#in hindsight the background should have a nice colour but like

[cobaltfluff]

how to take care of your weird-looking plant (teru vash)

[levyfiles]

Only 9 years of Anger but it’s been 30+ years of trauma.

I’m a Canadian multiracial woman who grew up in a community that was not as diverse as it is now. Since I was a little girl, I’ve encountered several instances of baffling behaviour toward me that only in hindsight did I come to understand it was because of my colour. The jokes about watermelon, dumb edgy nonblack kids who think I’ll think they’re cool if they drop the n-word around me. Some fool who everyone thought was funny in high school lead a rendition of Hero by Enrique Iglesias and replaced the word hero for “negro” as he played guitar at a Christian school camp retreat to zero consequence. I was nicknamed Aunt Jemima by older boys because I wouldn’t date them. All this stuff was background noise because my number one awareness of being a Canadian was that despite all this, I would never be treated as bad as an indigenous person would be treated in this country. So I laughed off the jokes, ignored the jabs, ignored the n-word, played the “cool black person” who let things slide because that was how you survived. I made it to my 20’s being passive and moderate, and at some juncture I realised my friend circle was occupied by people who used my colour and my race as a punchline. It was like something snapped in me after college; I stopped being passive, I wanted to learn how to be myself and be proud of my heritage instead of acting like I was some ambassador for every white person in authority who wanted me to nod and say “no no I’m okay with your opinion, so please hire me.”

In 2011, I broadened my friend group to people who had had similar experiences but hadn’t backed down, people who had a community to back them up so they didn’t cower at the idea of facing their own trauma. That’s when I started to make friends online who came from different and diverse perspectives. Starting that year I began reading first-hand accounts of police brutality cases and their large numbers. I heard about black sex workers in the states being harassed and disappearing when they complained. I heard about the way young black men are taught to keep their hands visible because even a parking ticket could get you killed. I was angry and heartbroken but I noticed that despite the fact that I was furious and cross-posting everything I learned on twitter and every other blog space I occupied, barely anyone who wasn’t black wanted to interact with it. It was like I was touting some kind of religion, asking people to believe that people in and out of this country had a disease called racism. 

The few people who used their public platform to talk about it were dismissed as crazy. After Trayvon Martin, my heart just stayed broken, and then the "mysterious suicide" of Sandra Bland and the mug shot they took with her body propped up in the police station when she had already been murdered fully wrecked me because so few people cared. There was always some excuse as to why these people deserved to be murdered; as if suddenly people got amnesia about the ideal of the justice system and due process. As if people should really be all right with a young teen being shot in the street was all right because there was no one else there to see it happen or why.  Soon followed a rash of different cases, and almost everyone close to me who wasn't black had some opinion about it whether that's telling us not to get too angry, to protest the way MLK jr said we should when his very own words talked about anger and pain and the way it spills out of people who only want to exist. He said unrest doesn’t develop out of thin air and that it’s the language of the unheard. I watched Colin Kaepernick get publicly ridiculed and watched white creators whisper a little about it if they weren’t against it. There was a shyness in the energy about the content I read or watched and I had somehow accepted that that would always be the case with people working with platforms online. I watched Tumblr delete a whole tag about BLM because people decided it was starting arguments. I watched white content creators make jokes about Tamir Rice, about Kaepernick until they stopped getting laughs.

It's now been 9 years later and even though 2011 was the first I had ever sat and listened to the truth about these cases and I had been furious and hurt since then, it was not the beginning of the problem and my making noise about it and trying to make people understand at the time fell on a lot of ears that didn’t want to listen. People who were experiencing the pain first-hand were screaming louder and louder until Hollywood got a nice chokehold on it and posted a print of Chris Pine with tears in his eyes and called that the face of the civil rights movement.

So now I find that I’m experiencing a strong sense of deja vu watching people younger than me, or my white peers finally get it. I see posts about it everywhere, white creators and white celebrities posting support and empathy. It feels like a sharp awakening of the world and the chance that there’s hope for all the people who have been yelling and screaming for justice long before I ever became aware of the score. 

It also feels terrifying. 

Because sometimes white creators don’t take stock of their audience. They see them often as a monolith of people who support and engage with their content, so they’ll post a handy instagram quote, or an edit with links to donate; they’ll post their own call to action. Now the activism is something it never was before, it’s “Cool”. BLM is trending; it’s a quick view count and an absolutely easy and performative way to say “Sorry” for all the times in the past these white creators said the n-word, all the times in the past they dismissed diversity because it was inconvenient to them, and all the times they ignored the casual racism in their own content and the transformative content of their audience. So their white kid audience, who are happy to follow them blindly to the next trend, don’t fully understand the impact of what’s happening now. They’re making their edits, they’re changing their twitter handles to ACAB and BLM, they’re performing just fine. It should be a good thing, right?

Then why are there white kids out on the street saying they’re protesting. Saying they are here to make change but they’re caught with baseball bats breaking windows, instigating confrontations and running away for black people to deal with it. Why are they out there living their favourite purge fantasy so they can go home satisfied and safe while people are being tear-gassed and trampled by police? Why do they go home and make their mood boards and their t-shirts and their etsy sales for cool “protest looks”. The tired tiktoks that are just recreated audio of black creators being spooned off so a white face can be the one saying the very thing black creators are brave enough to put on social media at the risk of getting hurt!

Don’t get me wrong. This is all necessary in the growing pains of a worldwide movement. It’s the #stopkony2012 of 2020 because even back then when the performance was on, no one was actually doing the reading. Internationally the whole internet went ham on a cause that had already been dealt with by its own victims.

What I’m basically saying here is that fighting for human rights isn’t a game; this isn’t a cool new thing you can jump in on because the chaos keeps you hidden. Take this seriously; bring this energy to the polls, and KEEP this energy for the future even when the trending page isn’t interested in giving you money for your cause, even when your friends get bored and decide that they want to move on to the next cool thing to perform activism for. Be real. Continue to practice empathy for those whose stories you ignored up until now. Non-Black content creators, your new awareness of something happening is not an absolution of your willful ignorance in the past. Do your reading; educate yourself. Because while you may be just discovering the outrage and the hurt of witnessing a black person being murdered and the pulling teeth aggravation that comes with zero justice, people have been dealing with this far longer than you or I.

[courtneyyharper]

“Fake tan: a pigment of my imagination”

After finally completing all my final year deadlines and binging as many tv shows as possible (MTV’s Catfish is currently playing in the background, peaking the level of trashy) I’ve finally got over the trauma that essay writing brought and can finally get back to writing here! This article is a far cry from examining the fantastical elements of multiple fiction novels in the restoration to regency period in that we are here today to talk about… fake tan.

I am by no means a tanning connoisseur, having had a few spray tans for formals etc growing up and being scared of tan in a bottle for most of my teenage years I was quite simply just a pale wee girl for the majority of my life. In terms of natural tan, my skin doesn’t know what that means. I tried a sunbed once or twice at the recommendation of a dermatologist and it left my skin pretty irritated, they just were not for me which has eventually even led to fake tanning a few times on sunny holidays, needs must.

I guess this is more my tanning journey than a reviewing process but without further ado here’s my opinions on just a small section of this over-growing market. Oh, and I guess I should throw in a photo of myself here to show my tan? I guess?

So, as I mentioned I used to be so terrified of tan as I watched my cousins and friends go a sightly shade of tangerine at 15. A true steppingstone that is right up there with the blue eyeshadow trend. After trying out a spray tan for a 6th year formal and missing the colour once it faded, I needed something much easier than travelling to a salon and stripping down in front of a stranger before making the awkward trek home a bit damp and convinced everyone is staring at you. Thus, I turned to the bottle… bottled tan that is.

At the start tans like St Moriz scared me most. Surely, they were just a rip off of the St Tropez brands but at a fifth of the price. While I no longer believe this and actually think it’s a bargain, it’s not a tan I would reach for now because of the undertones. After trying out Bondi Sands (most likely ‘light’ because I was still scared) I realised that these tans didn’t really suit my skin tone. The thing with St Moriz, St Tropez and Bondi Sands tans is that I believe they have a green undertone to them, best suited to gals or guys that are more likely to get a true tan or more olive-toned people and they just didn’t compliment my skin well but if this sounds like you then these are the tans you should lean towards.

A more red toned tan I tried out was the Primark statement, Cocoa Brown, but the thick white foam didn’t really absorb well into my skin. I was in need of a tan that had a darker guide colour in the foam to see where I could apply it to avoid streaks etc and a thinner foam consistency to allow for easier application. I know many YouTubers and influencers rep this tan as an amazing bargain but there was something in the quality lacking for me and it lay in a clutter drawer never to be reused.

Probably like most girls I started with the good ol’ Rimmell Sun Shimmer Instant Tan, which looking back I’m sure it was giving me more streaks then it was a colour and I can only cringe at the idea of me getting caught in the rain on a night out and that tan completely running off me. This tan would run off the skin if you looked at it the wrong way, of course in the title ‘Instant Tan’, unfortunately it was instantly gone too. I’m sure this is still a big hit with my mum though.

But this did later lead me to trying the Rimmell Sun Shimmer Mousse. Keyword: mousse. This was a personal favourite for years. While using this I gradually shifted from a light shade to a hesitant ‘medium’. Then eventually I was applying two layers to get a darker and deeper tan. I liked the way this tan applied, a nice dark foam which would show you the exact colour you were gonna get. So, this remained to be my tan staple for a long time.

Then one day I asked my mum to pick it up for me in the chemist and she accidentally bought me the Rimmell Sun Shimmer Tanning Lotion with Chia Oil. Of course, this was a bit frustrating, I need to stick to what I know but, on a whim, and running out of time to get ready one night I stuck a bit of it on. Oh, it smelt great. And it brought life to what tan I already had on, only glow-y and darker. Of course, I think this has been discontinued and can only be sourced on the likes of Amazon and random chemists. It was by using this slightly darker tan that I then upped my mousse colour to the ‘dark’ shade and that’s when the frustration began. I kept putting on this lovely dark shade of tan, all even and gorg, going to bed and letting it develop for 8 hours and then jumping in the shower the next day… for it all to run off. Especially my shins and chest would become significantly paler and even two layers of ‘dark’ just weren’t getting me the tan I wanted.

So, I shopped around for a new tan and came upon the bPerfect 10-second strawberry scented tan. Um, yes pls. This stuff smells so good. The colour was great. Again, another staple for so long. I would still go back to this tan happily. My only worry was that it’s supposedly Limited Edition and I was still applying two layers of this ‘medium dark’ shade and so knowing that I loved the bPerfect 10-second tan formula I reached for the mango scented ‘ultra dark’ shade and decided that the bPerfect 10-second tans, with their fruity scents, were definitely a favourite. Still to this day. I’ve even just ordered the new strawberry scented lotion in dark and I am beyond excited.

(Also, as a side note I picked up the matching bPerfect self-tan eraser and honestly this is just something I don’t believe in. All you need is to moisturise your tanned skin so it fades evenly and finally just take a nice long soak, maybe two, and some exfoliating gloves and hop out and use a towel to rub those stubborn spots! But a tanning routine is a completely different post…)

Of course, if you know me, or ever had the displeasure of seeing me hungover or straight after I’ve tanned, you’ll not be able to avoid the image of my pale face. After spending a good few months of my life on Roaccutane and finally having some semblance of acne-free skin I was not about to stick this dark brown foam all up in my pores and jeopardise it. So yeah, this means I tan up to my neck and deal with the consequences, just matching a foundation colour to resolve this but I also don’t want to constantly be wearing make-up. On the recommendation of a YouTube video I purchased the Tan-Luxe face drops that, in hindsight, were really not value for their money considering every brand now has their own cheaper and basically identical version. With these I just pipette a few drops into my daily moisturiser and… they give me a bit of a glow, I guess. They do smell amazinggg… but they don’t smell like 30 quid amazing. Plus, any tan they were giving me was fading a bit splotchy and so I went back to a time old favourite, the Dove tinted moisturiser. Oh, this smell screams 2013 summer. All I’m going to say is to remember to blend this downnn the neck, into the ears and of course up into the hairline, just to avoid any mishaps… Also, if you’re not big into an obvious fake tan or just need a topper on top of natural or fake, a tinted moisturiser is always a good shout. (Please use a brush too or at least wash your hands after use!)

Finally, the main tan that is so similar to the bPerfect is of course, Molly Mae’s Filter. Now that I’ve finally travelled to the ‘ultra dark’ shades this is what I ordered straight away. For best results I follow the bottle’s instructions and wait an hour to apply a second coat and I love the outcome. This one is kind of like a luxury tan only because you have to order it online and can’t just run to the chemist to get it unfortunately so I have to plan ahead with it. Once again, the smell is incred. I’m pretty sure it’s the green tea extract. I love the colour, the finish, the application. In conclusion, big fan.

I find the bPerfect and Filter’s ‘ultra dark’ tans both have the same vibes and I like to switch between them regularly and even use bPerfect’s strawberry scented as a wee pick me up every once and a while just because it smells great and I’m very hopeful that Filter paired with bPerfect’s new strawberry lotion as a tan topper will be my final holy grail.

Pretty sure I’ll be stuck on this hype for the foreseeable future!

