#something that 3d notably does not even try to do

[luxrayz64]

angry about saw 3d again im going to rant abt the public execution trap

so like, the public execution trap is innately sexist as all hell and tina is a caricature of a woman. the basic premise is this:

brad and ryan, two college students, are sitting opposite to each other with a spinning saw blade between them. their girlfriend tina, another college student who has been cheating on them both and manipulating them to 'do crimes' for her, is hung up on the ceiling above them, dropping down towards the blade. brad and ryan can either leave the sawblade where it is, killing tina when she drops on to it, or they can fight and kill the other, saving tina in the process.

for starters, tina is the kind of character that like. if I asked a 4chan user to describe the behaviour of women to me, they'd probably describe tina one to one. she's a conniving vixen, basking in the attention these two men are giving her and playing them both. when the game starts, she tries to play them, cheering for whoever is winning and claiming she's 'always loved him', until the other gains the upper hand at which point she switches teams, indicating her two faced, selfish nature. this is an opening trap - we are not granted any more time with these three characters. we know that she is a manipulative bitch, and that's all.

chad and bryan aren't particularly different in this regard. they're just as flat as tina is. they're both stupid frat bros easily egged on by the closest woman giving them attention. I'm going to be honest I don't remember which is which but until tina switches sides when white boy 1 overpowers white boy 2, they're both eager to save her and kill the other. white boy 1 catches onto this though, and he and white boy 2 agree that the other is not their enemy. they allow tina to drop onto blade, one of them exclaiming 'tina, I think we're breaking up with you!' right before she is gruesomely murdered in front of them.

from the character's perspective, this is justified. she was, after all, playing them both. without a doubt it is a horrible position to be in, but in the context of their relationship troubles, both white boys are innocent, more or less. neither of them knew that tina was dating the other. she was hurting them both, and didn't really care about either of them, switching teams to try and save herself without a care as to which one made it.

but it's always important to remember that someone created these characters and this situation.

tinas character is a sexist trope, a whore who plays with men for her own gratification. she's a succubus, leading innocent men down the path of evil, and this is how she is played. she is costumed so her cleavage is on display, she's been manipulating these boys into committing crimes for her (this is not elaborated on), and letting her die is framed as the correct choice. her death is a punchline, one of the frat bros dropping a one liner right before she is murdered.

she is the one who did the most wrongdoing, cheating on her partners and pushing them to crime on her behalf, but notably, it's not her test! she has absolutely no power in the situation. instead, the two men are being tested - will they continue fighting each other to save her in spite of the pain she's caused them, or will they acknowledge that they are both her victims and work together at her expense? her life is in their hands.

someone wrote a woman who is manipulating two young men, in which the two men agreeing to let her die is the correct and cathartic option. her death isn't something to be mourned, it's to be celebrated.

and look. if it were just this scene, maybe it would be fine. it would still be gross for the reasons outlined, but it wouldn't make me side eye the entire creative team behind this movie as much. but it isn't just this game.

there are 6 individual games (public execution, horsepower trap + the 4 from bobby's larger game) played in this movie. 5/6 feature a female hostage who is entirely powerless and must be saved by a man. none of them survive. this is totally ignoring the treatment of jill tuck, one of this movie's protagonists who gets not one, but two different deaths in this movie in which she is horribly murdered by another man, and both are framed as something to be excited about.

you're allowed to kill women off. you're allowed to write about toxic evil women who convince men to do bad things. but come on dude. when not a single one of the women in your movie are written with more than one personality trait, aren't allowed to be anything more than a damsel, you need to start looking inward. what the fuck did they put in the water in 2010 that made everyone working on this movie hate women this much

[fosermi]

since animation is literally your major, is there any details from the Sonic X Shadow generations clip we saw today that you might want to talk about?

OK SO major spoilers under the cut for the preview of the Sonic x Shadow gen prolouge

i was WAY too busy fangirling to give a proper analysis BUT when it does come out fully i might just do one, also please take note im still in my second year of studying to be an animator so these are purely my opinion. for now i can point out a few things that i genuinely want to talk about.

first thing that stood out to me was that 2D-3D style of animation, definitely something i dont think we've seen be done for the franchise before (correct me if im wrong) and it reminds me so much of RWBY in a way. There were some bits that, to me, looked choppy BUT THEN AGAIN those were the parts that needed to be choppy for emphasis reasons, specifically it was at the start where Shadow is having some sort of break down. its obvious from how choppy his movements are in comparison to the smoothness of the rest of the preview that shadow was genuinely shaking. with that 2D-3D style that choppyness looks janky as fuck but its so perfect for conveying how uptight and bottled up shadow's emotions are. its so hard to try and capture what im saying but trust me its there!!

second thing i wanna point out are the camera angles. they shift so much to serve the dramatization of the scenes and its so ✨JUICY✨like i shit you not, i cant stop staring at the different camera angles and going "oooohhh ahhhhh" and trying to rationalize the reasoning for those angles because HOLY SHIT they're so good and they actually do serve a really good cinematic purpose!! its easy for people to get lost in the changing of perspectives and camera angles but this? oh this does it so good that it actually drives the plot FORWARD instead of it seeming like separate scenes mashed together.

third thing I'll point out is the scene color shifts. when doing something cinematic, ambiance is key. so when the scene shifted from this soft and comforting blue hues

to this eerie red so suddenly with our only warning being a slight shaking of the screen??

that made it such a surprise that it gets the viewer on alert!! a good thing!!!

now i can go on and on about the different colors for each scene but let me just touch up on this one scene in specific:

it quickly goes from hopeful gold/good light to ominous black/no light, very contrasting, which can mean oh so many things... most notably; maria's hope vs shadow's resolve.

fourth thing ill touch up on are the frames where shadow runs. specifically the one where he runs out of frame from maria.

we get almost 1 frame of a model and then...

these frames here? chefs kiss, perfect. showing us just how fast shadow really is, so fast that we the light from his airshoes doesnt catch up until a fraction of a second later!!! even the glow in the doorway changes to reflect that short millisecond split.

fifth thing ill point out and its a small little thing thats making me absolutely rabid:

he fucking glows.

and yeah, sure, you can argue that its bounce light, its most probably is bounce light since its under harsh light conditions BUT if that was the case the glow wouldnt be this vibrant of a shade and it would give an aura and not specifically on his markings. just a little thing i noticed that i will get to screaming about when i post this.

last thing i wanna touch up on is the sound effects. they were just so very crunchy and pared up with the animation style?? oh it was delicious!! i have some issues with the lip sync but then again they were trying to go for an anime/western cartoon hybrid style here so its bound to be off on the lip sync.

anyway, thanks for listening to my silly ramblings, its nothing too impressive just a fangirl fangirling. now if you'll excuse me, ill go scream to the eclipse nation about glowing hedgehog.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

You’ve mentioned how boring the Avatar movies are despite how visually stunning they can be (I can’t help but agree.) How would you rewrite it to be a more interesting?

