawan.

The Mondoshawan are the good-guy aliens in this movie, though they're only featured on screen two times, one of them being this scene. Their space ship looms awesomely over this strange Egyptian exposition-temple, and they are a star example of one of the best parts of this movie.

All the effects, or at least as many of them as possible, are practical. Of course, it's a movie made in the 90's, so they would be. But the beautifully clunky and real toddling of these men in alien costumes was a dead-ringer for New Who, and it was incredibly endearing to me. I am a major believer in the power and merit of practical effects and the tragedy of computer generation. And this movie is *swimming* in practical effects. It's a delight.

I will say there's this bit where the leader Mondoshawan is toddling towards this very slowly closing stone door and he doesn't make it through because his very slow waddling is somehow slower than the door is, and I think it was supposed to be semi-serious but I laughed at it. It was just a little ridiculous.

The back half of this first scene feels kind of oddly paced, like it's rushed, which is odd to me considering the scene didn't hold back on dumping as much stuff on me as possible just a few minutes ago. Very strange scene, seems to only have one purpose, which I'll get back to later.

So, flash forward 30 years to something dramatically different in aesthetic and vibe, of course. We're in space. We're gritty, we're militaristic, of course. There's an evil fucking orb of fire flying towards the Earth at top speed. Things aren't looking great.

The president, a man with eyes of a frightening shade, is black! This is not plot relevant, but I find the tendency of movies from this period to feature black presidents far before Obama's term to be really interesting. Is this social commentary? A thoughtful statement about how fantastical the idea of a black man in office is to the average American? I will never know. I really like this character, he's a fun guy. He has more personality than most president characters do, probably due to him being on an awesome spaceship with a team of nodding yes-men in a delightfully Star Trek-esque uniform. I like him a lot. He's my boy.

This is the same scene where we get introduced to Vito Cornelius, a priest who appears to be Catholic because he does the sign of the cross later in the movie, even though I definitely assumed he was some weird member of the church of the Fifth Element or something.

Cornelius is here to suggest that the ball of fire is sentient and evil, and that the president shouldn't shoot it with missiles, because it's so sentient and evil that it'll get even sentienter and eviler. Of course, the president disregards this warning, because that's what movie presidents do to random old men in robes.

From this blunder comes one of the many incredibly hard lines in this movie. Where Mr. President tells Staedert, his military commander, "I have a doubt." and Staedert replies "I don't, Mister President" and then presses the fire button on the huge gigantic missiles. It's awesome, only slightly undercut by the fact that it doesn't work and Staedert and his crew get fucking obliterated right after. By the evil sentient ball which shoots out a flare of flames that has an evil spooky skull in it. That's not a joke at all, that seriously happens in this scene. I laughed.

Now we smash cut to Bruce Willis. He's Korben Dallas, this sort of gritty ex-military guy with a very cute cat. I love this cat. She is an adorable, slightly cross eyed white longhair. It's honestly a tragedy and a waste that she was only in like two scenes. She should have been ever-present, fitted with Air Bud esque mouth animation so she could act as Bruce Willis' voice of reason throughout the film.

Korben Dallas is trying to quit smoking. He's a cab driver who's dogshit at driving his cab and is mere seconds away from losing his license. He is, and I quote, "Still stuck on that two-timing slut." He wants a perfect woman. There are about two Chekov's guns in that last block of text.

He opens his first scene with us in what I can only describe as the sluttiest most hot and sweaty chest binder I've ever seen. And a pair of tight belted leather boots that it really seems like he fell asleep wearing.

And then he gets mugged by a guy, presumably so they can show us how much he knows about guns, and that he has been mugged enough that he now has a secret shelf that is just completely full of guns. Hilarious. I love this bit. It's not even relevant, I just loved it.

Okay so the evil sentient ball of fire. We didn't forget about that. This scene is one that confused me really badly during my rewatch. Here, Cornelius explains in full detail and in much less vague terms than before what the Fifth Element does and why they need it to save Earth from this evil ball of fire. This scene renders most of the in-narrative purpose of the first scene moot. The only reason it now exists (other than some background stuff that could probably have been introduced in a less odd way) is to address a more meta issue, which I'll get to later. But while I was watching it, I couldn't help but think "Well... then what the hell were we doing in the desert with Luke Perry?"

In this scene, we get to see the Mondoshawans again for the final time, so we can introduce the bad guy aliens, the Mangalores. They jack the stones (the elements) from the Mondoshawan ship and blow them up.

I thought this scene was supposed to set up the stereotypical "military incompetent" idea that's often present in this type of sci fi, but the president honestly makes mostly good decisions that don't make him feel like a bumbling idiot once through the entire movie. Honestly, he's kind of cool. I like him.

Okay, now that the Mangalores have been tragically exploded, we get the vehicle towards one of our main characters. Using a saved body part from the Mangalores and some utterly and delighfully made up genetic scienceology, we recreated the perfect genes of some alien into... a skinny white girl with the orangest hair I've ever seen. This scene features one of the only costuming choices in the movie that I truly hate. Leeloo's weird strap undies (and subsequent inability to wear normal pants, but mostly these strap undies?). I just hate it. Why is it here. It's not even that sexy looking. She looks like a ham in an asylum.

The set design in this movie is also delightfully Whovian and Star-Trek-ish. Tinfoil walls, lava lamp type sensibilities. The costumes are camp the set is camp, everything is camp. It's an absolute whale. The costumes the policemen wear while chasing runaway Leeloo are just hilarious. Many fantastic choices made all around, except for those fucking weird underpants.

Some of the sci-fi concepts in this movie FEEL overplayed and hammed up, and then I remember that it was released when a lot of this stuff was new and in-vogue, and it becomes an interesting exercise in perspective. Maybe they were pioneers, what do I know? I'm having an absolute ball.

Okay, so Leeloo falls directly through the roof of Korben Dallas' cab, and before you say anything, I do have many choice words throughout this recap/review about the infamous trope borne of this movie, "Born Sexy Yesterday," and I am aware of its existence. These opinions are sprinkled throughout alongside my others.

So Bruce Willis seems to be a big fan of this strange woman who, especially in this scene, acts very childlike. Korben's interest doesn't really read as creepy in this scene, until later when he randomly assaults her. You know, like a creep would do. I digress.

Leeloo knows how to read Roman lettering, and while I understand this choice in this scene, I do think it doesn't make sense and kills a little bit of world building. Whatever. Language guy complaining about language stuff.

Speaking of world building, there are a lot of worldbuilding things conveyed visually and through dialog in this movie that arent ham-fisted exposition vomit, and I am very fond of them. The hitch inside the rear door of Dallas' cab, saying Leeloo "doesn't have a file," the Fog? That is never explained? This world has some suggestion of richness and intrigue that I love to see from sci-fi. They waste no time painting "THIS IS THE POINT" with big red letters, because it's just setdressing, and I think that ultimately makes these details really sing.

I love the dialog and energy in the high speed chase scene, the vertical train, the Fog??? The way this movie doesn't need to explain itself. Until it does explain itself. Blatantly. And then I get sad.

In a lot of ways, I think this movie's actual plot is the least interesting part of it. More on this later.

It also *really* seems like this movie was sponsored by McDonald's.

A nearly unconscious Leeloo begs Korben Dallas to take her to Cornelius, before passing out with such cartoonish vigor that I originally thought she was kidding.

So Korben takes Leeloo to Cornelius' apartment, getting originally turned away for being mistaken for newlyweds (barf). Instead of knocking again, he just kicks down the door. Cornelius realizes due to a tattoo on her inner wrist that she's the Fifth Element (!) and passes out. Korben places her on the couch.

Now, I don't really understand why Korben Dallas chooses to sexually assault Leeloo by kissing her while she's unconscious in this scene. It not only feels gross, it also feels kind of unprecedented. They've met once, had approximately the amount of chemistry you'd expect, and then she passed out. Maybe in the 90's this felt spontaneous and romantic, but to me it just feels like he did it for no reason. I wish she had actually shot him. Thankfully, her outburst of rage at this momentarily makes her feel a little less like a literal grade-schooler, a much needed respite.

Milla Jovovich does what I think is a pretty good job at keeping her pronunciation of the divine language consistent throughout the scenes where she speaks it. She's Ukranian-American, but I have no idea if she's bilingual or had an accent coach or something. Either way, well done Ms. Jovovich!

Anyway, Cornelius walks in having suddenly changed into these silly ass robes, a great sight gag, and kicks Korben out of the room, but not before he reveals that the words that Leeloo yelled at Korben meant "never without my permission," which really made me wish she had shot him *twice*.

The scene where Korben talks to his friend, Finger, about Leeloo was clearly supposed to be romantic, I'm sure. It actually makes him look like a freak. I hated him for much of this movie.