[oosteven-universe]

Backtrack #1

Backtrack #1 Oni Press 2020 Created & Written by Brian Joines Illustrated by Jake Elphick Coloured by Doug Garbark Lettered by Jim Campbell     Guilt weighs heavy on former criminal "wheelman," Alyson, who led an illicit life that left her shattered into pieces. But when she hears about a massive cross-history car race that grants the winner a chance to correct a single mistake in their life, Alyson will drive from the Big Bang to the death knell of the universe for the grand prize.     I have to say this took me by surprise and I am not really sure why. Oni Press has a stellar track record and I have absolutely loved what I read from them. It could have been because the cover gives me this 70's/80's vibe in poster form or that with the title I had no clue what to really expect. I mean has Alyson been wearing pink instead of black this could've been a Happy Days Pinky Tuscadero moment for sure. In hindsight looking at the cover I should have been clued in but hey sometimes the cover has nothing to do with the interiors, mostly these days.     I will hand it to Brian the opening is great and to be honest I really thought that she was dreaming it and then woken up in a drunken mess. I figured that made sense to me. Heh fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me now there best not be a third heh. Though I will say that seeing Alyson's life as it has become is really depressing. Without even knowing much about her, other than she's a drunk, you feel sorry for her and a large part of that is thanks to the interiors by the way as they provide the clues to who she is now, to a degree.     The story & plot development that we see with how the sequence of events unfold and how the reader learns information is exceptionally well done. The set up and the introduction of Casper Quellex is handled beautifully and it really sets thing in motion. Plus it adds a bit of mystery and intrigue into the mix that just ups the ante. The character development that we see is amazing and as Casper tells more about Alyson than we'd ever get elsewhere it reveals a lot about himself as well. The pacing here is great and the way it takes us through pages revealing the twists and turns along the way works with everything else to create an exciting and intriguing ebb & flow to the book.     The interiors here are interesting there is some really thick linework that almost brings this exaggerated feel to the characters and this is balanced out by some finer lines when it comes to subtle details such as in the hands. The attention to detail is really nice to see and the faces and facial expressions give us so much emotion and feeling that it just enhances the characterisation. I also really like the sense of moment that we see here and that's critical to a story such as this. Backgrounds are utilised extremely well and within the composition in the panels they help create depth perception, scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the story. The colour work is really well rendered here also as we see some really great utilisation of the hues and tones within the colours to create the shading, highlights and shadow work. ​     This is not at all what I was expecting and yet now it is something I am not sure I can live without. This is so well written with an interesting concept, great complex characters and some absolutely beautiful interior artwork.  

[future-critical-blog]

How Pacing Fucked Steven Universe

Note: this is anonymous because I know what will happen!

Steven Universe is without a doubt one of the best shows I've ever seen. It's certainly the best cartoon series I've ever watched. The first four series, and a large amount of the fifth, are truly wonderful.

So, I'm going to be entitled and complain about the last little bit that didn't work for me. I got all those hundreds of episodes, and I’m just going to take a moment to really honk about the stuff I don't like.

Because we live in an age where Nazis are back, feminists think trans woman are the biggest threat they face and the world is burning - at this point, a bit of a moan about Steven Universe/Future will get lost I think.

Bear in mind: this comes from a place of love. I care about Steven and the characters because they took me on an amazing journey that really had an emotional impact on me. Then they tripped me right at the end, and now they're fuck-twaddling around taking up space in my brain that should be used for thinking about how great the show is.

This is about how the inability to wrap Steven Universe properly sucks and undermines all the amazing work the creators put into it. Now, that work hasn't gone anywhere: I can, and will, re-watch the series to reminisce about it. About what could have happened. Nobody has taken that away from me.

But still, there's nothing worse than a story that buggers up the ending. Worse yet, that ending is still going in Steven Universe: Future.

So what's the problem? Let's start.

Pacing, pathos and atmosphere

Things used to be teased, hinted and slowly revealed. Steven Universe used to a slow-burn that really built things up with the even-hand of a masterful storyteller.  Remember that long shot at the end of 'On the Road', after the characters leave? We see just the empty, sinister kindergarten whilst a discordant note builds in the background before... bang, credits. It builds atmosphere and tension.

What happened to that? Slowly building a feeling, weaving a narrative, and taking us on an emotional journey? We got a very rushed pay-off to all this with Series 5. The crew thought the show wouldn't be renewed, so they made the executive decision to wrap it all up.

·       Everyone’s fixed now. Pearl, Garnet, Amethyst, Steven.

·       Diamonds are friendly now. Blue got sad, Yellow got angry and White got… put in her place by a comeback?

·       The bubbled gems/corrupted monsters are all fixed.

·       The Off-Colours and Lars just got home.  No further adventures, they just got home.

Bits got missed out. Things got rushed. Homeworld, the Diamonds and five series of build-up got dealt with in the space of 40 minutes. For comparison, just Series 1 alone was 8 hours long.

Yeah, the network created that situation. You're cancelled! They seemed to say. No you're not! HA! They continued.  But it still sucks, narratively, and the creators are now compounding that problem by trying to go back and add in the bits they missed.

Worse, there's no pacing now because there’s no more overall story.  No atmosphere. Fundamentally, post Change Your Mind, everything is done. The series was wrapped up.  All we have left now is some loose-ends and Steven being moody.

It came back mostly just to tie up random ends. But more of something isn't always good: Series 1-4 and about half of Series 5 are amazing. We shouldn't clap and applaud we get more just because it's more for its own sake, we should cheer things for being good in their own right.

I don't just want more meep morp, I want the morp to have something to say and to mean something. Victory laps and adding unnecessary lore is pointless: characters and emotion are what drive stories.

This isn't about 'filler' episodes as such, nor is it about breaks and hiatuses. It's about spreading the story arc (and the individual elements within that arc) correctly over the allotted time. A story that takes 700 pages to set up, only to be resolved in 3 pages feels badly unbalanced - I'm looking at you, Stephen King. And that's exactly the problem Steven Universe has. The set-up is incredible, and the payoff is badly disappointing. That's pacing.

Being the Underdog

This was covered nicely, if ironically in hindsight, with the episode ‘Historical Friction’.  The play about olde-time mayor William Dewey was utterly uninteresting until Pearl rewrote the play’s script to make him an underdog.  This is part of pacing. It's dull to watch a winner win constantly. The characters need to be in situations where they're facing actual threats, otherwise we're just watching a series of foregone conclusions unfold.

What would Lord of the Rings look like if the Hobbits just marched from The Shire to Orodruin, with no setbacks or problems, and then just lobbed the One Ring into the fire? What's the point of the story? It'd be like a grand-scale version of watching someone go out for groceries.  Nobody wants to watch that, not really: you can go to the supermarket and see it if you’re that interested!

This couples with suspension of disbelief. Usually, the good guys win. We know they're going to win. We need to be able to suspend our disbelief, and that's something that the pacing and storytelling need to enable. We need to be able to get caught in the story, even though we know everything will probably work out by the end.

When you get it just right, even the creators don’t know for sure everything will be alright.  Remember when Picard was assimilated by The Borg?  Even the writers weren’t 100% sure how it would play out, because Patrick Stewart was playing hardball with the studio at the time over his contract.  There was a chance this could have been the end of his character.

But Steven isn't an underdog anymore. He's a bossy, self-important grump with a martyr complex. He wins all the time, not least of all because of the pacing problems. By this point:

·       Steven has healing powers that can literally bring people back to life

·       He has all the powers of a Diamond

·       He has the backing of the three other diamonds

·       He now has an army of friends who will fight at his side

So where is the story to tell? Consider, in Steven Universe: The Movie, Greg's arm gets hurt by the injector. There's no danger, no worry. We know Steven has healing powers. So why bother showing it? It's about as relevant or interesting as watching Greg brush his hair.

There’s no danger.  There’s no suspension of disbelief because the hero is now so super-powered.

This is even worse when coupled with the uneven pacing: when something takes so long to be painstakingly set up, only to be knocked down in a heartbeat, then why get invested in it?  The 21st Century reboot of Doctor Who falls into this trap a lot: multipart episodes about a Dalek (or whatever) invasion… but luckily their Evil Machine has a ‘reverse’ switch that fixes everything. Dust hands, job done. All that build-up utterly squandered on an almost supernaturally fast resolution.

You Need a Story to Tell

The first five series have a definite story. It gets rushed, badly, come series 5 but there is still a story. That is done now: there's no grand, overarching tale now. We're very much into 'oh, what if...' territory.

What's the problem with that? Things get missed, because they don't need to fit into a cohesive whole. They just happen because they're cool.

Consider The Movie:

·       Spinel goes from a cuddly, professional buddy to a would-be mass-murderer

·       Spinel knows where to find a stupidly powerful injector

·       She knows how to work it

·       It is tuned to work to her 'trumpet' sound

·       It is shaped like her gemstone

·       She knows specifically where Earth is

·       She knows how to fly a massive injector, with no obvious engines, to Earth

·       This all happens in an afternoon

And the explanation we're given, after the event in a Q&A session? It's because Spinel and Pink Diamond were close. That is supposed to explain the entirety of those bullet points. It rankles me because it's not truthful. Those questions aren't answered by that, they're answered by 'because we thought it would be cool'. It's an unsatisfying explanation, but it's true and they’ve tried to handwave it into something else.

It's also what happens when you run out of proper story. Sure, you can still come up with little adventures but there's no big narrative anymore. There is no large picture for everything to fit into.

That’s dangerous territory. Not only does it lead to weird scenarios, but it also starts generating new lore at a maddening amount. The fans don't help this, it seems to me that some people purely watch Steven Universe to demand moar fusions, moar songs and moar lore.  Even when that’s all they get, it’s not enough.

It's like demanding more swimming pools in your home because you're bored with foundations.  Sooner or later the whole structure falls down because swimming pools can’t hold a house up.  Neither can lore hold a story up: stories are about characters.

Similarly, the concept of 'fusion' relies on characters otherwise it's nothing more than the character dumps we used to get in toy-driven franchises back in the 80s. Songs have to have an emotional resonance otherwise they're just empty pop.

Remember the X-Files? How they got into a rut just generating series after series with no pay-off, but lots more wrinkles to an already convoluted story? Then it got to the end and... you can't end it. It's too sprawling, too stupid and too contradictory. That's where lore without a story takes you. Lore has to serve a vision, not the other way around.

Filler

Not filler the way it's come to mean to SU fans. I like the 'boardie' episodes - they're full of interesting characters and ground Steven's world in something resembling ours. No, I mean filler in terms of stories that don't mean anything: the characters don't learn anything, the world isn't made any more interesting. Things just happen in a self-contained bubble with no payoff or consequence.

In itself, that's fine. Some episodes are like that. If that were the only aspect to 'filler' episodes in SU, then who cares? The problem is the pacing. After glacial teasing, hinting and laying down groundwork... things get wrapped up so fast it'll make your head spin.

·       The cluster? We talked it into staying bubbled.

·       The Diamonds? They're fine now.

·       Bismuth? Steven chatted to her.

·       Lapis? She's sort-of fine, but not really.

·       Spinel? Sent to live on a farm.

These are all things that took many, many lines of dialogue and building to create and were knocked down in the space of a couple of sentences.

This is where the 'filler' comes in. Instead of another story about Onion being weird, why not devote it to tying up the plot in a way that feels paced properly? Instead of answering questions about Watermelon Stevens, why not draw-out a little more the actual conclusion to a big story point?

Why do I think Onion and Watermelon Stevens should be singled out for Calvary? Simple: they have no explanation and don't matter. They don't matter to the day-to-day lives of the characters or the world. They serve no narrative purpose. They don't advance other characters' arcs. They don't ground the world they inhabit. They turn up, do 'stuff' in a little bubble and then go back into the toybox until the next Onion episode.

As a side note, I would lay a lot of money that Onion will never get any sort of pay-off. He doesn't age. He's deeply bizarre. He's apparently a wanted criminal. He's terrifying. And I don't think for an instant he will ever get a reason for being any of those things: he'll just carry on as a quirky in-joke and take up episode space because apparently that is a story-telling priority now.

Songs

Songs are sung when something is too important for the characters to just say it. The song needs an emotional resonance, to show what a character feels effectively. Contrast 'That Distant Shore' to 'Independent Together': one is about a deep longing and sadness for a home the character has never had. The other is a soft-rock ballad about how great stuff is when you can be your own self but also be with other people... or something.

See the resonance that the former has, and that the latter lacks? Whether you like Lapis or Steg, or the songs, is irrelevant to the story and the characters. One song has something to say, the other is there for the sake of giving fanservice. Independent Together isn't something so important to say that the characters feel they need to sing it.

This really kicks off around the middle of Series 5. Previously, songs were a special event. Now, they're commonplace. Even in Mr. Greg, a fully musical episode back in Series 3, the songs have so much emotion. Plus, Mr. Greg is an experiment: 11 minutes, mostly held together by 6 solid songs:

·       Don't Cost Nothing: how much Greg and Steven just love one another.

·       Empire City: how excited they are to go on a trip together

·       Mr. Greg: Pearl almost lets her guard down, then realises and shuts down.

·       It's Over Isn't It? : A heartbroken character sings for a life they never had.

·       Both of You: A child shows the two adults they have something special in common.

·       Don't Cost Nothing: reprised as a coda.

I won't pretend that all those songs have a huge emotional impact, but they do all serve part of the story arc. You can see it there: the status quo, the trigger, the choice, the quest, the showdown, the resolution and the new status quo. Couple that with the fact that at least 4 of those songs (counting Don't Cost Nothing and its reprise) do have a very real emotional punch, you've got a great episode.

