#this sounds like a human version of bojack ..awesome

[bojackhorsemanobviously]

Bob-Waksberg will write and serve as showrunner on the series, which he will executive produce alongside Noel Bright and Steven A. Cohen for Tornante Television. Lisa Hanawalt is supervising producer and will design the original art for the series. ShadowMachine is producing out of its Los Angeles animation studio. Corey Campodonico and Alex Bulkley will serve as co-executive producers. 

HELLO??????

[weaselbeaselpants]

The virgin Hazbin vs. The Chad Helluva

((hey is the “virgin vs. CHAD” meme associated with alt right or anything iffy guys I’m kinda worried it is. PM me please))

This is long. Also read my earlier post for context.

Earlier this month I was chatting it up with a friend about how Viv gets heat for her material stuff while other purposefully “edgy” or “problematic” writers get a pass. The convo made me realize another important note about why I prefer Helluva to Hazbin and that’s it’s approach to it’s own themes and humor:

There’s a spectrum of pure shock/schlock humor to biting, meaningful satire. South Park, Drawn Together, Panty and Stocking and anything by Brandon Rogers is on the schlock end. Bojack Horseman, King of the Hill and Aggretsuko are on the black-comedy-satire end. In the middle are Rick and Morty, Kill la Kill and Venture Bros, where the humor can be either basic and cruel or strive for something more.

The schlockiest of schlock still have their followings who are in on humor that’s, first and foremost, out to get under your skin and even makes fun of them. When these works are “progressive” it’s usually just through sheer representation of a minority, and if they DO strive for a message, it’s little more than a much needed hot-take pointing out how stupid something is. South Park in it’s prime was ESPECIALLY good at the former.

Another interesting about these properties? The characters aren’t really that complex. They ARE strawmen! They are stereotypes! They ARE awful people. But either through the sheer audacity of the situation or how much the plot involves them, you somehow end up caring for these miserable, one-note people.

Viv’s humor fares more on this basic “schlockynottooseriousparody/comedy”-side of things, but Helluva Boss does this better than Hazbin.

Helluva Boss -both the actual pilot and it’s promotional material- doesn’t make any promises for any “deeper” character development. None of these demons at I.M.P are good people. None of them are SUPPOSED to be good people - they are literally demons who were never human and know nothing but absolute sin. 

((yes, I know this sounds similar to the “they’re in hell” non-argument. My point is not that this defense is foolproof, but that it works better in the context of Helluva vs. Hazbin. It’s a world building quirk, even though I’m not 100% sure Viv and her audience are in on the joke))

It makes their weird bits of NOTawfulness more funny because what business do they have being polite about their work or having any emotional connection to each other(Moxxie and Millie)? But they do! Blitzo is weird, even for a demon, but again he IS ONE, so his breaking into his coworkers house is just “annoying” to Moxxie and Millie rather than, you know, stalking which is absolutely what that is <--- it’s a bit of comedy that, to me, tells you what you need to know about these demons and what somehow is and isn’t good to them, which is to say: it varies!

((The one MASSIVE exception to this is Stolas who is 100% predatory and it’s played for laughs. Beejesus no. Get  owl boy out here. ))

Different series use their mythical creatures to different affect. In Satina the joke is that this demon-antichrist really is more of a little girl with a looser dad w. the version of hell being a send up to classic, even basic depictions of demons in media. Helluva’s different, with the Hell in that world being more of a ritzy, scummy city where everyone’s a dick to everyone else, and that’s fine. Even the joke in the beginning where the imps interview one of their clients tells you all you need to know about why this guy is in Hell, how he doesn’t get the point, and what the humor and tone of the short is striving for. I guess that’s why I’m just not offended by them using the R word, Blitzo laughing at the homeless (which is more of a joke on Blitzo, I thought), or the child murder. It felt oddly in character for these awful little creatures.

Helluva knows what it is and what it wants to be. While it’s fans and creators still take it too seriously, it really doesn’t set out to do much.

Hazbin has 99 problems and good world-building aint one. What IS one of those 99 problems - just as if not more than the lackluster storytelling or world building - is it’s attitude towards the subject matter.

