#buy rig frame

[adickaboutspoons]

Let's talk costuming significance! Because there's some really interesting stuff going on! So Zheng Yi Sao drops the soup bitch mask when she buys the Roman puzzle box full of indigo, correctly identifying it as extremely valuable. And there's a LOT going on there - because indigo dye has a long history of being a hot comodity, even being referred to as "blue gold", but along with that, especially at the height of Spanish colonization, that was of course heavily tied up in slave labor. And I think it's curious that, in a show that has been quite careful about depictions of and references to slavery, and unequivocally condemning and punishing those who endorse or practice it (think the British officers who called Olu a slave and got a knife through the hand, or the French Party Boat where the hoity toity people were either left to the fire or jumping overboard while Abshir and the other POC make a safe escape in a treasure-loaded skiff with a bright-looking future on the horizon) that Zheng buys the Revenge Crew as an ancillary purchase along with the indigo (I want to make it clear that I am in no way suggesting that this is in any way comparable to the horrors of the institution of chattle slavery. However, it IS strange that she is is framed so sympathetically, to the point that she is presented as a viable romantic possibility for actual ray of sunshine Olu, while at the same time using the labor of the Revenge Crew without any mention of any compensation other than a bedroll on the deck and some really good soup...). BUT! ALSO! I think it's notable that every one of her subordinates are attired head-to-toe in indigo-dyed fabric. Like, that is SUCH an ostentatious display of wealth on her part. She is SO successful that she can afford to "waste" blue gold on her peons. And that is just FASCINATING.

And just another, completely unrelated costume note - How Hornighost's clothes were actually a HUGE clue as to Ed being in limbo (not purgatory, writers. Purgatory is a different thing). So here's his "favorite shirt":

I'm particularly interested in the great big ring just behind his right elbow with all the ropes hanging from it. That is sailcloth, my v. dears, the large-gauge grommets being the places where the sails could be rigged to the yardarms. And "burial at sea" wasn't just a matter of pitching a corpse overboard - first the body was sewn into a weighted shroud - usually sailcloth. Couple that with the way the dangling ropes are giving strong Marley-weighed-down-in-the-chains-of-vice-he-forged-in-his-miserly-life, and the shroud-like cape thrown around his shoulders, and you've got a brilliant costume that is shouting "THIS iS A DEAD GUY".

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Biden wants to ban ripoff “financial advisors”

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library on Monday, November 13 at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

Once, American workers had "defined benefits pensions," where their employers promised to pay them a certain amount every year from their retirement to their death. Jimmy Carter swapped that out for 401(k)s, "market" pensions where you have to guess which stocks will be valuable or starve in your old age:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses

The initial 401(k) rollout had all kinds of pot-sweeteners that made them seem like a good deal, like heavy employer matching that doubled or even tripled the value of every dollar you put into the market for your retirement. But over the years, as Reaganomics took hold and workers' power ebbed away, all these goodies were clawed back. In the end, the market-based pension makes you the sucker at the poker table, flushing your savings into a rigged casino that is firmly tilted in favor of finance barons and other eminently guillotineable plutocrats.

Neoliberalism is many things, but most of all it is a cult of individualism. The fact that three generations of workers are nows facing down retirement without pensions that will provide them with secure housing and food – let alone money to see the odd movie, buy birthday gifts for their grandkids, or enjoy a meal out now and then – is framed as millions of individual failures, not a systemic one.

In other words, if you are facing food insecurity and homelessness after a lifetime of hard work, it's because you saved wrong. Perhaps you didn't save enough (through a 40-year run of wage stagnation and skyrocketing housing, health and education costs). Or perhaps you saved wrong, making the wrong bets on the stock market. If you can't afford to run your air conditioner during a heat dome, that's on you: you should have been better at stocks.

Apologists for this system will say that you don't have to be good at stocks – you just have to pay an Independent Financial Advisor to pick the stocks for you and you'll be fine. But IFAs don't work for free! What if you can't afford one?

Enter "predatory inclusion" – the practice of offering scammy, overpriced and substandard products to poor people and declaring it to be a good deed, because otherwise, those poor people would have to do without. The crypto bubble relied heavily on this: think of Spike Lee and others shilling for pump-and-dump scams as a way of "building Black wealth":

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/business/media/cryptocurrency-seeks-the-spotlight-with-spike-lees-help.html

More recently, Intuit and other scammy tax-prep services have argued against the IRS's plan to offer free tax preparation as bad for Black and brown people, because it will deny them the chance to be deceived and ripped off with TurboTax:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/27/predatory-inclusion/#equal-opportunity-scammers

Back in 2018, Trump won the predatory inclusion Olympics, when his Department of Labor let the Fifth Circuit abolish the "Fiduciary Rule" for Independent Financial Advisors:

https://www.investopedia.com/updates/dol-fiduciary-rule/

What was the Fiduciary Rule? It said that your IFN had to put your interests ahead of their own. Like, if there were two different funds you could bet on, and one would pay your IFN a big commission, while the other would be a better bet for you, the IFN couldn't put your retirement savings into the fund that offered them a bribe.

When Trump killed the Fiduciary Rule, he proclaimed it a victory for poor people, especially Black and brown people. After all, if IFNs weren't allowed to accept bribes for giving you bad financial advice, then they would have to make up the difference by charging you for good advice. If you couldn't afford that advice, well, you'd have to make bad retirement investments on your own, without the benefit of their sleazy self-dealing.

The Biden Administration wants to change that. Biden's Acting Labor Secretary is Julie Su, and she's very good at her job. Last spring, she forced west coast dockworkers' bosses to cough up the contract they'd stalled on for a year, with 8-10% raises for every worker, owed retroactively:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

Su has proposed a way to reinstate the Fiduciary Rule, as part of the Biden Administration's war on junk fees, estimating that this will increase retirees' net savings by 20%:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-11-07-julie-su-labor-retirement-savers/

The new rule will force advisors who cheat their clients to pay restitution, and will require them to deliver all their advice in writing so that this cheating can be detected and punished.

The industry is furious, of course. They claim that "The Market (TM)" will solve this: if you get bad retirement savings advice and end up homeless and starving, then you will choose a different advisor in your next life, after you are reincarnated (I guess?).

And of course, they're also claiming that forcing IFNs to stop cheating their clients will deny poor people access to expert (bad) advice. As the Financial Services Institute's Dale Brown says, this will have a "negative impact on Main Street Americans’ access to financial advice":

https://www.fa-mag.com/news/legal-challenge-predicted-for-new-dol-fiduciary-proposal-75257.html

Here's that rule – read it for yourself, then submit a comment expressing your views on it. The government wants to hear from you, and administrative law requires them to act on the comments they receive:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/11/03/2023-23782/proposed-amendment-to-prohibited-transaction-exemptions-75-1-77-4-80-83-83-1-and-86-128

Su is part of a wave of progressive, technically skilled regulators in the Biden administration that resulted from a horse-trading exercise called the Unity Task Force, which divvied up access to top appointments among the progressive wing and the finance wing of the Democratic Party. The progressive appointments are nothing short of incredible – the most competent and principled agency leaders America has seen in half a century:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis

But then there's the finance wing's appointments, like Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, who ruled against Lina Khan's attempt to block the rotten Microsoft/Activision merger (don't worry, Khan's appealing):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

Perhaps the worst, though, is Biden's Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, a private equity ghoul who did a stint for the notorious wreckers Bain Capital before founding her own firm. Raimondo has stuffed her department full of Goldman Sachs alums, and has sidelined labor and civil society groups as she sets out to administer everything from the CHIPS Act to regulating ChatGPT.

As Henry Burke writes for the Revolving Door Project and The American Prospect, Raimondo's history as a corporate raider, her deference to the finance sector, and she and her husband's conflicts of interest from their massive stakes in companies she's regulating all serve to undermine Biden's agenda:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-11-08-commerce-secretary-gina-raimondo-undercutting-bidenomics/

When the administration inevitably complains that its popular economic programs aren’t breaking through the media coverage, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.

The Unity Task Force gave us generationally important policymakers, but ultimately, it's a classic "pizzaburger." If half your family wants pizza, and the other half wants burgers, and you serve them something halfway in between that makes none of them happy, you haven't made a wise compromise – you've just made an inedible mess:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/17/pizzaburgers/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/08/fiduciaries/#but-muh-freedumbs

[novemberforsims]

Infinity Heart Ring Set

Hey everyone, here is a ring set featuring a huge diamond your sims can either buy for themselves or get from loved ones! This ring comes in 4 CAS Variants as well as a rigged Blender Version with higher texture resolution. We hope you will enjoy this piece as much as we do! 💍

Infinity Heart Ring

30 Swatches 10 Heart & 3 Metalware Options Rings Category 6 Placements ( Ring & Middle Fingers for both L & R ) Female Body Frame Specular Map for Extra Shine

Infinity Heart Ring ( Blender Version )

10 Heart & 3 Metalware Options Separate Gem, Diamond & Metalware Materials Rigged for Sims 4 Female Body All Textures Included

HQ Mod Compatible // All LODs // Custom Thumbnail // Disallowed for Random

DOWNLOAD

Conversion // Do not recolor or convert // Do not re-upload

Please tag @november.sl on instagram if you post ❤️

Check out our Pinterest Board to see Sims 4 releases: HERE

RC: @joreysimmer

[thirsty-lakedream]

Third Roomate

I arrive after a long day of classes and this is the first thing I see when I walk into the apartment.