All in 11 minutes.

That's the level of truly amazing, genius storytelling we're working with. Now contrast that to the 1hr 20m of Steven Universe The Movie:

·       The Tale of Steven: A prelude to a re-cap song

·       Once Upon a Time: a re-cap song

·       Let Us Adore You: The Diamonds are emotionally disturbed and co-dependent! How adorable!

·       Happily Ever After: The status quo. Also another bloody re-cap.

·       Other Friends: The trigger! Not huge emotional resonance, but up-beat and plot-relevant.

·       system/BOOT.PearlFinal(3): The quest.

·       Who We Are: NICE. This one has emotional impact and says something important.

·       Isn't It Love?: A Garnet re-cap. So at this point we're recapping what we re-capped when we recapped the re-cap. Lost yet?

·       No Matter What: Again, NICE. Emotional relevance and says something about Amethyst and Steven.

·       Disobedient: Kate Micucci hadn't been given anything to do yet?

·       Independent Together: Aimee Mann brought a friend! Can he have a job and some dollarydoos?

·       Drift Away: CHARACTER. PUNCH. PATHOS. It's here, folks. They can do it!

and so on.

See the pattern? For every one song that brings what we saw in Mr. Greg, there are at least four that are there just because. Because we thought it'd be cool. Because we needed more tunes to fill the runtime. Mr. Greg achieved more in 11 minutes than Steven Universe: The Movie achieved in over 80 minutes.

What's the reason? The Movie doesn't really have a story to tell. It's a victory lap. It's not bad: it's fine. Bits of it are simply excellent. But this is what happens when you stop having a big, cohesive narrative arc that you're trying to bring together.

Characters

Characters grow and evolve. Specifically, they have arcs. Just like the plot as a whole, and just like the subplots that compose it.  Generally, the stages are:

·       A status quo (Luke on Tattoine)

·       A trigger (his Aunt and Uncle die)

·       A critical choice (he leaves to become a Jedi)

·       A quest (the adventure)

·       A climax (the fight at the Death Star)

·       A turnaround (the Death Star is destroyed!)

·       A new status quo (the Rebels are ready to take on the next challenge)

SU gave most of its characters arcs broadly representative of this. The problem is, once those arcs were done the characters got put back in their boxes. They were 'fixed' and that was it. Amethyst's arc probably worked best: it spread over most of the first five series and felt like a real progression. Hence her fusion with Steven (Smokey Quartz) felt 'earnt'.

Pearl doesn't really grow or evolve much at all until Series 5. Ditto Garnet. Lapis is basically the same throughout the show: she broods, runs away and then comes back because of Steven's coaxing.

So, it’s back to my main drumbeat: its pacing is badly off. Some things take their good time and evolve naturally, others are wrapped up quickly and cast aside. Examples:

·       Peridot worked to become friends with the CG. She had a character arc that took half a series.

·       The Diamonds: it mostly turned on a sixpence in the 2nd half of Change Your Mind. Off-screen they then became annoying relatives, rather than murderous galactic tyrants.

Why does this matter? Well, most of the characters are now 'done'. Pearl is no longer co-dependent. Ruby and Sapphire know they're together (as Garnet) for love. Amethyst no longer hates herself. Peridot is a sweet (albeit socially clumsy) sidekick. Lapis is... well, the same as she's always been but seems happier with it now?

How do you tell more stories when your characters are already done? When the veg is cooked, you can't put it back on the hob because you've decided you want dinner prep to take longer.

SU keeps wrapping things up, believing they're 'done', then getting more time and needing to draw it out. This means either dawdling around with characters not going anywhere (which feels like either a smug victory lap or just something for its own sake) or actively unpicking their development.

Scrubs, in my view, is the poster child for the latter option: the show's cancelled, quick wrap up JD; Elliot; Dr. Cox; Carla; Turk etc! Oh no, we got another series! Undo the happily-ever-after so we can do more stuff!

That's why the pacing, particularly around characters and where they're going, matters.

Fusion

Fusion is the absolute biggest muddle of a metaphor. Is it friendship? Understanding? Sex? All? None? In any case, it used to be meaningful. Fusion meant something, even if that something would vary depending on the characters and the circumstance.

It took special effort to do: characters had to synchronise themselves through dance, to bring their thoughts together to fuse.

Now? It happens at the drop of a hat. No synching, no dancing. Fanwank it away any way you like: the characters are all 'fixed' now, they all trust each other, whatever. Fusion now doesn't mean anything because it takes no effort: pop here's Sunstone, pop here's Smokey, pop here's Opal. The fusions have just become like alter-egos that take no more effort than a quick-change in a phone booth.

And then there's Steg. Yeah, I get it: he represents the familial love between father and son. But why is he so built? Why does he look like some sort of sex-god? I'm a long way from a prude - it's just weird is all. A 16 year old boy + his middle aged father + the memory of the mother/wife shouldn't create a weird Adonis! But let me set that aside: the true problem with Steg is we had no build-up. Greg and Steven didn't talk about it, Steven just suggests fusing (through whispered dialogue we don't hear) and then it just happens.

Steg also isn't saved by being an interesting exploration of either Steven or Greg. He's fanservice. Fans wanted more fusions and more 'what if so-and-so fused!!' so they got it. He has 0 character. Just like Sunstone has no character beyond being an 'after school special'. Rainbow Quartz 2.0 has no character, aside from being chipper and cockney.

Contrast that to Smokey Quartz. Smokey is a delightful, self-deprecating scamp. She has a definite personality and stood up to a full interview with Sardonyx.  Smokey has enough of a character that it would be possible for her to act out-of-character.  What would out-of-character look like for Rainbow or Sunstone?  Provided it was cartoon-English and early 90s cartoon dialogue (respectively) it could be anything.

What happened? Fusions used to be characters, they used to have personalities that couldn't be written down on a postage stamp in luggage marker.

The answer is the story ran-out. The characters are all fixed now - so there's no emotional or narrative drive for their relationships. Hence the concept of fusion is now just serving fans who want to see 'what if' combinations of characters.

Too Many Endings

I’ve touched on this already, but here it is again.

The problem with wrapping up a show is you put all the pieces away as well as you can, and implicitly make work for yourself if it is not the end. You've just set up a load of strawmen you need to kick over if you decide you've got more story to tell.

That's what happened here. Change Your Mind ended it. Except it didn't, so we went back and unpicked what we could. Even though everyone is basically fixed now and the characters have no real growth or underdog-fight. Then The Movie ended it. Except it didn't, so we went back and unpicked what we could. Even though everyone is still basically fixed.

Will Future be the end?  Probably not.

That's why Steven is now a moody little jackass with a hero complex - we needed some conflict to drive what little plot there is, which exists only as a vehicle for tying up loose plot threads (Jasper!) we left out because of how rushed the first ending was.

It's a bit like when you misspell something, then you go back over it with your biro. But now it looks unclear. So you go over it a few more times to make sure it's clear. But now it looks like someone took a biro and leaked half the ink onto the page. The very act of trying to tidy it has made it less clear.

A Special Note About Garnet

This isn't about pacing, but whilst I'm on the moan I'll leave this here.

I feel wicked for this. Garnet is a brilliant character. I love Estelle: she brings Garnet so well to life. Any LGBT representation in a cartoon is rare and amazing, and we need more. But Garnet also sucks.

Why?

She's a metaphor. She's a metaphor for being gay and together in love. She is a symbol of a same-sex relationship.  On a side-note: yes Gems don't have gender technically, but let’s not be wilful here: they have female-coded designs and the subtext is so obvious as to barely be subtext.

It's nearly 2020. We're now 20 years into the 21st Century. 2001 A Space Odyssey was set 20 years ago.  First contact between Zephram Cochrane and the Vulcans is now only 43 years away.  And we can still only talk about gay (or, God forbid, bi or transgender) characters in children’s' media through metaphor. I cannot emphasise enough how utterly shitty that is, and how glacial progress has been.

Now, that isn't SU's fault. However, what is SU fault is their clever (and I mean that genuinely) ploy to sneak a same-sex couple into the show means that we don't see them as a same-sex couple 95% of the time. They're hidden. Ruby and Sapphire's love and relationship literally lives under a disguise called Garnet.

And that sucks. It makes sense as a plan. It's great we have Garnet. Garnet is still amazing. But she also sucks, because she acts as invisibility for the lesbian couple she represents.  Yeah, that’s some tough mental gymnastics to work that cognitive dissonance but I managed it.

My God, I Get It: You're a Cat Person

This is also nothing to do with pacing, it's just a creator conceit that bugs me. I freely admit it's also piddly and petty.

So: I'm not a cat person. And no, it's not because I haven't met your adorable little Tiddles or whatever. I don't hate cats, it’s just that most of the cats I've ever met are simply ghastly little shits. Their owners, through some mental blind spot; ancient Egyptian curse or brain parasite have become convinced that these hairball-gobbing, furniture-shredding, wildlife-destroying little cunts are angels. Somehow they've convinced themselves everything they do is adorable.

No amount of murdered birds or small mammals change their minds.

I've met, officially, two nice cats in my life and I treasure their memories. The rest can go to hell.

Why does this matter to SU? Cat Steven. Lion. Peridot and Amethyst doing little kitty-mouths when they're being cute. My God, crew, you love cats. I got the memo.

Why does that work me up? Well, do you know what I'd like instead? If a tiny amount of that 'cats are brilliant!' energy went into a proper wrap for Pumpkin. Created by Jessie Zuke and obviously a puppy metaphor... what happened to her? The crew don't care, because they won't tell us. If they cared even a jot it would have a story around it. Instead, we got some half-arsed bullshit from Joe Johnston about 'pumpkins don't last forever' and... scene. That's it.

But Cat Steven, OMG, yes we have to make sure to include him. Whenever we're at the Beach House. Especially if Garnet is there. Because... lesbians all love cats? Or something? Just... CATS. MOAR CATS.

Couldn't you show a little more respect for a character, albeit a not particularly important one, rather than worrying about how much airtime the various cats all get?

In Conclusion

It bears restating, this is mostly ire directed at Series 5 onwards. The other series are all still there, and I can watch them to reminisce. I can still enjoy some truly wonderful episodes of just about the best cartoon I've ever seen. This show is incredible... but the endings kinda suck. And that's down, mostly, to pacing. And how it kinda fucked Steven Universe.

[isaacbewleyunit19]

Today we used what we had learned this past term to non-destructively edit a picture of Nottingham to look post-apocalyptic, or at least dystopian. I decided to go the more dystopian root with my edit.

The first thing that I did was to duplicate the original picture. This was so that I always had the original on hand in case I made a mistake or wanted to back, and sometimes I forget to use a mask so this is useful for me. After doing this, I then duplicated the base image again but this time I didn’t lock it - I went to Image > adjustments > hue and saturation and edited the sliders so that the photograph looked more dark and purple in colour and general atmosphere. Since I had decided to try a dystopian style, I generally associate dark purple and blue colours with a dystopia which is why I made the choice to use that colour scheme here. Since I had copies of the original photo I was able to do this confidently as if I made a mistake I could delete the layer and still have the original to try again with. After I had done this, I used the magnetic selection tool on the edited image to erase the edits to the sky. This was so that I could edit the area the sky was in to a different image later.

Now that I had the whole sky behind the cathedral transparent, I wanted to add another picture behind it to give the city of Nottingham a more sinister vibe. I went onto Unsplash so I could get a high res image that was royalty free, and decided to go with a dark mountain shot that had stormy purple lightning coming off it. I thought that having a dark, foreboding mountain behind the council house would give a dark feeling to the image, although in hindsight this doesn’t do much to push the dystopian aesthetic - if anything, it causes the image to look a bit more traditionally fantasy-like which was not the look I was going for. However I am happy with how I managed to make a clear and neat selection of the area initially so I didn’t have to toil over cutting out the background behind the building for too long.

However, the selections near the treeline in the upper left had not been made clearly and still had traces of the original sky left behind. I spent some time thinking on how I could edit this out, and I experimented with using the clone stamp tool and sampling the leaves to try and make the trees ‘branch out’ more and hide the original sky. However, the end product of this made the treeline look very blurry and unrealistic in my point of view, so I decided to use the lasso tool to make a selection near the treeline and simply use hue and saturation settings to darken the sky to match the stock image I used behind it. I think this worked well and although I wasted some time on trial and error here it was worth it as I solved an issue I had with the edit.

Unfortunately I began to ran out of inspiration and time for this edit, so I decided to try and focus on some small details to see if that would bring me any good ideas on where to proceed later. I felt like a dystopian city would have some element of ruin, so I decided to try and make the road looked cracked to add some slight aesthetic. To do this, I went back to Unsplash again and searched for a cracked texture. Using the ctrl+t shortcut I then began to scale the texture against the road, occasionally right-clicking so I could switch transformation modes and fit the texture against the road better (most notably the perspective mode). I then lowered the opacity of the layer and added a mask layer so I could erase the texture everywhere except the areas of the road that I wanted it to be on. While this was a small addition it helped me become a little more familiar with mask layers and I think it was a nice touch.