Hazbin wants to have it’s cake and eat it too, but it isn’t properly established and the creators/fanbase already overemphasis how our cast ‘isn’t ALL bad; deep down’ and how they’re ‘complicated’. It gets me mad when people claim Angel IS GOOD representation because I just ‘don’t know the whole story yet’.

-You’re right! I don’t. Stop building it up because as I’ve said before what we have at the moment is what we 100% get. I can’t criticize what I don’t know but I can criticize what I do know.

And what I know about it is Viv tends to promote her brand as being representive of LGBT+ people. Her fans and her act as though her works are actually a total net-positive ‘guyz we’re just being edgythey’reinhellandit’sapilotsoit’sfreefromcriticismanywayletswritefanfictionforaserieswedon’tactuallyknowyet.’

If Viv and her brand didn’t promo Hazbin as being deeper than it actually is/NEEDS TO BE at the time of this production in the storytelling - well THAT would axe a lot of the bad criticism right there. For all the discourse in the She-Ra and SU fandoms about what is and isn’t good representation, the showrunners of those cartoons don’t aim to stereotype + hit for the lowest common denominator while also insisting that their show is actually woke and ya’ll “just don’t get it.”

((As an aside, if you are any of the following: gay, crossdresser, sex worker, undead spider demon-whatever, and you DO find Angel Dust empowering. GREAT! AWESOME. MORE POWER TO YOU.

But just because you aren’t offended by it and it was made with good intentions does NOT give it a pass < that’s the point I’m trying to make. ftm even with the explaination of the infamous ‘Charcoal’ design in SU, black people still have the right to be offended))

Remember the episode of Family Guy where Quagmire’s dad transitioned? It was Family Guy so no matter what it was gonna fumble the message, BUT what made things 100000x worse was Seth McFarlane promoting the episode as something the Trans community would really like.

It’s one thing to be ignorant or trying -and failing- to make a difference. It’s another to be arrogant about it. 

If you are gonna go all schlock-humor I think it’s best to take the lead of Bltzo’s voice actor, Brandon Rogers. He makes A LOT of sacrifices for the most insanely-purposefully-offensive jokes that straddle between making fun of everyone or just rustlin some jimmies. Dude’s the modern John Waters.

He also doesn’t promote himself as a gay icon. He just is gay and what helps a lot of his characters is that he’s often making fun of gay stereotypes by giving them character or making homophobes the butt of the joke. Brandon doesn’t act like a net-positive. It’s when you hear him in interviews that you know he’s genuine and know he’s not a threat.

And it’s why I don’t have the same expectations I have for his work that I do for Vivs; Vivs works are often telling me how I should feel. ((ftm it’s also why Brandon’s approach to writing, comedy and potentially deeper elements are better than Doug Walker’s or Sam Fennah’s attempts to make awful people “moving”))

.....hey is there anyway we could give Viv’s shows to Brandon cause I would love a Brandon-Rogers-flavored Hazbin/permanent Helluva!

---

TL:DR: If Hazbin had established itself like Helluva with it’s cast just being unlikable, nothing else you needed to know about them, it could have then PROBABLY have worked it’s way up to being like Venture Bros or Rick and Morty in it’s activism. As is, it’ still only “progressive” in a hypothetical sense, and I’m sorry but that hurts it’s credibility as a joke and a thought piece, which or whatever it wants to be...

[dontletthishappentoyou]

Shows Bonding - I had mild concerns in the first season that were absolutely addressed in the second. Overall, this was what I was looking for. I realized that I’ve been mostly doing cartoons for the past couple years, and it was nice to have some live action stuff that pulled off what it was going for with its characters as well as this one. 