Can't be done and not for the reasons you're probably thinking.

The Thing about James Cameron

To get into this, we have to talk about James Cameron as a director.

Now, I say this being a large fan of The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day, as well as generally liking Aliens and Abyss.

But generally, the focus of James Cameron's films is not the story or the writing: it's a new cutting-edge technology he wants to develop and try out and or a particular setting. The story is presented as an excuse to do these things and is paper thin at best.

The focus of Titanic was the ship itself, the exact timing of its sinking, seeing all of the ship (both upstairs and downstairs) both before and after the sinking, and to aid that along we get this story of Jack and Rose where they run around the ship like lunatics so we can see everything.

Abyss, similarly, is exploring the concept of a setting at depth and the technology needed to produce such a film.

Now, what also ties into this, is that Cameron has a few tropes he really really really likes in films that aren't that... deep I guess I'd call them. Generally, in any Cameron film, you can count at least one (usually more) of the following:

US Marines (Good or Bad or Both)

Evil Corporations/Evil Rich People

A Surprisingly (!) Good Scientist/Science/Robot People

An Uncomplicated Action Hero/Heroine

An Uncomplicated Love Story

In the case of the Avatar series, Cameron had thought up this fictitious world Pandora, the native people there the Nav'i, and wanted to push both CGI as well as 3D to the limit (notable is that Cameron did 3D for these films in a way films generally don't, in that he did actual 3D where most '3D' films just have two cameras for stereo. This is why Cameron's 3D looks so fucking good and is actually worth seeing in theaters versus other 3D films which are eeeeeeh watch it at home). And, as usual, what we see is a story written in such a way to show off the setting, the made-up culture of the Nav'i, and the technology used to produce the film rather than the story in and of itself.

So, in the first film, we get a story that hits all the usual marks for Cameron. Through Jake's adventure, we get to explore Pandora and see all the things Cameron really wants to show off to us, we also get all the tropes Cameron usually loves: an uncomplicated love story, evil corporations, US Marines, surprisingly good scientists who seem bad at first but then are misguided, and a dumb uncomplicated hero.

In this case, it's just the plot of Dances with Wolves (almost to a tee) but uh... more blue.

(The second film is even worse in this respect, as well as just as a film, as Cameron now wants to show a new part of Pandora, the ocean but uh... has no reason for the characters to be there so has to make something up that doesn't make much sense or give the characters much to do.)

The trouble is where this works for Cameron in other films (Terminator and Terminator 2 were great in that they didn't need to be complicated, the setting and special effects provided what we needed for great films), in Avatar we're hampered by a plotline that has both aged and that we've seen before, and by a script that's... just not good.

But the point I was trying to make is that Avatar would not exist without Cameron. This isn't a case where you hire a new director, new screenwriter, new anything, this is Cameron's vision and there's really not much wiggle room in that without dumping out everything Cameron wanted.

The best someone could do is rewrite the script to make the lines more catchy/memorable/quotable without changing the plot.

(Caveat, again, I think Cameron is great when he's great. What he does well he does very well, and he has made some fantastic as well as very entertaining movies. However, sometimes, it just doesn't work out.)

Back to the Question

So, to 'fix' Avatar you have to have a script Cameron would like, one that shows of Pandora in the way he wants, and with the uncomplicated characters he generally likes.

Trouble is, that is Avatar. I can think of no way to produce what Cameron would have wanted beyond what Cameron himself did. He was involved in every step of that movie and it shows.

And again, to make it better or different is to make something that never would have happened as, well, it's not Cameron.

Long story short, you can't have Avatar without Blue Pocahontas in Space.

[istherewifiinhell]

doing my remedial tf hw [rewatching the ep i feel asleep during]

anyway u can really increase u understanding and appreciation for what goes in to Making A Show Good. by watching bw, arm and en.ergon. which maybe thats not what u want from watching a show. maybe u just want a show that IS good. well too bad.

like okay. bw, late 90s cgi cartoon [an expensive one tho, or so the wiki keeps telling me]. arm, 02 anime but first unified producted between the 2 toys companies. En, 04 cgi anime. same voice cast for all em [as dubbers in the 2nd two]. En being the sequel to arm so they really ought to be the same characters even, tho in pratice its like... ehhhhhh.

like just constantly thinking about, okay what conditions are the VAs performing under, script writers/translators. how that all affects performance

and ofc animation, well does it need fidelity? verisimilitude?? what makes something look cool? or funny? or emotive, or affecting.

and like. these all kinda can just lead u to shitting on en for looking like ass and being made on the fast (and possibly cheap?? idk.)

BUT THEN u also get to think about the designs themselves, which, toy companies. not really remotely the show makers faults [probably?] and in terms of what could have been done to best SERVE the show being made OR the toys in production like. and ill tell u what it wasnt. of making the most bulky greebly design ethos so far and trying o directly translate that as accurately as possible.

cause its just. these 'cell shaded' black outlines behemouths with maybe very little rigging? they cant emote at all. the lip flaps are some kinda 2d thing, and if they need to move their eyes or jaws u know, facial expressiony things, they can add 2d DRAWN shots [not like. more than 3 an ep] for that...

also they dont seem to be doing cgi in the way id think of it like. 3d models in a space with a camera? i think its all or mostly composit? [so they dont get the befits of say, size consistency]

like its kinda notable bw, is the cgi show, and also the era where, there not fucking CARS! theres a lot more... i mean a guy who has two cheetah legs sticking off his back is... weird... but at least his shoulders arent like shot compostionally impedingly wide cause they are the tires and suspension for a truck? u feel? the one character model who IS a vehicle is infact, the stand out for just kinda. weirder, interactable challenges. his sheer Biggness at least IS absolutely reflected as. not a plot point but. story point. he cant inhabite the same spaces as the other characters. they really block out those interactions in a way to show that instead of fudging it.

BUT ALSO like. i dont like the pure like. DESIGNS of arm that much, they DO have a lot, big... hmm i wanna say maximalism [which. lol. not be confused with maximals... which is what u call auto.bots when they are. yes. animals] but its 2d animated with such swag and style [mostly. it was ALSO a rushed production(>_> yikes)] like. the design of what im looking at is SUPERCEEDED by HOW it is presented? ig? or that also they CAN just fudge things. THATS WHAT ANIMATION IS FORRRRR. ohhh who cares what poses this guy could actually make, or how that would effect the camera shot. just kinda. u know. make it cool. make it LOOK GOOD.

and anyway ironies of ironies. a cool picture that is NOT what the toy looks like, but like, at least has its spirit, its probably more likely to make u want the toy, or have. fond appreciation for it lets say. not even getting into like. interesting story and character work that makes/manipulates u into wanting the thing cause like ohhhhhh thats my guy. u know. toyetic media things. bloribofication under capitalism.

[gubbles-owo]

Railgun Reached 100 Downloads!!