In the end, I ran out of time and personally I am not as pleased with this edit as I have been with others. I think I should have probably chosen another theme, or at least another photograph of Nottingham that would have fit the dystopian theme better - I saw a classmate do a very well edited image where Nottingham was enveloped in flames, and manipulated the hue and saturation alongside stock images to make a very believable image. In the end for a dystopian theme I would have needed to use stock footage to edit in too many small details, and I think it shows when I only had time to edit the colours, add clone stamps and overlay textures over the photograph. If I were to do this again I think going for a much more obvious and explosive theme may have been better.

[murasaki-murasame]

I guess I’m fully committed to writing about :Re s2 now, since I have a lot of thoughts about episode 15, lol. Mostly good ones, though.

Thoughts under the cut [and spoilers for the entirety of :re].

In general, this episode adapted slightly more than I expected it to, but only a little bit. I’m slightly sad that it looks like the whole Cochlea/Rushima arc will be wrapped up by the end of the next episode, but with this sort of pacing it makes sense, and I have a lot of faith that they’ll handle it well. There’s also some ways I can see it getting trimmed down to fit well enough into one episode, but I’ll get into that later.

Firstly, I’m really happy they added in that scene of Hide heading onto the CCG’s boat. I’m pretty sure we didn’t get anything like that in the manga, and we kinda just had to guess at what he was up to during all this. I always disliked how coy Ishida tried to be about what Hide was up to in this arc, so I appreciate that it looks like the anime’s being more transparent about it. Hopefully this little addition is hinting at the idea that they’ll explicitly make it clear that Scarecrow is Hide in the next episode. That’s something that really should have been made clear immediately in the manga, since the upcoming scene with Marude and Yoshitoki literally spells out that Hide’s still alive, but Ishida kept being coy and evasive about it until like 40+ chapters after this point. Yes, I’m still bitter about that, lol.

On the note of Hide, I wonder if they’re going to include the flashback scene that shows him, as Scarecrow, breaking Amon out of the Aogiri base on Rushima. On the one hand, it’s pretty important at explaining that detail of what Amon’s been up to, but on the other hand, it pretty much never comes up again a single time, not even once Amon and Hide are back in the story and literally working together and talking to each other, so I’m not entirely sure if it’s even worth including. I’d prefer them to keep it and just take some additional steps to actually explain what the heck was going on with all that, and how Hide knew about the Rushima base in the first place. But I guess we’ll see.

And while I’m at it, I think I forgot to mention in my post about episode 14 that, since the chorus scene of the OP shows Kaneki in the environment he was in when he talked to his hallucination of Hide, I’m still pretty sure that the part right after that is meant to be him and Hide reaching their hands out to each other.

Anyway, back onto the episode itself, I feel a bit vindicated about how they did indeed go back to adapt at least most of the Rushima stuff from the end of volume 6 that they’d previously skipped past. So we actually got to see how Mutsuki ended up captured by Torso, and whatnot. I have a few minor issues with how they handled it, like how they didn’t explain that Mutsuki had transferred over to the Hachikawa squad, and that they cut the part where he talks to Hogi and thinks about Kaneki for a bit, but it’s all pretty minor.

It also would have been nice if they at least named the new Qs members, but that probably would have just felt annoying to anime-only people especially, to have lots of names suddenly popping up on the screen. It still gets across just fine that they’re just new members of the squad, at least.

It’s been a while since I read this arc, so I might be forgetting stuff, but aside from that, I think the only real thing they cut was the exposition about Miza’s clan, but I’m honestly happy they cut that. It felt really randomly thrown in when it happened in the manga, it never comes up again, and I’m still kinda reeling about the casual reveal of there being a clan of underground ghoul dwarf people.

I’m actually slightly surprised at how faithfully they adapted everything else. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had trimmed down or removed some of the fight scenes in this episode, but I’m glad they didn’t. I mean, some minor things did get shortened, like how they basically removed the whole sequence of the Suzuya squad laughing at Kurona when she thinks that Suzuya was dead, but that’s incredibly minor, so I’m not complaining.

I should probably wait to see how the next episode goes to see for sure, but it looks like the anime might be outright removing the whole plot point of Koma and Irimi coming back into the story because apparently they didn’t die at the end of the first series I guess. I’d be really, really happy if they remove that, since it was always a really frustrating part of the manga that was a big part of why so many people have always complained at how :re ‘just keeps bringing characters back from the dead’. They were some of the worst cases of that, since they literally did NOTHING after coming back into the story, and were basically just there to force the image of the Anteiku crew getting back together.

I was holding out some hope that they’d add some anime-original stuff related to Shirazu, along the lines of us seeing him as a Kanou-made zombie quinque thing so that the Qs can fight him and get some resolution to that whole plot point, but oh well. It’s at least perfectly faithful to the manga that nothing like that happens, lol.

The Tatara fight scene looked pretty neat in action. I’m still slightly baffled by the entire concept of a flame-spewing kakuja, but it at least looks cool. It’s a bit surprising that the anime decided to have the flames be blue, but it actually works pretty well with the show’s overall colour palette. 

I have a feeling some anime-only people are going to think that the history between Tatara and Houji that gets referenced in this episode is something that the manga went into more detail about, and that the anime cut, but not really. At most the anime just didn’t mention the name of the ghoul gang that Tatara’s brother ran, but that’s pretty much it. I remember this being one of the first parts I witnessed where people reading the manga were really disappointed by how it played out, since even in the manga it felt like such a weak, short-lived resolution to a whole background plot that never gets explored. I just wanna make that one clear for everyone, haha.

Back on the topic of stuff I wish the anime could do differently, it’d be great if they just outright kill Kanou off in this arc, since he serves basically zero purpose in the entire rest of the story, but at this point I’m not expecting them to. Oh well.

As I said before, it looks like the next episode is more or less going to adapt up to the end of the whole Cochlea/Rushima arc, so I’m curious to see how that pans out, since it still feels like there’s a fair bit left to adapt. But since this episode included stuff like a good amount of the action at Kanou’s lab, there’s actually a bit less to cover than I initially expected.

To start with, I’m expecting some changes overall to how the stuff with Mutsuki and Torso is handled. Which I think should be good. Especially in hindsight, the way Ishida handled this whole plot point was a really ill omen for what was to come later in the story, so it’d be great if they change it. Specifically, I think the manga went too far in making Torso look sympathetic, and in making Mutsuki look evil. They spent way too long on Torso’s tragic backstory, and they put way too much emphasis on the whole reveal of Mutsuki having severe issues with violence and psychosis. I have a feeling that the anime will handle that pretty differently, though. For one thing I don’t think they’ll have time to even go over Torso’s backstory to the same extent the manga did, and even thus far the anime has consistently made Torso more outright menacing and villainous than he was in the manga, and they’ve treated Mutsuki with a lot more respect than the manga did, at least by this point. Even in this episode alone, Torso was way more creepy and evil than he was in the manga, so I think that bodes well for the next episode.

It’s also interesting to me that they removed the scene where Urie stumbles upon Torso’s dismembered corpse in the cave while we as the readers were still left hanging about what happened between him and Mutsuki. It implies that they might be treating the whole thing with a lot less shock value than the manga did, which would be fantastic. Especially if it tones down the emphasis on Mutsuki being ‘secretly evil and murderous’ or whatever as much as possible. And on a similar note, if the anime still has him joining the Qs in fighting Takizawa, I hope they remove that random bit of genital mutilation because hoo boy that sure was the nail in the coffin in making clear exactly how Ishida was going to handle Mutsuki as a character from then on.

I have a feeling that they’re going to portray Mutsuki as being a lot more sympathetic, even when they flash back to how he killed his family. Which would be nice. For one thing, I’m pretty sure that the manga kept it a secret that in the auction raid arc he ate some dead investigators to heal his wounds, and I think they tried to bring it up here as part of the whole ‘reveal’ of Mutsuki being psychotic, but the anime’s already made it way more clear, in more of a casual and matter of fact way, that that’s what happened, so at the very least they won’t use that as part of some obnoxious ‘he was like this all along!!!’ twist.

It’ll also be interesting to see if they include the flashback to him telling the CCG about his desire to live as a man, since they didn’t cover it way back at the start of s1. I have complicated feelings about that scene, and how it was handled in the manga, so I dunno how I want the anime to handle it. I guess to get straight to the point, I don’t want it to be framed as ‘he’s a cis girl who wants to present as male to avoid sexual violence’, but at the very least, if the anime handles his character way better overall, I’d at least prefer that to how the manga tried to spin it. But I’d prefer it if they just stick to him truly identifying as a man, since, y’know, he does. [As a reminder, the official translation of the series still, as of the most recent volume of :re (volume 6) explicitly says that he ‘was assigned female at birth but decided to transition after joining the Qs’]

As I also said before, I hope they flesh out the scene with Marude and Yoshitoki to be a lot more upfront and transparent about Hide’s involvement in it, but thankfully it looks like that’s what’s gonna happen. Even with just with how this episode added in that short scene of Hide getting onto the boat, that on it’s own would make it much more clear what’s going on. But I do want them to be way more clear that, when Marude talks about having gotten information from Hide, he really does mean that he very recently got information from a very-much-still-alive Hide.

And on that note, if they at least keep that whole detail of him having given Marude the info about how the RC Gates work which lead him to figuring out the truth about the Washuus being ghouls, it’d just make it even more obvious that Hide has a serious connection to Aogiri, or at least with Eto specifically. Especially since the anime kept the scene where Eto talks about the whole RC Gate thing with Kaneki, and how that ties into the Washuus being ghouls. So it’d be even more obvious in the anime that it’s just suspiciously coincidental that both of them would know that big of highly confidential information and use it for similar goals of trying to take down V. And of course there’s also the fact that they might include the flashback to Hide rescuing Amon from Rushima, which would really just beg the question of what the heck’s going on with him. [Hint hint: the manga literally never bothers explaining any of it, but hopefully the anime will :)]

It’ll be interesting to see how they handle the final Cochlea scenes, especially since the preview stuff doesn’t show a whole lot of it, and doesn’t show anything to do with Kaneki. I still assume that they’re going to include the entire rest of the arc, since there’s only like three or four chapters of material left to adapt in terms of it. I think it’ll probably be handled faithfully enough, though the stuff with Touka and co fighting some of the other CCG people as they escape Cochlea might get shortened a lot, or basically done off-screen. I guess we’ll see.

Other than that, I’m still really, really curious to see how the heck they go about adapting the final arcs of the series. To put it into perspective, if they wrap up this whole arc in the next episode, then after that they’ll have eight episodes to adapt seven volumes of material [and the final volume is really long so it averages out to being very nearly one volume per episode anyway]. And honestly I just have no clue how they’re gonna work with it, and it feels kinda pointless to try guessing at this point.

I still do think that a lot of the stuff from the next major story arc can be outright removed, though, or at least heavily shortened. And I’d be thankful for it, since this is when the manga got really aimless and bloated. It’s in dire need of some strict editing.

At the very least, I think they could remove nearly everything to do with where Mutsuki’s character goes after this, which could save on a lot of time, even during the final arc of the story, since that involved an obnoxious amount of time being spent on having it get very clumsily resolved at the last minute.

But other than that it’s just kinda hard to say, and I think I’ll just wait until we actually get into the next part of the story before talking about it much.

I think they’ll probably spent five episodes on the Goat arc, and three on the Dragon arc, but we’ll see.

Also, I’ve been thinking about how the anime removed the references to Kaneki’s new reputation as the CCG’s Black Reaper, and I really think I like how they handled it. It was the sort of thing that felt disappointingly short-lived and unexplored in the manga, given that after the timeskip, Kaneki almost immediately abandons the CCG anyway, so we get all of like one scene of him actually doing stuff as the Black Reaper. I can’t blame anyone for being disappointed by how it got glossed over in the anime, but I think it works pretty well.

All in all, I’m still enjoying this way more than I ever expected to, and I genuinely do think it’s fixing a lot of the issues I had with the manga. It still hinges a lot on if they can stick the landing and handle the rest of the season well, though.

[alexanderessex190973ba2bcollab]

Collab Project - Meeting on Character Ideas and Plans for next meeting

In today’s meeting, we were tasked from last’s meeting to come up with ideas for what our spirit of animation character should look like for the collab film. My ideas involved tow different concepts one being masks and the other being Imagination being stored in glass bottles.

The first ideas was a log based creature who for each sequence, would have a different mask he would acquire from everybody’s sequence adding to the range of emotions and abilities he would be able to do based off everybody’s principle. The second idea involved sentient glass beaker bottles that were filled with imagination liquid inside of them which also had ‘Rayman’ like arms and legs to control their movement. The colours used for the imagination bottles paid close attention to the colour palettes that we elected to use in the sequence 

Peoples reactions from the group to my ideas were that they really did love them but even though they put my characters towards the voting process, everyone felt really unsure how we would animate the liquid inside the bottles as well as the log creature from the other idea a bit stiff looking. Theses were very much concerns I had when I was first designing these characters too but I still loved them just as much. In the end, we needed up going with Juan’s character design for the spirit which was a floating orb with a ring around him which in hindsight, was proabley the easiest to animate as well as being very simple and clear what it was. 

In addition to coming up with the spirit of animation, I also updated my animation idea and shared it to the group which consisted of a monk manipulating orbs around hi,m which the more he does it, the more he gets into the flow of it all as he moves the balls around his arms and eventually around his neck like they’ re hovering around him. The last scene of the sequence depicts my monk character fully transcended with a bunch of orbs around him and depicting him to ascending to ah higher plain with the pattern in the background simulating this.