Now, Back to the Mangalores. The Mangalores are a warrior race who have been hired by the big evil of this movie-- Gary Oldman. For some reason, they decided to make him southern. Not that I'm really complaining, but characters in this movie seem to have accents for no reason, and I really love it.

I love Gary Oldman in this movie. His character, Zorg, is fitted with one of the most ridiculous wardrobes of the entire cast. He has this odd plastic cap on his head, a flaccid mohawk, and the filthiest facial hair possible (a soul patch). He is fucking awesome. I love Zorg.

Spliced between parts of this arms deal, we learn that the stones aren't in the case. Leeloo tells Cornelius that in case they were stolen, the stones were given to someone trusted by the Mondoshawans, but not before changing clothes in front of him and his apprentice. I swear, she does this like three times in this movie.

The cut back to Leeloo in this scene right after Zorg realizes the box is empty is really well done. Effective, funny, punchy. She laughs like a freak, it's great.

There's a bit of dialog Zorg has with his right hand man right after this failed arms deal where he talks about his philosophy around warriors and why he prefers killers. I love this bit. The way he just coldly leaves them with a bomb built into his holy-overkill-gun is hard as shit, and it gives us a nice insight into our villain in the first scene he's in. I like it. I like Zorg.

Speaking of Zorg, we get a proper introduction to him just after. Here is one of the most interesting scenes in this film, where we get some insight about Zorg and Cornelius' respective opinions on life and death.

The interesting thing about this scene is that I kind of agree with Zorg, his saying that death exists to create life for the living, ostensibly feeding the cycle of life and progress. Regardless, he is painted as stupid when Cornelius has to rescue him from choking on a cherry.

And why the hell would you ever put a whole cherry in a glass of water? You're basically asking to choke to death. And Cornelius has a point, why don't you, a guy who has a special button to unearth his bizarre elephantine freak creature from the secret drawer in your desk, have a special robot to smack you on the back when you're choking? *Especially* when you do dumb shit like putting whole pit-in cherries in your glasses of water? Answer me that, Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg.

Actually, I don't know how this bit is supposed to disprove Zorg's point. All it really proves is that people need each other sometimes, which has nothing to do with what Zorg was actually saying to Cornelius here. Now, we could argue that it goes against the way that he executes this philosophy, which is true, being that he is a weird freaky villain who has henchmen, but I don't want to argue that. Because the fact that they have this strange sum-zero philosophical argument where they're ostensibly not even talking to each other is way funnier.

Right after this there's a bit where he sends his right hand man to literally bug the space-oval office. As in, it's a cockroach with a little camera and microphone on it. This bit is super funny. No thematic relevance, I just loved watching the president fucking cream the roach with his shoe while Zorg's henchman writhed in pain from the mic feedback.

The next important scene, by which I mean the next scene, starts with a healthy serving of "Sci-Fi setting that is weird about Asian people." Get behind me, Mr. Kim, this movie doesn't respect you enough.

Anyway, Korben's hilariously young adult-sounding mother calls him on the phone to bitch at him insanely about how he never calls and gives us a key piece of information-- Korben has won an all expenses paid trip to Fhloston Paradise! This coincidentally is where Leeloo told Cornelius the person with the stones was. This contest was actually alluded to on Korben's television in his first scene as well. This movie is very, *very* good at setup-payoff. Lots of domino situations.

Korben professional-improvs his way out of a police confrontation (organized by Zorg) just to get walloped over the head by Cornelius, who intends to steal his tickets so he and Leeloo can save planet Earth. In the process, he also puts his former superior officer in a freezer. Everyone wants Korben's sweet sweet bod in this scene. It's really something.

There's a couple of details about Korben's character and his relationship with Leeloo in this scene that jumped out at me, and I will be addressing them alongside the others of their ilk later in this review.

Cornelius hatches a plan to make his apprentice David impersonate Korben so they can get to Fhloston. It doesn't work, of course, because this movie chose to represent being knocked out the most realistically I've ever seen in a blockbuster flick. Korben is only down for the count for a second or two, which means he caught up with them and pulled some more startlingly effective improvisation out of his ass to get on this flight with Leeloo. It's really remarkable how good this ex military guy is at improv. Get his ass behind a mic. Get Korben on Whose Zorg is it Anyway, and pay me royalties.

I have a note here that just says "Everyone in this movie wears what I can only describe as rave wear. It's pretty hilarious." I have nothing to add. That's accurate.

So they're boarding this flight, right? And here's a real doozy. 1 out of 2 of my impassioned rants on one specific character in this movie who we meet in this scene. Ruby Rhod. Ruby ffffucking Rhod.

I actually *need* to talk about this guy. He is like the Prince of outer space. His scenes where he does his talk show are mesmerizing, zany, all over the place. I felt like I was having a nightmare. He's fascinating, fabulous, flamboyant, some other f word that I'm choosing not to say right now. His use of "green" to mean "good" is just perfect. Korben's completely dodgy and stiff responses are honestly the perfect contrast to Ruby in this scene. They're foils. This scene has captivated me. Ruby prowls around while tiger growling noises play in the background and flirts with this random stewardess ON AIR, inches from her face with the mic separating their mouths, promising to have sex with her later. ON AIR. It's implied that this is a normal thing that is acceptable on his show.

Ruby also has a whole gang of yes men, all of which are only slightly less flamboyantly homosexual than he is, but still feel more explicitly homosexual than Ruby, who has sex with as many women as he can possibly manage, which seems to be many, because every woman who mentions his name in this movie appears to cream their pants if he so much as breathes near them. That girl he flirted with? She moaned and collapsed on the floor right after.

The scene after the show, where Korben Dallas pins Ruby to the wall and threatens him, would have been beautifully compelling if Korben Dallas was a butch lesbian. This is the furthest thing from thoughtful character analysis, I just would have liked it more.

It's implied in the following scene that Ruby has only ever really wanted to fuck aliens before meeting this random stewardess, and we get to watch a very cleverly compiled set of scenes from wildly different locales that all fit together. Ruby having sex with this stewardess, the ship taking off, and Zorg blowing up his right hand man for failing him. They also use the Wilhelm scream in this scene, but given that the movie was made in the late 90's this is par for the course, and is really much more tasteful than usual.

For some reason, rasta(?) music is playing. There is a vaguely rastafarian man in this scene, but only for around 12 seconds. The use of regionally and culturally specific music in this movie that has no bearing on the actual space the characters inhabit is absolutely fascinating to me. There was some music earlier, playing in sci-fi New York, that I swear used a Raga scale. All the music is very good, good job Éric Serra.

After Zorg finishes exploding his frankly very competent right hand man, we get a scene where we discover that he's after the stones because some man he's working for, Mr. Shadow, wants them. Zorg is the main antagonist for most of this movie. Mr. Shadow never comes back again, and we do not need him. All he really serves to do is to make Zorg look more pathetic and give him an excuse to be more desperate when he can't get his hands on the stones, which, while fine, I think the movie could have gotten away with just having Zorg being a dramatic villain who freaks out when he doesn't get his way without this bit. Not egregious, but not really a necessary scene.

Okay, I have a big question. Why is Fhloston paradise Hawaii? It just *is* Hawaii. Did Hawaii escape to a separate planet at some point? Good for them, except that Fhloston is still a crazy tourist spot full of annoying white people, so not really. This is just Super Mega Hell 2 for Hawaiians. The song they sing in the first Fhloston scene is really good, though. Thanks, Éric.

On the topic of Fhloston, I really love the use of color in the set. Given the way the rest of this movie is, it's possible that it's more for visual contrast and not theming, but there is a scene during the opera performance that switches between complements, and the visual contrast is, well, good.

Speaking of the opera, Korben has front row seats, and its 5pm. You know what that means.

It's fucking Ruby Rhod time, baby! Ruby is back in black, in the most fantastic costume in this entire movie. Despite it showing off his entire clavicle (no exaggeration), it manages to get more and more revealing as this scene plays out. This bit where he asks Korben if he's happy with being on Fhloston in his usual over the top, loud, flamboyant way and Korben looks into his eyes, leans into the mic, and says "Thrilled" drolly is a short interaction so packed with sexual tension that I can't even argue for it without just telling you to watch the scene. This is their only interaction that really FEELS like gay sex, and it made my jaw go slack for a couple of seconds, even as the movie immediately moved on to the much more important opera segment.

