#i tend to get a lot of ideas by just. binging a whole lotta different isekai manhwa/manga

[chatonyant]

One day I'll find a good way to map out my stories to better plan them out, both in world-building ways and plot ways

Problem is is that when I physically begin to write them down I end up losing a lot of motivation behind it and sometimes just straight up forget I have it

Plus writing in notes is somehow different from slamming into a chat and monologuing about some ideas, which somehow gets the ideas flowing better?

But if I only brainstorm in my head, things get floaty since it's hard to keep track of everything at once without it in front of me and yet making it so that it's in front of me is so very hard lmao

Also just getting started on brainstorm is like a Russian roulette– will I have an idea that will snowball or will I go "im going to think about the importance of face paint today" and then immediately get distracted

[legobiwan]

Gotta to ask, do have any TV show, book o fanfiction reviews (especially Losing So Much and Undead Chosen One AU, love those fics) for these pressing times?

So for fanfics, I made a rec post a few days ago that might be instructive. Also, if you search my blog for #fic rec or #fic recs, anything not in that post will show up. As I’ve said, I’ve been a little out of the fanfiction consumption side of things the past few months, which is why I have reached out for suggestions. 

TV! Okay, so a rundown of shows I have enjoyed that are non-Star Wars. 

Psych (hilarious and at times poignant. The whole cast is fantastic, but James Roday especially is a damn good actor and shines in the few-and-far-between serious moments on the show. Plus, I am a complete sap for stories focusing on the relationship between parents and their adult children.) 

Russian Doll (captivating story and an easy binge. Think Groundhog day, but with more drugs and cats and based in New York.)

Santa Clarita Diet (season 3 lags a little, but it’s a great twist on the whole zombie thing and Sheila and Joe’s relationship is actually really fun to watch. Lotta gore, though.)

Slings and Arrows (Canadian show featuring Paul Gross as an eccentric theater director in a faux-Stratford Shakespeare Festival organization. Each season features a different play as the backdrop of the show, and if you’ve ever worked for an arts non-profit as a performer or admin or both, you will definitely appreciate how they portray the ever-present war between both sides and the eternal struggles of art vs. business. Plus, it’s just damn funny and you know, Shakespeare.)

Due South (speaking of Paul Gross. This is an oldie, but a goodie, 1990s-style buddy-cop/fish-out-of-water show that is both funny and heartfelt. I grew up on it and it holds a special place in my heart.)

Bojack Horseman (holy shit, this show. What started out as a zany portrayal of entertainment life in LA turned into one of the most piercing social commentaries on gender issues, death, addiction, mental health, sexuality, and inherited trauma. It gets dark in the later seasons, and the next-to-last episode of the whole series is one of the most haunting existential things I have ever watched on television. But it is fucking brilliant and funny and really holds no punches. Plus, if you are familiar with LA at all, the little references are especially hilarious.)

Umbrella Academy (I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but this is a great show if you haven’t checked it out yet.)

Agents of SHIELD (If you’re not in the Marvel fandom, I don’t know how much you’ll dig this, but I personally enjoyed a lot of it, especially Phil Coulson. The first few seasons are a little campy, but it gets darker later on with the digital reality arc and I really found myself enjoying it. Also, this was the first show I treadmill-binged, so it has a place in my heart for helping me to totally reimagine my gym routine.)

Dead Like Me (so someone recommended Dead to Me, and because I’m Very Smart, I ended up starting the wrong show. But this has been an intriguing watch, a very different take on life-after-death which is quite raw at times, but always interesting, especially as it kills off the 18-year-old protagonist at the start. Season 2 isn’t quite matching up to Season 1, but I’ll finish it off sometime in the next week or so.)

Farscape (this is quality Scifi television. Weird, amazing characters, amazing arcs, amazing aliens - definitely an underrated show of its genre)

Daria (ah, this one. There are a lot of reasons this show is personally hilarious to me, but let’s just say that it’s a full-on 90s disaffection cartoon that is smart with a highly relatable protagonist.)

Metalocalypse (this show is 100% over-the-top weird and I am here for it. Plus, Mark Hammill is a VA in it!)

Broadchurch (David Tennant in his glorious natural accent in a British detective series. Season 1 is amazing, emotionally raw and captivating television. I had a hard time trying to get through Season 2 and actually haven’t finished. But the first season is definitely worth it.)

Frasier (ah, a classic. The later seasons after “the event” aren’t as good but Seasons 1-5 are excellent and the humor is out of this world. Great show and one that stands up to multiple viewings.)