I was inspired for this idea from watching the scene form Kung Fu Panda 2 specifically the scene ‘Inner Peace’ as I loved the passion that was In shifu’s technique as he glided the raindrop around his body and arms and ending it on the flower. As well as this, this also got me thinking about the MASH networks from the start of this project as I was already visualising how this ascension that the monk character would face at the end of the sequence would look like as the Dynamics exercise would be a perfect representation of this. But most importantly the reason why I wanted to go with a Monk character to explore my principle was because I always synomise Monks being passionate about their craft and having so much soul into what they do weather that be their mediation or their martial arts as there’s a nice range of dynamics and balance that’s on display that they showcase. 

Kung Fu Panda 2 : Inner peace

Overall, I think this monk idea is where I plan to advance with the project as it technically covers two principles in one (both passion and soul) as well as being the most doable idea from last weeks ideas. In terms of the spirit of animation, I’m ok with the fact that my character wasn't chosen for the final piece as I really liked Juan’s design. Plus, the character ideas would be really fun experiments to explore in my own time to see if they are possible to make.

[dannsmith95]

Week 10 -  Gibbs Reflective Cycle

Description

Writing and recording my song has been a massive learning curve, I usually get a chord progression or riff I like and record it into my phone. If I get lyrics to it at the time I write down as much as comes out at the time then tend to leave it there, no thought of the context of the song or the audience etc. This time I came up with a riff during guitar practice which I noted on my first diary entry and I really liked the riff so I decided as I knew I would be working towards submitting a complete song for the formative/summative I would develop it into a complete song with lyrics, using the courses resources to expand on my knowledge of my discipline to develop guitar parts for the song, to also consider the audience it could be aimed at based on the sound and feel of the song so I could then write a full set of lyrics to it and work the song out from start to finish. I wanted to get more technical, adding layers to the chorus guitar parts and developing a bridge part that had more of a rock guitar sound. I also wanted to use my amp for the majority of the recording (I was initially unsure as to if I would use the Slate plugins as I liked the solo sound I got in the formative version) I decided to look into more miking techniques and dual miking the amps cap with 2 different styles of mic (dynamic and condenser) to capture a nice full sounding gain tone which in the end I was happy with. I recorded the songs and aimed for around -6db as I had in my head that this was a good recording input level, I watched a lot of tutorials before going into the mixing process to give myself a good base knowledge as shown in my research pdf, starting with the static mix once everything is recorded setting the levels and panning then moving through the mix track by track assessing the sound and tone and noting down what I thought could be altered and adjusted such as EQ on the snare sound to adjust the tone with some added compression to add more punch, softening the drum overhead track to take the harshness away from them also with the vocals some compression to smoothen out the vocals in the chorus parts. I EQ’d the bass to add more mid-range and cut some of the low end so it was less muddy and cut through the mix a little more while still sitting in the lower end. Strategically working through each individual track’s sound adding and taking things away with purpose was my main focus.

Feelings

I was feeling anxious about the process as I knew I wanted to make a big improvement on this version of the song in comparison to the formative version and I knew I had to work completely in line with my action plan in order to get it done with enough time for me to review it before submission. I knew that I had to create a bridge/middle 8 which would change the songs dynamic and feel completely to keep from the song being to much of the same and surprise the listener. I knew I wanted it to have a more rock feel to add sit with the other pop style elements as I feel this is my style and knew this is what it was missing. Once I created the piece musically, I knew I had to write lyrics for it again something I was anxious about however I thought best to record the music side then see what came out lyric wise which worked well. I really enjoyed creating the sound with different mic techniques for the chorus and bridge parts and adding a slightly more gainy sound for those parts also, this gave the song added punch and bite that I also wanted, the subtle chorus on the verse guitar parts I thought worked a treat adding a slight sparkle to the sound. Going into the mixing process was the most daunting although I had watched a lot of tutorial videos as much as it had informed me it had intimidated me to firstly how much of an impact this stage has and how crucial it is but also how complex it seems to be watching somebody do it. However, I had so much fun working through the song track by track and tweaking the tones where I though it needed adding and taking away where necessary. I thought to myself “treat it like tweaking an amp or pedal to find the right sound” once I simplified it a little in my head concept-wise I just had to watch some tutorials as I went a long of how to use certain features of Pro Tools. I found myself lost in the process spending a lot of time looping up parts of the track trying to get it to where I wanted it and then mastering the track to bring the volume up without losing the musical sound. Once the song was done I was unsure about the video editing process, what programme to use, how to piece multiple bits of video together showing all my contributions and then to match this up with the audio. After it was all recorded, I tried to load the different pieces of footage into a free video editing software which did not go to well as the video were jittery and the audio was sipping so matching up the video to audio was basically impossible, so I decided to invest in adobe premiere pro via the creative cloud as students get a big discount on the monthly instalments. This created another problem, learning how to use a more complex video editing software, so began the rabbit whole of premiere pro tutorials however after a few I was away and began to play around with some animation for the starting title and end credits.

 Evaluation

I thought the process went well, I worked to my action plan creating checklists for recording and mixing making sure I was keeping tight to them to leave myself a good amount of time to review the track over before submission so I could take a day out and go back at it with fresh ears and show it to a few others for feedback. I was happy with myself that I managed to get the recording and middle 8 created with words done quicker than I had thought and planned for, so it gave me a few days extra time for mixing/mastering. I surprised myself honestly, I thought I would really struggle but I was having a lot of fun throughout the whole process that I was excited to get started from waking up everyday and not wanting to stop at night. The whole process of piecing the song together then getting the drums back and adding them in and hearing it come together as a full song as if I were creating it with a band was great and so inspiring so much so I have been working on a couple of other songs in preparation for next term. I have learnt so much in such a short space of time I can not wait to see what my next recordings sound like on the back of this one. I think the song sound great in comparison to my formative version not just because it has full band arrangements but tonally however, I will look to re-record the song as my main error was the initially input levels were too high and this does not sit well when compression is involved so that was a massive learning curve. I sent the link to my song/performance video to a couple of friends who are also musicians for feedback regarding the musical arrangements and sound, also my friend’s girlfriend as she is a big music fan and I was thinking about my target audience which should we would be a part of so I wanted some feedback from someone who the song would generally be aimed at and all was positive, my friends thought the riff was really catchy and had the John Mayer vide I got from it and also loved the middle 8 as it was a refreshing rocky element which again I wanted and was so happy that they noticed. Also, one of them said the vocals were a little Ed Sheeran like (I was not at all going for this, but I’ll take it). My friend’s girlfriend said it would be something she would listen to daily and will be doing as she cannot get it out of her head which you could not really ask for more, this is also something my brother and my dad have said, I hear them humming or whistling it sometimes around the house and it gives me a really good feeling. Lastly, I delved into video editing, something just as daunting as using premiere pro was not easy initially but after a few tutorials I pieced the video together with the audio and even delved into some simple animation for the title and credits sections. Once I had played around with the masking for the title animation as I did not want to use a template, I wanted to create my own and the rolling end credits I tried something different a section of the guitar solo. The video is in black and white for the most part as I had to record in different rooms of the house and wanted to clean up the background a bit without using green screen techniques, I felt the black and white was simple and gave it an old tv feel. However, for the section of the solo I wanted to add a bit of colour and movement at the part where I slide down the neck so I added movement to the screen and an offset colour effect which is almost like the blue/red colour effect you would get from a stuttering VHS tape.

Analysis

I think I overlooked the recording aspect in favour of the mixing side of things initially, I thought I had the recording part down and was confident in my mic placement and tones however I did not take into account the input level as I set the input gain to as high as it could be without it clipping which in hindsight after some further research it seems -18db to -12db seems to be a sweet spot for input level to keep the sweetness of the sound and will be something I will be experimenting with moving forward before my next recordings as I found once the mix/mastering had be done the compression seemed to bring out some harsh tones in the chorus guitar parts, snare and lead guitar part. I will also be trying to relax more when I’m playing not worrying to much about how many takes I have to do and just having fun playing so that feeling comes out in the recording (I was so conscious about getting the lead guitar part right note for note that I picked to hard while playing) this is something that I come to notice a lot once the mix had been compressed. I will also be looking to purchase a better pop shield and portable vocal isolation booth, I feel the ‘T’s’ stick out too much in the mix (I have done all I can to take the harshness out of them) the pop shield I have is not very good and is a little small. Also, I want to isolate the vocals to prevent reflections from nearby walls as I work in small spaces mostly and this can be a problem, this will hopefully give me the truest vocal sound to work with when recording. Lastly, I want to look into video editing more to create performance videos for my songs that look clean and good quality and the after some investment into camera equipment potentially music videos as to add to my capabilities for my work portfolio, for use with my band and for my own personal satisfaction. I loved seeing it come to life in video and I also want to begin content creating via YouTube and Instagram in the future.

Conclusion

Moving forward I would set the input levels lower than I did initially as you can also turn the levels up in the mix, this will help to keep the tone and musicality of the instrument sounds when they are compressed when mixing/mastering. I would also make sure I am going into the recording stage with all parts of the song wrote so I do not have the pressure of writing while recording for the most part as I will always make adjustments where I feel they are necessary if they feel right when recording. I will be investing in some better equipment for recording, RODE NT-1a mic with Rode’s pop shield as mine does not cut it and a vocal isolation booth to capture the true vocal sound. Most importantly I will be learning to relax more and not take notice of the amount of takes I am doing as I am still very new to the whole process and it takes as long as it takes until it sounds right, I want the fun of creating my own music to come across in my playing and to capture that in the recording so when it comes to mixing and the end product I am completely happy with my work and what I have created. I have learnt so much about recording and mixing that it has inspired me to record and write more, I just want to create, capture, and release my music as much as possible moving forward. This course so far has been everything I could have ever wanted and needed, it had opened my mind to the possibility of me being a recording artist in whatever capacity that may be and has given me a passion I will continue to develop throughout my lifetime. Also, it has helped me prove to myself I am able to do it and given me the confidence to do so moving forward something I will be forever grateful for. I can know set up my equipment and get a song recorded, mixed and mastered to a point I will be happy with and if not I will know where I need to change it to make it something I will be proud to release to the world and then move on to performing live which will be the next step in my career when I have around 5 songs I can send to people and perform as a short set in local venues.

Action Plan

I would definitely create an action plan, recording/mixing checklist, again. This was something that helped keep me on track and gave me a clear path to follow and also eased my anxieties surrounding my progress as I was always aware as to where I was at. I will be researching further on recording and mixing so I can continue to develop my skills to get better sounding mixes and hopefully get good enough to add this to my future work portfolio as a private recording engineer. I want to develop my video filming/editing skills again to add to my future work portfolio, but I also want to create content for YouTube and Instagram for my band and my own personal channels, I enjoyed piecing my video together and adding the effects/animation bringing it all to life was great and I would also like to potentially do this for other people. I need to improve generally on the whole process, but I feel now I have a great base knowledge of recording music, video and mixing which I can develop on and progress for the next assignments and I am looking forward to it. One thing I have been inspired to do is write more and finish more songs, I have loads of riffs and chord progressions with either no words or some words so I will be going through the arsenal so finish them, something I have already done with 2 songs. I am going to continue to push myself to my limits as I think it brings out the best in me and I have surprised myself in how much I have accomplished in just a few months.

[willandlyra]

nothings gonna change my world

in which will meets nico’s sisters

word count: 1764

read on ao3

::

It goes better than Will had planned.

Will, despite being fully informed of Hazel Levesque's sweet demeanour, had still been expecting a shovel talk. Especially after talking to Leo.

("You should have seen her after my visit to New Rome," he'd said, letting out a whistle. "Girl hits hard."

"Leo," Nico had cut in, boredly. "You faked your death for six months."

"I didn't mean to!)

Especially after knowing that for all of being thirteen and whisked into the century from another world altogether, she was one of The Seven, she'd taken down Gaea. She'd probably saved Percy Jackson's ass at least twice, and she could make sweet of animals who'd injure any pleasant enough veterinarian.

However, Hazel does not start by pinning him up against the wall (hey, Nico doesn't look that strong either, and he could hand Will's ass to him on a platter any day that he liked) and looking him in the eye with an icy glare, threatening his future children in more than one way.

Will is not greeted with shovel talks or glowers, or even an intimidating comment made when Nico isn't looking.

When Hazel Levesque sees Will Solace for the first time, fiddling with his thumbs behind his back while awkwardly shadowing her older brother, she hugs him. Literally, she runs across the grass and open space, nearly knocks over two or three Demeter campers who are just trying to water some plants, and entangles him in a bone-crushing hug before she even looks at Nico.

All the breath is knocked out of her lungs.

"Hazel," Nico says, and he doesn't sound remotely surprised.

Eventually, Hazel untangles herself from Will, steps back a little. She looks right at him, catches his gaze (even though she is significantly shorter - she and Nico have that in common) and beams.

"I've heard so much about you!" she gushes, and Nico groans.

"Hazel."

"Shh, Nico," Hazel says. And then, seemingly remembering that she hasn't seen her brother face to face in weeks, she flings herself into his arms and hugs him in a way that not even Jason Grace could get away with. "I've missed you so much!"

Nico laughs. "Yeah, yeah," he says. He sounds a little uncomfortable, but mostly he sounds happy and Will thinks that happy is a great look on him.