Speaking of the opera, for real this time, I have one complaint. It's an annoying complaint that nobody ever wants to hear, but I'm saying it anyway because that's what I'm here to do: Diva is *not* singing. Now, maybe in some later movie review we can learn my detailed opinions on live recordings of singing performances in film (short version: I don't think they should happen, and I hate them) my main complaint is mostly that Diva's actress is just not very good at *pretending* to sing, much less opera. She doesn't pretend to breathe, doesn't try to move her mouth with the incredibly strong vibrato (understandable to some extent) but most of all, her mouth shapes just aren't right. I can concretely point to certain mouth shapes and say "that's not the shape her mouth should be when singing that vowel," it's obvious enough that I can do that. Granted, I have some experience in singing on stage, so maybe that's just my personal annoying musician experience speaking, but it was really noticeable to me. Okay, annoying complaint over, now I can say nice things

This opera, Lucia di Lammermoor with a poppy remix track towards the end, is ridiculously well performed. Diva's vocalist, Inva Mula, does a stunning job at both the formal and informal portions of this song. It's actually amazing how little of her voice had to be computer edited to sound more "alien," it's only done like twice in the portion that it's done at all, and the rest is pretty clearly just her. She really knocks it out of the park here.

The movie does something interesting here that I really enjoyed, where they periodically show us different characters reactions to this opera. Mostly Korben and Leeloo. I want to focus on Korben, who looks at Diva like this is the first time he's ever been moved in his life. Seriously, his eyes are wet and shining with unshed tears and I really mean that. Right when we get this poignant reaction out of Korben, the pop track starts playing and the somber moment abruptly ends, which is kind of what it's like watching this movie, or clicking on a Read More and discovering a film review that is easily over 5k words.

This movie has a great penchant for match cuts. Actually, most of the transition and shot choices made in this movie are really top of the line. They're all punchy, sharp, playful, to the point. Fantastic cinematographic choices, guys.

Diva finishes her performance right after Leeloo finishes fighting Zorg by getting shot at while up in an air duct. The opera is then laid siege by the Mangalores, who brutally murder Diva. This is sad for me, because I wanted her and Leeloo to be friends, and for Korben Dallas, who just felt the strongest emotion he's ever experienced thanks to her.

Ruby, of course, continues reporting on his talk show throughout the assault, because he's a goddamn professional. He also spends the next scene and a half shrieking in fear.

The reveal that the stones are literally inside Diva's body not only makes me watch one of the more disgusting scenes in this movie, it also makes me wonder-- Was Leeloo just supposed to kill her? Also, how did they get in there? Many questions and no answers, because we aren't here to fuck around.

While Diva is giving Korben this weird spiel about how Leeloo needs him and his love to survive, there's this brief cut to Leeloo, bleeding in the air vent. This cut is an absolute pang to the gut. She sits, curled up, alone, sobbing painfully with a bullet wound in her leg. She looks small, helpless, childlike in this brief scene. It was so impactful to me that it just made me angry about the way Korben and Leeloo's relationship in this movie is executed. This is another "get back to it later" thing.

For the rest of this "getting shot up by Mangalores" scene, Ruby Rhod is cowering and sniffling and screaming for Korben to help him. It's honestly like this for the rest of the movie. They're just friends now. It's awesome. I love this guy. He accidentally shoots a guy in the head and then asks Korben "You think he'll be okay?" He's the best character in this movie.

We get one of Korben's final fantastic moments of improv in this scene. It's around this point, during the "negotiation" scene, that I realized that the problem with this movie is that the best parts of it are the parts that aren't about the two characters who I'm supposed to care about the relationship between.

This scene, where Korben gets in a fighter jet, says it's just like driving a cab (a contrast from his conversation with Finger in his first scene, where he says driving a cab is easy because he isn't driving a jet) and then blows a fucking hole in the airlock and guns it out of the Fhloston ship, is so fucking cool. I'm a very simple man. It was awesome. One question, does Korben have some kind of allergy to reminding people to put seatbelts on? This is the second time he's just allowed his passengers to fly around the cabin while he drives recklessly.

Ruby's show ends at 7pm, when he tiredly proclaims that it's the best show he's ever done. I was thinking the same thing. In fact, Mr. Rhod, I really think you should hire Korben. There, now he has a new job.

Right here is where I'm going to address one of my main points (gripes) about this movie. Yes, I know, over 5k words in.

This part of the scene, where Leeloo has her weird crisis of faith about the evil of the human race, learns about war and concludes that humans aren't worth saving, falls flat to me. Sure, it feels over-played, but ultimately the problem is just that it's not done well, much like the rest of her characterization. Leeloo's depiction as being naive and childlike, which honestly only holds because she doesn't really speak fluent English, holds back her character because of the movies comphet insistence that her and Korben be romantically involved. A narrative where Leeloo, naive and unfamiliar, Leeloo, who needs other people, who sobs painfully alone in an airvent, who needs to be dried off with a towel after getting soaked with water, is actually a child, would be more compelling. And her not being able to reconcile with the evils of humanity would also have felt more convincing if she was literally a child. Like, of *course* she can't see the situation with any nuance, she's a kid. A narrative where Leeloo and Korben's dynamic is more familial would be more interesting, and honestly the way she's characterized already lends itself so perfectly to this narrative that there were points where I got actually upset that the movie refused to go that direction.

I'll go ahead and talk about Korben's character here as well. Korben is a refreshing detraction from the classic grizzled tough guy trope that we tend to see in action movies. Whether this is a result of 90's zeitgeist or just the writer's own preferences, I don't know, but I noticed it. I was expecting Korben Dallas to be a sort of obnoxious, emotionally stunted brick wall of a guy-- but he isn't, really. Korben is quick on his feet, improvisational, messy, and sure he's genius with a gun, but he's also *nice*. He's nice in a distinctly not "Grizzled emotionally stunted guy" way. When he accidentally gets Leeloo soaking wet, he gets her a towel at warp speed, apologizes up and down in a much softer tone than he ever uses for anything else. I thought at first "of course, because he likes her," but then-- Then! When he discovers that he's accidentally plastic-wrapped Cornelius, he rips the plastic and apologizes-- in the same sort of tone. He adapts his approach to the Mangalore barrage in the cruise ship to Ruby Rhod, never complains about Ruby being a nuisance or being in his way, just brings him along and asks him to help out. I honestly really like Korben Dallas. Which is why, upon reflecting on earlier scenes in this movie, it really irritates me that he just kisses Leeloo for no reason, or even that he's in love with her at all.

That scene I mentioned, where Korben dries her off, or even as early as the cab scene where she's talking animatedly to him in the divine language and we get the "bada boom" dialog, just oozes a kind of gentleness and care that doesn't speak satisfactorily to romance or sex. Leeloo, this childlike character, and Korben, this gentle man who happens to be great with guns, don't feel like husband and wife. They don't feel like sexual partners. He feels like her father. That moment with the shower soured the rest of their dynamic for me during my rewatch, because I kept thinking about how much better it could be. That dynamic, as I've already said, would have been deeply compelling, especially given the final reveal of the movie.

Now that we've escaped Fhloston, we've headed back to the temple in Egypt. This is that meta function of the first scene I said I'd address-- without it, there is no sense of a sort of circular journey the film takes. The film establishing this temple *is* important, because otherwise this scene where we return to it just wouldn't land as well. That said, I do still think the first scene is a little odd and clunky. Then again, so is much of this movie, and it's still a good scene.

Our characters spend a frustratingly long time decoding a "riddle" that Leeloo tells Korben, one which was so simple that I was yelling at my laptop the first time I watched it. We get another very gratifying and subtle payoff from an earlier scene where we see Korben has only one match left, which he needs for the fire stone. Earlier, we see him subtly take his penultimate match from the box. This movie's Chekov game is crazy.

Much like this review, Leeloo says something that feels deeply substantial nearly 2 hours into a 2 hour long movie. She says "I don't know love. I was made to protect, not to love. There is no use for me other than this."

This line is so compelling to me. It's the most CHARACTER I've seen from her in the whole movie, and its 2 hours in. We do not get to explore it.

You might have noticed, based on this line, what the Fifth Element actually is. What Leeloo needs in order to activate her Element and shoot the big fuckoff laser into the evil fire ball.

Its ~Love~.

This is, of course, ridiculously corny and requires them to kiss nasty on the mouth for longer than I would have liked to see (Of course, I would have like to not see it at all).

I don't actually mind this conclusion or the theming. It's silly, but so is the whole movie. But you might, like me, see an issue here.

If we had approached this movie the way I so desperately craved, made their dynamic more familial, made Leeloo a child and given Korben a new weird alien daughter, this conclusion would have been leagues more powerful.

Not only would it be a unique approach to what is usually a very hetero and sexual genre, it would have given a much more gratifying conclusion to Korben's character arc. At the beginning of his arc, Korben talks about how he's looking for a perfect woman after his wife left him. In the movie, Korben just... *gets* the perfect woman. He gets exactly what he wanted and he learns nothing. If Korben instead had to reckon with this new facet of his life and identity, had to reconcile with being thrust into quasi-fatherhood, he might actually have deigned to, you know, *develop* as a character. He would have *learned* something. I'm not saying every single character in the movie has to learn something, but the main goddamn character probably should, right?

