#this one was inspired by a particular screencap from the movie

[ddragayn]

“can’t you stop starting fires? “it’s our fate.”

[Image ID: From the knees up, an anthro dragon, August, can be seen facing away. There is a cock-sure tilt to their posture. Although dark in shadows, a pink flame is cupped in their hand at their side. They are wearing a leather outfit with many straps adorning it - in the likeness of Lio Fotia, a character from the movie Promare. The lines and background are composed of blues and pinks. /. End ID]

[fakehelper]

gif pack maker question game! 💕

I've seen a few of these float around for gif/edit makers and some questions apply to us, but I figured I'd make one specifically for gif pack makers! Feel free to send me some or just reblog and get some questions asked yourself! If you think of any other good questions, leave them in the replies and I'll try to add them in the future!

What is your favorite gif pack to date?

Which FC have you made the most gifs of?

What is the largest pack you've ever made?

What is the smallest pack you've ever made?

Who is your favorite gif pack maker? If that's too hard, top 3!

Which gif pack do you think is underrated (should have gotten more attention)?

Which gif pack are you close to deleting?

Have you ever deleted a gif pack?

How did you get started making gif packs?

Post your favorite gif of one of your current projects (or one from each!)

What scenes are the worst to color?

Which scenes are your favorite to color?

What was the worst show you've had to color?

Which show had the best lighting/was the easiest for you to cover?

Would you ever remake a gif pack? If so, which one(s)?

Would you ever do a gif pack collab? (ie, you split a season or movie of the same fc and gif half)

Which gifs do you think are ESSENTIAL for a pack?

Which gifs do you think should never leave the cutting room floor?

Do you have any current projects you want to talk about?

What are you most looking forward to gifing this year? Any upcoming movies or shows?

Do you usually gif a whole pack at once, or split up packs across various days (or weeks, or months... or years...)

What is your favorite expression to gif? Smiles, laughs, incredulous looks, etc

What FC do you wish had more footage for you to gif?

Which gif pack do you regret making? Why?

Any pet peeves when it comes to gifing?

Frames to Layers or Screencaps? Or do you use a different import method?

Frames or Video timeline?

Watermarks or no watermarks? Any reason why?

What is your favorite or standard gif size for packs? Any particular reason why?

Do you save your psds? If so, do you save one per scene and edit it or do you save one for each gif?

Do you save your .gif files after posting them?

What is a gif pack you've seen recently that you think deserves praise?

Are you someone who likes to take suggestions or do you just gif what you feel inspired to make?

Black and white gifs. Worth it?

Free choice! Ask whatever you'd like!

[batsincastlesociety]

more oc scribbles but they're also very scribbly actually

explanations + bonus doodle under the cut! :)

a manato outfit concept, along with some small crowd practice! i'm thinking of giving side characters / unimportant characters in crowds just faceless mannequin-esque designs, as i did here, for future reference. :3 i love drawing big, extremely exaggerated puffy sleeves so much!! definitely going to give all of manato's other outfits some sort of motif to that...

more manato!! wahoo!! this one is just random, honestly. a little scribble. a tiny thing. i don't draw proper character designs from the back, so i just wanted to make something a bit different. maybe i'll digitalize this and make it into a proper painting someday!

YEAAAAAH AKIHIRO!!!!! YEEAAAAH !!! i love him so much but i actually detest him but hes so silly abdhfsjska. this was sort of inspired by a screencap from "butcher vanity". as in the song 😭 but i just wanted to make him look bored and annoyed instead. not for any particular reason; i just typically resort to giving my characters' faces annoyed / bored as a default. i really want to digitalize this, too! :P but definitely not right now, lmao.

more annoyed akihiro!! i've been thinking of drawing eyes a bit differently lately, as shown here. he's very judgy in this shot, haha! idk of what, though... 🤔 once again, i just like making my characters pissed off. this one sort of gave me the vibes of old photos where they never smile. and in movies, all of the ancestors' portraits always look stern and annoyed... honestly, i'd be rather angry too if i had to sit still for multiple hours just to have my face painted too, so i can't really blame those guys 💀

this one was Just Plain Silly. also expression practice!! i liked how this one turned out,,, i had no idea how to make the eyes so i just resorted to anime, lmao. you know how some angry faces in unserious scenes in anime just have the character go like ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)? just big white eyes, and a massive square (typically sharp-toothed) mouth? to express Pure Unbridled Fury? like that. :)

this specific one was just literally based on something that happened a few minutes ago, lmao. just scrolling on tumblr and boom. netflixvania. get out!!!! >:(

also, a similar experience happened yesterday... i remember when i went to hot topic in the mall, as SOON as i turned to leave after i Purchased My Wares, you know how hot topic has all of their t-shirt graphics put into square frames, all over the wall?

yeah as soon as i went to Leave, and (poorly) chose to check out the graphics for a second, you want to know the FIRST god-damned thing i saw? A NETFLIXVANIA GRAPHIC. NO JOKE. now THAT was seriously the straw that broke the camel's back -- I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HOT TOPIC HAD NETFLIXVANIA MERCH!!! .·°՞(≧□≦)՞°·.

BUT I CHECKED THEIR WEBSITE. AND THEY DO. 3 pages worth of merchandise, and IT'S ALL FOR THE SHOW!! i died on the spot. anyway that's all i have to type right now but yeah it Sucked.

[thegeminisage]

for posterity (and so i can close the tab), i'm posting screenshots of the private skip/watch list i made for friends only - since i was too big of a dummy and didn't liveblog my initial tos watchthrough, to my ETERNAL FUCKING WOE, this is as close as i'm ever getting. sad! DISCLAIMER that i disagree with my past self on some of the skip/watch verdicts so please use the official spreadsheet (still a wip) as a guide if you're looking for that kind of thing.

of note from this first screencap: dagger of the mind, which i continue to feel normal about for no particular reason and definitely not relating to a movie with a brainwashing chair that came out in 2014. the corbomite manuever, which i dismissed at first and then came around to liking better later because of the little character moments. conscience of the king, which was actually the first trek episode i ever watched before i went back and did them all in official order (mistake, production order is better) and which of course got me into this mess. squire of gothos, which has this scene that inspired this fanfic. don't text.

it's also worth mentioning that i had to watch not one not two but THREE bad to mid episodes before i hit naked time and enemy within and then they put me right back in it with mudd's women. if i hadn't already seen conscience of the king and knew what was up i would have fucking quit. and that's why production order is superior

of note for this batch: the city on the edge of forever, in which a lot of important stuff happened, but also spock wore a little hat. catspaw, which is the first time i had an inkling of the idea that would later spawn this powerpoint (this is what "giving john crichton" means ifykyk). mirror mirror, which i didn't get until like a week later and then went insane over. metamorphosis, which made me so frothing mad it's unreal.

of note here: the immunity syndrome, which i have rewatched 60000 times for the spones. return to tomorrow, during which my eyes were dinnerplates start to finish. by any other name, which truly had so much going on including what i know in my heart was a tarsus iv reference. bread and circuses, which did indeed make me blush when bones pushed spock against the wall and spock went "really doctor?" i still can't think about it.

of note: the enterprise incident, which again caused mental illness related to the previously linked powerpoint. the paradise syndrome, which was the only amnesia episode, the first time kirk and spock mindmelded on screen, and so utterly fucking racist that all of that stuff was absolutely ruined beyond belief; i instantly moved to a google doc and to write down my mind palace version that doesn't involve All Of That. the one-two punch of the world is hollow + the empath, which made me a bones understander. the tholian web, which made me bonkers because i love a good fake death. plato's stepchildren, sections of which i had to watch through my fingers.

finally, of note for this batch: whom gods destroy, which unexpectedly brought back the brainwashing chair and excited me so much i had to pause the episode to collect myself. that which survives, bc the looney toons sfx made me scream laugh. requiem for methuselah, which genuinely induced a november 5th-like mania i didn't think i'd ever feel again. all our yesterdays, which was the worst i'd EVER felt for a space babe. and finally, turnabout intruder, which introduced "it's better to be DEAD than to be in the body of [x]" into my own personal lexicon.

ok that's everything! we have nine episodes left of tos to go back and watch before we move onto tng, but i know in my heart that tos will always be my favorite. i'll miss you tos :(

[maxwell-grant]

any thoughts on james bond??

Not really a fan and I don’t think that’s gonna change. I don’t have much experience with the character to begin with, I watched the Daniel Craig movies which bored me to death. I watched Goldfinger, which I remembered as being fun the first time I viewed it as a kid, but I find it hard to stand as an adult because Sean Connery was an awful man and oh yeah, that’s also the movie where James Bond rapes someone (I get that it was supposed to be a slap-slap-kiss thing but that is very much not what it’s in the scene). And I read the original Casino Royale novel, which is a must-read largely for it’s importance in pop culture and has some interesting aspects to it but, again, nothing that really got me to seek out the character.

Look, I get why Bond has become this huge cultural institution and the spy of popular fiction ever since his debut, why the 60s was the era of “Bond, Beatles and Batman” and why he’s kinda become the new standard for non-superhero action protagonists. I am extremely fond of that particular style you see in media like The Incredibles and Team Fortress 2, and that style owes a lot of it to the Bond films, hell I just posted above a screencap of Venture Bros, my favorite cartoon series. I’m certainly not gonna knock on popular enjoyment of a morally dubious man of action in a slick suit who charms and shoots his way through problems, after writing my most popular posts on my unabashed worship of Vincenzo. 

The things I like the most about Bond’s character in Casino Royale and the Bond of the original novels are largely the ways in which he almost betrays the impossibly competent image he’s been set up with later. I like that he gets picked specifically just because he’s the Service’s best gambler and not because he's the best everythint, I like that he’s uncomfortable with killing and especially the targeted assassinations, I like that he has vices and struggles because of his job. His job kinda forces him to be by default an unfeeling asshole who exploits people, and I think that’s an interesting perspective to develop, even without the context of it being James Bond before “being James Bond is the coolest thing ever” was the driving thesis of the franchise.

Thing is, I never really found any reason to give a damn about anything in Bond, other than enjoyment of the stylistic trappings and absurdities which just get kinda old after a while. I don’t enjoy the titular character or the hordes of largely one-dimensional "Bond Girls”, I don’t think the villains are interesting despite their supposed reputation in pop culture, I don’t get that much enjoyment out of death traps and car chases and gun fights if I don’t have anything at all to care about in the situations. I don’t think characters inspired by Bond tend to be interesting and even Bond parodies have gotten largely old and stale (I do like Johnny English but that’s solely because Rowan Atkinson is my favorite comedian and I’ll watch him in anything, and even then I didn’t even remember there was a third film).

As a kid, the idea of being a secret agent in service of the government has never really been terribly appealing to me, and as an adult it appeals even less. I don’t entirely dislike government agent characters by default, I really like Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks and An Gi-Seok from Vincenzo and agents of fictional organizations like Hellboy’s BRPD and Carmen Sandiego’s ACME, but I can’t shake off the stink of imperialism off my perception of Bond in particular. Again, I know it’s fiction, I know I talk about morally dubious protagonists I love all the time, but it’s the fact that Bond is so closely tied to his role as a government-sponsored murderer, my disdain for real-life governments and secret services being depicted in fiction as a swell and cool thing and not at all what they actually are, and the fact that I do not find Bond at all convincing or interesting enough for me to overlook that and buy into the fantasy, all blends together to make me dislike him.  

And yeah, Ian Fleming had utterly wretched views on gender and race and that bleeds a lot into the stories. People knock on pulps for racism and sexism a lot, and it's not undeserved, but even then I’ve seldom read anything in them as appallingbas the kind of shit you get on the Bond novels, and it’s harder to separate those from the character when so much of it is framed as the thoughts and opinions and attitudes of the character to the world around him. I would still not like James Bond even if I could put aside all the racism and sexism, and I very much cannot, but the fact that they are there, atop everything else, atop the character being an actual rapist at worst and his most iconic actor being unabashedly proud of being a wife beater and somehow still remembered fondly as a pop culture badass, and you end up with the one time Alan Moore did a comically grotesque exaggeration of a character in LOEG and I thought “you know what, I acknowledge that this is overblown and stupid and immersion-breaking but fuck it, I can’t blame you for your thoughts on this particular character manifesting with such bile”.

I know there’s good stuff in James Bond novels and films, I know why the character is super iconic and popular, please don’t misconstrue anything I’m saying as me thinking James Bond fans are horrible or something, because I don’t want to get that across at all. But I personally do not like Bond, and I don’t think I have to force myself to when there’s so many other types of characters and even spies that I prefer so much more. I don’t think I’m ever really going to be a Bond fan (I do like Timothy Dalton as an actor though, and if Sam Neil ever got to play Bond like he auditioned for, I probably would have at least some affection for the character since I really like him). 

I do like Austin Powers also. A lot of the jokes have aged really poorly and apparently Mike Myers is kind of an ass on set, but I think the concept of the eternally outdated parody spy still works, the films still have pretty funny scenes, and most importantly, he spoofed the concept to death so hard that even Daniel Craig said “Mike Myers fucked us”. Austin sucked out and absorbed all the fun parts of James Bond and then made them so funny and ridiculous that the Bond franchise has never again been able to have too much fun with itself, and if I gave a shit about Bond I would probably dislike that, but I don’t so, you go Austin. 

[drcrushers]

HELLO. I am back for my promised vent. I will put the majority of it beneath a read-more because there is some triggery things.

This is the experience I had with a male director today. This was over messages, thankfully not in person. This is an example of interactions I hear and experience CONSTANTLY. I got confirmation after reaching out to another actor friend of mine after this exchange, that this director was notorious on the east coast for not paying actors, making them uncomfortable on set, and in general had blown through most of the actors over there to the point where they’d no longer work for him.

(Let it be know this is just a vent on my half, I feel better by expelling this, and it is no way a ‘cancel culture’ or whatever other nonsense people are doing these days smh).  

But I will give you the tl;dr version: i’m getting sick and fucking tired of directors and other film industry professionals in positions of power using, abusing, and treating actors like shit (and interns and production and anyone ‘lesser’). stop exploiting actors, stop being creeps, stop gaslighting and just in general STOP BEING SHITTY PEOPLE BECAUSE WE’RE FUCKING SICK OF IT.