Nico catches Will's eye behind his sister's mass of curls.

"At least she hasn't got any baby photos," he sighs.

::

Reyna, in fact, does give Will a shovel talk.

At least, he thinks she did - the whole experience was kind of strange and rushed and over in a flash. Her and Nico have a weird seeming relationship, he supposes, but only on the surface.

Minutes later, she's barely conscious of his existence, because she's so caught up in the smile she's got aimed at Nico and the stories he's telling her.

Reyna had not greeted Will with a hug. She had, thankfully, greeted him alone and not with an army behind her or two terrifying and giant and glaring silver and gold dogs. Will's pretty sure he might have actually melted into a puddle of fear at that point. Not that Will had expected anything of the sort.

("Reyna's great," Nico had said, one evening in the Hades cabin, starlight streaming through the window.

Will had asked Nico about his family, and Nico liked being able to answer.

"She's not like Hazel," he'd continued. "She's very... closed. She's like me. She's a warrior but she's a sister, and she makes things make more sense."

He's liked her since then.)

But Reyna hadn't gone on the other side of Will's imaginary expectations, either - pinning him up against some cabin and prodding him with flaming torches while Nico rolled his eyes in the background.

It seemed, in hindsight, Will wasn't very good at envisioning hypothetical situations. That said, he was still refusing to go to dinner with Lord Hades and Persephone for fear of death.

("My father is way too busy to actually kill people," Nico scoffed. "He has other people to do that for him.)

"Solace, right?" is what Reyna says when she actually sets two dark eyes on the two of them, having firstly drawn Nico against her and given him a tight but brief hug.

Will shrugs off the urge to salute.

"Yep," he nods. "Uh, Will. Reyna. Preator."

"Reyna's fine," Reyna says, coolly. She reaches out her hand, and Will oblingly takes it in his own and shakes it. "I've heard... a fair bit about you."

"Reyna," Nico says, warningly.

Reyna smirks.

"Not much," she continues. "Nico's as closed off as he's ever been, but he's getting there. The amount I've heard your name in casual conversation when he doesn't realise he's rambling is a good sign in itself..."

Will grins. "Yeah?"

And Reyna smiles, kindly. Softer, like she's seen something she likes on his face or in his eyes. It wouldn't surprise him. Will reads like an open book and most of the words are like gold when it comes to Nico.

Most of them, at least. Shadow travelling not included.

"Yeah," she confirms. "So it's nice to meet you, I'm glad that he has you. Really. You two... look good together."

Nico is blushing a little and Will's smile is stretching out to the far corners of the universe, far surpassing the moon and all the planets and the sun. He breathes out a sigh of relief and it feels like releasing all the winds in the world.

"That said," Reyna's tone changes, dips a little. Not scary or threatening so much as authorative. Kind of like how Apollo sounds when he's telling everyone to quieten down so he can talk about himself. Actually... probably not that, not so much.

Will gulps.

Reyna does not pull out a sword or a javeline or a lightsaber to threaten Will's life. But the intention is there.

"Make my little brother sad and I will have to come at you with the full force of the Roman army, Solace."

Nico rolls his eyes.

"Reyna, seriously."

Reyna smiles again.

This time, Will is unable to stop himself from saluting.

"Noted," he says, and Reyna pats him on the shoulder. And when Will looks back, despite himself and his words and his manner, Nico can't stop smiling.

::

There's one sister he can't meet, not really.

Bianca is out there somewhere: soul basking in the light of the sun and the warm blue skies, wind breezing against her skin.

Every day she is relearning something that she loved about the world: moonlight and rainfall on a roof top, archery, girl power, girls like Thalia Grace. She must be a little kid now, at the point of discovering little songs and colourful things.

When Nico talks about it he sounds sad but there's something in his voice that's as though he's thinking, yeah, she'd really love that. He once said that Bianca loved every new part of the world that she got to see, and Will supposes in that case it's fitting that she'll get to see it all through two pairs of eyes, both big and beaming, like Nico's.

But one day, months and months and a year or so, they're wandering through the Camp Half-Blood grounds, exploring their way through wilderness and overgrowth and bright colours submerged in uncut grass. The sun is out and the two of them are drowning underneath white light and gold hues that make this place feel like home.

Nico will never be warm. He's a child of the Underworld. But lately, his hands haven't felt quite so cold when he's holding Will's.

"Where are we going?" Will asks, but Nico's pulling him through wildflowers, barely dodging stinging nettles and the odd thorn, and he doesn't really care.

He'd go anywhere with Nico.

Even the Underworld - yes, he did do that, he's a stupid kid for love, okay. He went to dinner with Lord Hades of all people and ate special food that didn't trap his soul or whatever, and Persephone made small talk while everyone looked incredibly awkward. Will hadn't known what to say - he couldn't exactly say "hey, nice place you got here," and asking Nico's father about his job was the last thing he wanted to do.

Will gulps. He pushes that particular experience out of his mind.

"You'll see," Nico says. He pauses but doesn't stop moving, still pulling Will further and further out into the wild. Hell, Will likes being outside and even he's probably never come this far out into the greenery.

And after stumbling down another hill, they're lead down into a clearing, one which lets light fall beneath the roof of trees. It's empty but for the vague pulse of magic that Will swears he can feel, the thump-thump of life.

The glowing gold light.

And a marker. Something that stands out in the centre, where the beams of light really meet. Not a headstone, exactly, not - but it's something and it stands proud and made of stone.

An engraving of a girl, stood in position with a bow, poised to shoot an arrow into the sky ready to rip apart the constellations. A girl who could do anything and a name that Will doesn't need to read to know.

"I found this place a few months after the war," Nico says, after clearing his throat and looking awkwardly around, eyes sweeping the trees and the memorial and the ground. "I made this... place for her. She's not - here, like, physically. It isn't a grave so much. But it feels like her, it's somewhere she'd like. So it's like a little bit of her is here."

Will squeezes Nico's hand, and feels a gentle pulse in return.

"I'm sorry if it's weird," Nico says, hesitant now. "I know you can't know her, not really, but I wanted you to - meet her, I guess."

"It's not weird," Will murmurs. He squeezes Nico's hand again, clasps their fingers closer together. "It's not weird, not at all. And I'm - I'm glad you brought me here," he says.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Will says. He steps forwards, urges Nico to do so too, still not letting go of the gentle grip on his hand.

The light falls down on them and Will knows what he means now: the way that this place feels, the sleepy magic, warm light. They make their way closer and fall against the soft ground and Nico lays his head against Will and he feels safe.

And Will says, "tell me about her," so Nico does.

[asterinjapan]

Sparkling sights

Good evening again!

Today was a bit shorter (I was back at the hotel by 7 PM instead of near midnight, oops), and plans had changed slightly. I did however visit the Hama Rikyu gardens, so follow me below for my report!

Since I was back so late yesterday and I’m not going out of Tokyo, I took my time getting up and only went out a little past 10. The gardens are a 10 minute walk away from Shimbashi station, which is a half hour ride from Ikebukuro, so off I went!

Sadly, I’d forgotten about my special ability to get lost. It should be an easy walk to the gardens, but alas, it took me like half an hour even while following signs. In my defense, half the district seems to be under construction, so there were a lot of construction sites and shut off roads, which made it harder to navigate.

At least the garden is very welcoming, and also pretty touristic – it’s one of the most popular gardens in Tokyo, and it also shows in the plates etc., since English translations were almost ubiquitous.

I was a little late to catch all of the pretty colours of autumn, but there were still leaves on quite some trees, and the weather was lovely today, clear blue skies until the afternoon at least. Hama Rikyu lies in the middle of the city, meaning it’s very hard to take any picture here without the giant skyscrapers in the background, but I kind of liked it, actually? It makes it seem like this quiet bubble in the middle of the bustling metropolis. It was fairly quiet too while I was there, and since the garden is so big, I could walk for a good while without even running into anyone. I’ve really taken a liking to Japanese gardens. No matter how touristic, they’re just lovely to walk around in, beautifully planted and sometimes with a tea house in the middle (like here). Just a nice little break from the rush of the city.

The weather was great for walking, but I was getting a little hungry, so I got green tea with a sweet at the tea house before continuing.

After about 2.5 hours of wandering in the garden, I decided to go to Shinjuku to find a café and to go into the Metropolitan Government Building to see if I could catch sight of Mount Fuji. Well, uh. I did mention I’m good at getting lost, right? On top of that, Shinjuku station is the busiest in the world, and I don’t doubt one of the biggest too. I still have no idea how it works, I think it’s several separate buildings. I don’t know. I have a complicated relationship with this station and it took me half an hour to find the café, Toraya Café, even though it’s super easy to find on hindsight. Arrrgh. The café was worth it though! They sell red bean paste products, which I love love love, and I went with a matcha au lait with a layer of the paste and a red bean paste roll. Ahh, so yummy. It’s not the cheapest stand, but definitely worth a little detour.

Well, I say detour, but I still had issues finding my way around the station again and the sun was setting anyway. So I gave up on Shinjuku station (not even for the first time, oops) and went to Harajuku instead. Right next to the station is Meiji Shrine (closed when I got there), and the fancy shopping road leading up to it is called Omotesando. The trees lining this road are all decorated in Christmas lights, so that was a pretty sight! Sadly the walking bridge was closed off, so I had to make do with the pictures. (Omotesando goes up and down hill).

I went to toy store Kiddy Land, which is pretty big and has merchandise for all kinds of characters and shows. I refrained from getting anything from Cinnamoroll (but so cute! It’s a – rabbit? Thing? I think?), but I did get myself a pink Otomatone, and I am delighted. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please just look it up on youtube. They’re delightfully awful and I can’t wait to play on mine.)

A bit of shopping later, I made my way back to the station again and went back to Ikebukuro for dinner.

So far I think I should be able to take all my souvenirs back with me safe and sound, haha. Tomorrow I’ll be meeting up with a friend, although I’m not sure yet if we’re going to go through with the Sengakuji visit. It’s the place where the 47 ronin took their own lives, which is commemorated tomorrow, which is kind of… yeah. So we’ll see. Maybe a visit to the Sky Tree otherwise? And tomorrow should be a clear day, so who knows, maybe I’ll actually get a clear view on Mount Fuji, haha.

And after that, only one more day left! Ah, time flies.

See you tomorrow!

[werewolfgabby]

Evaluation

This was a really interesting project to work on, as it was a task to make a games concept but with a literature based starting point. I came up with the base concept for the game (Halloween Dating Sim) before we even started this project as it’s something I hadn’t really done before yet, and would give me a chance to explore a new aesthetic. I also really wanted to do a game like this as it would allow me to work on my background drawing skills - since they are a huge part of these types of game.

Since I already had a brief idea of what I wanted to do before I started, I chose to research all the books that had supernatural themes or creatures that weren’t regular humans - so that I could relate it to the monster idea I had. I chose these books to research: Woman in Black, Jekyll & Hyde, Frankenstein, Let The Right One In, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

The main book that I chose to influence this project was Jekyll and Hyde, since I loved the mystery and secrecy aspect of the novel, as well as the main character - Jekyll - and his issues with split personality and the supernatural. This Victorian Gothic novel combined with my original idea to make the dating simulator meant that I now had a dual genre game. While the initial game appears to be a modern dating simulator set in a cursed town, it is actually a detective game which allows you to expose the darker side of the town’s residents. In that sense, the novel starting point has actually stayed very prominent in my project - there is a character who is based on Jekyll & Hyde who is the main villain, and the main character you play as (Bailey) almost takes on a similar role to Utterson, trying to solve the mystery. 

For this project - Cauldron Hollow - I have created many different characters, some background artwork and a book cover, as well as some fake screenshots of how the game-play could look. When I went into the project I had planned to create more expressions and poses for each character and draw more backgrounds, but due to my limited time frame I am happy with the amount of work i’ve been able to produce. 

The Characters

I wanted to design a range of date-able characters for this game so that I would have more examples of character design for my portfolio. My poor time management definitely affected the outcome of this work quite significantly - as it was at least a week into the project when I started making the characters. I gave myself some time to think about the designs but did very few concept sketches before jumping into the final artwork, as I was worried that I wouldn’t have any actual finished work to show if I didn’t do it quickly. I wanted to have a decent amount of characters to show a lot of variety in the designs, which led to me having hardly any time to focus on each one.

 I did all the artwork over one weekend, which was a very poor idea - as I had no time to come up with several iterations for each. On top of this, drawing 9 characters in such a short amount of time left me severely burnt out by the end, and as a result some character artwork clearly has significantly less effort put into it. The character I made last, Robin, as a result was the one I liked the least - the colours didn’t really fit properly, the pose was a little rigid and the linework was messy. I think that this was partially due to the type of brush I was using, which I don’t think is suitable for the kind of clean line-work I was after - as a result I will change my brush for the next project to try and get a more appealing finish. 

If I could redraw these characters, I would do a lot of things differently. I would dedicate more time to each one and really focus on the ‘quality vs quantity’ as my mindset for this project was ‘more work means better’. I would also spend more time creating multiple different looks for each character so I could then pick the best concept and refine it, rather than finalising the first result in my head. On top of this, I would like to spread out the character design across a wider period of time, so that I don’t overwork myself on one - or even just do less characters. 

