#cg!michaelangelo

[softpawpup]

— caregiver ! michaelangelo from 2003 tmnt headcanons !! ( request from anon )

likes to show off to you

more of a big brother caregiver than a parental caregiver

lets you help him train by setting up targets or dummies (sometimes lets you hold those target mitts but never hits super hard when you do)

lets you listen to his music and use his headphones and earbuds, especially when you're overstimulated

really good at caring for you during episodes of overstimulation. tries to always have something on him to help you ground yourself

really bad about remembering to carry around a diaper bag

really good at entertaining baby regressors and can make diaper changing time super fun

at first likes to bring you out on adventures and missions with him but eventually gets too worried about you getting overstimulated or regressing during the outing and not being able to help you

loves it when you wear orange. like so much. it makes him so giddy

likes to call you ' froggy ' , ' tadpole ' , ' lil fish ' , ' buddy ' / ' little buddy' , a lot of things with ' lil ' in the front of it , and ' baby bro / sis / sib '

[sirfrogsworth]

Peter McKinnon did a video with a photographer named Garrett King. And he just went on a very long rant about lazy photographers who use Photoshop and "fixing it in post."

He continues... "You can't do that in film. You can't just make a bad decision and say "Oh, I'll fix it in post." (Not true. There was plenty of editing in dark rooms in the past. And now you can scan a film photo and literally manipulate it like a digital photo.) Fix it in post drives me nuts. That statement is so played out. It drives me nuts that people say that. Cuz dude, I don't work that way."

He also says that choosing film is the "hard path" and keeps talking about how lazy photographers who photoshop are.

I love film photography. I have an old Minolta that my mom gave me that I hope to restore and use someday.

But film photographers drive *me* nuts sometimes.

IT'S NOT A COMPETITION!

BOTH THINGS ARE COOL!

This idea that their way of making art is more valid or authentic than my way of making art is just a continuation of an old school mentality that really needs to die. There are still some photographers who will bully people because they use autofocus or aperture priority mode.

I actually think learning to be really good at Photoshop is much more challenging than learning to be good at photography. Sure, there are fields like photographic microscopy and product photography that require years to master, but I've been learning Photoshop for 20 years and I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of what is possible.

I have seen people with near 0 experience take an amazing picture.

I have seen people who barely know how their camera works take consistently good photos. It's the "using only power chords" version of photography.

But I have never seen someone with 0 experience photoshop something artistically impressive.

When people say "that looks Photoshopped" as if that is an insult, it really breaks my heart. Photoshop was a huge reason for my success. My ability to lay in bed and make funny things was essential to building my blog.

My post on Karl Taylor's Clinque photoshoot had so many comments saying his work "looked photoshopped" and it was a little frustrating.

Firstly because he actually sculpts with light and isn't actually very good at Photoshop. When he takes a picture, it pretty much looks like that from the start. The rest is just minor compositing work and blemish removal.

And secondly, because that kind of product photography predates Photoshop. Karl was doing this when Photoshop was just a baby.

In fact, still life photography was inspired by Dutch paintings of fruit and shit.

They were all, "I cannot stand sitting with another yappy model for days on end. I'm sick of people. I'm just going to paint *stuff* but with really amazing lighting."

But it is also frustrating because there is this mentality that digital tools are lesser. As if digital artists just press a few buttons and cheat-code their way into good images.

It's the same mentality people have about CGI. CG artists are the modern day sculpturists. They do the same thing as Michaelangelo or Rodin, just with different tools and in a different medium. Oh, but they also animate their sculptures in thousands of frames in multiple dynamic lighting environments all while maintaining photorealism.

To me, Thanos is just as artistically impressive as the statue of David or The Thinker.

Blair Bunting is a very talented photographer who mixes incredible photographic technique and lighting with his amazing photo manipulation skills.

And while these photos may not be as "authentic" as that film photographer's picture of a dude sitting on a truck...

I can assure you no laziness was involved in Blair's process.

Also, I really didn't want to bring up disability. But it is really difficult for me to do the physical process of photography. Sometimes I do not have the energy to get the perfect "in camera" exposure. Sometimes I won't even check my settings and I will snap a picture knowing that I can make it cool with editing. I just look at the histogram, make sure the data I need is there, and do the rest on my computer.

During my adventure to photograph a bridge in Alton, I was only able to take 6 photos. Usually I will take hundreds in a session. My fatigue got the better of me and I nearly had to go to the hospital after walking up a hill. (I was having a bad day. I'm better now.) I didn't get the photos I wanted to get. And on the way down that hill, as I was out of breath, I pulled out my phone and tried to snap a pic of something cool I saw in front of me. The phone had been set 2 stops underexposed from a previous shot and so the picture was pretty much all in shadow. And because I was walking super slow, I had just missed the sun over the horizon.

But it's a RAW file. And I knew I could probably do something with it. I could "fix it in post." Not because I was being lazy. Mostly because I was trying not to hyperventilate. Apparently, my body can't handle slight inclines any longer.

And this is what I came up with.