This started about a month ago. I had submitted a workshop clip in lieu of a reel for an audition for something that was being filmed here on the west coast. This is bad actor etiquette for professionals, but it was labeled as an ‘indie’ project, no budget, etc. Which is typical of a lot of casting calls in the groups I follow on Facebook. There wasn’t any red flags, and when I googled/facebook’d the name attached, I was brought to some previous indie films the same person had produced, directed, had been involved with. Super, not a murderer, that’s a good first sign. So I sent my stuff in. 

Weeks go by, I forget. Then I get a DM - it should be noted that I was not friends with him, we had no mutual friends, so it came in as a message request. 

Right, fair play. Not exactly the type of message I was expecting as an opener, but fine. I appreciate constructive criticism and I will ALWAYS take constructive criticism. So I take it all with some grains of salt, because this guy is someone who does indie films, etc. Not JJ Abrams.

Then we get into some humble bragging.

We have a decent conversation, professional otherwise, and end our conversation shortly after. Because it’s clear I’m not getting a job out of this.

But apparently homie here keeps names/etc because he sends out mass messages about rush calls and I get them. I ‘like’ them to let him know I receive them, but I never actually type out a message. 

This morning he popped into my DMs with this:

Mind you, it’s like 7am and I’ve just started work for the day (which for me, is at home). We exchange pleasantries - and I don’t have screencaps of this because for whatever reason, he’s using voice/audio messages that I have to listen to (it’s a FB messenger feature I don’t use, tbh). 

During one of them, he makes the following comment: “If I were your manager, I’d bend you over my knee and not in the good way.”

Hello, red flag. Now, I’m fine with a joke or a comment that may just be a bit off, but I tried to steer the conversation away from that particular topic because that comment did make me uncomfortable. 

The topic got back onto a role for a film his friend was making, some 70s inspired horror thing. He wanted a headshot. I sent it.

Now, full body photos aren’t weird in the industry. Like he mentions, it’s mostly used for modeling auditions. But how he not only makes the comment about women, but then the last line reminds me of one of those cringy, flirty boys who are like ‘oh lol you were in the shower send me a pic’. I continued to try and deflect.

Okay, fine. So he got a photo of me, wearing an oversized t-shirt and long fuzzy pj pants with little scottie dogs on them. I don’t know why I was still entertaining him, but naive, stupid me. 

This hit me wrong too. Were you expecting me to look like I just stepped out of a Haines briefs commercial? In my underwear or shorts that might as well be underwear? ?????

By this point I am done with this dude. He’s put me off, and I know he’s jacking me around. He continues about the movie/character his friend is doing. He compares them to some other movies.

More red flags. Hard. At this point I’ve already said I’m not interested in a film with such a premise. He persists.

Body shamed. Awesome. And then he drags in the nudity aspect, which is something, as an actor, I do not do.

I’m STILL telling him I do not do nudity.

At this point, I kind of bluntly ended the conversation and blocked him. 

[cielrouge]

Tagged by @piyo-13, who’s hella rad: 

Top 3 Ships: Ok, well first off here’s a visual shorthand representation of my typically preferred ship dynamics:

[Aka the pure ball of sunshine x the eternal grump with a secret heart of gold!!!] 

Ahiru x Fakir/Mytho x Rue: Ok this is a tie since I wasn’t originally into them at the start of Princess Tutu, but man oh man, I was totally on board by the end rofl. The first half is my ray of sunshine duck girl and her moody, brooding knight who warms up to all the LOVEEE she has to offer and then promises to stay by her side forever!!! And for second half, well in dealing with the series’ themes of fate, free will, and all that jazz, like...just bruh. Mytho actively chooses to love her after she’s literally been told that nobody ever would for pretty much her whole life. And idk man, that’s the kind of stuff that hits me right in the feels. [Close runner-up would be Ahiru x Rue tho cuz idk man that shit is also cute AF]. 

Adam Parrish x Ronan Lynch (Pynch): I mean...don’t we all sometimes wish to be one, doe-eyed Bambi boy with a magical farmer boyfriend who’d pay our rent, serenade us with Latin poetry and dream up sentient forests that feel like home? No? Ok I guess it’s just me then. 

Lan Xichen x Nie Mingjue (Nielan): Ah, the embodiment of my two visual shorthand representations seen above. Childhood friends? Check. Battle couple? Check. Fellow sect leaders with a shared history who are also each other’s rare equals? Check. Recognize and appreciate each other’s strengths which conveniently happen to be complimentary to their complete opposite personalities? Check. Consistently being soft ONLY for the other half? Check.  Tragic canon ending which we all collectively chose to ignore to some extent since it does not spark joy? CHECK. 

Honorable mentions (in no particular order) go to: Wangxian (self-explanatory lol), Xicheng (it’s all about the healinggg), Anne Eliot x Frederick Wentworth (the OG Austen second-chance romance), Margaret Hale x John Thornton (LOOK BACK AT MEEE!!! and Bejezus, every single fucking time when Richard Armitage’s voice visibly cracks at the end of his ‘I wish to marry you because I love you’ line, I temporarily descend to another plane of existence *swoons*), Otani x Koizumi (the OG shojo height difference couple imo), Kazehaya x Sawako (popular sunshine boy helps shy, misunderstood wallflower make FRANDS!!! and falls in love with her along the way *sniffs*), Suzume x Mamura (since I think it’s literally the only incident I know of where the second love interest syndrome is DEFEATED and she. chooses. the. second. guy!!!), and Kyo x Tohru (cuz that’s where the first screencap is from rofl). 

Last Song: “Top” by Stray Kids (the OP for Tower of God/Kami no Tou). They honestly did not have to go that hard with recording the Japanese, Korean, and English versions, but they did :’)))

Last Movie: In theaters (during the “Before” time rofl) was Onward. Most recently, Advantageous on Netflix. I’m also probably gonna re-watch Ne Zha at some point, since that’s also on Netflix now?

Currently Reading: Ahhh I took a staycation but I’m back to work by this Friday. And let’s see...on my to-read list is Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn (King Arthur meets Shadowhunters set in the Deep South), Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights (a Romeo x Juliet historical fantasy retelling set in 1920s Shanghai), and Rebel Sisters by Tochi Onyebuchi (book 2 in a series that’s basically Gundam set in futuristic Nigeria). But in terms of reading for fun, I’ve started Kacen Callender’s Queen of the Conquered, a Caribbean-inspired fantasy about a ruthless young noblewoman wreaking vengeance against the royals who assassinated her family and enslaved her people. Also at any given moment, I have anywhere from 10-15+ A03 tabs open at the same time. Don’t @ me. 

Food I’m Craving: Oh God, so, SO much. I run a side food blog which I. have. not. updated. in. months ( ╬` 益 ´)!!! But honestly I would like shank a man to be able to consume any kind of Korean BBQ right now. That or maybe some Korean fried chicken, since I finished binging Crash Landing on You recently and omg BBQ Olive Chicken was featured in like other every episode lmaooo. I would also kill for a choux cream bbang from Paris Baguette *sobsss* 

People I’d Like To Get To Know Better: @fireandwonder​, @lunartokiya​, @meishallaneous​, @myanchorandyourcompass​, @skadren, @walkingshcdow, @whenquietthunders​, @yukipri, and anyone else who wants to do this! No pressure tho! 

[muthaz-rapapa]

Precure 2019 Checklist

Alright, StarPre’s movie is going to be released in less than 10 days. That means, leaks season is just around the corner along with all the hype and disappointment that’ll come with it.

I’m not here to talk about that, though.

A year ago, I made this wishlist of what I wanted to see in StarPre and future seasons. Looking back on it today, I’m surprised this year managed to cover a good chunk of the stuff I asked for, including some that weren’t directed specifically at StarPre.

So here goes.

First for the StarPre demands:

1) Outer space theme - CHECK✓

I mean, this was obvious from the start but I’m still super glad we got to explore *magical* space instead of just having the girls sit on Earth, waiting to fight the alien mooks.

It also more or less fulfilled my wish of having a season take place away from our world (at least, occasionally) AND one that had a narrative theme centered around “discovery” as well.

Seriously, what are the chances of that?! Amazing!

2) At least one Cure who is an alien - CHECK✓

Not just one, but two of them! Yay!

Very happy that we got a more diversely balanced team instead of the usual 3:1 “humans/Earthlings to non-humans/non-Earthlings” ratio.

As for the “androgynous, non-binary” part, we got Olivio so another check✓ for that.

3) Spaceship rocket - CHECK✓

Asked for a giant one but I LOVE this one even more! The girls decorated it together it so it’s special~! <3

Besides, I got my giant spacecraft in ep 31 so all’s good.

4) Worldbuilding - CHECK✓

Will just refer you to this post for comments.

5) Battles in space - More or less check✓

Speaks for itself.

6) One of the major charas sporting a Princess Leia-inspired hairdo - mmm...yea, why not? Check✓

Well, while I wouldn’t call them major characters so much as plot tools, the Star Princesses did play an important role for (the first half of) this season.

And I suspect Aries’ horns are the closest thing we’re gonna get to Leia’s buns anyway so there. :P

7) Something named “Cosmos” - Check✓

Yeap. I still refuse to call her “Cosmo” because that’s not even a complete word. Unless you want to name your hamster that or something.

...

...

Now, for the general stuff:

1) Motifs not used before: Zodiac - Check✓

LOOK AT THEM!

LOOK! AT! THEEEEEEEMMMMMMM!!!!!

( ´͈ ॢꇴ `͈ॢ)･*♡

2) Green Cure - Check✓

I’m still not over this.

And Lala was such an awesome, incredibly lovable Green Cure, aaaaahhhh~

(´▽`ʃƪ)♡ 

Honestly, having a Green Cure appear in the main lineup is probably as rare as getting to see an eclipse in the region where you live during a time when you can actually see it happening.

Am I going to hold the next few seasons up to this silly, unfair standard?

I DUNNO, AM I????? (◎ω◎ ;;)

3) Idols (mentioned here) - Meh, whatever, check✓

Like I said, I’m not big on this motif especially when there are half a dozen other series (and an entire genre) out there that do focus primarily on idols, running at the same time as Precure.

But I know people were very excited for the prospect of a idol-themed season last year so I wonder how they feel now about what StarPre has given us.

Lessee, a space cat idol in the form of Mao, the Cures singing and dancing during the transformation sequences (Hikaru’s VA is an idol herself) ...

...and that’s it, really. Not enough to count as an idol-themed season but StarPre has flavors of it.

Anyways, the more I think about it, the more it’s pointless to ask Toei for a full on idol-themed season.

Because Precure is, foremost, a magical girl show. Moreover, a magical girl show with physical fighting elements in it.

If you stuff all that entertaining business into the anime next to its main staples (one or two stock footages aside), you’re only going to make it more chaotic than it should be.

And it’s not like Precure aren’t idols themselves already. What with a special merchandise line created just to advertise girls as idols, all the singing and dancing in every ED since the start of the franchise...

...and the sheer number of them that gather to do the same thing in the All Stars movies:

Really, Precure is basically Toei’s AKB48.

They’re just magical girls first before they’re idols. *shrug* :P

4) Phantom thief Precure (not previously mentioned) - ...hmm, I suppose ch-..NOPE!

On second thought, nope nope nope!

And I’m going to explain why...after I get more screencaps on Sunday but Yuni/Blue Cat definitely does not satisfy my needs for a Cure who’s also a phantom thief.

Sorry, not sorry. My hopes for this topic in particular are much bigger than that and she simply does not meet those standards.

But all in all, good haul this year. (^ ^)b

[jacademia]

Film Allusions in Crimson Peak

Hi, all! So because I am deep in my horror movie feels at present and, as horror is a genre that some of you are new to/unfamiliar with, want you all to have some more context for Crimson Peak as an intertextual Gothic pastiche, I thought make a little list of films (mostly horror) that CP references, alludes to, or visually echoes (other than Jane Eyre or any iteration of “Bluebeard,” that is). This list is certainly not exhaustive, but I hope will give you a starting place at understanding the scale of the intertextual web this movie is weaving (also maybe give you some movie recs if you’re into horror/classic cinema. I’ll try to include links to films in the public domain).

Nosferatu (1922) and other early 20th century cinema

Del Toro makes use of a lot of the aesthetics and techniques of film from the late Victorian period/early 20th century (appropriate since Crimson Peak is set in the 1890s - incidentally one of the peaks of Gothic literature). One of these is iris shots/iris transitions (shown above in this screenshot from Nosferatu). Iris transitions are when a circular black mask over the shot shrinks, closing the picture to a black screen (very common in early horror film and 1920s cartoons, ie Betty Boop). If you’d like some very iconic, silent vampire cinema, you can watch Nosferatu here at archive.org for free.

The Old Dark House (1932) | Watch free on Archive.org

Seeking shelter from a storm, five travelers are in for a bizarre and terrifying night when they stumble upon the Femm family estate.

A trope codifier for the haunted house movie, complete with oodles of Gothic weirdness, including those ooky spooky, co-dependent Femm siblings.

Rebecca (1940) | Watch free on Archive.org

A self-conscious bride is tormented by the memory of her husband's dead first wife.

Based on Daphne Du Maurier’s novel of the same name (itself heavily based on Jane Eyre), this Gothic variation on “Bluebeard” was Alfred Hitchcock’s first American film, won two Academy Awards, and is still considered one of the best psychological thrillers of all time. Features an overbearing female figure who directly interferes with our protagonist’s marriage to her, er, Prince Charming in the form of a Sapphic housekeeper obsessed with keeping the memory of the first Mrs. De Winter alive.

Notorious (1946) | Watch free on Youtube

A woman is asked to spy on a group of Nazi friends in South America. How far will she have to go to ingratiate herself with them?

Don’t drink the tea! Also, butterfly-backed chairs. Allll the butterfly-backed chairs.

The Fall of the House of Usher (1960)

Upon entering his fiancée's family mansion, a man discovers a savage family curse and fears that his future brother-in-law has entombed his bride-to-be prematurely.