There are some things I did like about the character design - I did try and vary my poses more; each character does have a fairly unique pose (even if the anatomy isn’t great, which I’d like to focus more heavily on in the next project) which I haven’t really tried before, and I think that they definitely look better because of it even if it isn’t a massive change. I also really like the colour schemes of some of the designs, and the outfit design I did, as I think it matches the kind of aesthetic I was going for. One final thing i’m glad I did was to keep the characters consistent in terms of shading, highlights, art style and brush texture - they do all look like they’re part of a set rather than all being drawn in completely different ways. I think the fact that I used a consistent colour palette throughout the project definitely influenced this, as I found that most characters fit pretty nicely together.

The Backgrounds

I came into this project wanting to improve my backgrounds, since they’re a big part of dating sim games and aesthetics. I am actually really happy how they turned out since I’m not normally very confident with them. The first background I made was of a bedroom and window, which I coloured in the same way that I had done the characters. Thanks to the perspective drawing feature, all the features of the room look relatively accurate, which I’m really happy about. It was only the hand drawn features (such as the pumpkin clock) which look a little out of place- but to remedy this I think I just need more practice with perspective.

For the window background, if I could improve it I think I would have added more detail to the walls - as the painting and picture frames are empty. I would have also liked to make the space outside of the window a lot more detailed - but I was too tired after drawing the initial room to bother spending more time on it. To fix this, I could have left it and came back later to finish it off when I was inspired to do it. 

I coloured the room with the same colour palette I had used for all the other work, which complimented the character well but also left me with a very limited range of tones that I could use. Overall, I think that trying to work entirely in a certain set of colours was a nice experience, but I don’t think it was really noticeable at all for the most part - I think I should either use 4-5 colours in a palette next time or non at all, but it was still an interesting experience. 

I was planning on creating a range of backgrounds but I had not anticipated how much time I would spend on the next one. It took me over 7 hours to draw from start to finish, and while it was absolutely worth it, it didn’t really give me a lot of time to do anything else. This is also an issue which I think can be fixed with practice - as I was still pretty new to the idea. I do really love the Garden background and how it turned out, especially thanks to all the soft lighting and level of detail which I included. For these backgrounds, I actually looked at a variety of reference images while creating it, and it really paid off I think - so hopefully I will continue to do so in the future. While I’m really happy with the few backgrounds I did produce, it would have been nice to have the chance to do more. 

The Book Cover & Designs 

Having to design a book cover was a pretty challenging part of this project as it’s new to me, so I wasn’t really sure what to put on the front. I did a few different ideas and eventually settled on the one that would allow me to both draw a background and a detailed character. This particular scene involved me having to draw a foreshortened character, which I struggled with. I kept at it until it looked right to me, but in hindsight I could have just looked up a reference to help me. Like the other backgrounds, I looked up reference images for the building rooftops, and as a result I think they turned out really well. 

The actual character artwork had some issues initially - her face was too wide, the eyes were slightly wrong for a reason I couldn’t pinpoint, and the whole thing looked a bit flat. I ended up having to change the colour palette at this point just to help the character stand out from the background. I’m glad that I went back and fixed all the issues before finishing the work, as i’m a lot happier now with how it’s turned out, although the face still bothers me a bit. I think if I could do this again i’d love to attempt an actual painting, rather than just soft shading and adding overlay layers, as it’s something I haven’t done in a while. I’m happy with how the character is posed as well as I think it actually looks different from my usual static poses. On top of this, I’m really glad that I went for a handwritten title as it gives it more of a fun feel. I do however think that it doesn’t really show the dating simulator aspect of the game- but I would have liked to create an alternate cover that is a lot happier and more pastel if I had more time, to show the dual genres present in the game. 

[storydevs]

Nice Things + Announcements

I’ve been chipping away at the site recently and most of it is pretty boring stuff that wouldn’t be fun to read about. But here’s some neat little things I did the past couple of days:

More Fitting Autocomplete

Usually autocomplete in Chrome looks like this:

The pale yellow really doesn’t work with the site so I set out to change it. This turned out to be a little more difficult than I expected but now it looks like this:

Maybe I should still highlight the fields that were autocompleted? I’m not sure. It’s never really been of any help to me.

Anyway the final CSS looks like this:

You apparently can’t override the textfield’s pale yellow background colour so instead I’ve filled it with a huge inset shadow that’s the same colour as the normal textfield. Next, the -webkit-text-fill-color with !important set overrides the browser’s styling and restores the text to its usual color. This doesn’t fix the blinking caret however, which remains black. So we use the new caret-color property (it only began being supported in browsers this year) to restore the caret’s usual color.

Logging In & Password Resets

One thing I love encountering in the wild is little islands of thoughtfulness that make things just a bit easier or nicer. Usually they’re obvious in hindsight and cause me to think “why didn’t we always do it this way?”

Above is my new design for the login and reset password forms which combines them into one form. Like many folks, I have a lot of accounts online. So a common experience for me is logging on and then... oh, wrong password. Huh, maybe it was this? No... hmm. Then I have to click on the little link that takes me to some new page. Then I fill out a different form that has the same handle/email field in it anyway.

But Password Managers...! Yes, they exist. However there are circumstances where someone might not be able to access a password manager (or may not use them at all) and then subsequently want to log onto a site. Might as well make it easy to reset.

The Mail Server Is Down

This means you won’t receive confirmation emails, nor can I receive support emails. I’ll get it sorted out when I can and re-send any unsent confirmation emails. In the mean time you can direct any emails to storydevs@gmail.com

Slower Development

To cut to the chase I have barely any money. So I haven’t been able to work on StoryDevs much lately. I don’t really know what to do about the situation. I’ve thought about starting a Patreon a few times — would that be something people would support?

StoryDevs is a place for developers of visual novels and story-focused games to find each other and collaborate. The site is under development but handle reservations are open: www.storydevs.com/reserve

Website: www.storydevs.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/storydevs Discord: https://discord.gg/A2jtNqE Email: support@storydevs.com

[theradicalintrovert]

“Victim mentality”

If it’s essential for parents to want their kids to be better versions of themselves, is it not acceptable for kids to want the same from the parents? Or are the kids too “naive”, and “don’t know what they want”?

Well, for one thing, kids do know when they want more love. 

I sat in silence having porridge for breakfast planning the workday in my head, when Mom uncharacteristically decides to give me company. “Why do you carry so many cards in your wallet?” she asks.

She knows just the right buttons to press at the right time. I say nothing. Like always. What she means is why do I carry around my IDs and my debit and credit cards in my wallet when I could carry only the essentials, while keeping some safely at home (in the event of me losing my wallet). She means well.

“Do not go through my wallet,” I reply, trying to keep calm while my slightly raised voice betrays me. Well the conversation ends with her getting defensive and saying “I don’t go through your wallet,” etc. 

Lies.

You see, she has been doing that for years now. Going through my drawer, my books, and my wallet. And that has perhaps made me even more fiercely protective of my privacy. When I stuff sponge in the keyhole of my bedroom door, I come back from work, to see it removed. It has come to a point where I can no longer consider that space as my home. It’s not. It’s my parents’s home, not mine. 

Perhaps I’ll paint an incomplete picture without giving you a backstory. I was brought up in the tea gardens of Assam and Kerala, while studying in Darjeeling and Ooty, respectively. My brother (5 years older), studied in the same boarding schools. It was a beautiful life, the ones you read in story books, with streams, outdoor fun, childish adventures, et al. 

Soon though, we moved to the city (Calcutta), a noisy chaotic mess that people somehow found ‘convenient’. My grades dropped, my interactions with people changed, I suddenly had access to all the distractions that a city had to offer, but most crucially, I came back home to my parents every day after school. From ‘talking’ to them once every two weeks by an inland letter, now I had to talk to them every day. 

As I struggled to adjust to this life (from the real jungle to this concrete one), my grades fell dramatically. Soon whatever talk was had with my parents, revolved around this. Screw friendships, screw play time, first get your grades straight then think about other things. Yeah I remember quite clearly what Dad said - there’s no point in making friends; eventually they’ll all go away and no one will be there for you when you need them. You need to be able to do things yourself. 

Great advice. So I stopped allowing myself to get close to people emotionally. always kept a distance. Didn’t go out with them as much. Heck even if I wanted to, I couldn’t because I never got any money, because you know, my grades were not good enough. So here I was in a new city, in a new setting, new school, new acquaintances, distancing myself from friends, no money to hang out with them either, but somehow a new girlfriend. 

Yes, in the 8th standard, I began seeing someone. Respite from the other crap. Also made me feel good about myself. I had something (someone) to look forward to everyday. She paid for everything when we went out. She called me on my brother’s phone at night. She was not perfect for me, but at the time, she was what I needed. 

Predictably enough, my folks found out about it. And when they did, all my money (whatever I had managed to accrue) was taken, my landline privileges revoked, and thus began the age of monitoring. My mom would be around every time I got a call. If I had to step out, I would be given exact change for the bus/auto fare. I had to borrow money from my brother to go out with her, buy her gifts on birthdays, buy my friends gifts (”what’s the point when you won’t get gifts from them in return” - probably because I never got the money to treat them somewhere. Nor did I invite them home because I always thought they would inconvenience Mom, and she wouldn’t miss an opportunity to tell me how it was not ideal to have them over). So I convinced myself that celebrating birthdays was a bad idea, and that only superficial people (read: rich) do it. I mean who celebrates the day they became a burden to the earth. I found meaning in the philosophy that productivity should be celebrated, and not mere existence.

Sounds fair, I guess.

I think they got used to the fact that I would probably never achieve the academic heights I once reached. My other achievements went largely unnoticed. When I became the school’s football captain, the house captain, regional finalist in the American Spelling Bee (twice),  the top scorer in the Green Olympiad (nation-wide), one of the highest performers in the ASSET test (nation-wide), and other inconsequential things. 

If home was a pressure cooker, at least in school things began to improve. Sometime during that blissful period, Mom saw me watching porn. My brother’s collection, but obviously I couldn’t out him. I told them I found the disc in school and next thing you know they come to school and talk to the principal regarding this. Yet another father-son moment that could have been...

Then after the 10th Standard, I had to change school. Money was short and the school wasn’t going to reduce its fees. So off I went, leaving the rich kids of DPS, to a local school. The teachers here would also take tuition classes of these very students (so ethics went beautifully out of the window). The kids here would take these tuition classes, else they would be subjected to grading bias. 

Run like a typical government institution, it was no surprise that the people who came to study here, too were from a different background, and culture. Barring a handful, I couldn’t have a conversation with any one of them. This was the phase where I got addicted to computer games. I would leave for school but instead of actually going, I started visiting this cyber cafe. I couldn’t bring myself to go to school. In the 12th grade, my attendance dropped to 19% before the school called my parents asking about me. 

What ensued was a slap on the face (quite literally) and even more monitoring. So much so that my brother was then tasked with accompanying me to school every day. Perhaps I deserved it. It was the most important year of my school and I was slacking. 

Then came college. Went to Mumbai. 3 years there on a pocket money of 1,500 per month (in Mumbai, yes). Sure I had hostel, and food. Perhaps I did not need more. I stopped buying clothes altogether, not that I used to do much shopping before. Again, who needs new clothes when you have your mind to colour your world. Death to superficiality! Never mind the embarrassment of going out on that rare occasion looking like the change in your wallet (useful sure, but you’d rather have notes).   

Did not get placed anywhere so came back home directly after college, with nowhere to go (story for another day). I was definitely living up to my father’s dream. Did a course which he did not approve of. Took 5 years to complete a 3-year course. And came back home without a job. 

Finally though I managed to bag a sales job in a multinational company. Something I was clearly not suited for. But I took it because the money was not bad (anything more than zero was not bad). Within 3 months I felt the pressure to leave, and that is exactly what I did. Didn’t tell anyone I was struggling. How could I tell my parents? They thought here I was at least doing something instead of just lazing around in the house. I couldn’t muster the courage to tell them I couldn’t do this, and that I was thinking of quitting. 

Anyway when Dad found out that I left the company, the first thing he asked was, “Did you leave, or were you fired?” In hindsight, I think he just genuinely wanted to understand the circumstances of my departure. Well, I guess I would have been fired eventually had I not left. I stayed jobless for a while after that. Applied to loads of places, even if it meant doing something I did not particularly like. I couldn’t stay there could I, using up the space in the home, while contributing nothing. Here I was crying myself to sleep for failing to launch but what good would that do? I needed to stand on my feet and do something for myself instead of moping all the time.

Finally I got a job in a content writing firm in Bombay. Once again to the land of opportunities. I think my parents were proud, to some extent. My dad cried as my train left the station. The second stint wasn’t that bad. I was getting by, barely. But it was nice to be able to stretch my legs. But good things rarely last, and soon I was moving about more than I wanted, getting ripped off more than I would have liked, and then came an opportunity to open a new branch office in Calcutta. 

I came back. Left all my clients, my independent life, because how often does one get an opportunity to head a branch office. But I thought being 24, and a person who does all this would change the perception that my parents would have of me. But predictably Mom began to rifle through my things once again and found weed in my drawer. Here I thought we had moved beyond this surveillance. But apparently not. However she decided not to question me about this at all. In fact she took the box and kept it - perhaps wanting an escape from all the failures I’ve brought upon them. 

Anyway, today she came and asked me about the cards in the wallet thing. Well, she was right. Like they always are. Perhaps I don’t know anything.  