Well dang, my funney little game reached 100 downloads, wild! In celebration I thought it'd be a rad opportunity to pull back the curtains and show my approach to creating the bedroom scene, with a few lil hidden things thrown in. So let's go ahead and… listen to me ramble about dev things for a few minutes, I guess, it'll be cool I promise.

Vertex Colors!

When it comes to making N64-esque environments, vertex colors are the hidden secret to make them look lush, colorful, and just plain gorgeous- as well as period-accurate!

Generally there are two ways to light a scene in 3D: you either use dynamic lights, or static lights.

Dynamic just means the scene is lit in realtime. You can manipulate the lighting at runtime to change color or brightness or angle, and use it to create cool effects, like a day/night cycle that slowly changes over time. The main issue is that dynamic lights take up processing power, and that was fairly limited on older hardware.

Static lighting, on the other hand, captures the lighting at a single point in time and bakes it right in. However this has its own downsides. You can't re-light anything, so you have to commit to it. Plus, static lighting in modern day rendering uses separate lightmap textures, which eats up a lot of memory. It's not really something you'd see on the older consoles we're trying to emulate here.

Sooo what are we left with? How do we light our scene without slowly having to calculate dynamic lights for every pixel on screen, and without cranking out a whole second set of textures for the scene?

Well, why not bake the lighting right into the model itself?

3D models are made up of a collection of points, called vertices. Two can be bridged together to form an edge, and a third can connect to both of those to form a triangle-- your basic polygon! While you can take a flat image and stretch it over polygons to give them texture, there's an oft overlooked bit of data you can store in each vertex: color!

The three different point colors of a triangle will interpolate into one another, offering a smooth, if fairly limited, color gradient. Typically this will be multiplied over the base texture, giving you the detail of a texture and the depth of lighting!

It's easiest to demonstrate with a visual example, so here's a shot of the bedroom in Blender:

Let's break this down a bit: what can we see? Well there's a bright window to the left, which seems to be casting light onto the ceiling, fan, closet door, and desk. There's also a bookshelf on the left wall and a mattress below the camera. Given the orange glow of the sun from outside, it's safe to assume this is either early morning or late evening, just before the sun sets. And while the room isn't unkempt per se-- if anything it seems fairly tidy and organized-- the mattress is notably resting on the floor, without sheets or a blanket. There are several monitors on the desk, all blaring light onto the ceiling, and presumably into the face of whoever sits there. Other than that, the room is rather bare. Already we can start to infer a few things about Urchin's character: where their interests or comforts lie, how they take care of themselves and their space, and so on.

Environmental storytelling! Well, a light version of it anyway. But what does this all this have to do with vertex colors?

Let's disable them and see the textures underneath! Get a good look at the texture-work, and…

…oh no.

The detail is there, since we can still tell the brick from the wallpaper, the bookshelf from the mattress. But the mood is seemingly nowhere to be found! The idea of the sun or any sort of local light source has been obliterated, and what we're left with is a fully-lit room that appears flat and lifeless. Dramatic, I know, but this is what we're left with when we're rolling with just textures alone. It's hard to look at, difficult to discern where things are.

What happens if we reverse it, look at the vertex colors without texture?

So the surface detail is gone, we're not entirely sure what these shapes are. But we can infer a fair amount solely by the size, shape, and placement of them, as we have a solid sense of where everything lies in 3D space. While the detail is gone, we still have the depth.

Thematically, it seems Urchin's room is usually kept fairly dim. The evening sunlight pouring in, while contending with the stark light in the corner and perhaps unwelcome, does cast a rather warm glow into an otherwise cold space. You get the feeling that once the sun sets, the harsh sting of the monitors will be the sole light source illuminating the room.

The mood is still here, despite taking away most of the details!

The mindset behind my own approach to N64-esque environments is this:

Textures carry the detail. Vertex colors carry the vibe.

Of course, there are a number of approaches and methods for using vertex colors, and this is just one of 'em. Ultimately, the two work together to create a rich, detailed environment!

Here's a couple more examples from different angles:

You may've noticed that the sides of the computer case don't actually have textures on them, only the front panel. If they're going to be mostly flat textures anyway, why waste precious (artificially) limited memory? That's one of the fun things about thinking with vertex colors: sometimes textures aren't even necessary! The same goes for the ceiling light as seen below.

While it's possible to generate vertex colors from realtime lights in Blender, personally I hand-paint all of them in myself. Is it slow, time-consuming, and tedious? Why yes it is!! But it's work I very much enjoy, and I love seeing an environment slowly come together, one vertex at a time.

I could babble on all day about how much I love this sort of thing and all the little technicalities involved, but ya get the point. If you want to discover more examples of this, try checking out noclip.website! It lets you view a bunch of environments from a variety of older games, and in some of them you can do fancy things like disable vertex color or textures individually, or reveal developer objects normally hid in game. For some cool low poly lighting shenanigans I personally recommend checking out Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo-Kazooie! And while it's not on noclip, Vagrant Story on PS1 is just… an astounding mastery of old-school rendering infused with bold style, it's WILD.

Fog!

Another relatively simple trick used on older hardware-- oftentimes out of necessity-- was fog. Originally used as a more graceful transition to mask short draw distances, it can also be used to set mood and tone with great effect!

Moving over to the game engine (Godot in this case), this is what the scene looks like imported from Blender after a lot of headache and hassle:

It's alright, but we can do better. We want to go for a hazy summer evening, so let's try a bit of orange fog applied to the whole scene:

It's subtle, but it does a lot! It's most noticeable in the darker corners of the room, lifting several colors and textures into a unified tone the further they are from the camera. Especially when combined with the shaft of light from the window and dust particles swirling along with the fan, it gives the viewer a nice sense of "boy I sure don't want to open up that window, it must be hot and agonizingly humid outside"

Extras!

Let's end it off with a couple random bits to mention! First off is this uh… well admittedly I feel it's one of the most rushed textures in the game:

See, the idea was for Urchin's closet to be missing its door, so they hung up a curtain over it as a soft-doorway. As I am still fairly new to texture painting I have no idea how to render cloth or fabric, and I think it shows here pretty clearly!!

…and yet, I've had several players point this out to me as an example of really good texture-work??

In all honestly I don't understand it myself, but I think it does highlight an important aspect of the N64 aesthetic: when your output resolution is already so low, sometimes you can get away with things you otherwise couldn't. Sure, it looks a bit shit, but mangled through 240p and an NTSC filter you can barely tell! A crummy cloth texture isn't going to ruin your game xD

And lastly, honestly, one of my proudest things on this project… and it is never seen in the final game. I present, the lightswitch:

So yeah, I think 32 x 32px is a bit much for a small lightswitch texture, this could stand to be 16px and probably work fine. But! While most of the textures were painted or filtered noise of some sort, this one damn texture I filled in pixel by pixel. And I adore how it turned out. You've got the interesting colors from all the surrounding ambient light mixed in, the switch for the light is flicked down while the ceiling fan is set on, and the lil shadows formed by the switches. It's good stuff… and because the the script was only finished with 24 hours to the jam deadline, I had to throw together the camera angles rather hastily. Ah well, maybe next time!