Two prongs here: Crimson Peak is very much playing with Edgar Allan Poe’s short story (incest siblings! Gothic manors sinking into the earth!) and evoking a particular aesthetic associated with a number of 1960s/70s “schlock” Gothic horror films like those made by Roger Corman who applied his use of vivid color and psychedelic surrealism to a number of Poe’s works. 

AESTHETIC!!!!! Speaking of aesthetic excess...

The Brides of Dracula (1960) and other Hammer Horror films

Vampire hunter Van Helsing returns to Transylvania to destroy handsome bloodsucker Baron Meinster, who has designs on beautiful young schoolteacher Marianne.

Known for a series of Gothic horror films made during the 1950s - 1970s featuring well-known characters like Count Dracula, Baron Frankenstein, and The Mummy, Hammer film productions hooked audiences with its use of vivid color, gore, sexy damsels in nightgowns, sexy women with fangs, sexy mummy girls, sexy... you get the idea. It left an indelible aesthetic mark on horror cinema since (including Crimson Peak). Also famous for catapulting the careers of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing or, as you might know them, Count Dooku and Grand Admiral Tarkin from Star Wars.

The Innocents (1961)

A young governess for two children becomes convinced that the house and grounds are haunted.

Frequently listed as one of the best horror films of all time, The Innocents (one of Del Toro’s direct inspirations -- clock the nightgown in the screencap) is a loose adaptation of Henry James’ seminal Gothic novella The Turn of the Screw.

So many more under the cut...

The Leopard (1963) 

The Prince of Salina, a noble aristocrat of impeccable integrity, tries to preserve his family and class amid the tumultuous social upheavals of 1860's Sicily.

Another of Del Toro’s direct intertexts, which influenced Crimson Peak’s party scenes.

Suspiria (1977), the films of Mario Bava, and giallo cinema

An American newcomer to a prestigious German ballet academy comes to realize that the school is a front for something sinister amid a series of grisly murders.

A cult horror classic, Italian director Dario Argento’s Suspiria plays fast and loose with Gothic horror and fairy tale tropes, making for a slasher film quite unlike any other. Notable for its dreamlike surrealism, use of highly-stylized colorization, and sheer amounts of gore, Suspiria remains one of the most aesthetically influential horror films of all time and, looking at screenshots, you can maybe see its visual influence on films like Crimson Peak:

Guillermo Del Toro has also cited Mario Bava, another of the key figures in the golden age of Italian horror, as inspiration for his use of color and set design in Crimson Peak.

From Bava’s Black Sabbath (1963):

From Blood and Black Lace (1964):

Bava’s film, Blood and Black Lace, belongs to the giallo genre, which refers (at least, in English-speaking countries) to (largely 1970s) Italian horror thrillers/slashers notorious for their combination of intense, stylized violence and eroticism. Very much a precursor to the American slasher film.

The Shining (1980) 

A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil spiritual presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.

As film that also loosely adapts “Bluebeard,” it’s perhaps unsurprising that there are so many allusions to Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same name in Crimson Peak. 

And, man, does it have it all! Snowed in, Gothic entrapment! Threats of domestic abuse! Secrets locked away in forbidden rooms! Ghosts! So many ghosts!

Ghosts in the bathtub! 

Ludicrously enormous amounts of blood! Innocent waifs with the ability to commune with the dead! Intrepid third parties who heroically make an attempt to reach the isolated Gothic hellscape to help our damsel in distress only to get immediately merc’d! It’s all here, y’all.... except the incest, of course.

Flowers in the Attic (1987) 

Children are hidden away in the attic by their conspiring mother and grandmother.

Ok, this is something of a cheat, as Crimson Peak is alluding more to V.C. Andrews’ infamous novel of the same name, not the 1987 film (which is an abysmally terribly adaptation and hilariously bad flick). Anyway, abused siblings are locked away in an attic... and... well... things get all... Sharpe family values, if you know what I mean.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) 

The centuries old vampire Count Dracula comes to England to seduce his barrister Jonathan Harker's fiancée Mina Murray and inflict havoc in the foreign land.

If you liked Crimson Peak, I think you’ll enjoy this too, as, like CP, this movie is a sincere horror film, but also a pastiche/celebration of the Gothic and vampire cinema. It’s visually sumptuous and very high-energy (if you didn’t like CP or Moulin Rouge!, this one is probably not for you).

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Ichabod Crane is sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate the decapitations of three people, with the culprit being the legendary apparition, The Headless Horseman.

This is another one that, if you liked CP, you might enjoy. Based on Washington Irving’s "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Tim Burton’s film evokes a number of genres and horror aesthetics, most notably the Gothic horror flicks of the 1950s/60s, to create a kind of Hammer Horror film for American Gothic.

The Devil’s Backbone (2001) and Del Toro’s other films

After Carlos -- a 12-year-old whose father has died in the Spanish Civil War -- arrives at an ominous boys' orphanage, he discovers the school is haunted and has many dark secrets that he must uncover.

Crimson Peak is not Guillermo Del Toro’s first foray into Gothic horror, as ghost stories and dark fairy tales are very much his specialty (as we shall see again in Shape of Water later this semester). I highly recommend his ghosts-as-a-reflection-on-the-trauma-of-war film The Devil’s Backbone and his take on portal fantasy, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), as they’re both excellent and you can see echoes between them and the effects/visuals of Crimson Peak.

[joyfulprincessdragonlover54]

How to Train Your Dragon to Me (Edited) 

I would like to start off by saying thank you to @hello-em75 for creating this awesome project for the fandom on Tumblr.  I think it’s truly wonderful how it’s being encouraged for all of the fans to share why this franchise is so special to them as individuals.  I also appreciate how it was encouraged for everybody to do it in whatever way they feel the most comfortable. Mine will simply be by the “Text” page of Tumblr.   I’m afraid I’ve never had the unique talent in fan art or tribute video making.  Yet even before I found out about this fantastic HTTYD themed project.  I always hoped to create a post in which I could share my love for this franchise with other devoted fans.  And why it means so much to me. So once more, thank you @hello-em75 for conceiving this brilliant idea. It’s not about competing against other fans. Instead it is about everyone diving into their personal stories with the franchise and keep supporting all the fans who are shy about their love for it to speak out. We all want to hear what everybody has to say.  No pressure to be concerned it won’t be good enough in comparison to anybody else’s level.   Only share how you feel. I just love it! 

My story in being introduced to How to Train Your Dragon was back in February 2010.  I was 21 at the time.  Always been an animated film lover.  I won’t deny that my fiber stemmed from mainstream studios. Even still, I was always up for traveling off the beaten path.  Found some spectacular hidden gems. DreamWorks has quite a few of those.  Be that as it may, I never would have predicted the film I was about to see would create such an impact on my life.  I saw the trailer and thought to myself “ What an interesting film. I wonder if it will share the same DNA with another DreamWorks film? Spirit: Stallion of the Cimmeron.”  

Needless to say it became far more then an “interesting film”.  My soul was re-awakened! I say that without of any kind of irony or exaggeration.  I’ll first address that this was the film that introduced me to the value of 3-D format. Nope it was not another famous  record breaking box office hit.  How to Train Your Dragon was the one who changed my perspective of how this can benefit a story on screen.  Rather then manufacture it as the sole reason to see a film.  I was engaged from beginning to end. 

One of the main reasons the story appealed to me was how it synonymously displayed it’s lead character as someone who was identifiable and admirable. There were uncanny traits Hiccup and I have in common.  Sometimes it felt borderline identical.  It was as if the filmmakers had been clandestine in studying many of my struggles and displayed them on screen for the world to see. A medium that has done a swell job at bringing to light self identity issues people from all walks of life grapple with.  Yet his resilience and resourcefulness despite being an outcast in his society is commend worthy.  And that was well before we even reach the middle of the first film.  This was already becoming a consolation piece of fiction for me. 

Then they bring in Toothless.  A character that in it’s roots is exceedingly difficult at earning sympathy from the audience.  Animal driven films in animation have a notorious history of dividing movie goers.  If they talk it seems cliche.  The redundant corny trademark people roll their eyes at.  If they don’t talk, the audience sees them as mere props for the human characters in their story.  They can’t resonate with the audience as they don’t know how exactly to relate to their plights if it is not verbally stated.  It becomes even more staggeringly challenging as he is a dragon.  For fiction has a long history for interpreting these fantasy creatures in the villain bracket.  Even author G.K Chesterton made a significant point on what their role was in literature.  “Fairy Tales don’t tell us dragons exists. We already know they exist.  But that they can be beaten and killed.”  The filmmakers of this franchise took a bold risk at turning this classic notion on it’s head.  Hoping the audience would be willing to surrender to their story.  That by using a different but equally classic adage of “The eyes are the window to the soul” the audience would understand and sympathize with Toothless as much as any human character.  Now Toothless to this day still has his detractors from professional critics and amateur movie buffs alike.  Regardless of that, he has touched my heart beyond compare! He is a fully realized character who is multifaceted and has his own dilemmas. 

Book series author Cressida Cowell, directors/screenwriters Dean DeBlois and Chris Saunders are so brave for taking this chance in creating a dragon themed narrative that is not about conquering a monster as a ritual in transitioning into adulthood.  But about the obstacles of earning trust from a creature that is long ingrained in everyone’s mind is apart of evil forces who live to bring humans emotional torment.  Sure this franchise is not the first to explore this theme.  And nobody on the creative team tried to take credit for it.  They all openly acknowledged their inspirations and thanked them for it allowed them to take a closer inspection of why it is rarely explored in text or on screen.  What they did though was unconventional (in terms of mainstream studio features)  in it’s own right.  

At it’s core is a love story.  Not the typical owner and pet fictional iteration.  A genuine brotherhood team love story. One that requires slower pacing.  Another risk the creative team was willing to gamble on.  Earning trust is not immediate.  Mainly being Hiccup’s goal to prove he is not a social leper. He initially intends to kill Toothless. His own unique empathy for Toothless leaving him conflicted.  He does not grasp why he is ashamed of what his tribe does despite all of the rules and regulations drilled into his conditioning.   But his conscious tells him otherwise. It is wrong to murder this frightened creature. He deserves to be released unharmed.  A travesty to the Viking culture he grew up in. Hiccup freeing Toothless then Toothless sparing Hiccup’s life is a shocker! Neither quite comprehends why they just gave their sworn enemy a second chance at life. But this question is an internal odyssey Hiccup is willing to take. 

Hiccup did not dive in head first expecting  Toothless to cuddle up to him and offer him a ride on his back.  This had to be a gradual process.  Trial and error. Repetition and reinforcement.  Compassion and respect.  All of these features were crucial of guiding their story about strangers who met under negative circumstances and would later become brothers in arms.  The filmmakers shamelessly display every bit of this.  Hiccup and Toothless unexpectedly become dependent on each other.  Hiccup needs to brainstorm and invent contraptions as to feel worthwhile as his upbringing as has gone awry.  Brute strength and fast reflexes are not in his being.   Toothless needs to fly to survive. Navigating from island to island in the archipelago.   They each believe their purpose is to make it by in a society that wishes to subjugate them.  They just want as little confrontation as possible.  The chance encounter of Hiccup trapping Toothless with his own version of a catapult and him later venturing into the forest of Berk to find him was the beginning of their “Forbidden Friendship”.  Hiccup and Toothless alike always knew they were misfits. But neither ever dreamed of having the agency of seeking someone or something out who could potentially be like them.  They both believed they were all alone in the world. That is why I find their journey so rewarding to watch! 

They never expected to find one another.  Let alone feel so joyfully fulfilled.   This in turn was why I was so emotionally caught up watching the films.  In particular the first one.  Pretty much everything they do contradict’s their society’s dictation.  Their lives are literally in danger by merely engaging with the other presence.  Their secret of knowing and allying with one another is a secret that casts as much liberation as it does a burden.  They can be themselves when alone together. Exploring new ideas and places. Yet Hiccup’s tribe is acutely aware something is off.  Initially believing that he is inadvertently discovering dragon weaknesses that could lead to concocting a plan to eradicate all dragons.  Hiccup’s time with Toothless runs dangerously low.  My heart was in my throat with dread they would be separated from each other.  Hiccup and Toothless together gives them a purpose to live! I wanted them to live happily together and in harmony in their society. 

Such a love story is often over hyped and I could care less as is has their characters saying a bunch of frivolous dialogue with empty gestures.   Love is proven through consistent actions.  The hardships Hiccup and Toothless would have to painfully face head on to reach a happy end was not glided over.  The creative team was not shy about offering it’s share of agonizing lows.  Hiccup’s self-esteem dropping to practically zero.  Same goes for Toothless.  I still can not get over how blatantly the filmmakers do that to these precious characters. It’s so harrowing it hits me every single time.  Yet these emotions happen in reality.  These fantasy animated films are a mirror to it.   No happy ending is worth getting if  the characters don’t hit rock bottom.  

This is precisely what this entire franchise stands for and why it has become my all time favorite piece of fiction. It is as emotionally draining as it is fulfilling.  And I want to keep returning to them.  Both films have this in spades!  For me personally this is is so rare to watch a film that has all three of these qualities.  But the HTTYD franchise still had unexplained factors I can’t wrap my mind around  that it stands above anything else I have ever come across.  All I know for certain is that it is special.   And I am forever grateful to have discovered it.  

Also a huge shout out to Animation screencaps for these! They alone can define this beautiful under-rated love story.   :)  

[upontheshelfreviews]

Merry Christmas everyone! To conclude this month of merrymaking we’re looking at an animated Christmas cult classic that I have a bit of a soft spot for. But perhaps it’s best to start at the beginning:

ETA Hoffman’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” is one of my favorite fantasy stories, though chances are you’re more familiar with the famous ballet by Tchaikovsky that it inspired. The music is gorgeous and instantly recognizable, but few know the actual story of The Nutcracker beyond what your average community production rolls out every December. Much of the plot plays out like a variation of Beauty and the Beast with a protagonist akin to The Wizard of Oz’s Dorothy and story elements that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Grimms’ fairytale. Sadly, most of those details were lost in the translation from book to light holiday entertainment. Not that I’m complaining, I love the ballet, but there’s so much more to its origins that people aren’t usually interested in delving into.