I’m not too surprised. It’s quite normal to see my roommate sitting on the couch and watching one of his shows. What I did not expect is how he looked.

“Hey, Matt…”

The guy glances over but says nothing, instead turning his attention back to the tv. Instead of his normal sci-fi shit he instead is watching a baseball match.

“Matt, yo I’m talking to you.” I try to block the screen with my body but he simply leans over, pointing the remote to the screen.

“In a sec man, I’m trying to watch the game.” I roll my eyes. I doubt he actually knows what’s going on about, just trying to play into his new look. “And stop calling me Matt, you know my name.”

I roll my eyes, “God you are obsessed. You know, when I agreed to buy ‘Gabriel’ with you I thought I’d at least get a turn every so often…”

“Oh come on.” The muscles blonde stood up, towering nearly a foot above me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d feel a bit intimidated. “I’m just having some fun with our new toy before you take him for the rest of the night!”

“Is this fun? Your sitting all alone pretending to be some dumb jock interested in sports. Tell me Gabe, did ‘Matt’ even go to class today?”

He shifted slightly trying to hide away, but with his big frame it was difficult to. “Not exactly… But don’t worry, l attended for him.”

“Dude! Are you serious?” Turning away from the guy, I barged into my roommate’s room, where I found him exactly where I thought I would. He stood in the center wearing a full-body haptic suit and VR headset strapped onto his head. He faced the wall, seemingly staring at nothing. The equipment was rigged to his PC, with the screen showing all sorts of familiar diagnostics and body mapping windows.

“You’ve seriously been using Gabriel all day? Even when you know I called using him tonight! Now his batteries are gonna be dead before I can even use him.” You grab him by the shoulder trying to shake him back to reality.

Matt didn’t turn to me but responded to my accusation “Relax bro. He’s been on the charger since he got home so you don’t have to worry! Look!” From behind me Gabriel walked up, standing attentively.

Both Matt and Gabriel spoke in at the same time in unison. “See? Look I’m Gabriel and I’m ready to go out with my frat bros all night!” Matt performed a mocking jig and Gabriel mimicked the exact movement. He then touched his finger to the temple of his virtual reality goggles and in an instant Gabriel halted all movement.

You see, Gabriel isn’t a real person, he never was actually. He’s what’s known as a techno-puppet. Like how in a video game you can use a controller to manipulate your avatar. It works the same way but instead you control this hyper realistic doll. It wasn’t hard to see why Matt took such a liking to living as him. We spent the last month building this entire life, even forging papers to make him an ‘official’ student in our college. We have people thinking he’s our third roomate, but in reality he’s just a toy for us to experience an exciting college life.

I waited for a moment as he took off the VR equipment and handed it to me. Hiding away into my own room, I excitedly put on the gear. Sitting myself down comfortably on my bed, felt around the headset until I found the power button. Pressing it, the technology in the haptic and goggles whittled to life. After a brief loading time, my vision awoke and I found myself once again standing in Matt’s room. My roomate grinned trying to hide his envy as I was now in control of Gabriel. Maybe ill give him a taste of his own medicine for hogging the beautiful body by taking him for the entire weekend. I know Matt is harboring a secret crush on our puppet so teasing him around the apartment can be a warmup to get into my new persona

[crooked-wasteland]

How did you calculate the estimation of how much each Helluva Boss costs to make?

I should clarify that my estimation for the cost and income of the series is extremely generous. The pricing for YouTube views can be as high as $0.05 per view which would increase Medrano's income by 46%, though that is something reserved for only exceptional creators. It's less money for YouTube in that case, and her sporadic uploading schedule would make such a deal undesirable for Google.

If you were to ask me how much I actually think the episodes cost, it would be closer to $500k. However, there are multiple factors I considered when I came to my generous(?) estimate.

Firstly, I looked into how much it cost to make a professional animated episode such as Rick and Morty, which is between $1.2 and $1.5 million per episode. To be honest, I think there are some episodes of Helluva Boss, specifically Truth Seekers, that cost at least near that threshold.

Which it should be noted that Rick and Morty should actually cost less than Helluva Boss due to the style the shows are animated in. Rick and Morty reduces the labor needed for their animation and thus costs by utilizing rigging in their animation, save for select scenes. Medrano pushes her animators to draw nearly every frame by hand. At least she did for the earlier episodes.

The fact that the animation has been declining has not been lost on watchers. And this is the second factor I took into account: Medrano's attitude towards animators and the cost of animation. We saw this during the Hazbin debacle where they ran out of money for the series in the final episode. Which is something we really need to interrogate. A24 is not known for expensive advertising, in fact, they often rely on social media and word of mouth which keeps the budget for a project low.

For example, Elemental was a financial disaster for Disney despite making back the budget for the movie, that's because they spent another several million for their ad campaign which ironically turned audiences away from the film. That counts towards the performance of a movie and a series.

If A24 was unwilling to go over budget for the last episode of the series to be made, her niche form of advertising her streaming cartoon series on a historical theatre marquee in Hollywood was not something they would have shelled out the extra thousands for. Which means the money most likely came from the initial budget for the show. And between paying animators and having a marquee (which to mind you the theatre never had a showing of Hazbin in the building, it was solely for advertising), she chose the marquee. Paying cleanup artists the equivalent of $4 an hr to make her series.

And it needs to be said, that sort of advertising is a waste. Like crypto bros buying ad space in Time Square for their NFTs, this sort of advertising doesn't actually draw in new audiences, but, in the words of Dan Olsen:

"All it's good for is internal propaganda. Making insiders feel like the money that they've spent is buying credibility."- Chapter 5: The Unbearable Cringe of Crypto

We also know that Medrano has a penchant for hiring animators fresh out of college, self-taught with no professional experience or references, and fans. This means she finds people who don't know the value of their work and are easier to exploit, or are simply so sycophantic and blinded by social media clout that they agree to work for what amounts to exposure.

As such, I significantly low-balled the cost of every episode to show just how rough things are going financially. But there is an aspect I didn't touch: Patreon.

Medrano sees a daily rise to her Patreon of around 3k paying members with her monthly total being 11k. It's estimated she makes about $5k a day through her Patreon, which is $150k-$200k a month. It's also worth noting others have pointed out that she has significantly increased the cost of her Patreon tiers, and the massive drops at the start of the month with the gradual rise are members dropping said memberships and rejoining throughout the month, going up and down tiers. She's squeezing the Patreon crowd the most, as that is her actual fanbase.

Add to her income average of $375k from episodes and Medrano can absolutely afford to pay $500k per episode as I actually suspect she does. However it is still clear she is losing money in regards to merch and has had to change manufacturers and how she stocks her store.

The reason I low-balled the cost was to simplify the maths involved and highlight how the show itself is not cutting it to keep Medrano's business model afloat. Obviously when we expand the scope, numbers get larger and more moving pieces come to light. But the merch must first come from Medrano's own income, and we know she first cuts her animators before risking her own income. So she has decided to take the money from her audience in the form of merch quality rather than take a haircut from her lifestyle.

Ironically, she makes and keeps more money when she isn't pushing new merch.

[ceasarslegion]

that last post is really funny to me because my laptop is still on finance and i built my gaming rig from half of a tax return i got for being in the "dirt poor with 60k of student debt lighting up their ass that theyre on repayment assistance for" wealth bracket. so on the outside if you equate Having Things with being Rich and Privileged then sure, i guess i understand why you'd call me rich and privileged for having both a 2-in-1 art laptop and a custom gaming rig. But if you look at the reasons why i have those things you can see why material objects are a REALLY BAD metric to judge someone's wealth and privilege. Because it's not like laptops and gaming rigs are prime real estate and boats.

Plus, I don't really appreciate the idea that if youre truly poor, you will never have anything whose sole purpose is non-essential. Because if you're acting like this about laptops, an extremely common possession owned by people in all wealth brackets across the board, how far is this going exactly? Buying books instead of going to the library means you're rich and privileged? Having a bed frame and a double mattress is privileged because you could just sleep on a twin mattress on the floor?