There are other shows I enjoy, like Brooklyn99 and 30Rock that I assume are more well-known on this site, and thus I haven’t included them on this list. I’m also not including the shows I watched that were fine, but I didn’t feel enthusiastic about (Witcher, Jessica Jones are the first two that come to mind). I’m also sure I’m forgetting something or somethings. 

Books! I read too many books. I have no idea how to rec books except in terms of things I’ve read recently (at least, books that aren’t specialized music-academic offerings). Olga Tokarczuk’s writing is fabulous, I highly recommend any of her works. Going older, I read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man a few months back and that was superb. Another book I read a while back that stuck with me was Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City also sticks out as a recent favorite. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is also great, and to be honest (here comes some heresy), it’s a better book than Good Omens. Since I move a lot, I tend to read books and then give them away, but beyond my Shakespeare, Tintin, and Harry Potter collection, one of the few books that I always carry with me is David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, which is a singularly haunting and fascinating novel and I am transfixed every time.

In terms of Star Wars books? That’s pretty easy. Kenobi, Dark Rendezvous, Plagueis, Master and Apprentice, and - pending the conclusion - Thrawn. Shatterpoint was also excellent. There are other SW books I’ve enjoyed, but these have been the easy standouts of the lot.

[alexteltevskiy]

Intro to blog & Nishika N9000 camera review

Hello everyone! Welcome to my very first blog post. I have big plans for this far-flung little corner of the internet: camera reviews, photo techniques, experiments in visual storytelling and more! Art, design, filmmaking, photography - all here. Let’s roll! (no pun or reference to 35mm film intended)

Intro

Today it’s all about photography - I’ll be taking a look at a rather obscure little imaging device - the Nishika N9000. A unique, highly specialized stereo camera that that takes 4 images at the same time from slightly different angles, which, when combined into an animation, create a miniature Matrix-like effect of the objects in the shot appearing three-dimensional. It’s a specialized camera and the only reason you use it is for its GIF-making capability. It is also a complete pain to use, totally unreliable and makes pictures of horrendous quality. Despite all this, it is a total blast and very fun. Read on to find out why.

This camera, along with the original Nimslo and the direct predecessor Nishika N8000 are responsible for the influx of countless animated GIFs on Tumblr, FFFFOUND! and other image blogs alike. I always found them a gleefully enjoyable exercise in lowbrow picture-making fun, something that could add real depth to the mood of a BTS, a casual project or just plain fun while hanging out. I denied these inner callings for a while until I stumbled upon @tkbmedia and finally bothered to look at the tags being used. “Nishika” it said. And here we are. Now, part of the reason I want to write about it is because its a genuinely fun little camera and the other part is because there is next to zero easily-digestible info online about this little plastic wonder, or even how it relates in quality and specs to its progenitor, the Nishika N8000.

History

The first quad-lens stereo camera was the Nimslo. Designed in the US, the camera was made overseas has solid metal construction, electronically controlled shutter, high quality glass lens and is pretty compact as well. If you read between the lines, you figured $$$. Then came along the N8000, made by a different US company called Nishika, which some claim blatantly knocked off the design idea, made it much cheaper and marketed the living daylights out of it, promising the next big thing in photography. There is much history written about both these companies and why they fell from grace, but that’s not the goal of this review. Both these cameras were originally designed for lenticular mail-order printing where you would take the photos and send the roll in, getting back lenticular prints. In its waning days, Nishika learned on their design mistakes and made the N9000 camera, hoping to renew interest in the franchise, but by that time the infrastructure was starting to fall apart along with the public interest for these items. Nishika went out of business and the overstock was silently decaying in warehouses around the country for decades. Prices went down to near-free and, with the advent of the digital revolution, the camera started seeing a resurgence when experiment-happy photogs figured that these can be used for great artistic effect.

Unboxing & tech specs

Prices bordering in the $10-$20 made this novelty a no-brainer, so I splurged and received a sealed, new-in-box N9000 in the mail not long after. Was a lot of fun opening the package - the whole process resembled an unearthing of a time capsule from a prehistoric age. Best I could tell by the chintzy design and fonts used (I’m an art director by day, I pay attention to these things), my particular specimen was from the early 90’s. The N9000 is made, save from the hotshoe, entirely out of cheap, ready-to-break plastic. Even the lens are plastic. Relatively compact, looks and feels like a beefy, cheeseburger-binging point and shoot. Weighs next to nothing. Small size and weight is a plus for anyone that wants to travel and take multiple cameras for multiple shot types. This one doesn’t take up much space. Each press of the shutter creates 4 tiny half-frame images spread across two regular frames of 35mm film. A 36-exposure roll gets you around 18 shots give or take. A 24-exposure roll probably takes around 12, haven't tried. Has a closable lens cover. Aperture selector between F8 and F16. Button. Rewind button and knob. And winding gear, yes, the winding gear. Reason I want to focus on it is because I genuinely hate it so very much, from the bottom of my usually very accommodating and forgiving heart. They cheaped out and replaced the lever from the N8000 with a finely-sharpened flesh-shearing winding gear to advance each frame and wind the shutter. I can live with it, but I dread every time I have to advance frames. The shutter speed is a fixed 1/60 sec. Has a tripod socket, an unremovable strap, and, well, that’s pretty much it. No batteries. Surprisingly small amount of foam in the back door, so even with vintage, less likelihood of light leaks. Has a little sticker inside recommending 200 film outdoors and 1600 film indoors. I'd personally load it with 400-800 film and tweak exposure with aperture.