I say all this because today’s movie, The Nutcracker Prince, is one of the very few filmic adaptations that pays faithful tribute to both its source material and its theatrical counterpart. In spite of – or perhaps because of – the popularity of the ballet, there’s been only a handful of film versions of Hoffman’s The Nutcracker (or at least a handful compared to something like A Christmas Carol). How good you find each of them to be depends upon your taste and the production value. I’ve found remarkably little about the making of this particular adaption, but that probably has to do with the fact that it was barely a blip on the box office radar. Released through Warner Brothers (which itself would issue another Nutcracker movie starring Maculay Culkin six years later), this was the only full-length animated feature created by Canada’s Lacewood Productions. A shame, really, because looking at The Nutcracker Prince you can see the studio’s potential. But thanks to the home video circuit, the movie has found a new life as a nostalgic Christmas classic for 90’s kids like myself. Let’s unwrap the reasons why, shall we?

If there’s one thing I appreciate about The Nutcracker Prince, it’s how it plays around with the music order to emphasize a scene’s mood rather than slavishly follow the original score. Instead of the recognizable jovial overture piping over the main titles, we have the Snowflake Waltz from the finale of Act 1, building an aura of mystery and magic to lure us into the story. A series of cross-hatched stills introduce us to our cast and characters, and I tell you, when you recognize these names you will not be able to look at this movie the same way. If I told someone that Anne of Green Gables, Jack Bauer, Lawrence of Arabia, Jimmy Neutron’s grandma and several prominent cast members from Canada’s Saturday morning fixture The Raccoons shared the screen together once, they’d think I was crazy, but as you’ll see it’s the honest to Zeus truth.

Our story begins proper with Clara Stahlbaum (Meagan Follows) and her younger brother Fritz delivering last-minute gifts to their neighbors on Christmas Eve. They race through the icy streets of Germany until they reach the shop of eccentric family friend Uncle Drosselmeier (Peter Boretski), a clockmaker and expert craftsman of mechanical toys. Drosselmeier greets the children and they invite him to come light up the Christmas tree with the family, but he enigmatically tells them he has to prepare for his nephew. This comes as news to Clara and Fritz, since they’ve known Drosselmeier for their whole lives and have never heard him mention a nephew before. Drosselmeier sends them on their way promising he’ll be at the Stahlbaum’s party that evening. Once they’re gone, he hints that there may be something magical in the air this Christmas…

“Blasted pixie dust everywhere! Once the holidays are done I’ve got to get the place fumigated!”

On their way home Clara and Fritz debate what Uncle Drosselmeier’s big annual present he makes for the family will be this time. Fritz, the little future warlord that he is, wishes for a working fort with a mechanical army, while Clara dreams of an enchanted garden where swans in golden necklaces glide across the water. This conversation is a little holdover from the Hoffman story that I like. One of the most difficult challenges every writer faces is writing natural sounding dialogue for children; while Hoffman’s dialogue is a bit stilted by the conventions of the era, the meaning still comes through. Fritz laughs at Clara’s fantasy but because he finds the idea of swans wearing jewelry more ludicrous than a magic garden, which is how an ebullient boy like him would think.

Back at the Stahlbaums, preparations for the Christmas party are underway. The parents give their children their presents: older sister Louise (who’s often excised from other adaptations) receives a pretty new dress, Fritz a hobby horse and toy soldier gear, and Clara a pair of ballet slippers and a new doll she christens Marie. I have to wonder if this is some kind weird in-joke since in the story, the main character is called Marie and the doll she receives is the one who’s named Clara. What happened during the process of making this movie that resulted in their names being switched? Clara is thrilled since these slippers bring her one step closer to her dreams of joining the royal ballet, but feels a touch bemused when she overhears her mother getting choked up at the notion that this may be Clara’s last doll.

The party arrives, including Louise’s boyfriend Eric. Clara and Fritz tease the lovebirds (though to be frank, anyone who wears a powdered wig twelve years out of fashion to something that isn’t a costume party deserves to be ridiculed) but something about their shared intimacy stirs something within Clara. This on top of the adult party guests commenting on how fast she is growing marks her entrance into that state of melancholy and confusion that comes from standing between childhood and adulthood and not knowing where you belong. Clara’s age is never mentioned though I suspect she’s roughly twelve or thirteen, right on the cusp of adolescence and about the time where that mindset begins to sink in. She still plays with dolls and treats them like they were alive, but imagines a future as an adult. There’s a growing sadness over the impending decision between the two that she subconsciously acknowledges through her playing with Marie. This theme isn’t present in the Hoffman story (Marie is a confirmed seven year old in the prime of juvenescence) but it’s been incorporated into the Maurice Sendak retelling a couple of years prior to The Nutcracker Prince and I like its inclusion here as well.

“I wonder if this is anything like what my pen pal Wendy went through with that Peter boy…nah, you’re overthinking it, Clara.”

But there’s no time for her to ponder the implications as a crack of thunder, gust of wind and explosion of fireworks marks the arrival of the final party guest – Drosselmeier. He comes bearing his greatest creation, an enchanting music box castle complete with marching soldiers, seven swans a-swimming, and figures dancing inside the ballroom. In another humorous scene from the original story, Clara and Fritz fawn over the castle while frustrating Drosselmeier with their requests to make the automated figures do more, leading him to go on a brief “kids today don’t appreciate shit” rant.

As the party guests waltz to the strains of more Tchaikovsky, Clara wanders by the tree and spies a present she hadn’t noticed before – a nutcracker in the shape of a soldier. He’s not the most handsome toy in the box, but there’s something charming about him that she is drawn to. Drosselmeier confesses that he’s just part of his gift for the family and demonstrates how he works. On seeing the Nutcracker, Fritz wrestles him out of Clara’s arms and insists he has a go. But because there are no nuts left, he tries one of his toy cannonballs and breaks its jaw. Drosselmeier cheers Clara up by telling a story of how the Nutcracker came to look as he does. And this is where things get…weird.

Now I don’t mind the inclusion of the story-within-a-story. I’m happy they go into how the Nutcracker was cursed unlike most other versions, and there’s some good gags thrown in that make me chuckle. It’s how they go about it that I take some issue with. First, look at the movie’s style looked so far.

The character designs are clearly inspired by Disney – big eyes, soft rounder faces, realistic body proportions for the main characters, only slightly exaggerated for the lesser ones. The backgrounds are warmly lit and richly detailed, like an early work by Thomas Kincade. Overall it feels like something out of a classic storybook.

Now here’s some screencaps from Drosselmeier’s story.

“All right, who changed the channel to Cartoon Network?”

The scene doesn’t even look like it’s from the same movie. It goes from feature film quality to a Saturday morning cartoon, and that’s not entirely coincidental. Lacewood Productions grew out of Hinton Animation Studios which primarily made, you guessed it, cartoons for tv. And Hinton Animation itself had its roots in Atkinson Film-Arts, the studio that produced The Raccoons, hence why some of the cast makes appearances. But because I couldn’t find anything on the making of The Nutcracker Prince, we’ll never know if they went this route because the budget ran out, or the animators didn’t feel comfortable drawing the entire movie in the Disney house style and worked out some kind of compromise, or they just wanted the reveal of the Nutcracker’s human form at the end to be an even bigger surprise. Given some time and creativity they might have been able to come up with something better. You could argue this is how Clara envisions the story playing out in her head, but I don’t think a child from the 1800’s would imagine a fairy tale in the style of Danny Antonucci. In fact, if you played music from Ed Edd and Eddy over this part it wouldn’t feel out of place. Everything is played up for nothing but laughs, not even the Nutcracker’s transformation into a lifeless object, which should be an emotional gut punch. And I’d be ok with all this if it was a short sequence, but it lasts fifteen minutes. That might not seem like long, but since this movie is only seventy-five minutes that means it takes up a good portion of its first half. Plus the cuts back and forth between the story to it being told reminds you of how jarring the whole sequence is compared to the rest of the film.

But on to the story itself. Drosselmeier’s tale takes place in a faraway kingdom belonging to a King who I can only describe Yosemite Sam in his golden years right down to the ornery western accent (it wasn’t until doing my research that I discovered he’s voiced by the Texan monster from the Beetlejuice cartoon which certainly explains it), an extreme doormat Queen, and their daughter, the “beautiful” but very spoiled and unfortunately named Princess Pirlipat. They have in their employ a world-famous clock maker and magician coincidentally also named Drosselmeier and his apprentice, his shy nephew Hans (Kiefer Sutherland).

“Patience, friends. The joke you’re all expecting is coming.”

The occasion on which this flashback takes place is the King’s birthday, and the Queen has put in an order for a cake made out of his favorite food, blue cheese (would that make it a blue cheesecake?) This has the unwanted side effect of drawing out every mouse in the palace. Led by the Mouse Queen (legendary comedienne Phyllis Diller) and her dimwitted son (Mike MacDonald), they pounce upon the cake just as the Queen is putting on the finishing touches.

With no time left to make a new cake, the Queen is forced to send it out to the King and his party guests. This disaster is almost salvaged by a sycophantic Emperor’s New Clothes-style response to the dessert, but Pirlipat ruins everything by whining how she refuses to eat that repulsive offal. The King promotes Drosselmeier to the post of Royal Exterminator and soon all the mice are caught – except the Mouse Queen and her son. She takes her revenge out on Pirlipat; using her dark magic she curses the princess with extreme ugliness, cementing it with a bite to the foot.

Oh please, that’s just Kellyanne Conway before her makeup.

Eager to blame somebody for Pirlipat’s state, the King is ready to execute Drosselmeier until the Queen suddenly intervenes and begs him to consider giving the clockmaker some time to reverse the curse. It was at this moment I realized the King and Queen here are like if the monarchs from Alice in Wonderland had their personalities switched. They even have the same body types as their Disney counterparts.

The King reluctantly acquiesces, but gives Drosselmeier and Hans no more than…well…did I already mention Kiefer Sutherland is in this movie?

“Your obligatory reference humor, all wrapped up in one neat package. Merry Christmas!”

So Hans and Drosselmeier study the princess to figure out a way to break the spell, not helped by Pirlipat’s constant ear-bleedingly grating crying. Her only comfort is Hans feeding her nuts he cracks for her himself. Inspired, Drosselmeier researches well into the night and discovers the cure for Pirlipat’s condition – the Krakatooth Nut, the hardest nut in the world. It can only be cracked open by a young man who’s never shaved or worn boots and they must take exactly seven steps to and from the person they’re feeding the nut to with their eyes shut and without stumbling, which even by fairy tale logic is some damn arbitrary rules.

The King invites noblemen from around the world to crack the Krakatooth with the promise of marrying Pirlipat and becoming heir to the kingdom if they succeed, though he has them and the rest of the court blindfolded so they won’t be scared off by her hideousness. Unfortunately each man who makes an attempt winds up with a mouth full of broken teeth. The Mouse Queen, confident in her evil plan, watches the misery play out with delight. Hans, however, decides to give it a try, and to Drosselmeier, the royal family, and the Mouse Queen and Prince’s surprise, he succeeds. Pirlipat is transformed back into her normal, terrible old self, however the court is too busy fawning over their restored icon to notice what happens next.

Enraged over being foiled, the Mouse Queen casts a curse on Hans to make him “the prince of the dolls”. Before he can take his final step backward, she bites his foot and he is transformed into a wide-smiling nutcracker. In his new form he accidentally knocks over a line of busts domino-style, the last of which the Mouse Queen is too late to escape from. I love it when villains are hit by instant karma. Alas, Pirlipat takes one look at Hans and refuses to marry a doll that’s not even half as ugly as she was moments ago.

Yep. Totally unmarriageable material.

On seeing his prospective son-in law for himself, the King accuses Drosselmeier of trying to trick his daughter into marrying one of his contraptions. He has the poor guy who’s shown nothing but years of loyalty and service to his outlandish demands banished forthwith while he and his wife and daughter celebrate their own selfish victory. I always hated how they never earned some kind of punishment for their behavior, but considering the boundary-shifting turmoil Europe endured before, during and after this tale was written, it’s more than likely these foolish monarchs will get what’s coming to them in the worst possible way down the line.

Enjoy your power while you can, assholes. Come the Napoleonic wars, you’re all royally screwed.

As for the Mouse Prince, he mourns his mother for all of ten seconds before realizing her death makes him the new Mouse King. He declares to Drosselmeier that he’ll have his revenge on the Nutcracker – not for killing mommie dearest but for smashing the end of his tail when the busts fell and making it go crooked.

With the story done, we abruptly return to the party and Clara expressing her disappointment in Hans’ unfair fate. Drosselmeier assures her that while Hans may be stuck as a Nutcracker, he’s still the rightful ruler of the magical kingdom of the dolls and the spell over him can be broken, but only if he defeats the Mouse King and wins the hand of a fair maiden. I love Clara’s reaction to this; she rolls her eyes and wonders why all fairy tales have the same solution.

Long after the party has ended and the Stahlbaums are fast asleep, a restless Clara sneaks downstairs with her kitty Pavlova to check on her Nutcracker. She introduces him to his new subjects, her toys – Marie, her old matronly doll Trudy, and Pantaloon, the ancient captain of Fritz’s toy soldiers. Taken by a music box’s melody, Clara shares a romantic song and dance with the Nutcracker to the tune of the Waltz of the Flowers, not unlike the one Louise and Eric had earlier.

And for those of you watching, yes, Clara is clearly rotoscoped when she’s dancing. I’m not against rotoscoping as long as animators don’t rely too heavily on it (COUGHBAKSHICOUGH), though the use of it here as well as in one other scene emphasizes how uneven the rest of the film’s animation is under scrutiny. I do wish there was a full version of this song somewhere though because it’s quite pretty.

The music comes to a sudden halt as Pavlova breaks an ornament. Clara quickly stashes the Nutcracker our of fear of being caught out of bed, but before she can return upstairs she’s startled by the famous ghostly image of Drosselmeier atop the grandfather clock in place of the decorative owl, his cloak billowing out like wings. He showers the entire parlor in pixie dust, and goofy-looking mice armed with forks and needles pop up from of every crevice. Pavlova scares them away from Clara until one arrives to scare him back – the Mouse King, looking far more intimidating than he did in the flashback.

One is an animation student’s design project, the other is Ratigan’s cousin. Would you believe they’re one and the same?