I'm thinking of those tags I saw last night that said growing up with a gaming console made you upper middle class

[residentshitcunt]

The funniest thing for me personally, coming out of all the James Somerton shit, is the camera choises that he made. I've seen a couple of his more recent videos, there is nothing there that requires spending more than a couple of grand max on a complete camera rig. If what you do is sit in front of a stationary background in controlled lighting and talk at the camera, you can make that work with fucking 8-bit footage (I wouldn't for the sake of flexibility, but it's very doable), keeping in mind it's gonna compress down to a garbage-fire bitrate for streaming. And you go from a Ursa Mini Pro G2 to an FX6? When you're supposedly running out of money? Everything about an FX6 is more money. You need FF glass, you probably want AF lenses, probably mirrorless ones too (no sigma 18-35 1.8 for full frame), and for what, slightly better low light performance (not an issue on a professional set, most cine cams shoot at low EI values) and AF, which again isn't an issue shooting with cine lenses because they don't have fucking AF motors. "I wAnT tO sHoOt AnAmOrPhIc" buy a flare filter and crop your footage and spend the money you saved hiring people to do what actually needs to be done to make a good film, which doesn't involve blowing your budget on camera gear.

[houndsofbalthazar]

I like high concept reality gameshows. Watching a new one called The Underdog: Josh Must Win, which is a bog standard voting popularity contest type reality show, but the twist here is that it's two games in one - the game the contestants are playing, and then there is a celebrity panel trying to manipulate the show from behind the scenes to ensure the "underdog" wins. If they can get the underdog voted to be the most popular at the end of the show without anyone suspecting that it's rigged, all the contestants win a share of prize money.

It's a fun idea, you get this very clear look at the sorts of massaging of challenges and framing to persuade players to vote one way that I imagine goes on behind the scenes of any reality gameshow to make it more interesting. The celebrity panel is the "real" game, but they are also subject to the same sorts of twists that regular reality shows are, and I feel like the show is trying to have its cake and eat it; it's offering us this backstage glimpse, saying that we all get that these things are massaged, wouldn't it be fun if you actually got to watch the people doing the manipulating and their decision process? And it's right, it's a great idea, but it's also being manipulated behind the scenes with some of the same techniques so that we can still have our tense dramatic reality gameshow and watch people without perfect knowledge, and it just feels a bit fake, you know?

I'm also not really sure that I buy into the idea of the eponymous Josh being an underdog. The entire panel seemed to really like him from just his introduction video, he seems quite sweet, and he's a professional wrestler. I spent the whole first episode saying that there's no need to manipulate things anymore because they obviously cast the most interesting and broadly likeable person to be their underdog! I was not totally correct in this assessment because he did lose the first vote, but I think he's an obvious pick for a long term winner.

Overall, I am enjoying it as an entertainment piece, and I like the meta nature of the game, even if it is cheapened a bit by the extra twists. As usual, Channel 4 is at the top of the game when it comes to reality gameshows pushing the format.

[petty-crush]

“Furiosa: a mad max saga”

-Wonderful deep dive into squalor, insanity and violence. The future medieval grimness of this universe is so strangely addicting.

-Whereas “Fury Road” covered three days in the life of Mad Max, this film notes 15 years of Furiosa’s journey.

+It is a very different headspace.

-the most surprising element was that, in this tale of a side story character(albeit a co lead one) the most delightful sections involved..brand new side characters!

-Furiosa’s mother, aptly played by Charlee Fraser is a real bike riding, sharp shooting, rooting tooting she wolf. She gets the film off like a cannon ball.

-But the glowing star is Tom Burke, who absolutely steals every scene he is in as Praetorian Jack. Just wow.

+his hair lip also reminded me of a super nova young Stacey Keach

-I could watch him and Furiosa tag team all day. Best bruiser buddies duo in a long time.

-The sequence where Furiosa first stowaways the war rig and helps Jack defend it from marauders is the best part of the film.

-in addition to revisiting this desolate world, the action is a prime reason to see this picture. Director George Miller always has really different ways of framing movement so I’m clawing my armrest and wincing at the impact.

-I think the score for this is a bit better than “Fury Road”. It has more of its own identity.

-I’m really back and forth on Chris Hemsworth performance. At times I think he brings in the weakest presence. But mostly is pretty solid

-it’s hard to describe, but this characterization feels a bit too Monty Python fey to really center the film. I get he’s a dweeb who turns sadistic, but it just feels like it doesn’t have enough power.

-I adore the scene where Immortan Joe sizes him up, wondering if the captive child Furiosa is really his daughter. His cold bartering of her is really quite intoxicating.

-Anyone else think that one brown haired war boy looks a bit too much like that live action butt-head from a certain comedy show? Oddly amusing

-I wonder if knowing how Furiosa got from the green place to Joe’s army is all that necessary. It way over delivers, so it has no fault with me.

-Really the only thing I didn’t like was clips from “Fury Road” over the end credits. It just fell flat for me. Especially using the “coming at ya!” steering wheel shot. No buys.

-Ana Taylor Joy is wonderful in the scenes she shows up in.

-I like how the chapter breaks imply a much bigger world, of which we see only fragments.

-Oh man, the tree comeuppance is truly wonderful.

-Glad to be back, glad to get high on the fumes again.

[featureenvyproductions]

my thoughts on how to do Basically Kinda cel animation but cheap as fuck. strap in this is a long post and there are many swears PART 1

Really long intro

ok so I was animating my thing the other month right, and I was going to infodump on how I do cel animation without the right training from the comfort of my chaotic mess of an office. But I got into it and I was like "my god, I'm going to have surgery in a few months and my gofundme has accumulated dust, I can't be buying fucking $1/each cels and more paint". that got me thinking like....MOST people are probably like "wow I'm broke as shit I can't do this" even if they want to, but I think you can, so I took a couple weekends to hurl myself face first into seeing if I could do this - the version for if you're broke as fuck or don't want to spend money.

Obviously if you want something good quality AND you don't want to make this a struggle, splurge on good supplies like real cels and paint if you have the money. But if you don't or you just want to fuck around, this info dump is for you.

Disclaimer: I'm not a professional (if you can't already tell lol 👀👀👀) and I have no idea if this is what cal arts would approve of or whatever the shit but to be brutally honest, I also don't give a fuck, they're too busy fulfilling their role as the gatekeepers of the human-expression-to-corporate-tax-write-off pipeline to watch your heartfelt if low res artistic expression so come join me in this pit and let's just do whatever the fuck we want with whatever we got.

My goal is to give you ideas so you too can do the fucking thing. It's not gonna be Snow White. It's not gonna even be Steamboat Willie. That's fine. The point is to do the thing anyway and make some shit you wouldn't have tried otherwise. (And share it with me here on the internet bc I'm bored and depressed. If you feel like it) because sure you can go and pull up your 2d animation software and rig some shit up and blow anything I can do by hand out of the water in about 3 min flat but THATS NOT THE POINT IS IT THE POINT IS THAT YOU TOO WANT TO EXPERIENCE ART AS SUFFERING AND MAYBE ALSO UNDERSTAND THAT SOFTWARE DOESNT MAKE ART FORMS OBSOLETE.

Anyway let me just stow this soap box under the counter real quick.

There.

K So I'm gonna go through how I tackled this challenge - cheap ass cel animation - starting with prep, then the drawing steps, then getting the shit into some form where you can put all the frames together.

Prerequisite suggestion

This ramble assumes that you at least vaguely understand how drawing works and understand the basic idea of how animation works. How to animate overall - like the principals of animation- is a wee bit outside the scope of this post, in no small part because I know there are a BILLION people out there who understand those principles and execute them better than I do. I think I followed some of Aaron Blaise's videos to learn, but there are also other tutorials on YouTube. I also just learned from watching pencil tests and filming references of my long suffering friend in which i gave her instructions like "ok NOW put your hands on your hips dramatically in the direction of that rock". But yeah like I said the principals of animation themselves are better off taught by someone who isn't me (and I'm honestly still practicing).

Alright that's enough intro. Let's start with setup

FINALLY THE INGREDIENTS LIST

Most of the stuff in this ?tutorial? is really probably honestly laying around your house right now, especially if you live with any 50+ people who have ever had an office job. But I will talk about costs anyway in case you're starting from scratch. I found pretty much all of the stuff at Dollar Tree, and yeah, it's not an ideal place to go, but also this is a tutorial for if you're broke. And also unlike things that you have to repeatedly buy that cost you more per unit in the long run, most things you are using here are one time necessities, so you really are saving money. ....Now I'm in the US. If you're not in the US, I think there are also similar stores in other places....It'll be similar to something like if there's a shop that sells stuff for 1-2 euro or whatever. Things at dollar tree range from about 1-5 bucks, but I managed this with the $1.25 items (some were actually less than that but I lost track of my receipt).

