This is how everyone should be referring to Twitter.
[Image Description: headline by Financial Times that says “Who’s who at X, the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter”, with the byline “A look inside Musk’s big tent”. End I.D]
In the 80’s as computer animation was on the rise one of the thorniest problems was “how do we get this thing we made on the computer… OFF the computer?” There were a lot of unique solutions, but the one I’m fascinated by most is Disney’s solution of using a plotter.
A plotter acted as sort of a 3D printer but for 2D images. There was a ball point pen that could move up and down, and the paper underneath could be moved in and out. Using CAD based programs you could plot points in 2D space and the plotter would draw the lines between them and even do geometric shapes!
When it came time to do The Great Mouse Detective, the animators at Disney wanted to do more dynamic shots for the climatic battle inside Big Ben. Drawing all those gears and cogs would be a nightmare for the animators, so they experimented with using 3D animation.
But this was still the early 80’s. There was no digital ink and paint program, no way to merge the 2D animated characters with the 3D animated backgrounds digitally. So how did they get the 3D animated backgrounds out of the computer?
By drawing each frame on the plotter.
Every frame was printed out on the plotter, and then xeroxed onto animation cels, and then hand painted like traditional 2D animation cels are.
But why the plotter? If they were gonna have to export every frame anyway, why not use a printer? Well… because printers back then just weren’t very good. A plotter uses points and physically draws the line between them, much like how vector graphics work. It yielded a much smoother and higher fidelity line than if they just printed them out.
This was still a massive undertaking, but it was probably the best solution to getting the dynamic camera moves they wanted out on paper. 2D animation was drawn over top and then both layers of animation cels were filmed frame by frame.
And that’s how you got dynamic shots like this in the mid 80’s! 3D animated backgrounds, printed with a plotter, xeroxed onto animation cels, hand painted, and then re-photographed with the 2D animation on top!
This technique would be the standard way Disney got their 3D animation out of the computer for their 2D films… right up until The Rescuers Down Under which was the first fully digital animated feature. That movie used PIXAR’s proprietary CAPS System (hey that name sounds familiar 😉) to combine everything digitally. But that’ll have to be a story for another time!
Congress is now considering the appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security, whose funding runs out at the end of January.
Call your members of Congress and tell them to vote NO on any bill that increases ICE’s funding.
Please demand that the DHS appropriations bill prohibit ICE and Border Patrol agents from carrying guns and that it unambiguously declare that agents do not have absolute immunity under the law if they harm civilians.
Also tell them that any bill must restrict ICE and Border Patrol’s ability to conduct dragnet arrest operations and target people based on their race, language or accent. And the bill must clarify that ICE agents are liable under civil and criminal law if they harm civilians.
Do this as soon as you can.
To reach your representative or senator, call the U.S. Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.
Tell them the state and city where you live. They will connect you to any member’s office.
i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i’m talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.
there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there’s no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it’s just sad that it’s a dying art form.
anyway, here’s some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you’re into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.
Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil
Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.
if you’re ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i’ve been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.
since this post blew up, i’ve been wanting to do an addition with all of the recommendations from the comments and tags. but there’s a lot of them. some people might be crazy enough to sit down and seriously put them all in one post with descriptions. those people are honestly sick in the head.
anyway, here’s all of the recommendations from the reblogs. not all of them are text-based, but it’s a great mixture of styles. also don’t forget the links in the second paragraph of the OP which will take you to FMHY where there are a bunch more games listed.
Games
A Dark Room - text-based science fiction role-playing game.
Twine - great (free!) tool for making text-based games quickly.
Ink - scripting language for interactive fiction (also free)
Flashpoint Archive - a community effort to preserve games and animations from the web.
PICO-8 - fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs.
Non-Games
Library of Babel - interactive illustration which attempts to simulate what it might be like to browse The Library of Babel.
Superbad - technically not a game, sprawling website full of secrets.
17776 - serialized speculative fiction multimedia narrative about football in the far-future. beautiful, creative, legendary. created by Jon Bois, a legend and one of my favorite writers of all time.
Choice of Games - text-based, choose-your-own-adventure games (interactive fiction). some free-to-play, others can be bought like an ebook.
The Deep Sea - scroll to the bottom of the ocean. encounter the humble squid and his friends (by neal)
Space Elevator - like The Deep Sea, but up instead of down. you can equip your avatar with a scarf (by neal)
