#a spark of creativity

[ask-the-star-sanses-other-5]

Askable Characters:

-Ink

-Blue

-Dream

-Writer

-Black

-Tone

-Safety

-Grayscale

You can ask anything but with Black and Writer if you ask anything super personal they’ll probably stay away from everyone for the next 5 asks

[program-the-techwing]

A spark of creativity (1/3. Different worlds.) (3/4 this universe.)

It got boring quick. Nothing to do. He was considering ending it all. He was about to…immediately something knocked the dagger out of his hand. Well someone. He was immediately seized by someone’s arms. “HEY! LET ME GO!” He yelled. “No, you aren’t thinking straight and you’re going to hurt yourself.” They said. “I AM THINKING STRAIGHT!” He yelled back. Some sort of strings wrapped around his arms. They were purple. “Şłẽëp” someone said. And he immediately fell asleep. (Sorry for how short this one was it’s meant to be super short because I want it to be.)

[o0kawaii0o]

"I've been thinking of a new recipe lately.."

[ellie-makes-mbs]

name moodboard for “kodi” for anonymous

[centaurianthropology]

Using the costuming to figure out the budget of ‘Murderbot’

So I kept meaning to write other things, but what ended up lingering in my brain this week about ‘Murderbot’ was something a bit more specific to my training an interests: costuming, and more specifically, how costuming can indicate the budget of the show. 

I’ve seen posts on here and elsewhere criticizing certain aspects of the show for various costuming or setting choices (no drones, far less chrome and inorganic parts on both MB and Gurathin than I think a lot of us imagined, less visual representation of the Feed, things looking “cheap” or “plastic”, etc), and claiming that Apple has an enormous amount of money, so why did the show ‘cheap out’?

I think that A) fundamentally misunderstands that a single television production is not the same as its production company, and B) dramatically overestimates the budget this show almost certainly has.

I don’t think this is a low-budget show.  The CG is solid, the sets are lovely, and none of that is going to be accomplished with low budget, but looking at the costumes it’s clear this isn’t a high-budget show either.  Appropriately for a fairly unknown property, my guess is that season 1’s budget was modest. Keeping run-times down to 22 minutes an episode was likely both a stylistic choice (hooray serial adventure stories!), but was also a budgetary choice. Because every minute that makes it to air is a LOT of money on the table. 

But I can also see the mid-budget in the costumes, but also a lot of creative work-arounds for a limited budget. For one, most characters thus far essentially have two costumes: their civilian clothing (or MB’s armor), and the hab uniforms. And the uniforms themselves are modular, and so a good amount of customization can happen with a single costuming piece (which is both practical in universe, but also great for saving money for wardrobe). That means that more money can go into limited pieces.

There is certainly money that went into these pieces. We didn’t get to spend a lot of time with the original civilian pieces, but the uniforms all required a decent amount of tailoring, at least in the out piece, because let me tell you: jumpsuits are NOT one-size-fits-all. They have to be fitted to every part of a person in order to fit decently, which means each of the actors had a uniform made bespoke for them.  There are also prints (company logo) on a lot of the pieces that would also require custom work. The tunics Bharadwaj and Arada both wear may or may not be custom.

There are a lot of carefully cut corners that almost certainly lowered cost: the shoes, and probably the leggings and cargo pants, look like they were purchased rather than made.  Purchasing a costume piece, especially if you don’t have to purchase a brand name or a designer piece, is the cheapest and easiest way to costume. 

I think that, if they had unlimited budget, everything would probably be bespoke.  Even the fabricated clothing on the hab would be bespoke, down to the shoes (shoes are always the last thing to be bespoke, because very few costumers are also cobblers, and hiring someone to make shoes is VERY pricey).  I think they’d take all the little details they managed to work in, and go even farther with them.   I want to stress that I think the costumers did really well with what they had, and even had a lot of subtle detail worked into their pieces.  Having the company logo as a miniature texture print was particularly great.  And you can get away with the ‘printed’ clothing being made out of inexpensive synthetics, while still making it a stylistic choice.