Drosselmeier also douses the toy cabinet with his magic and brings them all to life. The Nutcracker is woken up and, having no idea of what’s happened since the incident with Pirlipat, quickly has to come to grips with his new form and the fact that a sociopathic mouse has sworn a vendetta against him. And you thought the Hangover guys had it bad. Marie and Trudy plead him to take up his mantle as Prince of the Dolls and fight despite his inexperience. Fritz’s soldiers vow their loyalty and Pantaloon (voiced by Peter O’Freaking Toole) is made second-in-command. Though rather than do any actual fighting the old coot drones on and on in Shakespeare references.

“So we’re not watching Ratatouille Peter O’Toole so much as Man of La Mancha Peter O’Toole. Imagine my delight.”

Actually, like the Marie/Clara name switch before, I have to wonder if this odd characteristic of Pantaloon is another subtle in-joke or reference towards the original story. Hoffman was a big Shakespeare fan and often referenced him in his writings, including The Nutcracker. In the book when Fritz’s soldiers desert the battle, the Nutcracker cries out the famous line from Richard the Third, “My kingdom for a horse!” (paired down here to a simple “Come back!” when the toy horses run free). In a weird way, having Pantaloon riff on Shakespeare is a nod to Hoffman. On top of that, one of his first lines is “All for one and one for all”, which everyone remembers from Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. Years after Hoffman’s Nutcracker was published, Dumas wrote his own version of the story which is the lighter, softer one that the ballet takes the most cues from. So whether or not this was intentional is up for debate, but if it was I give the writers all the credit in the world for honoring both authors of The Nutcracker in such an obscure and subtle way.

The battle between the mice and the dolls promises to be an exciting one. The problem is once it gets going, it’s so wildly unfocused. The mice and dolls run around each other aimlessly firing and flailing at will. Clara could end all this just by kicking the mice to the other side of the room, but she just stands to the side and giggles at everything happening. Then there’s Marie, who in spite of Trudy strongarming her into helping the fight barely does anything other than scream in a stereotypical Southern accent and complain about how all this fighting is spoiling her complexion, like if she were a more spoiled version of Princess and the Frog’s Charlotte LaBouff. She’s marginally more tolerable that Pirlipat. Granted she does have one funny moment where her dress gets splattered with cheese and that’s what pushes her into a violent rage against the mice.

“And you will know my name is the Lord & Taylor when I lay my vengeance upon thee!”

Anyway, the mice hold down Nutcracker long enough for the Mouse King to have a go at killing him. Clara finally intervenes, throwing her slipper at the Mouse King and knocking him off his high toy horse. But she slips on a marble into the clock and falls unconscious.

Clara wakes up back in her bed on Christmas morning, her head wrapped up in bandages. Nobody believes what she saw the previous night, owing her delusions to a fever sustained from her injury. Drosselmeier pays Clara a surprise visit and presents her with a newly fixed Nutcracker. Grateful as she is, Clara calls him out for not doing anything when his own nephew was in danger, though Drosselmeier states he’s not the one who has the power to save him. Clara’s mother insists she stay in bed and do nothing for the rest of the day, which, come on Mom. Worst Christmas ever.

That evening the Mouse King also pops into Clara’s room to return her slipper. Awfully decent of him, all things considering. After making more big talk about how he’s gonna turn Nutcracker into a pile of splinters, Clara lures him into her drawer with the promise of some chocolates Fritz left her earlier and traps him in there. She flees downstairs to hide Nutcracker, but the Mouse King has mastered offscreen teleportation and threatens to kill Pavlova if she doesn’t hand him over. The owl on top of the clock changes into Drosselmeier and once again he brings the toys to life. This time it’s just for moral support as Nutcracker and the Mouse King battle mano-e-mouso up the Christmas tree. It’s a big improvement over the first battle. There’s more focus since it’s just the two of them fighting and there’s creative use of the terrain and presents around it. My one complaint is that Nutcracker doesn’t drunkenly tackle the tree itself at one point, but we can’t have everything we want for Christmas.

Whomsoever pulls the sword from the spruce shall become king of all Toyland! Oops, wrong mythos.

At one point the Mouse King nearly runs through a defenseless Nutcracker but Pantaloon bravely intervenes at the cost of a nasty back wound. Finally, Nutcracker delivers the killing blow and the Mouse King’s body crashes to the floor. The mice scatter and the toys declare victory. But Pantaloon’s batteries are about to expire, and since the Stahlbaums out of double-A’s the only way to save him is to get him to the Land of the Dolls; the gate to which is coincidentally right through Drosselmeier’s castle. Nutcracker eagerly invites Clara to join them, and after saying some mysterious something or other about time, Drosselmeier shrinks her down to their size with magic. They enter the castle, and Pavlova goes to inspect the Mouse King, which, for a decomposing corpse, seems to be growling an awful lot…

In the castle Marie gets sidetracked by the waltzing gentlemen while the rest continue on. They reach some lovely winter gardens where the snow is made of coconut icing and the royal swans Clara has fantasized earlier wait to take them on their journey. Since Marie is too late to join them, she has to settle for being dragged through the air on a common mallard.

Still better than flying United Airlines.

The swans soar over a forest of Christmas trees up to the stars and through a magical waterfall that changes Clara and Nutcracker into attire befitting royalty and restores Pantaloon to health. They all land at a beautiful palace made of sweets where Nutcracker’s subjects give them a warm welcome. Clara and Nutcracker head out on to the ballroom floor to dance to my favorite piece from the ballet – scratch that, of any classical composer – the achingly beautiful Pas De Deux.

Like Clara’s solo before, the choreography is rotoscoped, but they’re much more clever at hiding it this time around. The dancing plays out like a dreamy montage with the moves fading in and out from one another, alternating between pink and blue silhouettes, minimally colored full-body shots, and more detailed animation reserved for closeups. There’s also an old-fashioned Vaseline-on-the-lens-style filter on, the kind normally reserved for romantic moments from Hollywood’s golden age which befits the tone they’re going for.

With the dance done, Nutcracker asks Clara to stay with him and rule the Land of the Dolls forever. Clara is sorely tempted, but something holds her back from saying yes. The idea of living in a candy castle with her dream prince and childhood friends is too good to be true, a perfect happy ending. And that’s just it – an ending. Clara has dreams beyond that will never come true if she settles, dreams of seeing the world and being a prima ballerina which can only happen if she chooses to grow up, and she wants to in spite of how much she’s fallen in love with Nutcracker. It would have hit harder if this theme of choosing to mature vs. clinging to girlhood was explored more throughout the movie, but the point still stands.

Now that the desire to grow up has taken hold, Pantaloon, Marie and Trudy change back into ordinary toys, the spark of life bestowed by childhood imagination put out. One by one, the denizens of the doll kingdom drop like flies, their number growing as Clara keeps justifying her refusal to stay.

And as if things couldn’t get any worse, guess who crashes the party?

Ohhhhhh shiiiiit….

Up to this point the Mouse King was a comical villain who was difficult to take seriously. But now here he is like Ratigan in the final act of The Great Mouse Detective, bereft of his senses and embracing his inner animal. His chest wound is still bleeding, his breathing is ragged, he doesn’t even talk, and he shuffles forward like a zombie, but nothing holds him back his single-minded pursuit of Clara. You can’t even tell if he’s going after her because he recognizes the part she played in his eventual demise or he’s desperate to stick it to Nutcracker before he drops dead. Hell, maybe in his near-death state he’s so delusional that he thinks Clara IS Nutcracker. That makes it even more terrifying; he knows he’s dying but refuses to go without taking someone, anyone out with him in as violent a manner as possible.

The circle-eyes kind of kill it for me, though. I mean, when a bad guy or monster is cornering you in their final moments, which gaze is more threatening – bloodshot, glowing and blank, or colorful cartoon rings? Unless their name is Judge Doom, the answer should always be the former.

Defenseless, all Clara can do is pelt dessert at him. But it’s only delaying the inevitable. And when Nutcracker tries to help, the change slowly and painfully takes over him and he is forced to watch as his mortal enemy corners his true love, resulting in the most arresting visual of the movie.

Nutcracker gasps out Clara’s name one last time and morphs fully back into wood. A single tear remains on his face, the only sign he was ever truly alive.

The Mouse King traps Clara on the balcony, lunges at her and goes over the railing, finally taking himself out with a classic Disney villain fall. Clara pulls herself back up and sees the palace is now completely abandoned and filling up with mist. She cries desperately for her Nutcracker as the final heartrending strings of the Pas De Deux play, and the scene to slowly fades to black.

This scene…this whole scene from the moment the Pas De Deux began…how it got me when I was a kid. It broke my heart and did an echappé all over the pieces. Everything from the visuals to the acting and especially the music still punches me in the feels. For all my gripes about the inconsistent animation, this is the part of the movie where it absolutely shines. And thanks to the ramped up tension that follows every note, I’ve always associated this piece of Tchaikovsky’s score with poignant dramatic moments. Say what you will about the past hour of this movie, it is worth it for this excellent emotional climax.

Fritz bursts into Clara’s room startling her awake and declares Pavlova killed a crooked-tailed mouse by the clockwork castle. Clara dashes downstairs to the toy cabinet but finds Nutcracker is gone. She sprints out of the house straight to Drosselmeier’s shop. Oddly enough, he seems to be expecting her. Clara begs Drosselmeier to tell her if the story about the Nutcracker and the Mouse King is true for the sake of her sanity. But then, a handsome young man enters from the other room.

Drosselmeier introduces him as his nephew, Hans. Despite this apparently being their first time meeting, Hans greets her with familiarity, even bowing to her just as her Nutcracker Prince did. And his voice is one Clara would know anywhere. She in turn gives the perfect response.

“Hello…Nutcracker.”

If the climax already left me nearly speechless than the finale takes whatever little words are left straight from my mouth. As far as endings go it’s near flawless. I’d say The Nutcracker Prince borrowed from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast if it weren’t for the fact that it came out the year before Beauty did. Like The Wizard of Oz, it knows how to leave you on an emotional high note. While it’s supposed to be ambiguous, it’s the kind where deep down you just know the real answer without any explanations given.

“Though I can only imagine how awkward it would have been after she said that if it did turn out to be a dream.”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP CYNICISM YOU WILL NOT RUIN THIS MOMENT FOR ME!!”

And because this was the 90’s, our end credits play over another Oscar-bait power ballad, this one being loosely inspired by the Waltz of the Flowers. Not one of the best, but still a good one to close the film on. Enjoy!

I honestly feel a little bad critiquing The Nutcracker Prince because at the end of the day it’s a fantasy, and fantasies play by their own emotional nonsensical surrealistic rules. It’d be like if Cinema Sins tried to blast a Jean Cocteau flick (and knowing those bastards’ egos they will if they haven’t already). Sure the characters aren’t the most deep, there’s some fluff in the story that could have been put to better use and the animation is inconsistent (characters go wildly off-model and if you pause at the right moment you’ve got plenty of fodder for the “DIDNEY WORL” meme) but when they get it right it’s wonderful. I’d say this and the obscure stop-motion version done by Sanrio (yes, the Hello Kitty factory) make for the most faithful and interesting retellings of The Nutcracker out there. I credit The Nutcracker Prince along with the Nutcracker Suite segment of Fantasia for introducing me to this magical music and story in the first place. I watched the tape quite a bit up until it got lost in the home entertainment shuffle, and enjoyed seeing it several times on the Disney Channel and Toon Disney during the holidays (and the occasional Christmas in July marathon). It’s not perfect, but hey, it wouldn’t be the holidays if you didn’t enjoy at least one imperfectly animated special that hits you over the head with nostalgia feels. Some people have Rankin-Bass, I have The Nutcracker Prince. And I hope the next generation will embrace it too.

Merry Christmas, and thank you for reading! Do you have a favorite version of The Nutcracker? Let me know in the comments! If you’d like to support me and see more reviews, consider supporting me on Patreon.

I’ll see you in the new year with Abby Kane’s requested review of Disney’s Pinocchio – that is, if my special Christmas present doesn’t keep me from finishing it on time (you’re going down, Ridley!!)

Artwork by Charles Moss.

Christmas Shelf Reviews: The Nutcracker Prince (1990) Merry Christmas everyone! To conclude this month of merrymaking we're looking at an animated Christmas cult classic that I have a bit of a soft spot for.

[sunnysynthsunshine]

7th Comedy Monologue

“Hey my Cheese bags I’m back from my adventure in 1985”

“No joke if you look it up

the timeframe of days for each month this year

are the exact same as they were in 1985”

So all this “80s revival stuff” with Duran Duran and Depeche Mode touring, Petshop Boys releasing a new album, a new generation falling in love with Queen and She-Ra while the world is being messed up by a tyrannical iron lady and a talking tangerine makes a bit of sense doesn’t it?”

Even though I was born in the 2000s I’ve always loved most of the media from that decade, the gothic and upbeat synthesizer music,the cheaply made but entertaining cartoons,the video games,the basic but stylish fashion,the musicals and John Hughes films,the mix of music genres in the charts,Goth,Synth,Punk,2 Tone,Post-Punk,New Wave,Glam Metal,Alternative,Shoegaze,Hip Hop,Electronica

I was watching Saved by the Bell  before Netflix even existed

Then again a lot of the shows from then were also being revived back in my day

Dal Winton was presenting game shows, Pingu replaced the scary walrus monsters with rap music, I watched or had VHS tapes of the Muppet show, Noddy, Postman Pat and Scooby Doo.