Wrap Up

I'll end it there, though there's still a lot I haven't touched on: Urchin's model and animation, the ocs and script, the tangled spaghetti code slapped into place for a 2 week jam, etc. If folk are interested in more of this type of thing I might do another one? I dunno, let's see. Thanks for reading and/or playing!! >w<

And if you haven't played this silly little vn but interested to, you can grab it here! https://gubbles.itch.io/they-built-a-railgun

[adultswim2021]

Robot Chicken #56 “Boo Cocky” | September 7, 2008 - 11:30PM | S03E16

I just realized what the title means. That’s cute. 

Man, do I hate this show. I swear to god, I don’t set out to hate this show; I will watch it with an open mind and hope that something in it will be of value and/or make me laugh. A few things get me here and there, but this episode? (spoken quickly, quoting a commercial I vaguely remember from my childhood) I-don’t-think-so.

First sketch of substance starts off with some recreations of scenes from the motion picture Revenge of the Nerds. The joke is that after a montage of mostly-faithful adaptations of key scenes of the nerds committing various crimes (notably the main nerd raping the cheerleader by posing as her boyfriend in a Darth Vader costume) it smash-cuts to them in a court room. They are sentenced to half-a-lifetime of hard time in a federal prison. They get brutalized in there. The show makes a joke that the gay nerd is happy to be in prison because he’s gay. Huh! What an interesting joke for me to talk about humorlessly for two paragraphs: 

Hey I JUST JOKEEENG. I am instead going to say opinions about those movies, because I think I’ve seen all of them? I don’t remember the third one almost at all. The first one is the best, but it’s not that good. I have a soft spot for it because it was one of the first R-rated movies I was allowed to see, along with Animal House. At the time I preferred it over Animal House, which is insane to me now.

Michelle Meyrink is in Nerds, va-va-va-voom! The second one is boring and bad, and rated PG instead of R. Ogre becomes their friend in that one, which is usually the domain of animated series adaptations (such as: Murph in the Problem Child movie/cartoon). Parts 3 & 4 are television movies, I think? The fourth one has one or some of the nerds getting married as a pretense for them reuniting. I remember they showed it in 3D that didn’t really work at all. You had to get the glasses from your local Safeway or something like that?

I remember turning the fourth one off early because it was lame, and then the next day at school my friend chided me for missing the much-ballyhooed bachelor party scene, where female strippers came out with like calculators on their bras (as seen in the promos). I watched the movie when the box set came out on DVD, and it was hilarious how gay it was. Literally, I mean, I’m not doing a thing where I am using schoolboy language to take you back to my 1990s Northern California grade school experience of being small and insensitive. What I mean is: the gay nerd gets so excited by the music and sensuality that he jumps on the strippers' stage and steals focus, and his friends all cheer him on instead of getting horny for girls. Honestly, those are some good-ass friends and I’m glad he found them.

I’m not talking about the next sketch yet. First I’d like to acknowledge that I’m doing a thing that I think I swore I would not do, which is use Robot Chicken sketches as a jumping off point to riff on popular culture in a self-indulgent way. I simply don’t care anymore. I like rehashing things I know about movies. It’s the only thing keeping me alive at this point. 

Okay the next thing is: Conan of “The Barbarian” fame answers the question “what is best in life”, and instead of delivering what I’m guessing are very iconic lines (I don’t like the Conan movies! I am sorry! I do not retain things from them!) he sings a song that is ironically flowery. He name-checks gumdrops, which seems like very low-hanging fruit when you’re trying to write a song where the joke is that it’s saccharine. Does anyone actually ever refer to gumdrops in any other non-ironic context? Anyway, I REALLY hated this one. The song wasn’t even fun. It felt like a song written by bad comedy writers who don’t normally write songs. Not the worst song to be on Adult Swim, that honor probably goes to the one in Casinko. 

Another bad bit: a channel change gag where a big monster carrot eats a rabbit and then says, “did that blow your mind?” at the camera. No. It did not. There’s an unfunny sketch about the Borg infiltrating the Star Trek experience in Las Vegas. My father-in-law is Walter Koenig, so I get to have that over dinner. There’s an okay sketch where a fart outbreak in a mental ward is interrupted by a TiVo menu and off-screen characters arguing about Robot Chicken that results in bloodshed (shout out to Moral Orel, a show Robot Chicken is friends with). There’s a sketch where two sound engineers are oblivious to the fact that the guy in the soundproof booth is being mauled by various fantastical things (zombies, aliens, finally a werewolf). 

The last “main” sketch is Saved by the Bell, but it’s Saw. You can tell right away that Jigsaw is Mr. Belding, because they got the real guy to do it. Lotta real guys in this. Dustin Diamond, fresh (not really) off his stint on Tom Goes to the Mayor, is in this as well! Get you a guy who can do both. Anyway, this sucks too, but I guess it’s sorta impressive that they got 80% of the cast to lend their voices to this. I guess. Wait, no, it’s not.

MAIL BAG

Bradley Needlehead rocks

HE DOES. Thank you for bringing him up. I read somewhere, and I also vaguely remembered it on the previously-mentioned AdultSwim.com video commentary that they told DLH that he was his replacement, and asked him to coach the actor to help capture him better. I think I characterized it a little differently. I could probably use a little clarification on that. It is remarkable that Needlehead went on to create China, IL.

[cowboy]

Do you think after a project like Klaus the industry is gonna see a rise in 3d make to look 3d bc of aesthetics? Or do you think it's going to keep heading in a more and more three dimensional style?

i'm going to assume you meant '2d' in the first 3d you said? like if 2d will be heading towards 3d aesthetics?

I think for commercial animated feature films, there's obviously a really strong emphasis on realistic, detailed, tremendous, data & process heavy aesthetics. I recently watched Lupin III (3d animated movie from 2019) and that made it extremely clear to me lmao. so with that in mind, klaus is definitely a film that carries that sentiment--their dedication to detail in klaus is a genuine herculean feat. so in a way, klaus was successful because it was able to compete in a society of media where pixar was releasing films like toy story 4 with extreme dust capturing textures HD 8k 400 fps and a free breath mint, or whatever. netflix was a safer place to release it though, because it's low effort and low commitment for someone to watch klaus.

side note, i'm going to be talking about this now entirely regarding the industry, because after 5 years of being an animator i have learned that no one outside of the industry over the age of 18 could tell you what the difference is between a 2d and a 3d animated film, much less what VFX is and how it's not motion graphics... etc. so they really don't care if it's 2d or 3d as long as it looks good.