I'm not saying this is an amazing photo. And it would have been really cool if I hadn't missed the sun. But this is what my eyes saw as I came down the hill and I was able to recreate that with digital tools.

I think that is pretty cool.

[adamwatchesmovies]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

2014’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles marks the fifth time the heroes in a half shell appeared on the big screen. With this many strikes, I'm thinking it just can’t be done successfully. Certainly not as a live-action picture. This film’s characters are thin and uninteresting. Worse, there are so many of them they leave no room for any kind of clever plot. The attempts at humor fall flat and often make the film unintentionally creepy. Never mind the sometimes dodgy special effects. Combined together, they make Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles feel like a trip to the sewers.

Reporter April O’Neil (Megan Fox) witnesses a group of mysterious assailants fighting back against the Foot Clan, a gang of ninjas terrorizing New York. Michelangelo (voiced by Noel Fisher), Raphael (voiced by Alan Ritchson), Leonardo (voiced by Johnny Knoxville) and Donatello (voiced by Jeremy Howard) are mutated turtles who grew up beneath the city and were taught martial arts by their “father”, an equally mutated rat named Splinter (voiced by Tony Shalhoub). Only by working together can they thwart The Shredder (Tohoru Masamune) and his minions.

This film was doomed the moment executives decided to make it live-action. With all of the technology director Jonathan Liebesman had at his disposal, the heroes previously created via rubber suits in the '90s are now computer-generated 8-foot-tall masses of muscle that just don’t fit in the real world. I know the sewer-dwelling heroes have brought many people joy since their creation but let’s not kid ourselves. They were created to be ridiculous and by failing to embrace this, writers Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec and Evan Daugherty will have you rolling your eyes. It would be too cartoonish for the turtles to be randomly named after Italian Renaissance painters so April named them as a kid. She also gave them their love of pizza. It would be too silly for Splinter to have learned martial arts from a human master so instead, he picked up his techniques from dirty books he somehow knew how to read. The attempts to clean up and make the story more realistic don't work. We paid to go see a movie named Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We’re ready to suspend our disbelief and will gladly do so if the story is worth telling.

Even if you forgive the clumsy exposition, the characters are terribly written. All of the turtles are one-note. Raphael is angry and unwilling to follow the orders of his blue-bandanna-wearing brother, the one with the purple stuff is the nerdy one, and so on. If you didn't already know their names, you wouldn't bother to learn them. Then, we have Michaelangelo. Whenever he and April are on-screen together, he comments about how attractive she is. It’s supposed to be funny in a “he’s like a little kid crushing on the teacher” kind of way but you won’t laugh; instead, you’ll be scared we're about to witness a remake of Humanoids from the Deep. It isn’t just him; it’s also her useless co-star, played by Will Arnett. He’s 16 years older than she is. Seeing so many people slobbering at Megan Fox in this kind of movie makes you feel ill.

As bad as the heroes are, they're as complicated as a paper on astrophysics compared to the villains. The Shredder is a nothing of a character. He’s evil for evil’s sake, complete with a “let me kill my minions for kicks” attitude and an evil plan that makes NO SENSE. The only good decision made about the Turtles’ arch-enemy is to put him in an insanely futuristic suit of armor during the climax. Martial arts or not, there’s no way the character (who by my calculations, has to be at least 80) could stand a chance against the four giant, bullet-proof, radioactive reptiles with weapons. By making him a completely CG creation, it also helps make the carnage of their big fight somewhat believable.

I could go on and on about what doesn’t work in this film. Splinter’s creepy design and his unbelievable prehensible tail, the role William Fichtner’s Erick Sack’s plays in the story, the fact that draining a four-liter canister’s worth of blood from the turtles has no effect on them, April’s worthless reporting skills, the idea of an antidote to a virus that kills within minutes, the fact that - as a mutant - Splinter’s blood should contain the same mutagen as his children but for no explainable reason doesn’t, the fact that the turtles meant so much to April as a child she couldn’t even remember their names until she watched her own video diary, and the numerous plot holes throughout. Just about the only good thing about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a comedic scene during an elevator and a long chase down a mountainside that’s actually inspired. The rest is a big headache for anyone other than 12-year-olds who are hopped up on candy and soda. (June 4, 2021)

[mamanerd22]

I really loved this book. #CemeteryBoys is the perfect book to read right now. Its set during the days leading up to #diadelosmuertos . When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free. However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school's resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He's determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave. . Honestly this book was amazing. I fell in love with the characters immediately. Yadriel is so authenticity himself and Julian such a fierce protector of those he considers family. I loved all the side characters too. Shout out to the sweet pitt bulls Donatello and Michaelangelo! This is a book I can see myself reading over and over again. Not only because it celebrates Latinx heritage so well but the representation in it warms my heart. 5/5 #BookReview #AdienThomas #LGTBQauthors #representationmatters #LatinxAuthors #latinxreader #multiracialcharacters #TransVisibility #transcharacters #spookyreads #foundfamily #SantaMuerte #nerdymamabooks #nerdymama #booknerd #bibliophile #bookstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CG-LW9jApTq/?igshid=4s7kyee46bx9