Scooby-Doo! Now that’s a show that never gets old because it never changes, anyone regardless of what generation they’re from would be able to tell you

“Oh Yeah, I remember Scooby Doo”

When you think about it Scooby Doo is quite philosophical

we are all just a gang going on our own adventures

that and the first few live-action movies are modern masterpieces

I was just browsing Twitter or Tumblr or literally anywhere on the internet only to see that screencaps were taken from the live action Scooby Doo interviews had turned into memes

*ahem*

Well,I was auditioning for the role of Velma, I could sense from the way Matthew Lillard just fully encompassed the role of Shaggy, it felt like he was Shaggy, he was our saviour as he felt his spiritual energy increase, that’s when I knew we were working with a legend

Something like that although Matthew isn’t too fond of the memes himself specifically the ones where his spiritual connections are described more like demon possession rituals

*ahem*

“Being Shaggy has led me down a path of death and destruction. I’ve killed many mortals in hope of replicating 1% of Shaggy’s being, by the end of filming I hope to become one with him”

In which Matthew responded with

*deadpan voice*

This is wrong

I mean I might also have inspirations where I feel like I can philosophically connect with them, in their performing style and personality but that’s where I draw the line

Personality?  That’s a tricky subject

You could say some people have consistent personalities

People said Freddie Mercury and David Bowie were party animals who were incredible on stage with their charisma, creativity and charm but other sources have said they were relaxed, laid back people who were shy when being interviewed.

That could just be the contrast between their onstage and offstage personas but not all of us have that, even if we are all  just actors in a play, hoping each day goes the right way

Some of us are punk, even if we don’t explicitly say that we are, or have the stereotypical style associated with it,a lot of us just try to be ourselves,some of us can enjoy reality shows and horror movies at the same time,some of us can enjoy One Direction and Gorillaz,some of us can love fashion but also love memes, Theatre, and 1980s aesthetics

I’d say I’m the same but sometimes my personality is all over the place

I can go from being cheerful, relaxed and happy to being dazed and clumsy or cynical or entranced and hyper-fixated to Pessimistic and Cold to Quiet and Timid to Mellow and Loud   what personality traits you associate with me, however, is up to your own conclusion

call me any internet subculture stereotype and I’d be able to tell you about how I either, unfortunately, was the stereotype or I hung around people who were those stereotypes

if you said I was someone who watched Cbbc and citv you’d be right

if you said I was a classic rock enthusiast years ago and now you’d be right

if you said I used to be a cringy anime enthusiast  you’d be right

if you said I was one of those theatre kids who watched Disney sitcoms you’d be right

if you said I was one of those meme posters who referenced movies like Shrek and bee movie you’d be right

Another thing punks did was and sometimes still do was creating fanzines, magazines related to their favourite band or tv show or their own opinions on what’s going in the world, nowadays you could say social media has replaced that, but publications like the Daily Mirror, The Sun and TMZ still have a presence on there,I’d say fanzines should have a revival.

The BAFTA’s also happened recently and I wasn’t impressed, then again when are awards shows anything other than beauty pageants for films anyway?

Some films deserved their awards, but some films barely got a mention, Paddington 2 wasn’t included in there or in any of the other film awards this year and Stan and Ollie got nothing…

A darn shame because that film was so well made, it felt authentic, while Stan and Ollie also have a bit of a universal following, there are still some people who probably don’t know who they are!

Before Walliams and Lucas, Before the Two Ronnies, Before Richie and Eddie

There was…Laurel and Hardy

Two moustached blokes, who in the 20s and 50s would just try to delight audiences the best way they could, through slapstick and laughter, without them, most of the world’s double acts wouldn’t exist and even Spongebob wouldn’t exist

Yep, you heard me right, all those misadventures Spongebob and Patrick would have, they were loosely based on the adventures of Laurel and Hardy, except instead of it being about a tall British man and a fat American it was about an anthropomorphic sponge and a dumb but caring starfish.

Speaking of Spongebob, there was some sad news involving Spongebob not too long ago

The creator of Spongebob, Stephen Hillenburg…had passed away from ALS

I know, it’s awful,stupid motor neuron diseases and stupid Adam Levine too,for those who don’t know there was an episode of Spongebob called Band Geeks where they ended the episode with the cast playing a song called Sweet Victory over a Superbowl type of event, for the actual super bowl Spongebob fans around the world petitioned for that song to be played in tribute for Stephen,however we got Adam Levine singing a different song instead….what a letdown

If it wasn’t for SpongeBob I and some of the rest of the new generation, wouldn’t know half the old music or old films we know now.

To let down millions of fans like that makes me sick

Honestly, I was a bit sick a few weeks ago, I’ve been sick before and hospitalized twice but this particular moment of sickness was odd

It was like any other night, I was trying to get some sleep and lucid dream, but then it happened, the shivers, the shakes the trembling aches,

Out of nowhere, I felt like an ice-cube stuck in a microwave, It was too cold but it was too warm, I eventually got to sleep but when I got up the next morning I felt sick again, sorry for disclosing those details but it was like the exorcist…

Usually, when I’m sick watching documentaries, Kitchen Nightmares or 90s films weirdly cheers me up

Speaking of films, Rocketman the Elton John movie is out and it actually looks good

It’s being directed by the guy who was the replacement director for Bo Rhap and if it ends up being brilliant I won’t be surprised, the trailer gave off Velvet Goldmine vibes, the style of composed cinematography and I’m sounding like Film Twitter, Isle of Dogs was a good film…oh wait it wasn’t acknowledged much by the award shows either.

Another amazing film I recently watched was Rocky Horror…I know I’ve mentioned it before but that was when I only knew the sequel and some of the soundtrack,

It was amazing, it was brilliant, it was fantastic, it was out of this world,

ah! Rocky Horror was splendid

I definitely now understand why it’s still going strong to this day

It’s that hybrid of rock and roll, optimistic nihilism and soft aesthetics

That just works for me, another thing I’ve remembered was that Richard O’ Brien played the dad in Phineas and Ferb, well that explains that part of me liked that cartoon for the music and some of the characters but other characters did my head in like that Isabel character

“Hey, Phineas what ya dooing?”

“How about you let me finish my invention and you mind your own business”

Oof that’s too harsh…but considering aspects of the marvel Phineas and Ferb crossover were surprisingly a bit sexist at times outdated for the show that is usually quite progressive in its representation and characters…it’s probably accurate

Another person who hasn’t changed but is also often harsh, Piers Morgan, a little tweety bird told me he had a mysterious illness, good riddance I’d say, he’s the new Noel Edmonds, the presenter who used to be ok but now is unbearable…because he never shuts up

Thankfully though he’s “taking a break” from GMB that will rest our eardrums

Russell Brand has also been in the tabloids again, even though he’s more focused on his Buddhist spiritual recovery enlightening, looking back he wasn’t as bad as people described him, yeah at times he was a bit too over the top,but he was and is quite an ok bloke, but I’d say temporarily banning tickling is a bit of a stretch,

when you think about the number of people who disrespect our literal and figurative personal space on a daily basis, it kinda makes a bit of sense,

whether your sensory sensitive or not, I’m sure you hate it, when people are too touchy at times

although years ago I would’ve been a bit of an ignorant hypocrite about that

Hating it when crowds of kids would chase me like how the paparazzi chase their next gossip target, yet often annoyingly running up to people to talk to or entertain them.

I really need to learn to enjoy loneliness more because I get some of my best ideas when alone, but emotionally I feel a lot better when around others, a bit of an Ambivert really,

I’m sorry I can be a bit all over the place, I’m trying to make my energy more manageable

as that lucid dreaming thing has been misused at times,

I shouldn’t let myself be controlled…

by anyone or anything..no overthinking, no overworking,

treat the world as your stage, start your first act, motivated and ready, take your recharging interval breaks and then move on for your second act

fancy that me an ex-drama student making that metaphor when my current course  involves digitally drawing art, editing audio and sitting at a computer for most of the day

But then again just because someone shows good charisma that doesn’t always mean their a good person.

Ted Bundy, one of America's most notorious serial killers used charisma and charm in his court cases, and with the amount of fangirls giving him fanmail it was like the Beatles fandom but for people with Stockholm syndrome,and now with Netflix’s documentary and Troy from High School Musical in an upcoming film about him, that seems to be repeating itself…

*Alien voice* Ted Bundy the 1960s called they want your fangirls back!

One show I know you probably haven’t heard of is The Boondocks, a south park esque cartoon with an anime esque art style, referencing the social commentary of African American culture and media, celebrating some aspects while critiquing others, through the lenses of a socialist boy named Huey Freeman, his rapper wannabe brother Riley and their activist grandad Robert.

This show was quite revolutionary,it referenced the issue of each episode quite well, even though it only lasted 4 seasons, however, because the show is quite American, apart from the animation which is done in Korea,The Boondocks is not well known in the UK, which is a shame because it is a really good show that still holds up…however, it does fall under one mousetrap that most other adult cartoons fall into….

Because of the references to violence,innuendo and other dark subject matter sometimes referenced in a satirically humorous way,some audiences  would just watch the show because it’s offensive thinking that the show was made just to be offensive..instead of what the show was actually made for..which was to give social commentary on the issues relevant to African American communities in America.

I had watched this show years ago, it only just came back on my radar, because the creator Aaron McGruder, who based the show off his webcomic of the same name, had recently made a new issue.

There’s a difference between being satirical and being offensive

Your either making fun of something bad that a system or people are doing to make people aware of how stupid and sad the world can be at times,subjectively making fun of a stereotype, or your an arse who thinks they’re a comedian when they waste their time on social media, thinking they’re amazing and funny when they’re holding up the line at Mcdonald’s and the only people laughing at their jokes are gammon and people who found Bernard Manning funny

“Oh Wait”

I know sometimes I have unpopular opinions such as how my views of someone dip depending on their views of Kanye West

and sometimes I can be a bit snarky, and I hate and love stuff in equal amounts, but we need a bit of that don’t we, if we bottle it all up we explode like volcanos, but if we overshare too much, we crash like out of control cars

It’s all about moderation, salt is a tasty condiment but eat too much of it and your arteries will get clogged,

A few days back it was the day Mark Ashton passed away, for those who don’t know,he was an LGBT activist in the 80s,he volunteered with organizations such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament,he and the other activists helped to support the miners during the miner strike, creating the LGSM Alliance,Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners,there was a film made about them too, called Pride,but what some people don’t know is that….Mark Ashton was Northern Irish…he was one of us..he was the Marsha P Johnson of our time..if we were a bit like Mark Ashton this country would be a slightly more accepting place, why don’t we give love!

Let’s move on, plant more flowers in our garden..I know I sound like a hippie but it’s true, our Celtic Summerland is being used as a cesspool for Nuclear Waste

Oi! use your own bins, not the place we’re living in, pick up your rubbish and clean up your own mess…

The 80s were telling us something with all those protect and survive adverts, yes some of us were prepared as the older generation made us alert, others couldn’t recognize that a lot of innocent people were getting hurt.

When we say we want a 1980s comeback we want the music, clothes, games and  films,

but Nope

while we have some of that the 1980s revival we get is the one that involves Nuclear Danger and the ghost of Margaret Thatcher

All these TV and Film revivals, some are cool others are just unnecessary  Do we really need a Snow White sequel? No, we don’t but we did get one even if it was unofficial

Back in 2007 a French animation company made a sequel to Snow White which was also a bit like Shrek in how it satirised the fairy tale tropes, how Prince Charming feels like he is objectified while he ends up doing the same thing to the female characters, quite a tosser but that’s the point of the parody to point out the flaws with fairy tale logic, and to put the likes of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella in more realistic scenarios.

…it’s strange, weird but brilliant too

The English dub had quite a few familiar faces doing the character voices

Stephen Fry as the narrator, Morwenna Banks, Simon Greenall and another British actor

Rik someone...

Ah! I remember his name now, he was in many successful sitcoms in the 80s and 90s,he was a legend, he knew how to keep people laughing, whether they were children, adults, teenagers,

in television, theatre, film or music

quite an eclectic range of talent

Although

I’m a new fan, I might adore his work, but I had just learnt his name 2 years ago, whereas, with other fans, they have created their own work, such as Charlie Brooker and Simon Pegg… some were able to meet him…lucky...

Some encounters were quite interesting, I had heard someone’s nan got to meet him in the 90s but she got his name wrong so she ended up saying

“‘oh hello can I have your autograph please Mr mayo?’

Well that happened, she probably still got that autograph,...

And somewhere up there, Rik Mayall is thinking of us, he, Stephen Hillenburg and David Bowie are probably chatting away

Let’s make the lord of misrule proud

[aimmyarrowshigh]

Making A Galaxy Far Far Away: An Aesthetic Photoset Tutorial

Requested by @geleixi (and varying amounts of time ago by @rockett-to-the-purple-moon, @thenameisgreed, @pizzaplanethq, and probably others who sent nice messages that I went “Oh, what a nice message this means so much I LOVE IT SO MUCH I’M TOO ANXIOUS TO ANSWER IT WRONG I’ll just do it later” and then promptly NEVER answered it.)

Brainstorming & Photo Collection

Picking a Color Palette

Choosing Images from Collection

Coloring

Textures & Effects

First off: I am not even going to remotely pretend like graphic design is a Thing I Am Better At Than Anyone Else, because that would be patently false and ridiculous, but I also get a fair number of Asks about making photosets/aesthetic posts, so here we are. I’m planning to do a separate one, maybe, for how I do the Cartoon Girls All Grown Up and Nancy Drew Dream Games series, because the “brainstorming and photo collection” part is so different that it inherently affects the rest of the process.

BUT I also feel like I don’t see a ton of tutorials that go through the brainstorming/finding images part of making aesthetics, and I tend to think of my Graphics Style(TM) as “DEEPLY Uninterested in washed-out faux sepiatone grimdark Tumblr Coloring?? + Not Good Enough At Masks To Do Negative Space Well,” which might be some people’s level of ~graphics design passion(TM)~ too, so. That’s the ride for which this ticket has been bought.

Brainstorming & Photo Collection

Obviously, the specifics of this are totally different for every aesthetic, but all of the GFFA/swworlds start from the same seed: Star Wars Aesthetic.

Star Wars itself has a very particular Lookque, imo: it’s not quite retrofuture, it’s not quite dirtpunk, it’s not quite scifi, even. There are the insanely sumptuous (and hella culturally appropriative) queens of Naboo and the ramshackle toppled AT-AT where Rey lives on Jakku and the not-even-subtle-at-all-jfc Nazi inspiration of the Empire and First Order and the straight-up millennial Tumblr witch Goffik look of the Dathomir Witches and Zabrak siths and the blue, blue water of Scarif. There “isn’t” a unifying aesthetic through Star Wars, and yet, as Gareth Edwards said, there’s a LOOK and FEEL to Star Wars: if you go a little too far to the left or right, it isn’t Star Wars anymore.*

*That said, this tutorial talks about Crait, which was invented by Rilo Jon, who went both too far left and too far right but mostly... too far-right. BA DUM BUM! Anyway.