Comparing to the N8000

The main reason I went out on whim and got the N9000 instead of the N8000 is size and weight. As soon as I saw pictures of the N8000 in hand AND read that they put a large chunk of metal inside just to make it feel more expensive and reliable than it is I knew it wasn’t for me, as my photo bags are always packed and space is at a premium. The N8000 is a very, very large camera, I’d say roughly twice the size and weight of the N9000. But, at the same time the picture quality looked to be the same (identical lens) and features are largely identical. The N8000 is also the very definition of gimmicky, with the fake LCD screen on top showing recommended settings for exposure. The "meter" built into it is just there to remind you when to use flash. And with today's film exposure latitude the f/11 is totally redundant. That's a whole lotta strikes out against the N8000. The only feature that I miss from the N8000 is the wind lever instead of gear, the rest of the playing field belongs to the sleeker, more modern and compact N9000. The best camera is the one you have with you, remember?

In use

Load film. Wind to 1. Set aperture. Point. Shoot. That's it. When you get to the end, hit the rewind button and crank that knob. Live life and be happy. They have a rather complicated set of recommendations for ideal positioning of foreground/mid/background elements, but in use I found that they correlate pretty neatly into my shooting style anyway so I just base a shot on instinct and click away. Just frame the subject either medium shot (waist up) to long shot (full figure) and try to compose stuff into the foreground and background for perfect harmony. Even when the rules are totally broken I still notice a 3D effect (works better for objects closer rather than further). When it gets even a little big (very, very little bit) dark - use flash. Theoretically, any type of flash should work, but my Canon 600EX-RT wouldn't trigger because the firing pin is a fraction of an inch off. Go figure. Had to MacGuyver a workaround with a coiled hot shoe extension to make it click. Even then, the flash wouldn't fire every 3-4 frames, killing the shots. Also, some films with a softer base (looking at you, Fuji Superia) tend to be torn at the sprockets when advancing the frame, renderings the entire roll useless. Reason for that is that there is only one film advance cog in the top of the body and winding pressure is applied unfavorably to the top sprocket holes only. Be very, very gently, or bye-bye roll.

Image processing

After taking the shots, what's next? Everybody has different procedures from here on out but the general goal is to develop the film, get scans and then combine those scans into an animated GIF. If I'm shooting B&W, I develop in my trusty D-76 concoction and after drying, proceed to scan on the Epson V800. Negs are converted in ColorNeg and the final images assembled in Photoshop. Obviously, there are lots of other substeps involved in each respective step, but they are outside the scope of this review. A bit later I am planning to write about my experience with developing your own film, scanning film and using ColorNeg and Lightroom/Photoshop to get the most out of your film shots, but for right now PM me if you would like advice/tips/tricks. Last step is to export an animated GIF or an MP4 video if you're planning on uploading to Instagram. Sounds like a whole lot of steps, huh? No fear, after doing this a couple of times it becomes second nature and many processes can be automated with Actions in photoshop.

Conclussions

So why do it all? Funny thing, I almost filmed a mock camera review where I smash the camera into moon dust against a brick wall. That's how frustrating it sometimes gets with all these inconsistencies and deficiencies in build quality. Would I bring something like this to an even remotely professional shooting environment? Absolutely not. The only camera capable of pulling that off is the Nimslo. Forget anything with a Nishika badge on it. But, if you are looking for a novel (and cheap) way of taking pictures and impressing friends, family and followers, as well as having the technical chops necessary to use film and assemble the GIFs, it's hard to beat the Nishika. The resulting images are what make all of the hassles worth it. It's like I sometimes describe the allure of film in general to people. Film is grainy, soft, full of imperfections and lacks the punch and pizzazz of digital. But oddly enough, that's exactly the way most of our memories work. Warm, somewhat vague,fuzzy. The Nishika just takes it to a new level by introducing depth. It's like a good old memory, animated.

Sample pics