Community - Going into this one not knowing if it’ll have the things I like or the things I dislike about Dan Harmon. Turns out it has both, but right now I’m mostly enjoying it for the same kinds of reasons people enjoy Friends or all those other shows that let lonely people vicariously feel that they have friends, or a community.  Ratched - What the heck was this? Somebody read and watched One Flew Over the Kuckoos Nest and thought “Nurse Ratched needs a spin-off seiries.” And then they actually clearly put a ton of effort into it? It kinda worked. I kind of wish I had known what to expect a little bit. Basically, what you should expect is kind of out there historical fiction that addresses things like coming to terms with your sexuality in the age of inhumane conversion therapy, mistreatment of the mentally ill, and also petty drama with the coersion and manipulation you might expect from a spy movie and a sitcom at the same time. It works if you’re ready for that.  Russian Doll - Bingeable. I wouldn’t watch a second season, but enjoyed it for what it was. I’ve been super into digging into characters lately, and this hit that spot. I found it by just searching for ‘sadcoms’ and this was exactly what I’d hope for.  After Life - Ricky Gervais. Very very Ricky Gervais. To the extent that the whole time I was kind of cringing hoping, but not confident, that some of his character’s flaws would be addressed by the end of the series. Most of them were, which I guess is fine. It kind of felt like watching someone figure out how to do something you consider simple. The character arc was a mediocre version of some stuff addressed in Bojack. If you really need more Bojack and can’t find anything good, go for it with this, but meh.  She-Ra - Here’s the winner for things I’ve watched this past year. The plot does get convoluted, but I might do an actual video essay about its portrayal of a psudo-leftist utopia, although the political issues it addresses are very limited, since it obviously doesn’t really get into economics or anything like that. But heteronormativiy is out the window, body types are what they are and are portrayed as unquestionably lovable, acceptance is the default, while still refusing to tolerate intolerance and imperialism. It’s interesting to pair it with a series like Ratchet that addresses homophobia directly, but I don’t think it’s failure to recognize the challenges that these people have in the real world is a downside at all. It just exists to show what things would be like without any of that. The antagonist team is generally portrayed as imperialist, stuff you’d safely call evil, while still humanizing its individual members, often delving deep into the manipulation that led them to become a part of the Horde. Which of course gets back to character. Zuko tier stuff here. Not just with the obvious one. At first I kind of disliked the main characters arc, but watched a bunch of videos about it and actually kind of figured out that some of it is largely related to my own personal failures as a person in some of my ineffective attempts to avoid negative attributes. Anyway, there’s nothing I’ve watched that I’d recommend more highly than this in a long time.  Movies The Irishman - I didn’t finish this one. It had a pretentious feeling to it that made me feel like I should take the intellectual respnosibility for enjoying it myself or else risk admitting a failure of sophistocation. But it is way to telly over showy and I felt comfortable just not participating in that after the first hour went by without anything I’d clearly identify as the inciting incident.  Marriage Story - Watched this with Ivy on Valentines day. Wouldn’t recommend it in that context, but once again, dug into character. Made me freak out about custody, but I’m assuming it won’t have that effect on most people. People said the acting was good, and I completely see what they mean. If I hadn’t been occasionally paying attention and having that in mind, I’m not sure I would have noticed, but that did make it extremely engaging.  Room - I really enjoyed the structure of this one. It felt like halfway through it could have been the end and we would have successfully surpassed a hero’s journey or whatever, but that would have ignored the emotional consequences of the kind of issues that the story addressed, so it kept going, introduced a whole new set of characters an hour in, and I don’t think there would have been any other way it would have worked for me. Definitely something I’d recommend.  Music  Red Velvet - I’ve been listening to this alongside BTS and Black Pink in my dive into K-Pop. With prog and indie, you get CDs, download stuff, listen one way or another, you get your friends to listen to it, then you go to concerts to get closer to the music, witness the viruosity in the case of prog, or connect more humanly with indie. With ska and electronica, you have friends who vaguely like the genre, you go to concerts because they’ll be crazy and fun. But I’ve been kind of exploring how different musics interact with culture over the last few years. Classical, traditional Celtic, folk, and now K-Pop.  Y’all have seen the culture around K-Pop. People get deep into it in a different way. I can recognize Petrucci’s solo style, with the rapid picking in the middle register fast stuff, I know Mike Portnoy used a double pedal on a single bass drum in LTE but not DT, I’ve heard people talk about the different distortion pedals Steven Wilson uses, but when people get into Kpop, they know what year RM had different hair colors, what kind of family he comes from, they might have memorized a couple interviews with him, and it’s just taken a bit farther than boy band fandom was taken even in the 90s.  I definitely used to see all that as extremely shallow, believing that music should be about the music, but I don’t feel so fundamentalist with my approach to how music ‘should’ interact with culture these days, so I’m seeing if I can get into it. Of course I’m failing a little bit. I mention Red Velvet specifically here because that’s the band who’s music I’ve gotten into most. I just listen to it in the background. I don’t know the names. I’ve been trying with BTS a little bit, but it’s tough when I don’t emotionally connect with the band. I’m trying to see if Red Velvet’s breaking of that barrier with their mildly complex harmony, occasional counterpoint, and diverse instrumentation and style can kind of be a gateway into that culture and I can stop listen to BTS thinking “they have seven dudes, why don’t they utilize their potential for awesome vocal harmonies?" and start listening to it on its own merits.  100 gecs - Nice. It has a playful tone to it. I can imagine doing similar things if instead of having Garage Band, I had been given and taught to use some more intricate production software. Often it sounds like they do the kinds of things people do when they discover new instruments and want to try it out and push it to its limits with no hesitation that people trained might have with more critical ears, but then it’s refined a bit and comes across as authentic and energetic with just a bit of the punk spirit to it, but adjusted to the modern zeitgeist.  Other than that, music consumption hasn’t been as prominent in my life as it has and I’d like to get more of that going. I’ve been introducing kids to a variety of things, but that kind of gets me listening to stuff all over the place that I’m already very familiar with and have set associations with. 