So part of what makes Star Wars Look Like Star Wars, to me, is that it ISN’T ever Too Scifi. There’s a realism in all of Star Wars’ disparate planets -- their looks, anyway; like, talking about how Crait, in this case, makes NO ecological sense as a planet AT ALL is another post entirely. (IT MAKES NO SENSE.) It’s different from, like, Doctor Who, which I think revels in its “we can make these aliens and planets look like WHATEVER” more? Star Wars tends to be very like... “we want to use practical sets and effects.” Even for planets that only appear thus far in Clone Wars and Rebels? So it’s definitely part of the intention of SW’s Aesthetic.

ALL OF THAT TO SAY, my first step with each planet is to figure out the best way to represent it using as much real-world photography as I can and how best to channel the ~spirit of Star Wars~ in the graphic. Sometimes I fail miserably. CURSE YOU, NAR SHADAA. But most of the time it helps provide a Framework for the rest of the brainstorming and photo collection.

SO. FOR CRAIT. (For another example/totally different look and process, I wrote up a little about Haruun Kal on its post here.)

Crait has the definite benefit of appearing in one of the movies, so the first part of photo collection was to screencap TLJ. I took the caps using the 1080p digital release at a 20-frame frequency, so even once I deleted the aps that weren’t of Crait (moving the Canto Bight frames into a folder for Cantonica, of course!), I had like... 1500 images just from TLJ to start the brainstorming and collection with.

First, I trimmed down those ~1500 screencaps to 168 caps that were distinct enough from one another to give me a sense of “what happens” in the scene and, more than that, “What Crait Looks Like.” Then, because there’s additional canon material of Crait besides TLJ, I saved the unlettered images of “Star Wars: The Storms of Crait” from comic penciller Mike Mayhew’s blog @mikemayhew -- if those hadn’t been available, which they’re usually not for planets that appear in the comics (THANX MIKE MAYHEW!!!), I would have taken and cropped panels from the comic at both 100% and screen-fit/60% sizing that had utility for a graphic about planet scenery and not character.

THEN, I looked at Wookieepedia and MSW. Crait was based on the Salar de Uyuni salt flats in Bolivia, so I Google image-searched that. There weren’t actually very many images of the Salar de Uyuni salt flats that I super loved, so I ended up saving images of other salt flats as well, particularly the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

THEN there was the issue of the red minerals, which were entirely fictional and not part of any real-world salt flat. BUT, there IS real red sand... so I saved some images of red-sand dunes (mostly Mui Ne in Vietnam). I also went through my Star Wars Stock Folder to find images of crystal caves and mines that I’d either saved for other planets in the past, but didn’t end up using, OR just saved because there are so fucking many crystal-based planets in SW.

Each of my big graphics series has its own Stock Folder for unorganized images that just strike the right Vibe~ and might be useful someday, in addition to every planet (or cartoon girl, or US state for the Nancy Drews, etc) having its own folder for specific/organized image collection.

My Star Wars Stock Folder:

So there were already a lot of crystals, star destroyers, blasters, and bunkers that were actually in snow but whatever it was white and crystalline, to work with. I added some workable Crait-like images from the stock folder to Crait’s collection, too.

AND THEN, finally, I LOVE the vulptices, so I searched for (and found!) some of the concept art and 3D modeling images from ILM, and I put those in the folder, as well.

I also saved this, hoping I’d be able to make it work because it’s SO CUTE, but I couldn’t, but here LOOK HOW CUTE:

And then, lest I stay in the image-collection rabbithole forever, I said, “OK, that’s enough.” I ended up starting to actually MAKE the Crait graphic from a collection of 272 images:

Picking a Color Palette

Obviously, the dominant colors of Crait are red and white, so the aesthetic had to be based in red and white. My first instinct was to make a duotone aesthetic using only red, white, and black/grayscale. Something like this:

Which... I don’t hate, or even dislike. It’s definitely more in line with popular Tumblr aesthetic, uh, aesthetics. But I usually don’t like landing on that kind of coloring because it ALWAYS, ALWAYS whitewashes people of color (and jeez, it even whitewashes white people -- look at the model in the fourth frame down on the left, or Luke in the bottom-left.) The “vibrance -100 + Selective Color Red>Red + 100″ always ends up doing the above example to, in this case, Poe: turning him into a licorice man.

So then trying to correct THAT either whitewashes the FUCK out of him/people in general:

(Toning down the red)

Or introducing other colors back into the graphic as a whole:

(Upped yellow and cyan.)

So I nixed that coloring before I even started. (These examples were made after the fact purely to serve as examples.)

I went back to the drawing board, AKA the Crait image folder.

But looking at the collected images -- especially the screencaps and the panels from the Storms of Crait comic -- I was struck by how much Crait also incorporates yellow and blue. (Note that I really, really wanted to try to include Trusk Berinato and Bail Organa... but we’ll talk through why that didn’t work out.) I LOVE @droo216‘s bright, almost jewel-tone edits which I 100% know I don’t have either the patience or skill to make, but I liked the idea of trying to make Crait’s aesthetics in a primary colors + black/white scheme.

Which I actually really like! (Again, made post-facto as an example.) But again, red vibrance DiD tHe tHiNG!!! to Poe and ESPECIALLY to Finn and Bail.

So a high-vibrance look emphasizing bright colors was a no-go. Besides, going back to the source material: high-vibrance and high-energy are the opposite of what the planet of Crait is about. It’s a dying husk of a planet, being killed slowly by its own ecology as the salt in its crust dries out everything beneath it, sucking up water until everything either evolves into living crystal-dogs or goes extinct (thank u Rilo for not including dune-worms, this is the one thing you did right). Crait wouldn’t be vibrant.

But... aha! It’s also distinctly layered. I’ve done three-panel swworlds aesthetics before, so I decided to do that for Crait, too: first a mostly-white graphic like the salt crust, then white+red+yellows in the middle, and finally a dark layer of almost entirely red like the mineral mines.

Choosing Images from Collection

With the color palette and “feel” decided (dying at the surface, then growing richer and redder and angrier as the photoset moved downwards), I was able to choose images.

NEKKID PHOTOSETS SANS ANY EDITING! XXX! But for reference to see both cropping and for reference on choosing.

TOP IMAGE, MOSTLY WHITE:

L-R, TOP-BOTTOM:

I saved this image from my dash at some point and have been tossing it into planets’ folders every time there’s a white-based color scheme. It almost got used for Ilum, but at the last second wasn’t. I felt like it fit the coalescence of Rey’s Force strength here, and also the kind of “last wisps” of Luke Skywalker, well.

“Lifting rocks.”

I’m actually still not 100% whether I should have landed on a vulptex here, but dammit they were one of the only good parts of TLJ. This vulpie baby is on the salt surface, looking out at the blinding sun, so she seemed like a good fit compared to the other caps of vulptices -- the ones loping on the canyon surface at the end were all very motion-blurry.

Carrie in that gorgeous coat in homage to Harrison in Blade Runner makes me weepy, and those were some of the most beautiful shots in the movie. This one had a good balance of white and black, so it could be placed around any level “busyness” in the surrounding photos. Especially since I suckkkk at negative space.

I saved this image to the Crait folder like the day it was announced as a planet in the upcoming Episode VIII and given its first peek. I love it!

Hi, salt flats, and also Star Wars spaceships. I actually had a lot of trouble with the level of green in this image, but the ~essence of Star Wars is PEW PEW SPACE BATTLE, so.

This is an ice sculpture in real life! It reminds me of the vulptices and is cool as hell.

The Millennium Falcon! I toyed with different caps that showed it in actual battle, but the blue would have been hardest to work with in this photoset compared to the others below. Plus, now I can save a bunch of Falcon-in-flight pictures for use on planets that only appear in the novels or comics.

NECESSARY, ICONIC, PERFECT, THE MOST IMPORTANT THING THAT HAPPENED ON CRAIT.

Fine, this is a snowy mountain and not a salt flat, but I liked the striations in color and gentle variations in grayscale.

 This was the palest/least Bright Blue sky of all of the Falcon screencaps from Crait.

I tried a few screencaps of Crait from TLJ, but I landed on using the full-panel image of Crait from Storms of Crait. It has the cleanest definition of the “planet from space” options we have of Crait.

This is a promo image, not a screencap. It’s a much crisper view of the ski-speeders. I love the vivid color difference.

The blue-and-yellow additions to the color scheme didn’t work out, but I did still want to include Storms of Crait. This shot had a little more blue in it than I would have liked, but it has Leia in a ski-speeder back before the salt caused them to rust out, too!

Remember when it seemed like the Crait battle’s new AT-ATs would be super cool and like, do more than stand there menacingly behind Kyle? Me, too.

POE! DAMERON! HAS! NEVER! DONE! ANYTHING! WRONG! IN! HIS! LIFE!

KYLE! HAS! ONLY! EVER! DONE! WRONG! IN! HIS! LIFE!

I tried out like five different tiny-frame-difference screencaps of the ski-speeders kicking up red minerals, and I decided that this one, with a clearly defined spray of red surrounded by white and bluish sky, suited the placement here best: there’s red in the panel to its left as the main color, but minimal red in the above- and below panels.

I wanted to include actual Connix, but she’s wearing yellow and only ever shows up surrounded in brownish-black darkness, so here, have one of my standard Fashion Rebel Officer Stand-Ins instead -- the red and white obviously played a part in picking this shot over the rest of the options from the photoshoot.

I LOVE this slightly mystical shot of a Rebel pilot slash astronaut on a rain-slicked salt flat. How perfect?!

As we get down to the bottom of this middle panel, I wanted to include more destruction and more presence of yellow and orange. This image has a good balance of “negative space” in the sky and salt flat, and then the explosion of Nodin Chavri’s ski-speeder (I think?) ties in well to...

Finn and Rose, post-collision. I wanted to include Rose, and the almost JJ Abrams-esque white starburst in the center of this cap is a good balance to the spray of red around a ski-speeder two panels above.

Luke on Crait in the Rebel Alliance...

And Luke on Crait in the Resistance.

This was a kind of “????” moment of characterization -- and general direction -- in TLJ, but Luke surrounded by red as an old man would fall right below Luke as a young man, on his first mission after the Battle of Yavin, when the three graphics were aligned.

I wanted to use the straight-up concept art of the vulptex, but the black around it was TOO black, if that makes sense? So I layered it over a darkened cap of the vulptex who leads Poe to Rey and freedom. This is one of the very rare shots that I use an edited base image.

Han and Chewie! I had to include Han and Chewie. The unlettered panels from Storms of Crait that show the mineral mines are stunning; I highly recommend heading over to Mike Mayhew’s page and taking a look. The detailing of the crystals is something I wish I could have captured better at this scale.

This is one of the red-sand dunes I saved! Crait doesn’t have any living vegetation, but the drama of the black, stormy sky and the red sand drew me in here.

Some CGI crystal caves... I saved these ages ago for use on Ilum or Dantooine, I think? (Same with what will be #11 below.) I don’t love using CGI, but I think the crags on these crystal growths suited the images from canon!Crait.

A screencap of the TIEs chasing the Falcon through the mines. This was honestly one of the most visually stunning parts of TLJ, and it’s so split-second that most people missed it AND most of the screencaps have a lot of motion-blur. I’m really pleased that this one came out so crisp, and I knew I had to use it as an “anchor image.”

Finn, full-on, in red. I’m realizing belatedly as I write up this tutorial that I showed Poe face-on and Finn face-on, but I stupidly chose to show Rey only from a distance. I AM A FOOL! A FOOL!

Aren’t these resin crystals amazing? The full-size image actually shows them surrounded by snow, by the tree-stump they’re on wouldn’t fit Crait, so I cropped in closer on this image than I did for most of the Crait set.

Another shot of the Falcon in the mines. I like the way the framing of white sunlight here echoes...

Leia’s face, a bright spot in the dark, watching out over the salt flat. :(

(See #5 above!)

And again, the homage of Carrie’s coat looking like Harrison in Blade Runner made me sad, so I THREW IN ANOTHER HAN AND CHEWIE. The mining equipment here shows more detail than in the screencaps above, too.

Coloring 

Like I mentioned waaaay above, in the intro: I never use set colorings for photosets. (Except Halloween Spookstravaganza, because jeez so many of those screencaps are like 240p VHS rips and it’s just not worth putting in Effort(TM).)

That said, I think one thing that I do differently than I see in most tutorials is this first step:

I ALWAYS start Aesthetic photosets by arranging the images and then *BRINGING THE CONTRAST ALL THE WAY DOWN.* This is especially helpful on photosets that include a mix of real photography, CGI screencaps or art, and/or comics panels, but it’s also just useful in general for photosets that use images from a wide variety of places.

The reason I do this is because it helps to “smooth out” the differences in light source, color balance, etc., that are part of the raw base images. For this set, it also helps to define the variations in color between very similar shades: the craters on Crait, the wisps of clouds, etc.

In some cases, I’ll do two layers of Contrast -50. For Crait, I did a later of Contrast -50 and then a layer of Contrast -15.

Then, I Select All > Copy Merged > [Turn Off Contrast Layer View] > Paste As New Layer.

Now, the “smoothed” version is placed as a layer above the raw layer. From there, it depends on the look of the photoset what I do -- sometimes, I leave it as-is, but I almost always lower the opacity on the “smoothed” layer until the level of contrast and balance looks consistent across the whole photoset. For Crait, I ended up with the “smoothed” layer set to Lighten 100%.

Selective Color time. There are two ways I usually start this: either one color at a time -- especially for Aesthetics like Pheryon that will essentially be monochromatic -- or, in this case, I looked at the balance of the three main colors that would carry through the entire Aesthetic.

REDS

Cyan -100 (This brightens the vivacity of the red.) Magenta +100 Yellow +100 Black +35

BLACKS

Cyan 0 Magenta 0 Yellow 0 Black +100

WHITES

Cyan 0 Magenta 0 Yellow 0 Black +100 -- This is NOT my usual setting for adjusting white, and since white is one of the main colors in the Crait Aesthetic, it might seem counterintuitive to make the white darker instead of brighter. However, this will help to make next step of color adjustments “take” on the white/whitish surfaces a lot more easily, and it will also help to balance out the bluish sky areas with the white background areas. (I’m not sure this explanation makes sense? But it’s what I did.)

