Keep on Swimmin' |
Ezra, 20s, he/him or they/them There's no method to my madness. I preemptively apologize bc I rarely tag (I'm on mobile and fast reblog lol). If you need/want me to tag for any reason lmk!! |
Sometimes I forget how much I am spiritually akin to Burton Guster and then he says things like “No, Shawn, I can’t spend the night in the museum! I don’t have my toothbrush! I don’t have my multivitamins!” and I remember
(via letmetellyouaboutmyfeels)
Stranger Things season 1: beneath the superficial image of “peace and prosperity” in 1980s small-town America, there was the painful legacy of countless atrocities committed by the American government in the name of ‘freedom.’
Stranger Things season 4: evil Russians (not Soviets) have sent our All-American Hero to the gulags which apparently still exist in the 1980s and it’s up to us to save him 🇺🇸🦅🫡
There’s probably a term that already exists for this but if there isn’t I’m gonna call it ‘Rambofication’ in honor of its probably most well known instance: Rambo First Blood was about a soldier, John Rambo (that’s his actual name I’m not doing a bit), returning home from the Vietnam war, so traumatized by war that he brought the war home with him to a small town, unable to adapt to life without strict military discipline and hierarchy. Subsequent Rambo movies were about how John Rambo was the only supersoldier tough enough and patriotic enough to kill faceless hordes of dastardly foreign commies.
Ergo, ‘Rambofication’ is the process of a series starting with a relatively nuanced or subversive narrative before its sequels become a shallow embrace of the very narrative it originally subverted. It happens surprisingly often!
(via yoursummerfrost)
transparent-plastic-robotgirl:
I love animation history and one of the things that always baffled me was how did animators draw the cars in 101 Dalmatians before the advent of computer graphics?
Any rigid solid object is extremely challenging for 2D artists to animate because if one stray line isn’t kept perfectly in check, the object will seem to wobble and shift unnaturally.
Even as early as the mid 80’s Disney was using a technique where they would animate a 3D object and then apply a 2D filter to it. This practice could be applied to any solid object a character interacts with: from lanterns a character is holding, to a book (like in Atlantis), or in the most extreme cases Cybernetic parts (like in Treasure Planet).
But 101 Dalmatians was made WAY before the advent of this technology. So how did they do the Cruella car chase sequence at the end of the film?
The answer is so simple I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner:
They just BUILT the models and painted them white with black outlines 🤣
That was the trick. They’re not actually 2D animated, they’re stop motion. They were physical models painted white and filmed on a white background. The black outlines become the lineart lines and they just xeroxed the frame onto an animation cel and painted it like any other 2D animated frame.
That’s how they did it! Isn’t that amazing? It’s such a simple low tech solution but it looks so cool in the final product.
@transparent-plastic-robotgirl check it out
omg that’s cool as heck!!! 🌸
Disney made a neat featurette about the movie that gets into this process.
The whole things’ worth a watch, but the xerox process shows up at 11:41 and they go into the cars at 22:18.
This was the first full length movie to use the xerox process, without which you would just be rotoscoping. Which is a cool technique, but would have required both much more work and probably not given you quite the rigidity that they get here. It also mentions how the early version of xerox was perfectly suited to 101 Dalmatians because it produced extremely stark black lines that could have been distracting in a different context but are perfectly suited for the black and white dogs. This early version also produced a rough scratchy sort of line that fit well with the modern, jazzy style of the movie. It also let them “cheat” in the crowd scenes with gaggles of dogs in frame, letting them easily copy and rescale and flip individual action cycles to make multiple dogs from a single animator’s work.
The xerox process is also an interesting art automation story. Before this disney employed a large number of inkers, whose job it was to take the animators drawings, which were done by pencil on animation paper, and trace them with ink onto the celluloid that would eventually be photographed. And after 101 Dalmatians showed the process could work, it was just a matter of time for the entire inking department. Today disney employs four inkers who make reproduction cels from their old movies for collectors or display.
(via itsrapsodia)
“Just fucking transition already” in all its forms is necessary counterculture to the endless fucking eggslop that litters the trans internet. “When you wish you were a—” No. You are one. Transition about it. Quit romanticising the closet.
An addendum for those who cannot safely transition now: you’re fine, you can make sure you’re in a good position beforehand. Love to you all.
Working on getting to a situation where you can safely socially/medically transition counts as part of transition tbh
This includes finding community with other trans people, online or offline, and learning what your options are from others who’ve been in the same situation as you. Find mutual aid groups operating close to you, find out what your options are for accessing transition care, learn what you can do about your specific situation.
There’s help to be found. You don’t have to be alone in the closet.
(via spones-in-my-bones)
I’ve been tinkering with the idea of an urban fantasy “All Fairy Tales Are True” setting where some fairy tale characters are mortals who reincarnate and live through their story again and again with no memory of their past lives, but other characters are immortal, carrying over biases and grudges and regrets from the last time they went through this.
Snow White’s dwarves keep her room exactly as she left it, and keep a wary eye on the horizon for the day she returns. When she does they treat her like a beloved daughter come home, cook her favourite meals, warn her to stay away from apples this time, and keep calling her the wrong name.
Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother found her a touch ungrateful last time, and has decided not to appear to her this time around to teach her a lesson in gratitude. This Cinderella, without the memory of the last time, is still a terrified, miserable woman desperate to escape her awful situation.
The Witch in the gingerbread house has developed a thousand traps to eat those goddamned kids. She’s failed every time. She lives a life of Sisyphean torment previously known only to cartoon coyotes.
(via seananmcguire)
It’s crazy and wildly unfair the types of people who will be out there with no shame over any of their behavior meanwhile I’m stuck being nauseated at myself for every very normal conversation I have with someone
(via pojkflata)