You will need the following shit for part 1 of this vaguely educational series:

The smallest cheapest strand of fairy lights you can get. Mine were battery powered, doesn't really matter either way. If you can get white ones get white ones. (I could Not find white ones :/)*

Batteries if they need batteries *

An 8.5x11 drawing pad (at the dollar store I got the 64 pg one)

A translucent container with a flat bottom. I got a little 8x12 storage basket for this. You probably can't get anything big at the dollar store but try to get something with a bottom as close to the drawing pad size as possible (it's ok if it's a little smaller) *

Scissors (or a knife/craft knife you don't mind destroying. You may want safety goggles if you don't have them. These also exist in dollar tree)**

Clear tape**

Something small and tube like. Maybe plastic straws. I actually used flagpoles from those tiny flags, you know the ones (ok these in the picture are NOT from dollar tree and i will provide excuses later on in this document. You could also use straws i think)

Hole punch

Super glue (or the strongest adhesive you can otherwise get if this isn't available to you)**

pencils (I don't know why I didn't take a picture of them but you're on the gay art website I feel like you've probably seen a pencil in your life)

sharpie (you'll use it more later but you might as well get it now)

A pack of sheet protectors (you may or may not need more depending on how many frames you're doing but for now one will do but for this first part you only need one)

* this is part of an optional component but you WANT TO HAVE IT TRUST ME

**if you are REALLY not in the mood to buy these things and you don't need the tape/scissors for the above optional item, you can technically just go to FedEx and like make a cheap b/w self serve photocopy of something to avoid the employees yelling at you and then quickly go use their choppy thing and the tape and scissors they have laying around in the self serve area. They may have a hole punch too idk

And now FOR THE MAKING PART

First thing to make: substitute peg bar

Some things I'm doing here are optional, but the one that really isn't is the peg bar. That's the thing that keeps all your stuff lined up. Without this your frames are going to be moving all over the place and movements won't register the right way. It's got (if you couldn't guess) pegs on it. And these match up with the holes in your paper or cels.

This is a real peg bar

I think this is like 16-20 bucks if you buy it on Amazon, maybe a smidge cheaper if you go through someone else (I will discuss traditional animation supplies for when you're NOT broke as shit in another post). The problem is that this is for acme punched paper (notice how two of the holes are long). Yes it helps things register better, but we're going to be punching our own paper and a 700 dollar acme punch is NOT in our budget today.

There is a version of a peg bar you can get that fits normal hole punch holes. But this isn't the buy things the easy way tutorial, this is the broke as fuck tutorial. So we're going to be making this shit.

Steps to make the thing (I'm sorry about this list not being numbered apparently even when you fuck with the html directly you can't put images in a numbered list on this webbed site):

Ok first we need some cardboard or cardstock. Something sturdier than regular paper. OH GUESS WHAT WE HAVE THAT. If you don't have other stuff to use laying around, take all the backing cardstock off the drawing pad. Be careful to keep as much of the adhesive stuff left on the actual paper as possible.

We're going to cut that into strips. Keep them as straight as possible. They should be like 1/2-3/4 in wide.

(You may want to skip ahead in the steps a bit to see how we're using this so when we use tape in this step you can avoid putting it where the pegs go. You don't have to but things will stick better) Stack them and tape them together as tightly as possible. This will be the bar part of the bar.

Take one of your page protectors and place it on the bar and try to center the middle hole on the bar. Trace that hole onto the bar and pick two others to trace (pick circle ones that fit entirely onto the bar).

Now we make the pegs. You will use the flags for this (or straws, see flags and note in the Ingredients TM list) So I actually had these pride flags from Walmart (please remember we are trying to stay dirt fucking cheap here, I promise I don't usually go to Walmart at all.) Bc my dollar tree doesn't have them yet, HOWEVER I KNOW THEY WILL BECAUSE IVE GOTTEN THEM BEFORE so technically by the time I finish writing this you will be able to get them there most likely. Now the great thing about cheap flags is they're cheap. That means they use shitty hollow plastic tubes as poles. That's great for us because we are going to snip off the ends and use them as pegs. You want to measure up a 1/2 inch from the bottom and cut them. Do this on 3 SEPARATE flags, because you want at least one perfectly flat end for each (that's likely the factory end, so keep track of which end that is). You can also use plastic straws for this probably, or paper sticks for thick lolly pops. The idea is whatever you use needs to fit the page protector holes.

Take your super glue or other adhesive and put a little on the "pegs" and attach them (factory side down) to the bar where you marked the holes in step 4. (note that the pic shows that I taped both this and the thing you're making next to the leftover cardstock to keep it all together, which is an option but you don't have to if you like to suffer)

Let this dry while we work on the next part.

Second thing to make: "light box" (I use this term COMICALLY loosely. Optional but you will have an easier life if you have one)

This is the LED Light pad I use for animating. If you can afford like 30 bucks, just splurge and get one. It helps you cheat and see your previous pencil drawings under the current one so you can better draw the current frame. (And before you ask yes I know it looks like I dug it out of apocalypse aftermath rubble I will not be taking criticism at this time,,,,)

If you can't afford that, we're going to MacGyver together a little apparatus that works basically the same way. The "we have LED light box at home" if you will.

(I mean you can also just tape a peg bar to a window and go at it which is free but your arms are going to hurt drawing like that. You can also just get really good at page flipping while drawing. I am NOT good at that )

Steps to make the thing:

Remember how I made you get a plastic container with as flat of a bottom as possible? (It can be flat on the inside or outside bottom doesn't matter) We're going to mutilate that. Put on your safety glasses if you have them and you're scissor-cutting something that tends to crack rather than bend because the occasional plastic shard will fly off. Cut the sides off the container. It's probably easier with a knife but I was all about suffering. Try to get as much of the sides off as possible. It's ok to leave some of them if that's the side you'll have facing down. (For me my container had an annoying hard to cut rim on the bottom so I just decided to cut the sides off entirely and have that side down).

Take your fairy lights out and unwind them. If you have battery powered ones... Pry the cheap little battery compartment open (you can see there's a screw driver there so use one if you have it but this plastic is so cheap you'll probably be able to just bend the cover and pry it open and rotate it out of the way tbh) and stick the batteries in. We do this first to make sure the lights work before we waste time using them.

Cut a little notch in the side of your plastic piece where the wires can go.

Flip your plastic piece so that the side facing you is the side you want facing down the rest of the time when you're actually drawing on this thing.

Feed the wire from the battery box (or coming off the plug if no battery box) through the little notch , with the battery box OUTSIDE the plastic area, and tape the wire in place.

Now arrange the strand so you have as even as possible a distribution of lights all over the plastic, and tape the wires down to hold the arrangement in place.

Flip it back over and switch it on. Voila shitty light box. Now you can't put a lot of PRESSURE on this but it'll do the job. You can see like 1-2 previous images through it too believe it or not. And this is with these horrible yellow lights I found, if you have brighter ones it should be more effective. (Now switch it off so you don't eat battery life)

Now let's get the paper ready

Now that the first part of your setup is done you need shit to do your pencil tests/preliminary animation on. (The thing you'll eventually trace onto the cel)

Take the paper you removed the backing from. We're going to mark and punch it. We'll be punching from the ADHESIVE/PERFORATED SIDE. This is important because it will help keep the pages and therefore holes aligned when we take the hole punch after it.

Here's how you go about it for the best result in my humble opinion:

If you made your peg bar as above, you've already removed the cardstock cover of your cheap drawing pad so go to step 2. If you haven't, then remove the cardstock cover/backing from your pad now. Try to keep the adhesive intact as much as you possibly can (basically you want to keep the pages from slipping when you eventually punch them so they need to stay in a neat little stack. If you're having trouble or you're having to use a different type of paper such as ink jet paper, you can probably also achieve this with binder clips in a pinch- is that what they're called? the black things? look like 90s butterfly hair things if you squint? Just make sure the paper is stacked evenly and the stack is held firmly together. )

Still trying to keep the adhesive holding the stack together as much as possible, carefully separate the paper into 2 or 3 smaller stacks. (ignore the hole markings in this picture I took it after I realized I needed to demonstrate this step)

Take one stack and put one of the sheet protectors over it, lining the side with the holes up so that that edge is along the perforation in the drawing paper (if you're using a different type of paper than the dollar store pad, line the edge of the sheet protector up with the edge of the paper, but move it about 1/8th to 1/4th inch away from the edge. basically you don't want the holes right on the edge of the paper). Trace the holes onto the paper with a pen or pencil. (Note: if you're using a manufactured peg bar, use that to determine the hole placement instead of a sheet protector - it'll be easier to modify the holes in sheet protectors if necessary later).

Carefully, keeping the stack of paper all lined up and together, punch each of your three holes with the hole punch. (The reason you made stacks is that do you really want to do this with each individual page? I didn't think so)

Ok Let's Try It Out!!

Alright here's a shot of me using this to draw some frames from my animation about some creepy deer (coming soon to a feature envy productions official tumblr near you). You take some paper and carefully place it on the pegs, sketch a key frame, and then place another sheet over that on the pegs, switch on the "light box" and sketch the next key frame, referencing the first one. (Oh and of course make sure you're drawing on the smooth side - not the side you taped the lights to). Like I said, this is definitely like. If you have no other options you might as well try it - You generally can see through about 3 sheets of paper in a dark room. At least the key areas. So you should be able to in between with this setup as well. Not great but hey! If you're on a strict budget, you can still do this, and it beats buying a bunch of expensive shit on Amazon. I'm pretty confident that most people have almost all of these items laying around their house like I said, but let's break it down - If you're like me and you animate at 24 fps but on 3s, that's an average of 8 frames per second. So for each pad of dollar store paper, you're getting about 8 seconds of animation (maybe more, maybe less). You can factor that in when deciding how many drawing pads to purchase (keep in mind if your backgrounds are very simple, you may be able to use the additional cardstock for this purpose as well instead of using up sheets of paper).