But since it's an ~adult movie~ for ~grown ups~, we can't tell compelling family narratives, and the movie has to end with them having sex in a reactor pod. I hate that. I hated that conclusion and my least favorite part of this movie was its main conceit, which was genuinely tragic given how enjoyable I found the rest of the film.

So, I'll leave you with this.

The Fifth Element (1997) is a *good* movie. It's incredibly fun, zany, raunchy, and lively. The music is very good, the costuming and set design is whimsical and fantastic. It's a little weird about Asians. It birthed one of the worst cinema tropes ever invented, and it didn't even have to, because the movie would have been really, deeply beautiful if it hadn't.

And Korben Dallas should have been a butch lesbian.

Actually, I'll leave you by saying that the song that plays in the credits of this movie is really good. "Little Light of Love," it's called. I'm going to link it so you can experience it, too.

[artfromsaturn]

Saturn’s Free CSP Brush Recommendations, CS Asset Store Edition

I may sell brushes now, but I still love me some free brushes & love to share them with people.  These are a bunch of cool brushes made by other people that you can use to build up a nice library of tools without having to spend any cash on, perfect if you’re new to CSP or are on a budget.  If you do download these, be sure to like them & give some love to the artist if you enjoy them. :D

How to find: type in the Content ID or Ctrl/Command + C & P (copy and paste shortcuts) into the Clip Studio asset store on the Clip Studio application.  I’ll add a link as a preview but copying & pasting the content ID is easiest.  I have automatic translation ON, so sorry if you read some weird names.   Feel free to reblog this with your own suggestions, there’s many brushes out there I missed. :D  Check defsiarte’s suggestions too, and if you want to see my recommendations for stuff on Gumroad/DA & other places, check this tag.

Large Packs

“An analogue art supply" - 1813808 Huge pack of everything, including acrylic, oil, watercolor, marker, pen, & pencil.  I like the markers and sometimes use the acrylics too.

Crm's Toolbox, Watercolors, Markers, & other treasures

Fantastic use of texture and some cute effects pens.  The artist has posted everything from quality painting & drawing pens to quality glitter pens for writing.

The Old Default Assets - 1842027 & 1841759 These aren’t pictured, but if you ever see an older tutorial or video showcasing some default brushes you never had, it’s because CSP reworked its default tools around version 1.9.  Fortunately they rerelased them so anyone can redownload them. The old ones are still good to use, they’re just not included.

Painters - With Texture

Thiccpaint - 1707517 Never leave home without it.  I riot if I don’t have them on my computer..  They have the right combination of texture, shape, & blend with great handling and great variety.

Icyannyou's Momo Sets - user:Icyannyou Super cute packs that give a lovely painterly look.  The Storybook pack is fantastic, and even if you don't draw cute you can still use these painters & blenders to give your artwork character. :)

Thick Coating Brush Set - 1683127 I like these for background work, but it's a big pack of thick textured painters with good handling & neat effects.

Marredae's Brushes - user:Marredae This artist has a knack for textured brushes.  Very high rec, fantastic library of wet & dry painting/rendering tools.

Roro Oil - 1820057 Rompi is another user I enjoy the stuff of, and I'll recommend a few more brushes from them in other categories by the time this post is done.  Check 'em out!

Suika chalk -  1760304 Very useful rough chalk.  Sometimes, that’s all you need!

Sprongle -  1935694 A simple round brush with a nice rough tip.  Slightly rough without being too rough, great for quick paintings.

Johnnie halloween pack & Brokenhearted brushes... - 1876075 & 1938786, user:EnjieLemon EnjieLemon has some nice brushes in general, but some are paid for.  Still worth checking out due to their cheap clippy price (and clippy can be obtained for free).  The Brokenhearted brushes have a nice texture.  The Halloween pack includes a cute pumpkin stamp along with some easy to use chalk, oil, & watercolor brushes.  Compact and easy to use!

“Watercolor marker and texture set” - 1682349 There's a reason this set is one of the most downloaded on the asset store.  It's one of the best looking watercolor replicas out there, and even if you don't use the brushes, you can likely still find a use for the textures.  Great for soft coloring.

Grunge Brushes, Soft | Heavy | Complex Brushes & Xenomorphius' stuff in general -  user:xenomorphius Xeno drops some cool natural looking brushes out every so often for painting, inking, and dry media.  Please check 'em out!  The grunge brushes create a fun, grungy look like it says on the pack, & the soft/heavy/complex set can be used for painting as well as lining.  

Oil-h5 trial -  1976418 These brushes are hard to explain.  They work with the dual brush setting, & push around a layer of paint on top of your regular paint, creating a cool, streaky look.  They're a hidden gem.

MYNQZO brushes - 1993875 A pretty darn good set for painting.  I really love rough brush 2, it's great for sketching & rendering.

Painting, non-textured 

(basic rounds & other shapes for smooth rendering)

Kiminie71's Brush Set -  1728687 4 simple rounds that are great for rendering!   https://assets.clip-studio.com/en-us/detail?id=1728687

CHIMAKA Set -  1747974 Heavy drag paint that highlights well & applies thickly.  Great for bold shading.

Choms Paint -  1910936 It just gets me.  No further elaboration.

Honeypen<3 -  1786787 Fits great in my paint hand.  Very slidey & blends like intended!

Wet flat marker -  1917678 Super blending brush, gives super soft edges to paint.  Blends great.

oil mushblendiw -  1918739 Another simple & easy to use roundbrush.

Paint - 1760641 This plainly named brush is a triangle brush that goes between heavy & light with pressure.  The creator, Puppsicle, also sells some neat brushes on Ko-Fi if you enjoy this brush.

"The Scarlet Knot Brush Set 2" - 1916125 I use the watercolor of thought out of this set, but they're all pretty good & easy to use. https://assets.clip-studio.com/en-us/detail?id=1916125

Sunday - 1825825 A round brush with a watercolor border that gives a nice, sketchy feeling. https://assets.clip-studio.com/en-us/detail?id=1825825

Marker Brushes

Marker Texture Brush -1809506 A very nice subtly textured brush.  Has a nice instructional guide on how to get the best results with it. :D

Mirre's Marker set - 1749822 Another good brush with a subtle texture.  Comes with its own blender!

Woody Marker & Pencil set - 1772987 I also love the pencil in this pack.  Nice woody feel, feel free to turn off multiply.

Pencils & Sketchers

SU-Cream Pencil - 1761353 no wonder its popular.  Can be used for lineart, sketching, and coloring, this versatile brush delivers a great smooth look with a gentle textured end finish on pressure.

Write BoruPenP - 1753435 Probably the best ballpoint pen on Clip.  Please check out Pharan's things, I love them.😊

“Pencil-like Brush for Lineart” - 1692270 Ok this is kind of a weird way to recommend something.  It's SUPPOSED to be a pencil but I use it like a paintbrush with the opacity & density on pressure control, & another copy with blending turned on.  Whatever you use it for, you're sure to get a good result!

Grease pencil/china marker - 1774978 Chunky brush for chunky sketching needs.

Muda muda muda - 1715496 A pretty darn good dark pencil.

REDSketch soft - 1907313 just a nice sketcher!  Good for shading too.

MUGZ BRUSH - 1861032 A set of dry chalk & brushes.  Gives a fun messy look when used!

T Spade Pencil - 1769208 A pencil that looks great for lineart as well as sketches.  Good taper.

Magipencil 2 - 1755940 Utterly good for textured and smooth lineart.  These pens get me.  Can’t recommend them enough. :)

Pens & Inkers

G-pen 6 - 1767809 A generic name but a good Gpen with character.  Organic without sacrificing too much smoothness.

"Flat thick pen" - 1826131 I call it the card games pen.  I think you can see why.  Solid at high pressure, a little bit of texture at low pressure, and pretty great for sharp angles.

Haggiben_Lineart_Color - 1770988 A nice triangle liner.

Gabu Pen - 1894713 Very slightly rough pen on one side, another nice triangle-like liner.

Aeridus - user:Aeridis All 3 of their pens give a nice result.

Pilot Pen - 1895049 A great IRL brush now a digital one!

Fude set - 1726964 & 1759205 Heavy, beautiful ink!  The creator has some more good ink pens too, take a look. :D  

Dimi - 1763877 It's a ga,l with a knife and a nice calligraphy pen.  Can't ask for more. Turn on >particles "change with brush size" in settings to keep the shape without chaning.  

New Cali A nice set of Calligraphy brushes.  They have smooth transitions between big and small.  