ultimately it's kind of hard to say, because framing it as "will 2d features become more 3d looking?" doesn't really fit in the reality of the industry rn. 2d feature films are a rarity nowaday (in america at least, i know there are european ones but i focus primarily on american animation talking about this, plus europe has the benefit of smaller studios being able to make features which.. does not happen often in the us), so: I'm not sure if it's that there will be a shift in the industry towards 2d to look 3d, because 2d is already nearly extinct in the commercial feature realm (even that new chip and dale movie ABOUT THE 2D/3D DICHOTOMY couldn't be fucking arsed to ANIMATE THE """2D"""" ONE IN 2D........ they 3D animated him and used fucking toon shaders).

what i DO think is that Klaus gives the industry way more of an incentive to consider 2d animation for features, and the advent of Klaus' lighting technology gives them reason to throw something fresh at moviegoers. spiderverse itself even gave a taste of multi-dimension animation blending to extremely huge success, and that's the reason mitchells vs the machines has the aesthetic it does; a blend of 2d and 3d is fresh and interesting for viewers who have any taste at all. so klaus REALLY knocked it out of the park and its success was absolutely notable to netflix and so on. (netflix is the devil but simultaneously i have to give them hats off for promoting so many 2d and stop motion features.)

outside of streaming it's hard to say if you'll see a truly 2d animated film in theaters ever again, but within streaming which has become the industry interest anyway, i think that it's very likely you'll see more 2d films coming out with technology improvements. sergio pablos himself said that he didn't really want any harsh comparisons between 2d and 3d or to say that klaus is a good film just because it's 2d, but to say it's good because it's simply a good film, and the ultimate reason he used 2d animation for klaus is because he felt that 2d had been left by the wayside to never improve meaningfully after disney and co moved onto 3d features. He wanted to improve the medium to catch it up to speed with 3d, and he fucking DID.

at the end of the day, profit is king in the industry. klaus had a budget of $40 million (toy story 4 had a budget of $200 million, for comparison!), but i can't find their profits online, so i don't know if it was a big enough chunk of change for other industry giants to put all their chips in to even try a full 2d feature. i know netflix does them here and there but i haven't heard of any new ones to the scale of klaus. then again i haven't been looking...

if we are talking about lower budget 2d features, btw, i do think there might be a slight foray into experimental yet more 'beautiful' technology techniques, but i'm not sure if that'll manifest as more "3d looking" animation. cartoon saloon went insane with wolfwalkers, which was deeply 2d to its core, and yet they slyly used 3d technology for the wolfvision scenes (in a similar way that disney used to integrate 3d into their 2d films such as beauty and the beast and tarzan).

last thing i'll say is that there IS a market for 2d--a particularly large one. look up any pencil test from a classic animated film on youtube and you'll see thousands of comments from people bemoaning a world without REAL 2d animated films, like they really used to make them, and every comment on Klaus videos are about how they're bringing glory back to 2d... so if there's a commercially large studio that wants to put their bets on it, i think there's really something lurking under the surface for 2d, especially for those feeling nostalgic.

I hope to be a part of that 2d feature resurgence :)

[rewind-reviews]

So I’ve Been Playing... Wolfenstein: The New Order

Shooters are the genre I play the most, one of the first PC games I ever played was DOOM 2 and I have been hooked ever since. Be it trying one of the classics like Blood or something a little more recent like Postal Brain Damaged I will play them all but there is one franchise I always come back to, Wolfenstein.

Wolfenstein 3D captivated me when I was a kid even if I had games like Quake to play I would always gravitate to Wolfenstein, something was amazing about the early 3D to me so was the way the game managed to tell its story with no words just get up, kill some nazis and escape against unspeakable odds. Growing up I was always excited when a new game would come out the 2009 "remake" got me so excited I would watch the trailer almost daily hoping to one day get my hands on it. But those games aren't what we are talking about, I want to talk about the 2014 reboot Wolfenstein: The New Order.

Wolfenstein: The New Order was developed by MachineGames and is a soft reboot of the franchise. Unlike previous instalments focuses entirely on a single-player experience with no multiplayer component. Because of this the story needed to be top notch and man does it deliver.

(spoilers ahead)

The story begins in 1846 with our protagonist captain William "B.J." Blazkowicz flying into Deathshead's compound to put an end to the mad scientist who is creating not only super soldiers and advanced weaponry but also mechanical monsters prolonging the war and leading towards a Nazi victory. BJ is joined but two notable soldiers. Commander Fergus Reid BJ's right-hand man and a very headstrong, capable and overall brilliant tactician and private Probst Wyatt III, who unlike Fergus is overwhelmed by the horrors of the war that he is forced to witness at the young age of 18. After fighting your way up the shore, scaling the walls of the compound and losing countless men in the prosses you gain entry to Deathshead's lab only to be ambushed.

This moment is when I fell in love with this game. You are forced to make a choice, who will die Wyatt or Fergus? This choice breaks me every single time I play this game, the weight of this choice is so hard to put into words. By the time you get to this choice which is only about an hour into the game, you have spent so much time around these two people that you love them both. Do you save the kid who barely had a chance to live his life before war changed it forever or do you save BJ's best friend?

No matter who you save you escape but are wounded leaving a chunk of metal in BJ's brain. Luckily you are found by a polish doctor who along with his wife and daughter Anya care for you for fourteen years until asylum is shut down, everyone inside is executed by the hand of the Nazis and Anya is taken. After fighting your way out, saving Anya and stealing a car you flee to a safe place. Your mission is to find the resistance and to finish what you started 14 years ago, Kill Deathshead and put an end to Nazi reign.

Okay, enough story I don't wait to spoil all of it for you. So how does the game play? Its a modern take on a classic shooter, nearly every room you walk into in MOST missions is full of enemies for you to blast your way through however you see fit maybe, you want to hide behind cover and take them out one at a time, maybe you want to charge forward with a fully automatic shotgun in both hands or (and here is how I played most of the game) you sneak through prioritising which enemies you take out first, who can raise the alarm? who is strongest? if I get seen can I recover? will I survive? However you choose to play you will have an arsenal to back you up everything from the previously mentioned fully automatic shotguns, to assault rifles even a bulky metal monstrosity that can take down most enemies in one hit. You can also unlock different perks by completing challenges which is where I have an issue. The perks are extremely useful in this game letting you hold more ammo or grenades healing on stealth takedowns things along those lines. However unlocking these can be a nightmare. At the start of most missions, you lose all of your weapons leaving you with your laser gun and a knife sometimes a pistol if you are lucky, plus there are no guarantees you will get the gun you need to unlock that perk you so desperately want making the unlocks harder than they need to be.

During the later stages of the game as the locations and battles get more and more insane some of the enemies become way too hard to kill, and yes it makes sense in the context of the game but fighting them becomes less exciting and more of a chore or hell sometimes its straight up unfair. starting a level with next to no ammo and having to fight two heavily armoured shotgun-wielding nazis is a terrible experience that I honestly never want to slog through again. However, the story really is when this game shines the most, every location and character this game shows you is perfect they all show you how war affects different people. Wyatt or Fergus resent the fact they are alive and the war has cost them a life they never got to live, BJ is desperately holding on to a dream of the future with the woman he loves where he can one day be happy. Max learns that he needs to fight after the death of his father. Even Deathshead shows his own goals and has his reasons to keep fighting, there were moments in this game that crushed me making me feel like fighting this war is pointless, like I have no reason to carry on and there were others where I felt I had to fight to save the character I love so much or to crush the oppressive force that took someone from me pushing me forward to end this seemingly endless fight.