Stay tuned because we're not done yet!

Part 2 will be Inking and painting. (Note: on the day I'm writing this I have a placeholder post there, but if it's still a placeholder when you look, please keep checking, I will add the second part, I just didn't want someone to have to HUNT for it if you're looking at this from like a year from now) Yes ink and paint. You didn't think I was getting you all excited for a vine's worth of pencil tests were you? no we're doing the whole expensive process from pencils to final product. And I'm going to show you the cheapest way I could figure out.

[chaifootsteps]

People loved the HH pilot because of the frame hand drawn smooth animation.... The whole POINT was that Viv was a "revolutionary" in animation supposedly, who was making a show with beautiful hand drawn animation. The visuals being amazing was the point. That's what people bought into. An original raunchy show with a deep story with HAND drawn animation. Not a half rig, choppy sloppy mess (not the animators' fault) with a completely different premise than what was shown.

Of course people are mad. If they wanted another rig cartoon for adults with a basic ass premise, they can just go onto any streaming service and dig through the current pile. HH was supposedly a revolution and a new breakthrough. Something different and better.

Revolutionary my ass.

She took us all for a ride, but that's okay. While her "buy my way into Broadway" scheme is crashing and burning, Lackadaisy will happily step in to fill the niche.

[adelaidedrubman]

one clown fifteen lines

Rules: Share 15 or fewer lines of dialogue from an OC, ideally lines that capture the character/personality/vibe of the OC. Bonus points for just using the dialogue without other details about the scene, but you're free to include those as well!

i was tagged by dears @simplegenius042 @direwombat @gwynbleidd @sofrosine @nightbloodbix @corvosattano @voidika @quickhacked to post a lil bit of oc dialogue samples! outgoing tags below cut + like here to opt in:3

1. “Yeah, ya know, they’re actually teachin’ all kindsa folk how to read an’ write these days,” she answered his second question with a sarcastic exaggeration of the natural twangs of her accent, ignoring his first entirely. “They ain’t even makin’ you go all the way to law school for it no more.”

2. “Piss off, Earl,” she spat, elbowing him out of the way. “I mean, honest to god fuckin’ piss off, alright?”

3. “Opossums are fuckin’ marsupials, Mary May!”

4. “I would fuckin’ carve out your eyes and throw them in the lake first, so that the only thing you’d ever see of me again is my fishing hook when I came back here to catch whatever trout had the bad luck of eating you.” 

5. “Familiar enough to know that if you’re calling me a ‘Delilah’ or something that’s some misogynistic bull —”

6. “Probably do a little publicity tour, once it all makes news. A few TV specials, tell-all nightly news interviews, a true crime podcast here and there. I bet I could make a good buck writing some kinda fucking memoir or something about this shit. Everyone would eat it up, you know, out of guilt, ‘cause —” she paused, raising her pitch a bit in nasally mocking, “‘cause we should really be focusing on the victims, not making the perpetrators famous,” she chimed, followed by a dismissive wave of her hand at the thought. “But you know, they’d still all be reading it to see what I said about you of course. But no skin off my ass, as long as they buy it. Figure I could spend… two, maybe three months as America’s sweetheart, then slip back into anonymity. Live off the royalties. The occasional consulting fee, anytime someone decides to make a movie about you and your fuckin’ cult.” 

7. “Head wasn’t that good,” she replied flatly. 

8. “Yeah, pretty sure they make a pill these days for when a gal realizes she’s made that kinda mistake,” she retorted with an exaggerated batting of her eyelashes as she pulled the flask from his hand. “And if you’re the baby daddy, she really would be wising up to take it.” 

9. “Oh, I’m back, baby.” She forced the smile to fall from her face, lips and brow tensing with sudden gravity. “And I’ve rigged this whole fucking mountain with explosives set to go off any second now. This thing is gonna blow sky fuckin’ high, and you and I are going to blow up with it. ’Cause I —” she feigned a gasp, brought her wrist to her brow as she threw her head back in a pantomime of being on the verge of fainting. “I can’t deny it any longer — I’m in love with you, and I want us to fucking be together forever in the fiery abyss of death.” 

10. “Tell your big bwother to make his stump speeches even scawrier next time — I’m sure it’ll make the canon fodder he sends out harder to kill, if he gravels his voice a bit more.”

11. She snorted. “You worried I’m not playing with a full set or something?”

12. “I jest,” she hissed, knocking his hand away. “You haven’t fuckin’ gotten that by now? It was a fucking joke.” 

13. “C’mon, that the fucking best miss church camp coachella can do to scare me?”

14. “For the fuckin’ record, I’m prolonging the void of nothingness when my organs stop functioning and I cease to exist in conscious form, not eternal damnation,” she finally spat. 

15. “It’s gonna be hilarious, actually,” she replied, pushing herself off from the door frame with a parting wave. “Tell your friends!” 

tagging: @cassietrn @shallow-gravy @derelictheretic @socially-awkward-skeleton @lordundying @florbelles @henbased @belorage @8bitpizzacoupons @firstaidspray @theresaruggedroad @afarcryfrommymain @clicheantagonist @v0idbuggy @orionlancasterr @strafethesesinners @deputyash @confidentandgood @strangefable @stacispratt @miyabilicious @omen-speaker @nowandthane @hctknives @wrathfulrook @fourlittleseedlings @galaxycunt @josephslittledeputy @just-another-wasteland-merc @voidika @captastra @blissfulalchemist @shellibisshe @thedeadthree and anyone who would like to share!

[isleofdarkness]

Willy Wonka is the candy salesman (played by the same guy in the play) because he wanted to see his candy make children happy. It was the best part of his job, but he couldn't do it as Willy Wonka because it could be a security issue, so he made up an alternate identity and opened a little candy store and cart so that he could see the children. That was how he met young Charlie.

Charlie never purchased candy and it wasn't hard to see why- the state of the boy's clothes and shoes, his thin frame, his tired eyes, all made it obvious that the boy was poor. But Charlie would always come by, passing on his way to school and slowing, savoring the smell of the chocolate. When Willy started conversation, Charlie was always so sweet and polite, such an incredible child, and Willy started finding ways to help him- maybe he would "find change on the sidewalk" and slip Charlie a few dimes or even a quarter, maybe he would save some packaging for Charlie to put in his shoes to keep the water from getting in through the holes, maybe he had plenty of scarves and gloves from a knitting hobby and he just happened to notice Charlie out with no coat in the cold, maybe he could afford to give Charlie a bit of free candy when the poor boy seemed particularly down. He wanted to help the boy, but he couldn't blow his cover.

Unknown to the world, Wonka only sent out four tickets. He knew the contest would likely be rigged and that rich kids would be the most likely to get them, so he kept one at his candy store in a small neighborhood, waiting for the right child to give it to.

He knew it would probably be Charlie, but he didn't want to make an assumption based on bias and a bad choice. But then, on one freezing day, Charlie offered to help him on his way to school. The boy had no coat, but he still offered to stay out longer to help Wonka, who was struggling to get his cart back to the store in all the snow. Wonka dropped a silver dollar in the snow, thinking Charlie would pocket it to help his struggling family. But Charlie didn't. He pointed out the coin and tried to give it to Wonka, thinking he had dropped it. Wonka denied it, wanting the boy to have it.

Then, Charlie did something he didn't expect. His family was demoralized, starving with his father out of a job, so Charlie decided to use the silver dollar to buy a candy bar for them to enjoy. He wanted one everyone would be able to enjoy, so Wonka recommended a new flavor that mixed two of the popular flavors, the two flavors Charlie's family members lived. He pulled out the bar, the one he knew had the final golden ticket, and handed it to Charlie, telling him to taste it to make sure he liked it. That was how Charlie found his ticket.

Wonka is on the Isle for dissidence, by the way. He's also a child of Delight and he's part fae.

[skylermadness]

Ocular Override (Montgomery Gator TF)

(Original Date of Upload: April 1, 2024)

Just a heads up, all the TFs I upload this week will be featuring my boyfriend!

Original Description:

Story commission. This was a rather fun one to write! I've been wanting to do a Monty TF for a long while now so I'm really glad I was given the chance to actually do so. Admittedly I still feel like I'm still not the best at robot TFs due to how complicated they tend to be, but I think I did relatively well here. Especially since it plays with some concepts that I typically don't usually do in my writing. Plus writing out that reality shunt felt really satisfying. Makes me want to do more mirror shattering in TFs! Now my question is does this count as a sequel to my Glamrock Freddy TF from a few years ago...

   One of the worst parts of having to use glasses has to be when you have to obtain a new pair for one reason or another. If you just had your prescription changed you have to undergo multiple processes to get a different set of glasses alongside the week of waiting for your sight to adjust. On the other hand if your current pair were to break and you had no backups you would have to jury rig some kind of temporary fix as you await a new pair to arrive. And while both of these events do not happen very often for glasses users, when they do have to happen it always feels like the most annoying series of weeks in one’s life.