Then, I Select All > Copy Merged > [Turn Off Selective Color Layer View] > Paste As New Layer > Either COLOR or HUE 100%.

“Hue” is more effective for smaller, more incremental color adjustments -- for BIG SWEEPING COLOR CHANGES, “Color” tends to work better. But it totally depends on the photoset! Try both, and see which you like better.

I feel like this is kind of the step where my process of making aesthetics stops being any different from most tutorials -- but this has been HUGELY helpful for me, a non-graphic designer-person, to be able to create a kind of “base image” that has very similar color values, brightness/contrast, and vibrance.

Sometimes this step helps to create really extreme color differences, such as in the Raydonia Aesthetic, and other times, I use it to just adjust one or two color-values so that there’s more consistency in, say, shades of yellow or shades of green, as in the Takodana Aesthetic, for which I just wanted to create a more cohesive palette of green in particular... it started out with a zillion greens, and I wanted to bring it all together into one “aesthetic.”

I think this step, and the reasoning behind it, are why SO MANY PSDs for aesthetics rely on a layer of either gray or sepiatone-ish set to Darken or Multiply as one of their key layers. But I’m just not about the grimdark life, and if I’m making an AESTHETIC OF A THING, I want the aesthetic POST to actually HAVE THAT THING’S AESTHETICS, you know?! I want to use the colors of the thing that I’m saying is meant to evoke the visuals of the thing!

Anyway. Now you have your BASE IMAGE. Often I’ll Merge All here, just for my own sanity.

Then I go in and make any other other adjustments on a “coloring” level that I think will help with the “vibe” I’m going for! For this Crait set, I definitely needed to bring the brightness up so that the white and red popped. However, bringing up the brightness also swallowed a lot of the detail in the white surfaces -- especially the planetary surface of Crait in that bottom-right space -- so I decreased the contrast again.

Brightness +70 Contrast -50

And then I go in for the macro-level adjustments of color using any mix of Selective Color, Hue/Saturation, and Color Balance that works. For Crait, that was more Selective Color, because since I had decided on my color palette, and it sadly did not include blue, I needed to start by taking out as much of the blue, cyan, and green that I could.

And I’m ngl, I told myself the WHOLE FREAKING TIME I was making this photoset that I needed NOT TO DELETE THE PSD RIGHT AWAY LIKE I USUALLY DO so that I could write up all the settings for this step.

But it was a reflex. And I deleted the PSD right away like I always do.

So suffice to say, I just futzed with the levels one at a time until the RED was brought up a little, the YELLOW was brought up a lot, and everything else was brought down and/or hue-adjusted to sliiiide into being yellow, red, or black/white.

Another Select All > Copy Merged > [Turn Off Selective Color Layer View] > Paste As New Layer > Either COLOR or HUE 100%. I think I also DUPLICATED this layer and set it to SOFT LIGHT 50% and then duplicated it again to SCREEN 50%.

I could have left it like this, but I am me and I am nothing if not Extra All The Time, so I opened up my folder of light textures (and other textures) and decided to Go To Town.

Textures & Effects

For your Aesthetic-Making Purposes, here are the three I used on the Crait set:

The first two were set to Screen 100%, and the bottom one was set to Burn 15%. I layered them in this order.

It still looked incomplete, so I decided to use this POWDR Element from Creative Market, which is actually like 5400x5400 pixels and which I’m not going to share here because I paid for it and don’t want CM to revoke my access or whatever, but it looks like this, only HUGE:

I also set this element to Burn 15% and moved it around the image until it looked the way I wanted it.

Textures and effects aren’t In on Tumblr anymore, but I really like using them -- they add, not to be cheesier than usual, texture to an aesthetic post, and I think that they can also help less-skilled graphic-makers like me to hide any myriad of imperfections in coloring, sharpening, whatever. I’m an especially big fan of this noise element (set as a pattern on Screen), so I’m going to share it here even though I didn’t use it on the Crait set:

Most of my textures have been saved over the last literally twenty years since I started making fannish graphics and photosets, largely from defunct old LiveJournals, but there also used to some great sources for them on Tumblr and still are live sources for them on DeviantArt. Just search around and you’ll find what you want! :)

In conclusion, I think it’s infinitely more fun NOT to rely on premade PSDs or standardized Settings, but I also recognize and fully respect that if I made graphics differently, I would probably get easily 5-10x more notes on each post than I do. But I make graphics the way that’s fun for me, and I just try to learn a little something from every set I make. The GFFA Planets/swworlds in particular have been something that I started, originally, because I wanted to catch up and learn about Star Wars planets that I felt like I was missing because I don’t have any fannish history with the Old EU, and I wanted to learn about them in a way that helped me feel like I was engaging with the SW source material AND making the enormity of the canon more accessible to other newish or casualish fans, like I was two years ago when I started this aesthetic series. I like making aesthetics that are genuinely inspired by the aesthetic of the thing that I’m calling it an aesthetic of, so even when it ends up just looking like rainbow barf (CURSE YOU, NAR SHADDAA!!!) I’m having fun.

THAT SAID, here’s how the time breakdown for the Crait set works out:

TOTAL TIME INCLUDING IMAGE COLLECTION AND SCREENCAPPING: Est. 20 hours.

COLORING AND ACTUAL GRAPHIC-MAKING PART: 7 hours.

WRITING UP THIS TUTORIAL: 5 hours.

So, um, if you are so inclined, here is my Ko-Fi link. I post at least two graphic sets every week, sometimes up to 25 (usually during October).

I hope this was helpful at all! I had a good time thinking about my process in-depth like this, and I would love to get tagged in any aesthetics you might try making using a similar method! :)

[kaiju-bluescreen]

requests/questions?

I have a ton of Pacific Rim projects I’m trying to get myself working on, but minimal inspiration for any piece specifically at the moment. I’m listing my ideas here both so I don’t forget about any of them and also to see if anyone is interested in asking about one of the ideas in particular?

(or if anyone has their own art/ficlet requests?)

All characters drawn in my outfits/just generally in fun fashion. Probably digital work, good excuse to practice characters I don’t draw as much

Hypothetical PR3 longfic except it’s far more character-driven and less action-y than a real third movie would ever be. Exploring lots of interpersonal relationships, working through the cadets’ trauma, very canon compliant except where the canon science makes me angry

Sad sappy Jake and Mako centric fic focusing on their family and loss thereof because I’m really fucked up over it. Both pre- and post-Uprising

Definitive (ridiculous) ranking of all Kaiju and Jaegers, including the non-canon ones from the breach wars mobile game (because they are fantastic.) Probably lots of nonsense and screencaps but also my legit opinions on design quality

Pre-Uprising Newt-centric animatic set to “Favorite Color is Blue” and accompanying songfic

Self-indulgent mostly-ocs-except-Tendo-is-there companion fic to the aforementioned longfic with a more suspense-driven story (making extensive use of neat world-building details)

Art/fic for cheesy magic tattoo au, Mako/Raleigh and Newt/Hermann centric during/immediately after PR1, uprising doesn’t exist (world where people have tattoo-like images on their skin that are influenced by major life events and are more or less visible based on emotion, etc. Basically a soulmate-identifying-marks au without the inherent soulmates thing)

Alt-ending Uprising with Kaiju!Raleigh, lots of drama and weird science running amok. Kind of a fix it but mostly just me giving myself an excuse to design kaiju-fied versions of human characters that are still recognizable as themselves.

[valkeakuulas]

Shippers ask: 2, 9, 13, 14, 25, 33

2. Talk about three of the most important ships throughout your life

KakaIru - My very first serious as hell ship. Wrote my first fics for it. I still think I wrote most of my fics for that particular pairing. Gay ninjas forever!

IronhidexRatchet (bayverse) - The movies came and I liked them together. I remember reading fics from LJ and this one as one of the first that really attracted me as a newbie transformers fan.

RatchetxTwins - I wrote my first transformers fics for this particular ship and found this lovely community in LJ, that used to post weekly fanfic/fanart inspirations called Wrench of Inspiration (haven’t checked them in ages but think it’s pretty dead there now).

9. Do you have many ships that never got together at all?You mean in canon or what? I admit being confused by the question, so can’t really answer to that. 

13. Has a ship ever broken your heart?OptimusxRatchet from TF: Prime kinda broke my heart, because, you know, Optimus flew down into the hole and died, but so did IronhidexRatchet bayverse ship, since they also perished. 

14. How do you feel about will they/won’t they?*shrugs* Fanfiction is a thing. Also, my favorite tags in AO3 is ‘Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies’

25. Have you ever shipped a pairing before you even started watching the show/movie simply because of gifs and graphics or similar?Yes. DriftxPerceptor. I started shipping them solely because of all the fanart and screencaps I saw in Tumblr when still was a lurker.

33. Name your favorite fanartist(s).Eeehhhh, don’t know, there are too many to name, although most of them have moved onto different fandoms, which is kinda sad, but at the same time people have the right to change their likes.

[pixelgrotto]

Animated bloody tears 

Through some unforeseen miracle of black magic, we now have a Castlevania animated series on Netflix. It debuted three days ago, and despite getting less promotion than I would’ve liked, Castlevania is finally once again getting some much-deserved mainstream attention in this day and age. 

I’m the biggest Castlevania nerd I know. I designed a whole series of Hero Forge minis based off of the Belmonts and their buddies and I even credit the franchise with helping me get over my childhood fear of vampires. So even though I barely watch new TV shows, as a former kid who used to visit Mr. P’s Castlevania Realm and The Castlevania Dungeon on a daily basis, I had to check this out. And happily enough, I thought it was great. Most of all, I’m astounded that this finally got made at all, because the original script, by comic book dude Warren Ellis (he's written some good Iron Man stuff) is a relic that was originally supposed to be for a live-action film and got stuck in development hell ten years ago. Just look at this Bleeding Cool article revealing one of Ellis’ production blogs from 2007, complete with ancient concept art. 

Usually scripts are trapped in dev hell for a reason, and I can recall reading a leaked version of the “goat fucking” dialogue referenced in that Bleeding Cool piece back when I was in high school. The whole thing made me think, “Jeez, it’s probably for the best that Castlevania never becomes a movie.” But wouldn’t ya know, over a decade later, they decided to subvert my predictions by resisting the urge to churn out another crappy video game film adaptation. Instead, they made a cartoon, and will wonders never cease - the goat fucking bit is still there, right at the end of episode one, and it’s actually funny.

So yeah, Castlevania the series ended up exceeding my expectations, largely due to a few smart choices. First of all, the animation, while occasionally stiff (which is par the course for most digital animation these days), reminds me of 1980s anime, and considering that the 1985 Vampire Hunter D movie was an inspiration for the entire Castlevania series, I feel like we’ve gone full circle. Secondly, the show retells the plot of Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, which had a stunning four playable characters and a ton of storytelling potential that couldn’t be fully communicated due to the limitations of the NES. This meant that Warren Ellis had some room for creativity in retelling the tale of Trevor Belmont, and he does a fine job of making the dude into a sarcastic, weary undead-killing exile. But Ellis and the show’s other creators were also smart enough to know that Symphony of the Night is everyone’s favorite Castlevania, and so we’ve got some lore cherry-picked from there as well. This includes backstory on Lisa, one of the few human women that Dracula’s loved, as well as characterization for fan-favorite dhampir son Alucard, who looks just like his Symphony design, minus the cape.  Speaking of Alucard’s design, the series really does a nice job of pulling the fanservice card with these little touches that make it seem like the folks in charge were actual Castlevania fans, which often isn’t the case with video game adaptations. It begins with Dracula literally crying bloody tears in the first episode (God, I loved that), goes on to Trevor’s usage of his in-game arsenal of whip, dagger, axe and holy water, and ends with a fight between two characters that I won’t spoil but is rad, because it’s exactly what anyone who played Castlevania III or Symphony of the Night might’ve imagined. 

Of course, not everything’s perfect, and the biggest issue I have is that the whole “season” is only four episodes. That ain’t a season, that’s a teaser, and when thinking back to the fact that Warren Ellis’ original script was for a feature-length film, its obvious that this was made as one big movie and then chopped into four bite-sized bits, probably because the bastards at Netflix (who cancelled season 2 of The Get Down, argh) didn’t wanna commit. But hey, they’ve since ordered eight new episodes, and hopefully in the next batch we’ll see more varied monster designs. (Sadly, if that Bleeding Cool article is any indication, it seems like we won’t see Grant DaNasty, the other playable character of Castlevania III. Seems like he’s going to remain absent in lieu of more focus on Sypha Belnades and Alucard, which is understandable but still kinda sucks.) 

Finally, the show’s music is forgettable as hell, which is a shame when Castlevania is a series known for its superb tunes. Castlevania III in particular had an astounding playlist, especially in the Japanese version, which utilized a special sound chip to create extra channels and manifest some truly badass chiptune tracks. I’m not expecting a major musical change in season two, but hey...I’d love to hear at least some hint of “Vampire Killer” in the soundtrack. These are minor complaints in the grand scheme of things, though. For now, I’m just happy that we have a solid adaptation of Castlevania that takes the source material seriously, and I’m looking forward to watching more. You should check it out, even if you haven’t played any of the games. And you should also steer clear of the people on message boards who are whining about how the show is bad because there’s too much cussing and violence, as well as the bozos who are out in full force claiming that the Japanese dub is better. I suppose I can understand the violence, since not everyone wants to see Trevor whipping a guy’s eye out. But the language thing is some pure weaboo bullshit, because even though the Japanese dub is fine, this was produced in English first and features a great performance by Richard Armitage as Trevor Belmont.  Argh, I seriously cannot stand people on anime message boards. I’m so glad I’m past the middle school stage of my life when all I did was argue with them. Now I’m more mature, and argue with people on video game forums instead. Yeaaaah. 

Images from the show taken from the Netflix site and screencapped by yours truly! Castlevania III screenshots from Gamefaqs and Legends of Localization.