Does Wolfenstein: The New Order have its issues? yes, Is it a perfect game? no. There are a few minor things I didn't mention here like constantly taking fall damage or needing to be super precise while cutting paths leading to pointless deaths, but would I recommend you play this game? absolutely. I haven't been this quickly attached to characters in a long time. There are moments this game makes you feel you are fighting a battle you can't possibly win but you need to keep fighting, you need to be the bastion of hope.

Anyway, I gotta go I think I need to rest before a new colossus shows up.

[everydaydg]

A simple look into how the DS games look in a 2DS

(A simple, unprofesional comparison)

So, theres a whole lot of DS systems out there huh. two revitions and a succesor (that also got its own set of revitions (even more than the original system tbh))

but you know that already so lets get straight to the main point.

how does the 2DS's integer scaling mode stand up against the DS lite and the DSi XL

Systems used here -DS Lite (Only Kirby SSU) -DSi XL -2DS *All systems are running at their highest brightness Games tested - Kirby Super Star Ultra - The World Ends with You - Cave Story (DSi ver running on 2DS and DSi) *I would like to aknowledge that most of the 2DS photos and all the photos in this are far from perfect and I am to blame for that, my phone camera aint perfect and im far from good when it comes to taking pictures, most of the photos taken are utilizing automatic adjustments Only photos that were taken with manual adjustments were that of Cave Story*

To start I would like to start with how colors are handled by the new LCD that the 2DS uses.

The original DS had a different type of LCD so the way colors are presented is a bit different

Its... slightly brighter. it overpowers alot of black making it so everything is one tone brighter than it should be. Take note of how rhyme's sweater looks on the right compared to the left, the orange is made less potent

warm colors struggle a bit more on the 2DS compared to the DSi as shown on the map.

*The photo on the right isnt indicative of the actual image on a DSi, its more to show off how a camera picks up on how the DSi handles warm colors more effectively and to show how the DSi separates pixels*

despite the small loss in color, the 2DS holds up nicely, while it does come at the cost of the screen state being smaller than it should be, it delivers on a nice interger scaled image with crispy pixels. not perfect as all things in life but quite good

you could aliviate the problem slightly by playing DS games on brightness Setting 4 but keep in mind that the colors will never look as good as they should.

now onto another topic, you most likely noticed how I pointed out the pixel separation on that note there.

Mind you, I do like the pixel separation a whole lot but it is something that wasnt present in the DS lite which is why im bringing it up and may be a point of contention to some.

*as stated before, this photo was taken with manual adjustments and the picture quality is indicative of the diferent color range between systems*

Side note: The 3DS version of Cave Story does not suffer from the blue present in the DSi version running through backwards compat.

I feel the strenghts of the 2DS pixel perfect mode and the problems of the DSi are more present when comparing it to a DS Lite

Left = DS lite. Middle = 2DS. Right = DSi

The DS lite also didnt have notisable pixel separation. While it is more notable on the photos keep in mind that im incredibly close to the screen and that the DS lite is TINY and when looking at the system at the propper distance this is not a problem

When comparing the three, the 2DS provides and really close image to that of the DS Lite! The DSi provides the correct color (sadly the picture doesnt show it propperly due to the amount of blue messing with my camera) but the bigger screen makes the separation between the pixels way more notable.

In conclusion. heres the pros and cons of every display

2DS screen = Colors are weaker due to new display, provides no pixel separation compared to the DSi, Smaller image than that of the DS Lite

DSi Screen = Colors are correct, the space inbetween pixels is extremely easy to spot due to how big the screen is (even at regular viewing distance), huge screen

DS Lite = Correct Colors, No inbetween spaces (at regular viewing distance), small screen but bigger than that of the 2DS

They all have their pros and cons.

I still recommend the DSi XL when trying DS games, I like how the display works but that is just my personal opinion.

So yeah. aint that a whole lot of text and really bad photos huh.

[nextnahas]

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Blender is basically “if it looks right, it is right”, even if some surfaces are clipping and objects are not perfectly solid. Everything is a mesh, so curved objects don’t have well defined features because they’re made out of flat sections. The consensus seems to be that Blender is pretty limited in terms of parametric design and constraints, which makes it fast and easy to build up and object but then difficult to change anything about it.

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For example, figuring out how to go from blender to model ready for CNC router to cut a 4’x 8′ sheet of MDF took some effort but saves so much time since I use the same program (blender) to create many different projects. And I do not have the time to get caught up unless it’s absolutely critical. But while I enjoy 3d modelling, it it a relatively small part of my overall projects.

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I understand if you want to be *professional* then you must buy commercial software especially if that is what you do every day for a living. Solidworks/AutoCAD you deal with licensing and all kinds of non-sense.

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This is anecdotal and hard to compare the skills of me v them, I really don’t have the time to do a large study on that sometimes you just go with personal experience.Īnd when I get a new desktop/laptop or want to show someone my design, I just do a `sudo apt install blender -y`. From personally experience, I am able to knock out a part much faster in blender vs solidworks or autocad even with people more experienced than me. “Some of us just want the part made” Exactly my point. But most are not making or pushing those decisions – they are plugged into a company with those already in place. But even there I see from academic papers algorithms and methods in Blender doing high level analysis. I don’t mean to take away from Engineers with a high level of understanding and who use expensive CAD software to do stress analysis. Considering I still have a job, I’d say they’re holding up well enough.Ĭraig, I apologize for coming through that way. My design ability and repair work is on the line every day. 3D printers see their best use when used in conjunction with other manufacturing technologies, parts, and materials, not when trying to replace them.Īlso, for the record, I do something along the lines of commercial/industrial maintenance for a living. I just feel like I see too many trying to make the printer be the end-all, be-all thing maker, when that’s a sub-par use of the technology. I’ve seen assemblies with the friggin’ WASHERS 3D printed. There IS something of an actual issue with a lot of these channels trying to print every single piece of something, and it’s obvious that, a lot of the time, it’s not for the challenge of doing so. It was a jab at the OP implying that 3D printing is somehow comparable in expense and difficulty to machine work because you “need” to know CAD, as if modern machining and design work in general doesn’t benefit heavily from the same.Īnd, no, I’m not ego stroking by criticizing something. That part wasn’t a jab at the guy making the pump. Posted in 3d Printer hacks Tagged PLA, pump, water pump Post navigation We’ve seen 3D printed pumps put to real work before, too, like this fertilizer dispenser. Instead, all the hard work is done on the CAD side of things. It’s a great example of how 3D printing can allow the creation of machines with complex geometry without the need for advanced machining skills. The design is on Onshape, for the curious. Turned with a drill at 1800 rpm, the pump is able to achieve a flow rate of 13 litres per minute, or a maximum head of 1.2 meters. Notably, no shaft seal is included, so the pump does leak a bit, but it’s not a major concern assuming you’re just pumping water and don’t mind spilling a bit of excess. There are a few ball bearings inside to allow the impeller to spin nicely, too, with hex head fasteners used to hold everything together and a long bolt used as the main impeller shaft. Gaskets are printed in pliable TPU to help seal the housings. The pump’s housings and impeller are all 3D printed in PLA, as well as the inlet which is designed for a 2L soda bottle to screw into. A great example is this centrifugal water pump that can really deliver the juice, courtesy of. Once upon a time, 3D printing was about churning out tiny Yodas and Pikachus, but these days, useful things are regularly 3D printed too.