   Recently Arti had been experiencing the broken glasses part of the two examples. The initial incident had only happened a few weeks back where one of the temples got snapped from its hinge after the glasses slipped off the back of their head and into the path of their wheeled desk chair. That had luckily been the only major damage it had sustained, but it meant they had to order a new pair of glasses to replace the broken ones. They also had to tape the temple back on as a temporary fix which had its own selection of issues such as the temple breaking off at the slightest movement or their hair sticking onto the tape’s glue.

   That was only the endeavor they had been experiencing throughout the past few weeks. The relief they had felt when they got the arrival date for the replacement glasses was only surpassed by the relief they experienced when they heard the doorbell of their home ring to signal the parcel had arrived. Finally would they be free from the mild inconvenience of a broken sight aid!

   Then Arti had opened the relatively small box, the relief they had experienced being squashed by pure confusion. “What the hell…?”

   They brought out and held up the single object within the box to their face. It was a pair of glasses, but it was not the kind you'd wear to deal with your myopic eyesight. Instead of being rounded rectangles like glasses usually possess, the frames were shaped like five-pointed stars. The lenses lacked perfect clarity and were instead tinted a deep purple. Judging by the feel of the temples in their hand the entirety of the framing also seemed to be composed of plastic. In general these glasses felt like some kind of pair of decorative shades or something and were far from what Arti had ordered.

   “Took an eternity to even order these things too,” Arti commented in mild frustration. Now they'd have to go through the process of ordering another replacement and send this back. Yet another series of inconveniences to add to the heightening pile it seems.

   They continued to stare at the oddly-shaped sunglasses for another few seconds. While they were displeased with this result, Arti still felt like it would be a waste not to try them at least once. The object looked rather stupid, yes, but it's not like they'd ever go out of their way to buy something like this of their own volition. So why not wear them for a short bit and see just how dumb it would look?

   With that in mind Arti headed to the nearest place in their house with a mirror. Predictably this was going to be within the bathroom. Once in front of a spot where they could look at themselves properly, Arti slipped off their shoddily taped glasses and replaced them with the star-framed ones. Expectedly the shaded spectacles looked ridiculous on the young enby’s face.

   There was something amusing about it at the very least. Arti couldn't help but smile slightly at the sight. Although the lenses were far from being up to their prescription and even with these on, things looked blurry. It made for a good five seconds of silliness though.

   “Hm, I wonder what Mike would say if I sent him a picture of me with these on…”

   As they mused to themselves Arti had been left oblivious to one thing thanks to the remaining blurriness. That was the appearance of a pair of sparks of red-colored electricity jaggedly moving themselves along both the temples of their new eyewear. The two crimson bolts spiraled around the extensions until it reached the glasses’ hinge, in which they would promptly zap into the sides of Arti’s head and give them a sudden shock.

   “Crap-” Arti stepped back a bit, raising up a hand and placing it onto the side of their head. Another second then passed before they started feeling their eyes twitch slightly. “The fuck’s going on with my…”

   Their statement trails off as they take notice of something impossible happening to their vision. It seemed to actually be improving at a slow and steady rate. The blurriness of their surroundings just casually being lost as everything was slowly coming into proper focus!

   Arti began to stammer in astonishment. “What the- why- how??”

   Of course with how the glasses were tinted Arti hadn't noticed the irises of their eyes was shifting away from their usual indigo and warming to a bright red. What they did end up noticing was a weird tingly feeling overtaking their body. This was followed by what seemed like small sparks of red emanating from their form and through their clothing. They looked down at their body to inspect all of these events going on, but were almost instantly greeted by a very freaky change of sort that had begun to happen to their hand.

   Purple. A shade of purple had crept onto the back of it. Even worse was that purple hue was spreading across their skin, overtaking the once pale tone with ease. A glance at their other hand seemed to prove it was mirroring this color change as well. After a few more seconds however Arti realized something else was happening alongside the color changes as well. Wherever the purple spread it looked as if the appearance of their skin smoothed out in a way. Like the actual fleshy appearance of it was lost, organicness replaced with a sleek look of artificial creation. And with how their hand was splayed they could even watch as the muscles that arise on the back of the hands seemed to completely and utterly lose visibility. What remained was perfect and purple-colored smoothness.

   Arti felt as if they couldn't just stare and decided to actually feel the discolored segment of their hand, the enby taking note of how stiff their fingers had seemed to begin feeling as they did so. But the moment the fingers of one hand touched the dorsal area of the other they could instantly tell just what their skin had become.

   “Plastic!?”

   A plastic-like substance at least. Sleek texture with a hard feeling to it. That didn't even seem to be the only major loss of organicness either. The longer Arti stared at each hand, the more changes that ensued. The stiffness in their hands was proven to be a byproduct of the transformation as they bore witness to their fingers segmenting. Skin-turned-plastic splitting around itself to reveal some kind of metallic ball-shaped joint. First was where the fingers met the hand itself, and the second was at the joint halfway through the fingers. Furthermore once they split at that joint it seemed like the discoloration changed instantly. Instead of purple their shifting skin tinted into a plain green color. Even their fingernails weren't left unscathed as they grew longer and thicker, alongside sharpening. They had even darkened, each of their fingers now being tipped with a deep black claw.

   The last major change that entered their hands was one of size. By the time their palms began to harden, the overall size of each hand was increasing in width, length, and thickness. Larger and larger, becoming such a size that they were already looking pretty intimidating. This was further exacerbated by the fact that their fingers were plumping up as well. Becoming increasingly thicker alongside the surprising change of two fingers on each hand merging together and leaving Arti with four fingers per hand. Inorganic, thick, clawed, powerful. Just staring at their hands gave them a mixed feeling of astonishment and fear.

   Then the changes began to move across their wrists and beneath the sleeves of their jacket. Another split entered their wrist to properly divide their hands and forearms, which was then followed by the flesh of their arms hardening into green plastic. As this occurred the region expanded in diameter and circumference, bulking up in size to fit the new proportions of their hands. This had caused the sleeves of their jacket to begin filling out a bit, folds smoothing out as their arms thickened up. Both forearms also seemed to garner one additional change in their lower halves. A thick, black stripe formed an inch or two above their wrist. Where the stripe formed the plastic rose in elevation while dull, silver-colored spikes formed to give this addition the appearance of a spiked bracelet.

   Their upper arms wouldn't be left unscathed. Another divide split their forearm region from their upper arm, meanwhile the joint that made up their elbow morphed into a large green metal sphere. The same tone of green etched into the skin of their upper arm as the plastic shifting progressed. Smoothness only continued to overtake their limbs, enhancing the artificial feel that was etching into their body. It would be more apt to call the plastic forming around them some kind of chassis as it seemed their muscles and bones weren't exempt from this loss of organic feel. Biceps and triceps morphing into thick wiring, bones becoming a series of metal rods, all of which supposed a bulky plating that was thicker than their limbs had normally been. There even seemed to be rectangular incisions forming within the sides of their upper arm plating which seemed to be some kind of portion of the chassis that could be removed.

   The sight of their sleeves filling up had prompted Arti to try and roll one up. It was proving difficult though as their limbs had already grown enough in size to make their jacket begin to feel smaller. Although they quickly became distracted by what seemed to be growths arising on their shoulders and tagging the apex of their sleeves even more. 

   By the time the creeping plastic segmented their shoulders and formed yet another metallic sphere for a joint, the green seemed to shift back to purple on the spot where the shoulder met the torso. This change in color came with a rise in their chassis that extended outwards from each end. The way this formation seemed to be shaped already gave it the appearance that Arti was gaining a pair of shoulder pads of all things. And considering the size of them it didn't take long for them to bust through their sleeves and reveal themselves.

   The way the bathroom light shined over the purple plastic only continued to make Arti feel weirded out. “What the fuck is going on with me!?”

   A slight groan then escaped Arti’s throat as they felt a series of compressions and aches surge across and within their torso. Hidden beneath their undershirt was more of that wave of green plastic washing over their front and back. At the furthest sides of their body it maintained a deep green coloration. However as it converged closer onto their chest the shade of green took on a lighter shade. At the same time it seemed like their chest was expanding in a way, growing forwards and filling their shirt out more than it had prior. But it didn't seem to be expanding with muscle of any kind. Seeing as the more the green overtook their body the smoother their form became, and the more they felt their internals shift and churn thanks to the mechanizing of their form. Beneath the casing was just more and more wiring replacing their muscles while their skeleton continuously became metallic.

   The lower half of Arti’s body wasn't exempt from these changes either. While the upper half seemed to be one concise segment of chassis, the moment the changes reached a two-thirds point of their body a dividing seam formed between their chest and abdomen. Greens would easily jump from their upper torso to their lower, but as plastic overtook their flesh it became increasingly evident that their abdominal region was garnering a certain hollowness to it that it didn't have prior. As if their vestigials had just been disappearing or melding into their machinery.