[musicvideoprojectakamuka]

Music Video

Ideas

Originally for this project I was planning on lip syncing a song but then I found out that it wasn’t allowed because of copyright laws, so I was really lost on what to do. I considered contacting a dancing group to dance cover a song, but I just couldn’t see it with out a few lip syncing. 

I also contacted a grime group but things didn’t work out between me and them so I had to find something else.

So after a lot of thought I decided to go with one of funniest songs I know, Moustache from ‘A million ways to die in the West’.

I love this catch song, filled with moments that make you just want to dance. Also the light hearted nature of it makes even more enjoyable to listen to.

Before I get into this project let me tell you about the music I listen to and what I like to see in a music video.

Music and visual taste:

I literally listen to anything that sounds good, doesn’t matter if I understand it or not, as long as it is “music to my ears” then I will play it, and if it happens to have a good video with then that’s a bonus.

A genre in particular that never fails to disappoint with their music video is k-pop. I love me some k-pop. The genre is based on songs that have a choreography to it which makes it easy and perfect to sync, but the visual effects and concepts they come up with is just crazy and so inspiring.

Take Idol  by BTS.

There are so many creative concepts that inspire me not just musically but visually in general.

The over the top outfits complimented by the over the top art style goes so well, there is much colour and you could see all of it, on the left side its more warm, but towards the right its cooler.

More vivid colours and patterns, creating a frame for the singer who is also dressed in a colourful fashion.

This shot in particular caught my attention when I saw it, its so in your face and loud you’d want to go back and replay it.

Another music video I looked at was also from BTS called Mic Drop

There are couple of great shots and synchronization in this music video.

When the beat drops the clinch their fists and explosion goes of behind them... SO AWESOME.

But this shot/technique is what I love the most, having the background slow mo while the foreground is moving at normal speed. So everything in the blue outline is slow mo’d and the solo singer is moving and dancing at real time.

Another music video that adapted that technique was also from a k-pop group called TWICE.

https://youtu.be/V2hlQkVJZhE?t=123

They must’ve filmed the background singers separately and the main singer, the one that will play at normal speed on a green screen, then keyed her and composited her into the footage.

I really want to adapt this technique into my work.

The final k-pop video I would like to mention is Exid: ah yeah

https://youtu.be/egqDPipqIAg?t=104

What I like about this is that they have split personality/alter egos to help get their narrative across.

Synchronization:

What makes music videos so powerful is the syncing of the music and the visuals, this could be done either through a visual effect technique, clever editing or physical movement.   