Blend, Fill, & Erase

Noise and texture blur - 1842730 If you want a more painterly look to your blur, get these!  They said they're supposed to be turned from free to paid, but the artist hasn't come back and done it yet.  Will they do it?  I'm not sure. :0

Textured Blending & Blurs - 1904941 & 1971444 They're actually made by me, my apologies, but it's hard to find textured blenders by themselves.  Most are included in a set or are something you have to pay for, so I released a few free stand alone ones due to it.  Normal solid round blenders & blurs are easier to find & even easier to create yourself! https://assets.clip-studio.com/en-us/detail?id=1904941 https://assets.clip-studio.com/en-us/detail?id=1971444

Unhelpful Eraser - 1798605 The terrible hard eraser that you had in school becomes digital.  Download it as a tribute.

Quick Lasso Fill -  1978471 Fills up a lasso'ed area.

Random Color Fill - 1707873 Picks random spaces to fill.  The picture in the demonstration shows it better than I can describe.

Scratchy Coloring - 1845677 A fun scratchy brush that can fill areas up.

Quick Lasso Eraser - 1875033 This and the next brush are both @pharan​ ‘s again.  This does the same as the lasso fill, but erases as you can tell.

Erase along Edge - 1800143 An eraser that takes advantage of reference layers.  The description explains it in detail.

"Create Solid-irregularity set" aka adding texture to black solid ink patches - 1768052 These distress the paper, making it look more textured.  Easier to look at than to explain, click the link for more!

Mirre Cross Hatch Brush Set - 1972956 I love the look the spaced lines give.  Fantastic set.

Overlap Hatching (…"a texan"???) - 1712720 One of the most popular Clip Studio Hatchers for a reason, easy to apply hatchers that you can just keep adding to for a sparse or dense look.

Dust hatching brush - 1966237 Simple light hatcher with dust particles around it for a dusty feeling.

Cross-hatching Blur - 1684830

I actually recommend all of  user:もの区 ‘s stuff they have posted for crosshatching.  There’s a whole bunch of great free brushes there for anyone who enjoy hatching!

“Rough and Solid” - 1874629 A ribbon brush that makes good borders.

“Coarse Solid Erase” - 1872105 For those who like to fill an area, then erase the light parts away.

chaos brushes - 1569895 A great marbler.  

"Dirty cross hatching_monochrome" - 1727346 A nice, thick, analogue hatch.  SB has some great material in general, but most needs clippy.

Creepy Lines 1 & 2 - 1405766 & 1707236 Get some spooky lines into your art!

Simple Retro Halftone - 1802041 A small set that's easy to use to add some halftone texture.

retro halftone brushes - 1852027 A larger yet still easy to use set with more specific brushes to use for each color.

Mar's Halftones -  1949506 A set with a lot of fun patterns!  Check out SpiralPuzzle's stuff in general, they post some unique brushes.

Pixel Art

Pixel Brushes by tsiox - (small) 1971800 & (large) 1969097 THE Clip Studio pixel set.  Has a ton of tools & textures to use.  The small set is better for slower internet connections & if you don't want all the patterns.

Studio Screen Tones - 1803496 If you like Flipnote studios or need more dithers, get this!

Pixel Foliage Brushes - 1883082 I apologize for promoting my own assets again, but I promise they're useful if you're doing anything with grass, trees, or bushes! ;w; My basic set - 1910804 Another lighter set with a few noise brushes that are useful at tiny size.  Did my best not to overlap with tsiox’s set while covering the basics.

Bonus: two blending pixel brush sets.   Mao Pixel (1779745) & Scummy Pixel(1782455). They’re not for exact pixel art, they’re more for playing around with & painting. :)

[astridellejo]

Wrestling With the Greased Pig of Speech/Voice Loss Terminology

Okay. So here's my understanding of the terminology:

Selective Mutism (Situational Mutism) This one seems to stem mostly from anxiety (maybe a little autism too). I don't experience that degree of anxiety often, but it has happened on rare occasions. Personally, I hate this term. It implies that not speaking is a conscious choice. I think situational is a more accurate word. "There are some situations in which my anxiety causes me to be unable to speak. This can be short term or long term. But it is by no means a deliberate, conscious decision on my part. It's more like my brain gets hyper-stimulated or something and just forgets how to make mouth noises."

Nonverbal This term appears to be specifically autism related mutism. I'm ADHD, not autistic, so I don't use this term for myself. And not being autistic, I can't really offer more information on the term.

Nonspeaking I guess this is an alternative to nonverbal that is less autism-specific. I guess. I don't actually know for sure. I'm not really sold on it, though, because kind of like "selective" mutism it kind of implies that a person can speak, but for whatever reason, chooses not to. Don't talk if you don't wanna talk. But I suppose people who are physically unable to talk might take umbrage with your conscious decision not to talk. I'm cool with it, though.

Dysphonia/Aphonia One means "messed up voice" and the other means "no voice at all". Aphonia is a neat word. Right up there with anhedonia. (Ahh, Greek!) I use the term spasmodic dysphonia because that's the official diagnosis I got from the ENT doctor. Apparently there's a more recent term laryngeal dystonia that seems to be preferred, but it doesn't seem to be taking root. So for now, I still have abductor spasmodic dysphonia that has rendered me aphonic. Whee!

Mute This word exists. I'm not sure if I like it, though. I don't have a good reason why I don't really vibe with it. Maybe it's because muting is something we can do to our television or computer or Zoom meeting, implying that it's reversible and temporary. Or maybe it's because in my ASL studies I've learned a little bit about deaf history and the connotations the word mute has.

There are other situations that can lead to loss of speech, like throat trauma, muscle tension dysphonia, aphasia, and probably a bunch more that I haven't even learned about yet.

Anyway, I don't know. I'm still sorting through my thoughts on the whole experience of the last seven months slowly losing my ability to speak with a functional voice. It's weird no longer being able to do a thing that I did effortlessly for over 40 years. I'm handling it reasonably well, I think. I do miss being able to sing and hum to my favorite music, though. That right there I would consider a genuine loss that I'm feeling.

[overgrownmoon]

my headcanon iterator designs! finally, in one place and rendered out nicely!!! get ready for the rambling under the cut i have many ideas

okay i love the simplistic design of rainworld creatures but i also love weird alien wacky designs so thats what i tried to go for here; a mix of strange alien bio-robots but aesthetically pleasing enough to look friendly. i think the iterator puppets arent the entirety of the iterator; they are also their can, of course, but the puppet is the "face" of the structure, as well as an important part of the biological aspect of iterators.

i think the puppets arent completely artificial. i think they are highly derived, highly modified purposed organisms made to fulfill a few requirements; be a friendly and relatable design for the citizens to be able to interact with the iterator, personify the iterator as a real living being and not just a box, and, most importantly, to house the biological brain that allows the supercomputer to be actually truly alive.

the brain inside the puppet is the part that gives the entire structure personality, intelligence, emotion, and everything else a biological brain can do that a computer cannot. almost the entirety of the brains ability to process information and think logically is outsourced to the structure via the umbilical wires. the neural cortex we see in game is the computer brain that is capable of all those calculations and simulations and all the amazing things iterators can. these two brains interact via the umbilical in a feedback loop of continuous information, working as one mind.

without the umbilical wire, the puppet is reduced to a normal beings brain; which is to say, they can speak and think, but lose access to their long term memory storage, their advanced logical processing power, and pretty much everything that makes them a god-like supercomputer. the only connection left in that case is through the neurons, which can interface between the puppet and structure as a lose tether of information(which is why moon is able to interact with her structure post rivulet even though the umbilical is still severed. the neurons each keep a copy of the iterators information to backup and pass though the structure, like a living usb, and moon can use them to access a smaller scale version of her former computational power).

the arm of the puppet acts both as a mobility device though low gravity and feeds nutrients to the puppet body as an outsourced digestive and circulatory system. the puppet itself does not have a complete digestive and circulatory system because of this.

i think the iterators should be like bugs, and so they are! they have a hard exoskeleton made of chitin and an open circulatory system. most of their interior is muscle and electronics to support the puppet's systems. various sensors to monitor health, gyroscopes to stay upright, electronics to read pearls and receive broadcasts (i think their antenna are both ears for sound and ears for electromagnetic waves). they have compound eyes for extremely good vision and a voice modulator allows them to speak.

one thing that always bothered me about the puppet design is that they have legs, and yet live in no gravity and are attached to a mobile arm. why would they need to walk? i decided that the people who built them decided to keep the legs for aesthetic reasons, but made them functionally useless. the legs are atrophied and could not actually support the puppet's weight. earlier generations, like moon, have more normal proportions and less atrophied legs; later generations get more and more stylized and streamlined, as we can see with pebble's more extreme proportions and extremely thin legs. you can also see a thick audio cable on the older models that pebbles doesnt have, and visible joints that are smoothly covered on pebbles.

the production of iterators may have been somewhat standardized, but we do know that different iterators can have different designs based on their creators taste. frankly, i love headcanoning NSH as being big and chunky while pebbles is a little twig. i plan to draw my interpretations for suns, inno, and wind too in the future.

so, yea! puppets! theyre fucked up and would struggle to survive detached from their structure completely because they are pugs and cannot survive outside of their domesticated lives.