   Arti could only step back a bit, placing a robotic hand onto the sink as they clutched their abdomen. It didn't hurt, none of this had necessarily hurt. It had only really felt like a constant barrage of pressures and aches but nothing that was outright painful. Such a thing added a certain level of surrealness to the young enby’s transformation.

   “D-damn it-” Arti grunted out. They still were having trouble grasping just what was going on. How could a pair of glasses just cause something like this to happen to their body!? Were they becoming some kind of cyborg, or were they just transforming fully into a robot?? Neither felt like the most promising of outcomes!

   They could still feel their form getting larger. As if by the time their spine started to shift they were forced to get taller. Five foot nine, ten, eleven. All the while their body seemed to get wider and larger as if to fit a newly established change in proportions. As if despite the fact they didn't seem to be becoming something organic they were still getting some kind of body type that would replicate a build that could be defined as broad, muscular even. An obvious difference from their previously skinny, twinkish body.

   It had also meant that their shirt would finally begin tearing from the strain being put onto it. Horizontal rips forming across the deep indigo fabric to reveal the bright green of their plastic underbelly. They couldn't tell if they wanted to be fascinated or disturbed. It didn't help that they could also begin to see what seemed to be seams forming around their neck as well to signal that it too was beginning to be consumed by the roboticizing.

   That in itself caused a growl to escape their throat. A primal sound that was layered in a mechanical undertone. “N-need to reverse this-” they stated, eyes twitching a few times as they spoke. Their voice seemed to be getting equally as primal, alongside getting deeper as well it seemed. Their mind was even picking up a strange hint of natural aggression entering their vocal tone as well. They tried to ignore that for now though, they had to focus on undoing all of this. And seeing as the glasses had to be the cause of this…

   Arti started lifting up a hand until it was close enough to one of the glasses’ temples. But just seconds before they could try and rip the accessory off their face their body was forced to endure another mounting in pressure, this time in their rear.

   The lower half of their body had already been in the process of transforming by this time. It started with a large black colored band circling their waist, raising a bit from their plastifying skin while gaining dull silver spikes and a silver rectangle that emulated a belt buckle. Beneath this makeshift belt the greens started to layer the area under their waist and shift into a pattern of light and dark shades that emulated the appearance of scale-textured pants. The same smoothness that overtook their body consumed this region as well by smoothing out their groin and rear in quick succession. But none of this was the cause of the spontaneous pressure grown, that came with formation of some kind of bump in the rear portion of their waist chassis. The pressure continuously mounted as the growing bump strained against the back of their pants, just trying it's best to escape the denim confines. A good few seconds passed, Arti uncomfortably growling all the while, before the loud sound of something bursting out of their pants echoed through the bathroom walls followed by an equally as loud sound of plastic hitting the hard-tiled ground.

   Looking behind them, Arti was greeted by a tail. The appendage seemed to be divided into five cylinders split with seams that revealed spherical joints. Each cylinder was green in coloration and adorned with spikes atop them. It was obvious that this tail was some kind of reptilian one more than anything else.

   “H-how!?” was the only response they could formulate by this point. Everything was just getting weirder by the second and they couldn't keep track of it all anymore. Their attention would also quickly be diverted again by the sound of the buckle of the belt they were wearing snapping alongside the button of their jeans breaking off. Their waist had finally seemed to widen enough to force them to their limits, and they could practically feel the aches in their legs as the segmenting and changes finally reached the limbs.

   The transformation of their legs was effectively the same as it had been in their arms. Diameter steadily increasing as the now scale-like painting adorned the plastic chassis of their upper legs. All the while their quad and hamstrings muscles were yet again shifted into wiring that coiled around their lengthening and metal-shifting leg bones. Their knees would be reduced to another ball joint as the upper region was divided from the leg’s crus, which had also been in the process of being transformed. Their pants steadily filled up more as their legs bulked up in size and increased in circumference. And while they didn't rip apart, the lengthier size of the limbs caused their legwear to ride up the lower half of their legs a bit.

   The most drastic change came with their feet. The color changes yet again shifted from green to purple. The size of both feet steadily increased, this thickening quickly becoming tangible beneath their shoes as various portions of each foot indented into the footwear. The sides and top of each shoe bloating while the toecap seemed to practically swell in size from the way their toes pressed into it. Even more bizarre was as the bumps representing each toe grew more prevalent it seemed like the amount of them lowered. First it was five, then four, then three massive bumps. Then a few more seconds passed and in one quick instance their shoes just exploded. Clothy shrapnel flew through the air as their much larger and thicker feet were released from the confines of footwear. And larger didn't seem to be an understatement either as it seemed each foot practically doubled in size and thickness from this transformation. The final adornment they would get was the attainment of black claws that promptly unsheathed out of each toe.

   Heavy steps sounded as Arti continuously readjusted themselves. They would guess they were a little over six feet now and they were not used to it. Then again it's impossible to get used to any of this.

   Another growl escaped through increasingly mechanizing throat. They could feel the internals of their neck tingle and itch, throat moreso as they felt constant pins and needles in their vocal cords. No doubt it was becoming some kind of voice box. 

   “I need to stop getting distracted!” Arti frustratedly said as they slammed their fist into the sink. 

   Their voice had basically stopped its fluctuation by now. It was fully deep, fully mechanical. Its tone was overtaken with vibes of combativeness and arrogance that seemed to straight up be programmed into it by now. That had to be a sign of some kind of indicator of what was to come. They were already eighty percent transformed at this point. They had constantly just been watching their transformation and not doing the one thing they knew could probably do to undo it. And who knows what'll happen once their whole body was transformed. They could practically feel their face begin to pressurize now…

   Now with some sense of resolve Arti lifted up a hand again and grasped onto the glasses. Without any hesitation they yanked them off their face with such an amount of force that you would assume the glasses could have been glued to their face! But as they brought the glasses downwards and away from their face they were given no clear indicator that the transformation stopped. They were just granted with the piercing crimson gaze of their improved eyes in the mirror’s reflection.

   That and the still-mounting pressure in their skull.

   “Damn it…”

   The changes to their skull then properly kicked in. Plastic began to crawl from their neck and onto their head while their face started pushing forward. The way their face was morphing was instantly noticeable as them growing a muzzle with just how it was elongating outwards. This was further noticeable with the way their nose was meshing into the upper portion of the muzzle, the nostrils flaring and enlarged as they poked out the muzzle’s apex while the cartilage-turning-plastic practically reshaped to take on a more animalistic appearance that would fit Arti’s new facial shape. It also seemed the further forward the muzzle pushed the more its shape became noticeable reptilian. Almost boxy upper jaw and a more triangular lower jaw, both divided from each other by a seam. Their lower jaw had also taken on a lighter shade of green while the upper half and rest of their face took on the darker shade.

   The muzzle they were growing wasn't the only portion of their face that was shifting into being more animalistic. By the way their head was stretching to the size and reshaping it seemed the transformation was hellbent on making their entire skull adopt this practically gator-like appearance. They could even feel their teeth change within their mouth, each and every one becoming staggeringly sharper than they had ever been while each tooth started varying in length to the point the inside of their mouth just looked asymmetrical. It also felt like their tongue had dried as it practically fused into the plastic of their lower jaw as well.

   What was one of the more overt changes is what happened to their hair. Typically long and fluffy-textured, their hair seemed to be rapidly pulling into their head as the inorganicness crept across their scalp. Deep indigo follicles shrinking away into pure nothingness, easily replaced by the sleek green smoothness of their plastic casing. Although as the waves of plastic began to converge closer to the middle of their scalp something different happened to their hair. Instead of disappearing it ended up shorting upwards, practically restyling away from its lengthy and floofed appearance to something much different. Follicles thickened, merged as organic cells reshifted into plastic at an atomic level, as the color of their hair brightened to red. All the while the style of what remained of their hair ended up organizing itself to a perfectly, practically geometrically cut mohawk that had the exact same plasticky texture as the rest of their entire body.

   At the same time as their hair changes, Arti was left to watch what remained of their human facial attributes disappear. Their ears shrunk away into nothingness with holes shut by the plastic. Eyebrow hair melted into black plastic that would serve as their new eyebrows. As their eyelids got consumed the color of them had shifted to purple instead. All while it seemed their eyes just slightly sunk into their skull as if they weren't apart of the casing that made up their head. Opening their jaw would prove that something was going on deep within their head. As if their actual skull had been reduced to an extension of some kind of endoskeleton that was hard to see.

   Would that mean their brain had been mashed into circuitry? Their consciousness now being streams of data and strings and code?

   “I'm a… robot now…” Arti said. Were they stunned? Were they defeated? They weren't sure what to do about this. How to handle it. All they wanted was a new pair of glasses, damn it!

   Right, the glasses. Arti had still been holding them in their hand. The very object that started their transformation. All they could do was just unhand them and let them drop to the ground. 

   At the very least it seemed Arti’s vision had improved. Perfectly clear, they had thought. Although for some reason the world around them just felt wobbly. Like the walls and ground were beginning to melt and swirl. They weren't sure if that was actually happening or if their newly mechanical vision just had some weird additions to it.