[unit8586specialistisaacbewley]

https://vimeo.com/342202399

Final animated project

For my final project, I decided to do a short animation to tell a short and simple narrative about a few characters. In the end, I decided to try and portray a short story of a character hiding from a policeman in an older era (loosely based on Victorian), and this is what I based my animation off. In the industry, a project like this probably wouldn’t be a very large-scale production. The aim of telling a clear and simple narrative to a consumer is a format that can be utilised for many purposes, including things as advertising a product to full-on entertainment films and shows. However, due to the aesthetics and subject matter of my animation, I believe the most appropriate purpose for it in the industry would probably be as some form of entertainment for younger audiences.

 At the very start of my project, I did a lot of research into CAPS and traditional animation including the history and development of it. I also unintentionally learned a few other things about the process through my research on various artists that work in the industry and have personally inspired me. This helped me understand a lot more about the process and gave me insight into what made a good digital animation which I was very grateful for, as previously I didn’t have much experience with animating a full piece in Adobe Animate. Although, doing research alone didn’t help me fully understand the processes and skills since I learn a lot from actually doing things myself as a kinaesthetic learner. This was a challenge to work with, as I didn’t exactly have the time to hone a large amount of skill and experience with Animate before starting production on the animation, but the only way to really build on this weakness would be to simply use Animate more and create more animations in the future. I could have also tried to do more preliminary test animations and exercises as part of my final project production, although this could have conflicted with my time management restrictions during the project.

Personally, I think that I did a very substantial amount of research on the topics of my chosen final project, and this is very apparent through my production logs and hopefully the effort I made to complete my project on time. Despite the fact I think some of the research I chose to do was not completely necessary to the project at hand and wasted a bit of my time (such as the very early history of CAPS and traditional animation), I think my analysis’ of my chosen artists and animators were very succinct when it came to detailing useful things about their art styles and techniques and I even experimented with techniques inspired by their processes in my final project to help save time and enhance my aesthetic.

 In total, I did research on 5 different artists and also looked into the history and development of CAPS and traditional animation. I was mainly interested in the history of the latter as I believed the same principals and methods would be useful for digital animation, and for the most part I was correct although the history itself was not as relevant. I chose artists and animators that drew in all sorts of styles and specialised in various things, although in hindsight I realise that nearly all of my chosen artists graduated from the same animation college and this did make my research pool a little stale. However, simply going to the same school didn’t make their work any less unique or offer less things to learn from, so this wasn’t a large issue in the end and overall I learned a variety of things.

 As part of my analysis’, I wrote about some aspects of the related animators’ process and work that I felt I could perhaps transfer to my own development. These were mainly things about their style and production that I believed would save me time, with things such as considering doing a more messy and less polished lining style in order to save time while also exploring a potential new aesthetic. I think I used my research very well in this aspect, as overall using new methods inspired by these processes, I managed to complete the brunt of my animation within 2-3 days. The vast majority of the development in this final project has actually been more about the writing, so I would consider this a sign that I utilised my research very well and definitely took away key lessons that adhered to my project proposal and self-imposed goals of time management. 

Compared to other projects, thankfully I had a lot less problems than I anticipated. One of the major problems I had with the project, however, was an issue where I realised I would not have enough time to do a more complex animation that I had storyboarded out before final production where the character moves their entire body to look behind them. This was difficult to deal with, as without the action the rest of the animation looked rather stale and boring. It was hard to find a compromise since it was hard to continue to make the animation look dynamic and interesting without the body of the main character moving at all, but in the end I decided I could salvage the animation of the head moving, and keep the rest of the body static. This did effect the overall quality of the animation, but it did help me save time and adhere to the guidelines in my project proposal. To try and make the animation more interesting to look at I also decided to add in a policeman character at a very late stage of development. The animations on this character were not the most polished either, but using colour and the composition of the animation I think I managed to add in a lot more interest to the overall piece and got it to remain still visually engaging and interesting for my chosen audience.  While I did manage to solve this problem in a somewhat effective way, a lesson I took away from this was that perhaps I should have put in more effort to the pre-production and storyboards, as this issue could have been completely avoided if I drew the storyboards more consistently and had more time to perfect them. This is less of a time management issue and more of a priority issue that I should keep in mind for future endeavors. 

 I think for the most part, I planned out my production very well. My overall goal was to improve on my time management and make sure to finish everything within my deadline, and I am glad that I achieved this goal that I set out in my project proposal. However I ran into a few issues with prioritising which parts of development to focus on and do more work for - the key offender of this was how much research I put into the history of animation rather than having more time to perfect my storyboards so I could preserve the more complex animations that I wanted to use to make my animation look visually appealing. While in the end I did somewhat manage to work past these problems and still meet my goal of finishing all of my work on time and get it polished to a good standard, I now know that I need to work on understanding what aspects of my production process I need to prioritise and work more diligently on.

 Honestly, I think I didn’t use as much practical skill as I could have in the final animation. A lot of this was down to me needing to cut out some animations that I didn’t have the time to perfect, and although me not including these extra animations did help me meet my goal of finishing the project on time it definitely does detract from the whole appeal of the animation. Some of the motions are quite stiff, and though I did try and make it flow as nicely as I could it is not as smooth as I initially envisioned it to be. Quality of the animation itself aside, however, I think that I did really good work on the colours and creating the background and shadows. I had a lot of difficulty narrowing down what sort of art style to do, and in the end I am very pleased with the aesthetic and quality of the background and extra effects. While this doesn’t completely make up for the lack of dynamic animations, it did help with keeping my animation more engaging and it is good progress towards improving on background and environments in general. I also included a few principals of animation, although they weren’t completely obvious, but I think they added some nice little detail. The head moved in arcs which made it quite satisfying to look at, and I also included some small smear frames in the eye darting movements. While these little details weren’t bad, I think if I increased the scale of them and made the effects more noticeable it would have really increased the quality of my animation.

Generally working on this project has really helped me improve with navigating and using Adobe Animate. Beforehand I never really used it for much, and often deferred to using After Effects to create animations for tasks as it was very clean and smooth to use. However in order to create a sense of the ‘hand-drawn charm’ that I wanted to emulate after doing my moodboards and researching artists, I pushed myself to use Animate for a fully-fledged animated project and I think it has been a really vital and engaging experience for me. I also got the chance to experiment more with smear frames, which was very good as I did a small mini-teach lesson on them and I finally got the chance to exercise my skills and knowledge in a final project. Of course there are still a lot of things I need to improve, such as making more dynamic animations and the like, but I think I have made a very good start and my animation is still fairly appealing despite the flaws.

All in all, I am very pleased with my final project despite the disappointment with some aspects of it and the difficulties I had during development. In my project proposal, I outlined that my main goals to achieve in this project was to improve on my time management and use colour and shape to create a visually appealing animation for a younger audience. I think that my method of analysis for the artists I researched really did help make a difference in my final piece, as it helped me develop and flesh out aspects I was struggling with such as colour and art style to use, and this reflects well in the final animation in my opinion. Working on this project has also helped me recognise new goals that I need to work on in future, such as prioritising different aspects during development and using critical thinking to consider if I need to be exhausting all of my effort into small insignificant parts of development (notably the research into the history of animation.

[j4d1389]

Going through my blog posts I realised that I never actually finished a post I was doing about Lucas’ birthday! I came across a partially written one in my saved section but it was actually just notes!

So I am going to take a rewind time to last September when Lucas turned 6(!) and had a flamingo themed birthday!

If there is something that Lucas loves more than Flamingos (and Trolls) then I am yet to come across it! He has had a fascination with them for a very long time, since the time that he went to the Wetlands centre in Llanelli and he saw them there.

For his birthday I made the invitations for him as I couldn’t find any with flamingos on that weren’t going to cost me an arm and a leg. I drew out a basic silhouette of a flamingo body and used that to create a stencil that I could use to paint flamingos onto each invitation, to paint them on I actually used a sponge to give them a bit more texture as I didn’t actually want them to be flat. I then liberally sprinkled each invite with glitter to create sparkly flamingos, I did it whilst the paint was still tacky so that the glitter would stick to the pain. Whilst I was waiting for the invites to dry, so I could add-on the legs, I started on a canvas that I was going to give him for his birthday. I used a dry paintbrush (quite a rough bristled one) and dipped it lightly into a yellow/gold paint and brushed it lightly over the canvas in a few places, once I was happy with how that looked I did exactly the same using a red paint to create a sunset effect. I was really happy with how it turned out and it was practically dry as soon as I was finished doing it. I then used the same technique I used on the invites on the canvas, again liberally sprinkled with glitter once I had finished.

I left them to dry for an hour or so so that they would be fully dry by the time I went to do the legs and writing that I was adding to the top of the invites. To do the legs I used a thin paint brush and a touch of black paint. I used a metallic gold pen to write “Birthday Party!” at the top of the invites. I probably should have done a faint line to ensure my writing was straight but at the time I really didn’t think about it.

Lucas absolutely adored the invitations, so much so that we actually ended up keeping a spare one for him so that he could have one for himself (good job I made more than I needed).

When I bought the canvas that I used I bought it as a pack of three, initially I was going to use them all to paint for around the house (and I do have a light sketch drawn out on the largest one of them but I am not overly happy with the idea now so will have to change it) however I decided to use two of them for Lucas. The smallest canvas had multiple flamingos on it and the medium-sized canvas had one large flamingo on it.

For that flamingo I sketched out the shape I wanted straight onto the canvas and then painted over the sketch. For all of the painting I used acrylic paints as I find them easiest to get hold of and so nice to use. It took me a couple of days to get it to look exactly like I wanted it to. For the background I used the same effect as I had on the other canvass so it kept them linked. I didn’t use any glitter on this canvas though as I didn’t feel that it was needed as the flamingo was quite large and quite a statement as it was. I did one coat of paint initially and left it to dry, when I went back to it do continue with the details I decided that the flamingo looked too flat so I added more paint on thicker in places. I felt that it gave the flamingo a texture that reminded me of feathers.

  His birthday cake and cupcakes followed a similar colour scheme to the canvases that I painted just with hints of gold. Instead of making a flamingo I decided to buy a personalised cake topper. I also bought wafer paper cupcake toppers for the cupcakes I made for him to take into school, sadly I forgot to take any photos of the cupcakes with the toppers on as I didn’t add them until 10 minutes before I took the children to school so that they didn’t wilt at all. For the colours on the cupcakes I used white, pink, red and yellow to create a sunset effect. I added all of the colours to one piping bag and using a 1M piping nozzle I piped a “rose” swirl (which has become my favourite swirl to use as it doesn’t put too much butter icing on top of the cupcakes). Once all of the cupcakes were piped I used some rolkem gold powder rejuvenated with some water (usually I would have used a clear alcohol such as vodka but as these were for children I just used water) and with a paintbrush I splattered it onto the cupcakes. The more cupcakes I piped the more blended the colours became and some became more of a pastel tone rather than the vibrant colours that I had started out with.

His actual birthday cake was a rich chocolate mud cake using the recipe from “My Cupcake Addiction”, covered in vanilla butter icing using the same colours as the cupcakes. I wanted to create a watercolour effect on the cake but I used too much of the coloured butter icing, however I love how the cake turned out in the end even if it wasn’t how I first imagined it would. To do the cake, I first filled and covered the it with white butter icing to create a “blank canvas”, I then added splodges of the chosen coloured butter icing around the cake. Using a cake scraper and a warm pallet knife I spread the butter icing over the whole cake, cleaning off the scraper and pallet knife after each use.

Once I was happy with the finished effect I added some blue food colouring to some chopped white chocolate and then melted it, I did this so that I could make sure that the chocolate didn’t seize when I added the food colouring (though I have found that the Sugarflair Pro Gels don’t generally seize when added to chocolate but I didn’t want to risk it). I then poured it on top of the cake and let it drizzle down the sides of the cake. Once the chocolate had set I added on flakes of real gold leaf, I should have added them beforehand but I hadn’t actually planned how to do it, so hindsight is a wonderful thing.

To finish the cake off I added the personalised cake topped that I had ordered. I could have had any colour flamingo and writing but I chose to stick to a pink flamingo with gold writing. I don’t think Lucas would have been happy if the flamingo had been any other colour in all honesty and the gold writing just tied in with the rest of the design.

Lucas’ party was held at home with a handful of friends which was lovely. I much prefer doing smaller parties to big ones, though I do love doing a big party too. He had a fantastic time with his friends. Once all of his friends left all of the family came over to celebrate with him too. He had a wonderful day and was spoilt rotten (as children always are), he is already talking about his birthday this September and he keeps changing his mind between a bunny rabbit birthday or a second flamingo birthday! He seems to forget that there are several months between now and then and he may very well change his mind (though actually I doubt that it will change very much), If he sticks with the flamingo theme again I don’t think there will be much that I can get him as I think we have bought almost everything flamingo for him as it is. He has also had flamingo cushions and a flamingo toy made for him by my nan which he sleeps with every night. Fingers crossed he chooses something easier for us to buy him this year (I doubt that he will but I will keep my fingers crossed).

Keep a look out this week coming for my blogs on Skye’s birthday, however they may not be up until the end of the week so there could be some silence from me until all my work is completed (I have a few other bits to do this week which I will also blog about once everything is done).

Until Next Time x J x

Flamingo’s! Going through my blog posts I realised that I never actually finished a post I was doing about Lucas' birthday!