If anything, I think they would have pushed the budget harder with the civilian clothing if they had a bigger budget. It’s stated that their clothing is hand-made.  If I were costuming the show, I would want their costumes from Preservation to be actually hand-made, with a ton of detail work, all made of natural fabrics to contrast the synthetics in the Corporation Rim.  I would want layered textures, embroidery, bead-work, knits.  I could see them trying to do that with the civilian costumes, but it was there that I still saw what almost certainly were purchased pieces that didn’t quite nail that feeling. And that’s what convinced me that this was a mid-budget show. If they had the budget of, say, ‘Game of Thrones’, very different choices would have been made. I mentioned the civilian clothing, but there would have also, likely, been a lot more obviously inorganic parts on Murderbot, and probably also Gurathin.

Anyway, I have no idea if anyone is interested in my thoughts on budget on a show like this, but it was this realization that made me fine with a lot of visual changes to save money. If our SecUnit doesn’t have metallic feet, and a ton of visible inorganics, I get it. A few visual effects shots of being reprinted (a fun thought!) are way cheaper than having to either provide makeup or costumes consistently to create believable synthetic pieces, particularly if you have to supplement them with CG. So it’s fine. It’s fine if they can’t afford that, or the drones. Hell, having the hab look cheap is not only fine, it’s perfect! This is the budget model, after all. It looks like an intergalactic air-stream, while the DeltFall hab (which was the deluxe version) is far more upscale sci-fi visuals. There is so much visual storytelling going on, not only working within the budget, but utilizing their lower budget to tell a story.

[thegoldenshi-shi]

Been thinking about the Prowler

[spicyavogato]

Late night doodle of my latest fandom obsession

[toast-x-butter]

Afterlife, oh, what a terrible thought

fic: Theseus' Guide to Ruining a Perfectly Good Boat

[captain-astors]

Reading through Witch Hat Atelier, extremely slowly because the art is amazing and I have to stop to marvel at every chapter. Everything about this series is a delight thus far, I would definitely recommend it.

(This is a panel redraw from the first chapter. I'm only on the second.)

[thewanderingmask]

Hermit-a-Day May #2: Grian!

[chrisrainicorn]

sona reveal #MyMe

[ask-the-star-sanses-other-5]

waiting for asks so here’s an image of Writer’s first fight with Dream

[program-the-techwing]

a spark of creativity (1/3. Different worlds) (2/4 for this world)

He had lost track of how much time passed. He had no one to talk to. He couldn’t talk to the souls since he had overused their soul magic on Frisk. He has given Frisk a proper burial since he still felt so guilty. He wanted the timeline to just end. Nothing happened. He called for help. But nobody came. He cried into the darkness. Nobody came. He yelled for someone, anyone. Nothing. Just silence. It was deafening. He’d prefer the genocide runs over this. At least in those to an extent he had his brothers. And he had his friends. He wanted that back. He wanted it to go back to the start. He couldn’t reset. Since the player wasn’t there in the world to do it. Flowey was an exception before the player appeared. But with the amount of time the player had been in their universe it had permanently shifted it to only a vessel with the most determination controlled by a higher being could reset. Sans had thought it had been a few months. Maybe weeks and it just got so boring he overestimated. He didn’t know. He was surviving by hunting and foraging.

[serendippertyy]

patchwork now vs. their very first design from june 🫢

just wanted to say again his new design is heavily inspired by a commission I got from cattywampus.woods on IG! anyone who draws patches is welcomed and encouraged to do their own patterns and colors and I just loved the colors they used so much so now it is immortalized forever!!

my goodness I am just so happy with how not only patches evolved but also my style in such a short amount of time!! ^^

[ellie-makes-mbs]

name moodboard for “emily” for anonymous