[taldigi]

Hello good morning/day/night I’m a bit lost when it comes to Nathan from gym club and whats “canon” and fanon with him, could u help me?

So someone had found that in an old.. like, 2010 publication, there was a small report on the then in-development concept Lady Bug. Here:

so TLDR: The canon was that he's gorgeous, his name is nathan, and he was in the gym club. He was also marinette's love interest. Anything past that is "fanon". If concept stuff can even be considered fanon.

now, if you want a heavy breakdown, continue on.

So, introductory stuff: an idea in this fandom is that there are "concept characters" like Felix, Richard, Adoni, the Quantic Kids- more obscure designs like Sebastian, Flora, and Alina. Characters who don't exist in the canon 3D series- or at least not recognisable AS these characters.

For example, Melodie may have been developed into "Flora" (a fan name I like to use) who was later developed into Chloe.

They are so wildly different, it's easy to separate them into different characters. Chloe would never be friends with Marinette willingly, but Melodie or Flora are easily depicted as close friends of hers. It explains why she's a hero- at least on a meta sense.

So, back on track.

"Felix" was a design used very heavily in a LOT of concept work, He was Chat Noir's secret identity, Marinette's crush, and a boxer.

From the Artbook, Felix is described like this: "Felix is a classmate of Marinette, and he’s popular among girls. ... He has a speciality on athletics and boxing, and when he rotates his ring he can transform to Chat Noir."

Marinette is described like this: Marinette lives as a normal student at day.... Marinette is in love with Felix, but she doesn’t know Chat Noir is Felix in transformation.

Please keep that description in mind.

It was so established, in fact, that was the design that moved foreword for the PV. So he tends to be the most Well-Known because he DID get to star in some animation!

Felix' design got reused for Adrien's cousin, so the two characters get confused a lot. In a meta sense, Concept Art Felix is closer to Adrien then he is to Felix GDV.

However, he was later developed and changed into Adrien, the character that currently takes the role of Chat Noir. Adrien is notable for being attractive enough to be a model, and participates in the fencing club. Oh. He's also Marinette's Crush.

However, these were not the only designs that existed. Some of the earlier ones got pretty weird. Since the only thing that kept them strung together was the fact that this this character was the secret identity of Chat Noir as well as Marinette's Crush.

I'm quite fond of using some of these to depict Nathan.

So it's safe to assume that...

Nathan COULD be a preliminary name chosen BEFORE Felix was chosen- as names and identities were fluid. Early Marinette was Marietta, after all.

Him being in the gym club DOES mirror the fact that in concept work, Felix was noted to be a boxer as well as Adrien being a fencer- and that Marinette often chose to try and impress Felix by getting into athletics herself.

Nathan is labeled as gorgeous enough that Marinette is tempted to misuse her good luck powers to score a date with him. Something that Marinette would do frequently with Felix. Not so much with Adrien, but we're aware of her crush on him so it's hard to argue. With Felix' popularity with girls and Adrien... well.. Adrien being a model and also being fought over constantly....

This is like, an early publication. Its hard to argue that due to how early it is and how much lines up, or that it's fake- the site seems legit, but personally idk.

Also, it could just be a fluke in the report. Maybe this early Chat Noir identity character wasn't really named Nathan? But hey, concept fandom takes what scraps it gets. and pairing that up with how creepy early Chat was.. well, you get the picture. It's all trying ones best to tie up string, it's all fun.

most importantly, it gives me a new character to use. and I will use him for evil. i promise.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Miru

Debut: Pac & Pal

Miru is one of those “obscure” Pac-Man characters. She’s not REALLY obscure, and is in fact the titular Pal of Pac & Pal, and a big part of the game! Any in-depth Pac-Man Fan knows Miru. To most, though, anything beyond Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, and the Ghost Gang is obscure.

Not me! I play Pac-Man for the world and characters, and I am NOT kidding! And Miru here is one of my very favorites!

As mentioned previously, Miru is Pac-Man’s pal, and is featured in Pac & Pal, the second sequel to Pac-Man after Super Pac-Man! Ms. Pac-Man is more of an official mod than a sequel, and is sort of a spinoff, despite its much bigger fame than the true sequels. And honestly, it is, conceptually, far less interesting, even if the gameplay is more widely appealing.

In Pac & Pal, there are no dots, and no Power Pellets! There are ghosts and a maze, but this time, the goal is to collect all the items within, by flipping over cards to unlock paths. To fight ghosts, Pac-Man can now collect various items to use various attacks that are functionally identical, but have different fun visual effects! He can even play a trumpet to make them happily dance! It is so charming!

The most important thing about Pac & Pal, however, is Miru! The Pal! As a Pal, Miru will try to collect fruit as well, bringing them to the Ghost House. This does help complete the level, but it provides many more points for Pac-Man himself to collect the fruits, so stealing them back from her leads to a higher score. Stealing them back when she is just trying to help seems kind of rude, but she is described as “playful” and “mischievous”, so I think it’s fine. She probably finds this whole thing fun!

Pac & Pal did not come to arcades outside of Japan, but they did an “unsuccessful” test run, where it was rebranded as Pac-Man & Chomp-Chomp, simply replacing Miru with Pac-Man’s dog. As much as I love Miru, I feel a bit like Chomp-Chomp works a bit better as the Pal here. A happy little dog would be more universally seen as a friendly character compared to one that kind of looks like the ghosts, and instead of stealing back fruits from a mischievous friend, it’s now like your dog has picked up something he shouldn’t have, and you need to get it back! Both characters are very cute and should coexist. I think Miru should walk dogs as a fun little side job, and walk Chomp-Chomp when the Pacs are busy! A trusted family friend.

What IS Miru? She’s good! She’s safe! But what about her species? It is kind of vague! There ARE some sources that say she herself, despite her very different anatomy, is in fact a ghost! This would explain why she brings the fruits back into the Ghost House to collect them. Is this her house, too? Notably, though these sources are American plug-and-play blurbs, so I’m not sure how “canon” they should be taken as. For all we know, they just saw a non-Pac entity in a maze and assigned it Ghost. One even calls her Pal instead of her name! That’s what I like to think of her as. a Pal. It is her species, to me.