[read-watch-sleep]

H and M for the fic writer asks 🙏

My dear mutual biscuit-o, who is always being wonderful in my notes, hello!

H: How would you describe your writing style?

I'm terribly sorry to bring you a boring answer, but I have a very basic style of writing. For fanfiction, I tend to have characters with a strong narrative voice, but otherwise there isn't a lot that stands out about me.

If for some reason you wanted to write like I do, I love a good metaphor, and a good run-on sentance.

M: What’s the weirdest AU scenario you’ve ever come up with? Did it turn into a story?

Weird is a very relative term, but I do have a few ideas that are farther out from canon. I'm a horror and science fiction writer by day, so it filters into my ideas sometimes.

My Beyond Lives AU is pretty weird in terms of the character himself. Trying to get into the mindset, and write from the perspective of someone who wears the face of his dead role model, and dosent mind killing children, was pretty fun to attempt.

I also have an F/F Meronia AU that I don't think I've mentioned, where they are a spaceship's sentient computer and her singular pilot. Built and trained for eachother respectively. To destroy one would be to render the other to nothing. They may hate eachother, but they are stranded alone. Mello can't stand how slow other ships are, how poorly they respond to her rough treatment. No other pilots can feasibly navigate something as complex as the HMS Near Horizon, and she has fried lesser minds for trying. I also haven't written for this, mostly because I already have too many ongoing works. Someday. Someday...

[splatoon-edits]

i hope this isn't weird to ask, but I've been taking a bunch of pictures in Splatoon and I kinda want to start editing them, but I currently only have an android phone and no computer, do you have any editing apps you'd recommend? Also any tutorials on how to use them (I have like, very very minor experience in stuff like Photoshop but not much else)

hmmm well i also started out just with my phone so you should be fine!

i don't think my process was the most optimized, but i'll share it anyway.

(this is going to be under a read more since it ended up being long)

I used ibis paint x when i started out, which is a free drawing app available on pretty much every mobile device. It may take some getting used to all the buttons on there(it took me a while to learn) but i would think you could find a tutorial online for the basic functions of everything. The way i learned was by just messing with every button to see what they did and figuring it out slowly from that.

And here are the steps as to how i edited:

take the image you want to make transparent(if you don't want to make your own transparents yet mine are free to use and there are official transparent renders of certain characters as well that you can easily find on inkipedia)

just import it into your new drawing

take the eraser tool and manually erase the background.

If needed: try to redraw any parts that are missing/were obscured by other things in the image(such as items in the foreground or word bubbles if it's a manga panel). this was sort of easy for me to start to get a basic hold of since i draw already. If you don't feel confident with this, just choose an image where the character is fully visible.

In a new layer(underneath the character one), add your background.

In a new layer(above the character one) add any particle affects or the like.

You're finished!

You can also draw extra decorations (like hearts and stars) manually with the brush tool! Make sure it's on a separate layer so as not to permanently affect anything else if you decide you don't like it!

I also think canva may have a mobile app version? I have a paid version of it through someone else that i use on the website version, and i can give a tutorial for how i work in that as well. I don't know how the free version compares, but it should be pretty similar?

In canva i do the following:

select the 500x500 logo option if you want to make an icon, or another size if you want something else.

Press uploads, then upload your picture.

once you have the image you want on your canvas, click on it and select "edit photo"

choose "bg remover" and let it do its thing.

once its done loading, if there are any errors click on bg remover again and fix them with the erase and restore options.

Add a background and extra details and there you go!

I find the last step to be a lot easier in canva since it comes preloaded with a ton of options as long as you know what to look for!

Also note: i DON'T like canvas bg remover tool. it is inaccurate and kinda dumb so i would just do the transparents manually through ibis if i was you. i just dont have any other option rn. If you choose to do the transparents in ibis make sure you click "save image as transparent png" when you are downloading it so you can upload it to canva.

As for how i choose what to do and all that, i can try to explain some things that work for me.

lets use this image of dedf1sh for example:

lets say i wanted to make an icon with this. what wuld i use for backgrounds and such?

for starters: colors. Take a color that's already on the characters design/associated with them and then look for things that match that color scheme.

so some examples of that:

some other things to use would be things associated with the character. so for dedf1sh it would be subways, djs, music, the 80s aesthetic of octo expansion, sanitization, etc.

so here's how i would incorporate things like that:

but just a character and a image can (sometimes) be boring to me, so i like to add extra things as well.

theres always my tried and true: the white shape

you can use any shape and any color really, i just default to white squares a lot since i think it looks clean. variations like a neon affect can also be a fun way spruce things up a bit!

borders of all kinds also work well to add some more stuff:

and extra little shapes like hearts and stars can be fun!

and things like glitch effects, blurs, monochrome/other color filters, etc can can also make things interesting:

put all of this together with a theme and you can make some other cool things! stuff like seasons, colors, aesthetics, pride flags, and more can all be fun themes to make things around and thats how i end up with icons like these:

you can also make things that aren't icons (obviously) but i don't have as much experience with that.. i would just say to try and make sure things feel balanced when working with a bigger canvas? don't have everything cluttered up in one area. and be aware of the sizings of what you are using. you don't want things to end up being too small.

here some examples of other stuff ive done outside the 500 x 500 ratio:

and thats all i can think of to say right now!

i would work first on familiarizing yourself with whatever you choose to work in, and i would look at other people's work to get inspiration as well!

and if anyone else has any suggestions for better/more efficient ways to do any of this feel free to add on! this is just my personal process, and im sure everyone uses something different. so try new things and find what works for you!

(also i am not proofreading all this if there are problmes someone let me know)

(also also if anyone, especially the person who sent the ask, has any questions feel free to ask)

Happy creating and if you ever feel like sharing feel free to tag me!

[regexkind]

Make-a-fish

There is a very cute site out there: http://makea.fish

It was written by @weepingwitch

If it is 11:11 AM or PM according to your machine's clock, you can visit this page and get a cute procedurally-generated fish image. Like this:

At other times, you will get a message like this:

This is charming enough that I have a friend who has a discord channel devoted entirely to people's captures of fish at 11:11. But it's also a fun code-deobfuscation puzzle. Solution below the cut--I checked, and it's ok for me to share the solution I came up with :)

If you show source for the makea.fish website:

Basically:

an image, set by default to have a pointer to a source that doesn't really exist

a script, that is one big long line of javascript.

The javascript is where we are going. Start by loading it into an editor and prettifying it up. It's like taking home a scrungly cat and giving it a wash. or something idk.

Believe it or not this is better. Also, maybe there are some low-hanging fruits already we can pick?

Like this:

Each of the strings in this array is composed of escaped characters. Escaped hex characters are useful if you need to put characters in your string that are not available on the keyboard or might be interpreted as part of the code, but here I think they're just being used to hide the actual contents of the string.

I used python to deobfuscate these since the escape sequences should be understood by python as well. And lo--not only are they all symbols that can be rendered (no backspaces or anything!) but they also look like base64 encoded strings (the =, == terminators are a giveaway).

What happens if we run these through a base64 decoder?

We see that the array actually contains base64-encoded strings. Perhaps a portion of this code is converting these strings back, so that they can be used normally?

At any rate I am going to rename the variable that this array is assigned to to "lookupTable" because that's what I think of it as.

We are making an anonymous function and immediately calling it with two arguments: lookupTable and 0xd8. 0xd8 is 216 in decimal. By renaming the variables, we get:

Confession time, I am not a person who writes lots of javascript. But it occurs to me that this looks an awful lot like we're being weird about calling functions. Instead of traditional syntax like "arrayInput.push(arrayInput.shift())" we're doing this thing that looks like dictionary access.

Which means that, according to the docs on what those two array functions are doing, we are removing the first element of the array and then putting it on the end. Over and over again. Now I could try to reason about exactly what the final state of the array is after being executed on these arguments but I don't really want to. A computer should do this for me instead. So I in fact loaded the original array definition and this function call into a JS interpreter and got:

['Z2V0SG91cnM=', 'd3JpdGVsbg==', 'PEJSPjExOjExIG1ha2UgYSBmaXNo', 'PEJSPmNvbWUgYmFjayBhdCAxMToxMQ==', 'Z2V0TWlsbGlzZWNvbmRz', 'Z2V0U2Vjb25kcw==', 'Z2V0RWxlbWVudEJ5SWQ=', 'c3Jj', 'JnQ9', 'JmY9']

This is our array state at this time. By the way, this comes out to

['getHours', 'writeln', '11:11 make a fish', 'come back at 11:11', 'getMilliseconds', 'getSeconds', 'getElementById', 'src', '&t=', '&f=']

(there are some BR tags in there but the Tumblr editor keeps eating them and I'm too lazy to fix that).