The following are example starting of at the syncing part 

https://youtu.be/V2hlQkVJZhE?t=184

The dancing is so in sync with the music that even the little “dundun” the dancer shakes her thigh, also the cinematographer also played a huge part in the sync zooming in and out, and the editor changing the setting while maintaining the dance’s continuity.

https://youtu.be/9_k_goMr5ZI?t=136

This one is more subtle but I love it, when the rapper says “life styyyyyyyle” the camera pans for the duration of “yyyyyyyyle” giving it a very nice sync feel.

https://youtu.be/6ONRf7h3Mdk?t=289

I could write a whole essay on Sicko Mode, how the variation of the vfx styles match the variation of flows on the song. But lets talk about the specific syncing example, the jagged flips are so sudden and quick they match the beat perfectly, but they’re so subtle yet so obvious, but it syncs to the beat so we just accept it with out really thinking about it.  

Cartoon Music videos:

Everything I’ve spoken about up till now was to do with live action, I would’ve implemented some of these techniques into my project but I decided to go down the motion graphics side. 

I really like this because of the simplicity of the art style and the retro look which reminds you of an old game. There is little movement in it but it doesn’t feel like a flat image because the elements are animated which gives it more life.

https://youtu.be/oHKVS-vphXA

This one is dear to me because its from my favourite anime, ‘Gintama’, the first half of it is very artistic with simple animations with little movement, but its done in such a tasteful way, they added shadow drops to the characters to make them stand out and I really like. The second half is your standard anime animation.

This one is a beast, the animators really out did themselves, on the contrary to the previous cartoon videos I mentioned, this one is full of movement and effects. This really shows that the only diffrenece between this and an live action music video is that these are cartoons, but other than that it really does feel like a music video.

https://youtu.be/rQvIR1oL1vE

Bojack horseman opening is also very simplistic but it gave me the idea to use simple cartoon 3D using maya’s toon shaders.

Moustache Music Video:

I decided that it was only suitable to have a moustache lead singer for this song.

But I had to decide what style of moustache, an audition if you will. 

In the end I decided to go with this, I like how detailed it looks but it could still fit a light hearted role.

The vibe I was going for is to give him human features since he’s performing, so I gave him legs which are basically stick legs, I’ve tried adding a guitar and hands but it didn’t look good at all.

But that hat worked out well, I kind of animated it in an overly cartoony way which I think fits the theme and the vibe of the song.

In this song I kind of decided to take a satire political approach by getting two moustache-less gentlemen and placing moustaches on them to give them “looks” and “dash”.

Hitler and Stalin moustaches.

The borders for the portraits is made of from smaller moustaches aligned a rectangular border. I thought it would give it more flavour instead of just having a plain rectangular border.

To add to this scene I added the moustache dancing along to give the feel that the moustache is dancing around the video environment and acting almost like a host.

Character animation:

This was my first time trying to animate a character, so I don’t really know how to optimise and use my time efficiently, so I ended up duplicating a lot of the layers, and some of the layers were animated frame by frame.

But then I figured out the time remapping expression which allows you to loop animations and that really came in hand.

Also in order to give the moustache a bit more life I used the puppet tool on some of the animations to give it a bit of a dynamic wind blow.

3D Toon:

I decided to make some sort of sign and I wanted it to look 3D, orginally I attempted doing it in after effects using roto, but then I figured I would just use maya toon shader.

I made two versions of each light sign, lighting one and skipping one. This gives the illusion of animation.

There were some problem as you imagine using the toon shader for the first time, for example some of the outline over lined, some lights bugged out and didn’t display their textures.

But the outline was great it really was the cherry on top for the toon effect.

I also used the toon shader on a piano to place on the stage since I felt it was sort of empty.

3D no toon

3D with toon.

Another thing I did to make things not seem so bland is give the sign a wood texture in after effects just to give it more character.

Evaluation:

Overall I didn’t optimise my time for this project and kind of did the whole thing in a week and a half. But am half impressed with my results, but theres so much more that could be improved. For example adding more animations and doing more of the song. However I am really pleased with the toon shading turn out and I will defiantly try play around with it more, same thing with the puppet tool.

I didn’t have time towards the end so I reused the animations at the beginning, I was planning on adding some other characters alongside the moustache, like a scissor playing the piano and a comb dancing on the side.

I might also look into more basic character animation just for fun, because it is enjoyable to see the results.