   They were sure of one thing though. They were confused, and they were pissed.

   Looking at their reflection in the mirror their eyelids dropped a bit to morph their expression into one of frustration. Arti then lifted up a fist and proclaimed, “God fucking damn it!” before ramming the fist into the glass of the mirror to shatter it. The sound of glass breaking echoes off the walls of the room. It echoes through the walls. Because as the mirror shattered, the reality around Arti does as well.

   They were quick to notice the room beginning to break, but all they could do was watch in pure confusion. “W-what the-”

   The world then broke. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, it all broke apart into glass-like shards and fell away. Even what remained of the clothing Arti had worn was seemingly burning away into reality-warped shards. The ground beneath Arti rapidly destabilized because of this, the ground opening up into an endless void. They only had a few seconds to register what was going on before everything fell into the void, them alongside with it.

   “GRRAAAGHHHHH!!!!!”

   For about fifteen agonizing seconds Arti was left to fall down into darkness. Fear strongly gripped in their circuitry as they truly didn't know what was happening. A subjection to purgatory, a condemnation to Hell, something they couldn't truly register. At least that was how it was for that quarter minute. Everything abruptly halted once their back slammed onto the cold hard ground of a room that practically materialized around them in an instant.

   “SHIT-”

   A beep promptly went off in their head, followed by an automated message. “Swearing is not permitted on Fazbear Entertainment premises.”

   Arti blinked a few times before letting out a groan. “Wha…? The hell do you mean Fazbear Entertainment…”

   Another beep followed by the same automated message. What's worst is they could tell it's coming from inside their mind. They didn't want to grasp the implications of that right now though. Instead they started to sit up and take a look around. 

   It didn't take long for them to notice that the room they were in felt massive. Metallic shelves with various boxes seemed to line the area they had fallen into. Considering the close proximity they were to the ground they could also tell that the place was pretty dusty as well. If they were to hazard a guess they believe they're in some kind of storage room. That did not make this situation any less purplexing…

   Another beep played in their mind followed by the automated voice. “Our sensors have detected that animatronic 5 [Montgomery Gator] is currently in Storage Room B…”

  An eyelid raised. “Montgomery Gator?? I-I’m not-”

   The void just ignored Arti and continued. “Please be aware that we are in operating hours. Prolonged periods of time outside of your designated pathing may result in your programming being deemed faulty. If this is to occur-”

   “I'm not Montgomery Gator! I'm-”

   “-you will be reprogrammed or scrapped. Please return to your designated pathing in [10 minutes]. Thank you.”

   Faulty programming? Reprogramming?! Arti let out a frustrated sigh. “What the fuck have I been put into…”

   Beep. “Swearing is not-”

   “Yeah, yeah…” Arti interrupted with a growl. They didn't necessarily want to be reprogrammed, so their only bet right now is to return to their designated pathing. And as they thought that an internal map of the establishment they were in projected in their mind almost instantly. 

   “Jeez, how did I even know that-” they muttered in surprise. Analyzing their internal map Arti started their trek to where they're apparently supposed to be. Their steps echoed through the storage room as they did so, the human-turned-animatronic trying to think of just how to tackle all of this.

   They surmised that if they wanted to avoid reprogramming they might as well try their best to pretend to be this Montgomery Gator for as long as they could. Perhaps if they were lucky they could find some way to reverse all of this. Although they would be lying if they said they weren't hoping this was some kind of fucked up dream.

   So forward Arti walked to a new life. One that they could only hope was going to be temporary…

[innytoes]

Hello, please do prompt 21 for willex!! So excited!

And also for @legolasghosty who asked for the same with Willex(ie). Because you all love the giant skeleton prompt lol.

You'd think after several months of being crammed into a tour bus during their first tour ever, Alex would have cringed at the idea of pooling their money to buy a house together as a band. But it wasn't like they were making Mansion Money (not yet! the Bobby in his mind shouted), and well, he kind of liked their little house. He liked seeing his friends every day. They each had their own bedroom, they converted the garage into a music studio, and there were enough bathrooms that nobody wanted to murder the others on a regular basis.

The house was in a nice neighbourhood, but nice in the way that people smiled and nodded at each other on the street, not nice as in 'everyone's lawn is immaculate and exactly according to HOA standards'. The house on the corner had an alarming amount of garden gnomes, there was a Little Free Library a few houses down, and apparently people went kind of hard decorating for the holidays.

Reggie had been more than happy to sweet talk the little old lady with the Pomeranian from down the street into giving up her source for decorative gourds. But it wasn't enough, so they decided to plan a trip to the nearest Spirit Halloween.

It wasn't like they planned to come home with a twelve foot skeleton. But it was there, and it was awesome, and when Alex had tried to object, Luke had turned to him with a: "We're the adults now, bro. We get to decide what that means."

And well, how could Alex object to that?

"Okay," he'd agreed. "But only if we can rig it so he's holding a pride flag."

And so, Clyde The Pride Skeleton was erected in their front yard, much to the delight of a lot of their neighbours. It wasn't uncommon for people to stop and take pictures, for little kids to shout HI CLYDE on their way to school, and for the local teens to salute him while biking past. Alex kind of loved it.

So yeah, he wasn't particularly upset to find a stranger in their front yard taking selfies with Clyde. The skeleton was located far enough to the front of their yard and they had enough greenery and porch between him and the house that their privacy wasn't exactly compromised. And well, who wouldn't want a picture with a giant gay skeleton?

The thing that was alarming was how this guy was taking selfies.

Because he was on stilts. Stilts high enough that when Alex looked out of his bedroom window, he was face to face with the beautiful, handsome, insane stranger in the front yard.

"Hi! I love your skeleton!" the guy called, waving as Alex opened up his widow in alarm.

"What the hell are you doing?" he called, a little alarmed. The guy was really, really high up.

"Taking a selfie?" Stilt Guy responded, wiggling his phone a little for emphasis.

"Okay," Alex huffed to himself, because obviously. "Why are you on stilts?"

"Oh!" the guy beamed. "Because else I couldn't get his face and my face in the frame!"

Which made a weird kind of sense but also who had giant stilts just lying around? How far had this guy walked with (on? that was a terrifying thought) giant stilts just to get a selfie with Clyde.

The guy moved around the skeleton, coming up to the window, and while Alex thought he should probably be more concerned, the closer the guy got, the more he realised he was very, very pretty. Besides, if he was a creep, he'd be easy to topple over.

"I'm Willie!" Stilt Guy said.

"Alex," Alex said. "Do you always have giant stilts with you, or did you make a special trip just to meet Clyde?"

"His name is Clyde?" Willie's smile became even wider. "I mean, I had them in my backpack, I just did a shift at the Hollywood Ghost Carnival. They're collapsible. You'd be surprised how handy they can be!"

"Uhuh. I bet you rescue a lot of kittens stuck in trees," Alex said sarcastically, and okay, maybe a little flirtatiously. Listen, it wasn't ever day that a handsome stranger hovered outside your bedroom window wanting to chat.

And so they did. For like half an hour, Alex sitting in the window sill and Willie shuffling around on his stilts. He told the story of Clyde the Pride Skeleton, Willie told him about his job at the Carnival, and they both flirted up a storm.

Alex was just about to offer Willie to come inside (through the window, through the front door, whatever would be easier in the giant stilts), when Reggie came running down the street.

"Guys, do we have a ladder?" he called. "Mr Emerson's cat is stuck in a tree in front of the Molina's house and she sounds so sad, we gotta help her out!"

Willie met his eyes. The mischievous smile was back.

Alex groaned. Okay, so he'd been proven wrong. "Actually I think we got something that will work!" he called down, and when Reggie turned to look, his face lit up.

Maybe afterwards, they could still grab a coffee or something. You know, on the ground like normal people.

[the-hikers-eye-photography]

Sunsets and Long Exposures

Before the recent storms I was able to head out to a spot along the local coast to do some exploring and set up a few compositions. I was most intetested in featuring the incoming storm clouds and the really cool rock formations that this location has to offer as foreground interest.

These clouds really do a great job of leading the eye into the frame as they function as leading lines due to how they just out into the water. This is important because it adds depth to the photo and tends to give the viewer the feeling they could possibly step right into the image and walk off into the distance.

I shot this on what is almost certainly my favorite camera I have ever owned, the Nikon D750 (I paired it with the Nikkor 16-35 mm f/4 wide angle lens). I've owned more compact and contemporaty set ups, higher resolution set ups, and setups that were far more suited for hybrid (an equal balance between photography and videography) run-and-gun style shooting, and while I do like other cameras more for their video features, the quality of the Nikon image files never fails to bring me joy.

I had briefly toyed with the idea of selling the camera some time back to balance out a little of the cost of a newer rig I was tempted to buy, I'm glad I didn't. I most definitely would have regretted it.

Dear Nikon D750,

You're the best.

Sincerely,

Me.

Let's go exploring.