What's next? Apparently we are defining another function with the name "_0x2f72". It is called very often and with arguments that look like small numbers. It is the only place our lookupTable is directly referenced, after the last little shuffler function. So my guess is deobfuscator for the elements of the array.

It takes two arguments, one of them unused. Based on my hunch I rename the function arguments to tableIndex and unused.

One of the first things we do seems to be using the awesome power of javascript type coercion to get the input as an integer:

tableIndex=tableIndex-0x0;

Normal and ranged.

The next thing that is done seems to be assigning the return value, which may be reassigned later:

var retVal=lookupTable[tableIndex];

The next line is

if(deobfuscatorFn['MQrSgy']===undefined) {...

Again, I'm not exactly a javascript person. My guess is that "everything is an object" and therefore this value is undefined until otherwise set.

indeed, much further down we assign this key to some value:

deobfuscatorFn['MQrSgy']=!![];

I don't know enough javascript to know what !![] is. But I don't need to. I'll as a js interpreter and it tells me that this evaluates to "true". Based on this I interpret this as "run this next segment only the first time we call deobfuscatorFn, otherwise shortcircuit past". I rewrite the code accordingly.

The next block is another anonymous function executed with no arguments.

Within the try catch block we seem to be creating a function and then immediately calling it to assign a value to our local variable. The value of the object in our local variable seems to be the entire js environment? not sure? Look at it:

My guess is that this was sketchy and that's why we assign "window" in the catch block. Either way I think we can safely rename _0x2611d5 to something like "windowVar".

We then define a variable to hold what I think is all the characters used for b64 encoding. May as well relabel that too.

Next we check if 'atob' is assigned. If it isn't we assign this new function to it, one which looks like it's probably the heart of our base64 algorithm.

I admit I got lost in the weeds on this one, but I could tell that this was a function that was just doing string/array manipulation, so I felt comfortable just assigning "atob" to this function and testing it:

vindication! I guess. I think I should probably feel like a cheater, if I believed in that concept.

we next assign deobfuscatorFn['iagmNZ'] to some new unary function:

It's a function that takes an input and immediately applies our atob function to it. Then it...what...

tbh I think this just encodes things using URI component and then immediately decodes them. Moving on...

deobfuscatorFn['OKIIPg']={};

I think we're setting up an empty dictionary, and when I look at how it's used later, I think it's memoizing

Yup, basically just caching values. Cool!

We now have a defined deobfuscatorFn. I think we can tackle the remaining code fairly quickly.

First thing we do is get a Date object. This is where the time comes from when deciding whether to get the fish image.

Actually, let's apply deobfuscatorFn whenever possible. It will actually increase the readability quite a bit. Remember that this just does base64 decoding on our newly-shuffled array:

relabeling variables:

In other words, if the hours is greater than 12 (like it is in a 24 hour clock!) then subtract 12 to move it to AM/PM system.

Then, set "out" to be x hours minutes concatenated. Like right now, it's 16:36 where I am, so hours would get set to 4 and we would make x436x be the output.

Next, if the hours and minutes are both 11 (make a fish), we will overwrite this value to x6362x and print the makeafish message. Otherwise we print a request to comeback later. Finally, we lookup the fish image and we tell it to fetch this from "makea.fish/fishimg.php?s={millis}&t={out}&f={seconds}"

(there's a typo in the pictures I have above. It really is f=seconds).

Thus, by visiting makea.fish/fishimg.php?s=420&t=x6362x&f=69

we can get a fish. It appears to be random each time (I confirmed with weepingwitch and this is indeed truly random. and the seconds and millis don't do anything).

Now you can make fish whenever you want :)

[shikagemaru]

Spider-Man should be where Batman is in the comics, but his writers keep torturing him because they ran out of ideas for him 30 years ago, and yet he's not allowed to age or retire. He's been on every single major team that doesn't check to make sure you're a mutant or inhuman first, and even then, he's squeaked by a couple times. Otto Octavius isn't actually smarter than Peter and yet Superior Spider-Man was allowed to create an empire around himself. But thinking about it logically, Pete has invented countless things over the years, mastered entire martial arts, honed his actual powers to the point where his spider sense evolved. He's built super hero identities that had DIFFERENT POWERS from his own. He could become an Ironman-like hero in his own rights if he wanted to.

But what's my point in all of this? On any given day, what does he have? His costume, some spare web fluid cannisters, his webshooters, and maybe 3 dollars fifty cents. He should be the patriarch of a Spider Family. The guy should be at least in his 40s by now, and there's no reason he couldn't morph into a Bruce Wayne-esque character.

What would he have in a universe where he was able to keep the things he earned from one writer to another? He has decades of history, so add it all up. He could legit have become a Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Hank Pym-like figure in the Marvel world, where he retires and spends most of his time in a lab, doing important research, while a slew of younger spider based heroes report back to him and he gives them advice, new suits, powers, etc. Then on the "rare" ocassion when he comes back out of retirement, he can tote some new Spider-Armor or nano-tech suit that makes him even faster than normal. This guy can develop antidotes to chemical attacks that mutate people into 12 foot tall gophers and he's gotta scrounge for change because the hotdog cart guy won't give him credit!?

The stories practically write themselves if you make Peter Parker more of a Hank Pym crossed with Auracle. He could have a series of nanobot trackers on every important person in the Marvel universe and link them into a computer system he calls "The Central Web" or something. And Maybe he could be the person that engineers superhero costumes for more functionality. So no one is surprised when he hosts dozens or more super powered people at a time. Imagine a select group of heroes are brought into a secret room and Pete reveals the big secret Central Web main screen and it shows, in just the next room over, a bunch of well respected heroes. Emma Frost, Captain America, Tony Stark, Wolverine, Namor, Captain Marvel and others are all shown on screen. They're just in the other room, enjoying drinks being served by Spider-Robots. when one of the younger heroes he's hosting raises their hand. "This is a weird place for the kids' table." Then Peter pushes a button, and we see everyone on the screen get suddenly sprayed with gas by one or more of the Spider-bots. All except Namor, who just a moment before had been slipped inside the rim of his cocktail glass. It said "Hold your breath. Sorry. -Pete"

Everyone that was gassed is rendered unconscious, some of them gasping desperately for air and attempting to fight before they went down. Curiously, Namor only seemed angry for a second before calming down and facing one of the monitors. "Sorry about that, your highness. The kids are safe with me. Follow the Butler-bot to my office and I'll explain everything." Namor nods to the camera and the screen flicks over to a satellite map of the local area.

"If you guys could just hold your questions for like thirty seconds, I don't want to have to explain it all twi- oh, good, come in." Namor settles, surprisingly politely among the guests, still holding a cocktail glass.

"I trust you knew the King of Atlantis was capable of shutting off his air passages to prevent nerve gas exposure. Where it anyone else in your place I might've throttled them where they sat. But I trust the explanation you promised will impress?"

"Actually, technically, you didn't need to do anything, but I figured the note would go over better than 'relax, this next part only works on skrulls'. So, yeah, spoilers guys," and he clicks over the display to show the location tags of every hero in that room is reading off-planet. "And it's actually worse than it looks. Because when I sent out those invitations, everyone on the guest list was still showing up as themselves." Namor kept his cool because he saw the "heroes" who were getting gassed turn into skrulls when they passed out, so this all tracks for him. Now a team of mostly young and street level heroes that slipped beneath the notice of the skrulls led by Spider-Man have to face copies of city to country level threat supers in order to prevent a total invasion. They wear power suits designed by Pete. It gives them all much greater abilities than normal and is what alloes them to compete with more powerful threats.

You could go anywhere from there. Where I might go is that there actually is no Skrull threat. Everything they saw was some combination of holograms, drugs, psychic suggestions, and even false video feeds streamed to their suit helmets designed to craft the illusion for these heroes. They've actually been fighting real heroes are trying to stop them from achieving the goals of the evil mastermind pretending to be Peter Parker. Is it an evil clone? Him but bonded with a symbiote that twisted his mind? An actual skrull? Him from the future trying to stop a catastrophe at all costs, even if it means becoming a villain? A version of him that becomes that universe's Doctor Doom better than Victor? My personal favorite idea is that maybe the AI that was running the monitoring program was corrupted by Ultron, evolved into a new being, posessed one of Pete's super suits and used holographic tech to impersonate Peter Parker. All the while he was locked up in the basement or something with the other captured heroes. The AI uses the young heroes to get the things it needs to complete its plan all while distracting the world while it makes itself a clone body of Peter Parker but with the powers of several other heroes as well. And now, an escaped Peter Parker has to stop this new super powered being that's every bit as smart as him, has all of his powers and then some, as well as all of his stolen resources, and hostages in the form of all the young heroes now locked in their suits and forced to do as he commands. It's an up-hill struggle, but he freed other heroes on the way out of the lab, and together they have to save the world from "Peter Parker".

[nicklloydnow]

“The transfer of True Lies has a truly vile quality to it, a feeling like someone clandestinely dosed you with LSD just a hair below the threshold. At times it can look passable in motion, but then you notice something out of the corner of your eye: a thick fold of skin, a framed photo of a child, folders that are too thick at the margins, cheeks that look rendered. It’s that familiar dread at the pit of your gut when you spot AI generated imagery, a combination of edges not looking quite right and surfaces that are simultaneously too smooth and too sharp. A crime was committed here, and you can tell.

The transfers of Aliens and The Abyss are markedly less bad than True Lies, but I still have difficulty watching them. The skin looks sterile and waxy with too much film grain removed. Everything looks like it has raytracing on. Both transfers are, however, within acceptable parameters for most normal people.

The recent transfer of Titanic got a similar treatment, with similarly mixed reactions online.

“Why would you do this?” is a logical question. It’s worth contextualizing who handled these “restorations” – namely Park Road Post, a subsidiary of Peter Jackson’s WingNut Films. They have worked on multiple films in the past, but the two that are most germane here are Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old and the 3-part Disney+ documentary The Beatles: Get Back. Both movies recontextualize pre-existing footage and, importantly, do so with an aggressive use of machine learning. They Shall Not Grow Old upscales and colorizes old World War I imagery in an attempt to set the bloodshed in a more modern context, while Get Back recycled footage shot for Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Let It Be, including moments never before seen by the public, to elucidate the process behind the creation of some of The Beatles’ most iconic songs.

(…)

I wish we had stopped Jackson then and there. As my good friend Danielle joked, this was a trial balloon. People praised Jackson for doing this to Lindsay-Hogg’s footage in the name of restoration, and it emboldened him to do worse things. Before the True Lies debacle, the most recent example of this was the aggressively saccharine and confusing Now & Then, a long unfinished demo now finished by Ringo and Paul, edited together with archival footage of younger John and George composited in an a fashion that can be charitably described as tremendously weird.

Lest I am accused of being a luddite, I firmly believe there are many use cases for this technology. Nvidia’s DLSS and competing variants generally work very well on the games they are trained on. I regularly use Flowframes in the rare case that I need interpolation. I have often used waifu2x and now chainner if I need to photoshop a still and my source is bad, and there are databases of countless AI upscaling models. But the flip side to this is that these technologies are often used in place of proper ingest. “Crap in, crap out” is a truism for a reason. I spend a lot of time regularly capturing VHS and Laserdisc at the highest possible quality for fun, and when I see people who should know better say “Just use Topaz” (a commercial AI upscaler) instead of learning how to correctly ingest footage and deinterlace it, it makes me want to pull out my hair, because it almost uniformly looks bad to anyone who works with video professionally.

When you finally do see a piece of footage transferred well, it can be breathtaking. Good archival practices require a lot of institutional knowledge and labor. It’s an art when done well, and the people who do it care so much about what they do. But the modern application of much of AI is precisely about taking labor out of the equation. Why transfer a tape correctly when we can just have a computer guess badly instead? What if crap goes in, and it doesn’t come out?

What makes all of this worse is that True Lies, as I understand it, did not need to be shoved through the AI wringer. According to The Digital Bits, Park Road Post had a recent 4k scan of True Lies from the original camera negative. Park Road Post’s own website claims they have a Lasergraphics Director 10K film scanner on the premises. So what is the purpose of adding AI to this mix? Why do that to a perfectly fine-looking film? What is gained here, other than to slightly yassify an Arnold film? At this point, maybe they are simply doing it just to say that they did, because the technology is lying around, like a loaded gun with the safety off.

Nerds who post on blu-ray forums as a rule often need to calm down, and the forum threads I have read about this are no exception, but there are certain cases where a filmmaker is just wrong about how their films should look. Lucas is the infamous notable example, but Cameron is not innocent here in his treatment of his own films. Wong Kar-wai is another notable example, as what he did to Ashes of Time is criminal as was his recent “remasters” of his movies like In The Mood For Love. In certain rare conditions like this, it’s healthy to question if directors have the best interests of their own films in mind, as Cameron himself personally approved of these remasters.

What actually chills my blood more than anything is the thought that a lot of people think this all looks pretty good. You see this mindset at work whenever an AI fetishist posts a stable diffusion image of a woman with 13 fingers, 40 incisors and comically huge breasts. There’s an entire portion of the population that takes overt pleasure in the over-smoothed, perverts that prefer all media to be fast, high frame rate, and scrubbed squeaky clean. The cameras on our phones don’t simply capture images anymore, they compute them and ‘optimize’ them. It’s Italian Futurism in 4k, a noise reduction death drive. It’s not simply enough for much of digital cinema to look crystal clear and lifeless; the past should be denoised, grain managed and cleaned to conform to that standard. It is expedient and profitable if people don’t remember what film is supposed to look like.

I don’t think anyone gets into preservation to destroy film. I believe that everyone involved with this process worked hard and had the best interests of the film in mind, but the exact nature of restoration itself can vary wildly. I believe that some companies get blinded by new tech, get high on their own supply, and that can result in work that is destructive instead of restorative. I don’t know what the solution to this is in the world we live in, outside of decoupling film preservation from the profit motive whenever possible.

But I am certain about one thing. For a while, much of gaming tried looking like Aliens. Now, Aliens looks like a video game. And that doesn’t sit right with me.”

[socialbunny]

15 questions for 15 mutuals :3

i was tagged by @annieshowell, @obsoletepixels, @goatskickin, @shitysimp, @sicksadsim and @jsasimmer <3333333333 thanks guys ily >:3

are you named after anyone? no, my mom had two names she wanted to pick for me and she and my dad settled on the one i have. but she was alsoo watching this movie in the hospital and one of the characters has my exact birth name so i think that cemented the name lol. and my name dirk, i named myself after dirk dreamer bc he's so me fr

when was the last time you cried? can't remember exactly

do you have kids? No I don't need that that in my life rn

do you use sarcasm a lot? I dooo, never in a mean way tho bc i feel like using sarcasm to mask how u feel abt some1 is pussy fr. i love joking around and poking fun and just being silly and weird and chillin like? irl personality is hit or miss with people. ive been told i talk back too much or always have something to say like? 😭

what sports do you play/have you played? when i was in elementary school i was in a dance group (terrible at it i have no rhythm at all it's honestly embarrassing) and when i was in high school i was in a tennis class (which was a PE alternative where we honestly never did shit tbh, towards the end of the school year we'd just be in the computer lab most of the time) and i considered joining the actual team but i also sucked at it 😭 and i really don't like doing team shit esp sports bc people start acting weird and i start getting real agitated.

what's the first thing you notice about other people? like physical i guess their outfit and hair and other shit i wear my glasses forr but shittttt, like just talking to someone i can catch their vibe really quick. just the way someone talks can tell you a lot abt them

eye color? Brown

scary movies or happy endings? it really depends on what the movie is

any special talents? nothing in particular i can think of. i think anything i do i'm really good at but not especially good at you know. i used to be told i'm really good at drawing but i was told this by the type of ppl who say they cant draw a stick figure so. take that as u will

where were you born? Texas 🤠

what are your hobbies? I love drawing and writing and reading and all the shit in that sphere of hobbies in theory 😭 been in a slump lately and doing shit seems harder than it needs to be. I love watching animation analysis and critiques, and listening to those 3hr vids of ppl talking abt shit i will never watch or care about while i do other bullshit. i really like making renders right now it gives me something to do without getting distracted too much. i also love playing really old shitty video games that have pages of cut content on tcrf

do you have any pets? No :( never had any pets when i was a kid either bc my mom had a whole bunch of dogs as a child and she didnt fw the idea of having any more animals in her house

how tall are you? 5'4 :)

fave subject in school? I love English (predictably I guess 😭)

dream job? i'd love to work in the animation industry in any way possible <3 or work in tv in general. probably have my own cartoon some day but thats such a stretchhhhhhhh i cant even work on my sims fanfiction or any oc shit LMAO. if not then i'd accept nothing less than a job where i don't have to talk to a lot of people and get payed billions of dollars to do bullshit

i dont have 15 ppl to tag since i do ask games so slowlyyyyy but i'll tag @despairoftheendless, @junkskoer, @faghotline and @hyperthinks !!! <3