After Pac & Pal, Miru only ever appeared in rereleases and small cameos... but then, this. Get a load of this!

For Pac-Man’s 20th anniversary, a Pac-Man DLC was released for Minecraft, where the main selling point for most people was to play mazes in 3D and create your own... but for me, it was that MIRU IS HERE! And she is PLAYABLE! Ms. Pac living in copyright hell has led to a miracle! Miru is the only character besides Pac himself to be available by default, and the only non-Pac-Person playable! It may have been 38 years after her debut, but for such an obscure character, I think that having one of your two unique appearances be in PLAYABLE form is pretty amazing! Thank you to whoever decided to add her here!

Finally, Miru will be returning again in 2022, as Pac & Pal is included in Pac-Man Museum +, the latest game collection! Look at this lovely spritework from the official website! Also, they call her Mil in this game. They do that a lot. It is a good time to be a Miru fan, I think! And hopefully you agree now that I have blasted you with my Beam That Turns You Into A Miru Fan! Have fun!

[phoenixyfriend]

The Guy in the Chair and the Guy in Spandex

(Read on AO3)

Ned Leeds has always harbored some small fantasy of being Super.

He’s not, probably. He’s not a mutant, and he doesn’t have a powered suit or superspy training. He’s just Ned Leeds, high school senior and future computer engineer. He thinks that, if he does well enough at MIT, he can probably end up as somebody’s Guy In The Chair, which would be totally awesome.

In pursuit of this goal, he spends a lot of his free time coding. The things he codes aren’t the most complex or super, really, but learning to do mods for video games is still practice. When he’s really lucky, he gets to use the school’s 3D printer to make the kinds of tools that he think the superspy kind of heroes might use. He’s not exactly great at it yet—that kind of thing is proprietary, and he needs classes on the topic before he can actually do anything like that—but it’s fun.

MJ’s been encouraging him. He’s pretty sure she thinks it’s kind of dumb, but she doesn’t say so. This is incredibly nice, for MJ.

Lola keeps telling him he’s got magic in him, and it comes out in his coding, but he prefers to think it’s the hard work and endless practice. He’s a nerd, and he’s proud of that.

It’s just that sometimes… it feels like there might be more.

--

Ned doesn’t initially pay much attention to Peter Parker. The guy is just one of Michelle’s customers. He’s about their age, and seems to be in a shitty enough life situation that it’s notable, but he’s just some guy. The only reason Ned really notices the dude is that he probably has a crush on Michelle, and it’s kind of Ned’s job, as her best friend, to scope the guy out a bit.

Unfortunately, Peter Parker apparently has no internet presence. There isn’t even an out-of-date Facebook account or anything. Parker just… doesn’t seem to exist. It might be a fake name. It probably is. That’s not actually a big deal, though. Giving strangers the wrong name in places like donut shops isn’t sketchy.

Ned vaguely notes it when Parker starts working for a lawyer. MJ mentions it, and the job shift means that Parker is now wearing a button-down instead of pizza delivery clothes. He doesn’t come in smelling vaguely of grease and tomato paste anymore. He drops by a little more often than he did, and sometimes gets a donut instead of just coffee. It’s a good sign, Ned thinks, but also not really his business.

Except then MJ catches his attention, and does the wide eyes that mean ‘do what I say, or I’m going to lecture you about it later.’ Ned does as she says, because his best friend is kind of intimidating, before he processes what she’s even trying to tell him to do. She’s jerking her head and doing the ‘pay attention’ expression, and Ned follows the gesture to… Parker.

The guy looks beat to shit.

Exhausted. Bruised, both under the eyes and across the cheek. Raw-red knuckles and an angry cut on his temple that Ned really hopes isn’t going to get infected.

“Go talk to Ned,” he hears his best friend order a boy who might as well be a stranger.

“Um, that’s not—I mean, I—that’s—”

“He’s bored and I’ve got customers. You’re both loser nerds, it’ll be fine.”

Why the hell does Parker look like he’s going to cry at that? Yeah, it’s an insult, but it’s not a particularly intense one, and MJ had even insulted Ned in the same breath. It’s chill.

Parker glances at Ned and, on the spur of the moment, Ned flips MJ off. She returns the gesture, fake surprise across her face.

Parker looks torn between laughing and fleeing.

Maybe there’s an issue with his home life or something.

Ned is legitimately surprised, if only a little, when Parker actually does as suggested and joins him at the counter. He looks nervous. He won’t meet Ned’s eyes.

“So, how’d that happen?” Ned asks, waving vaguely at Parker’s face. He already sort of knows, because he’s overheard Parker talk about living in a rough area before, and people usually take that as a neutral topic. It’s New York. Fights happen.

Parker meets his eyes, blinking like a stunned lemming. “Uh—what?”

“You get mugged?” Ned tries to clarify. “You’re kinda banged up.”

“Oh! Yeah, um, sorta?” Parker looks away again. “I was on my way home and some guys were harassing these girls in club clothes and I tried to step in to distract them while the girls got a Lyft. Wasn’t planning on having it turn into a fight, but…”

“Dude, that’s so cool,” Ned enthuses. “Like a little hero moment, right?”

Parker flushes. He also goes pale. It’s a very strange and uncomfortable look, sickly and unpleasant. “Not really? I mean, the second people started throwing punches, the bouncer noticed and finally got involved. I barely got a hit in.”

Ned isn’t sure if that’s true. Parker’s definitely spindly enough that Ned can see him not doing too hot in a fight, but something tells him it’s more complicated than that. “Still cool that you helped them out, though.”

“Yeah, I’m—I mean I guess?” Parker just really does not stop stuttering. “It’s not, uh, not a huge deal or anything.”

Ned tries to think of something to say. He’s got nothing.

“So I hear they’re completely reworking the sequel trilogy now that everything’s mostly settled from the Blip,” Parker says, and just like that, they’re off.

(Continue on AO3)

[object-show-analysis]

Flower’s character arc and where it came from

A lot of people seem to think Flower’s actions in the final episode of BFB were out of character or came out of no where. So let’s talk about it.

Most claims I see when people accuse characters of acting “ooc” in the finale seem to come from an inability to recognize the slow progression/change in goals. Yes, characters like Four and Firey all might seem out of character if you judge them from the first time we see them in the show, but what they’ve been trying to achieve has been slowly changing throughout the course of BFB, to the point where it was relatively easy to predict their actions in the final episode.

But when it comes to Flower, it’s even more than that. Her actions line up with everything we’ve been told about her since episode 1.

From Episode 1 of BFDI we’ve known one thing about Flower. Her motivation is Attention. She wants to be Seen. She wants to be Admired. She wants to be Loved. A good season one example of this is her first ever line in the show:

She hasn’t even shown her face yet and she’s already asked someone to what they think of her physical appearance.

This behavior can be dated back to the Firey Comics, but as those don’t count as fully canon in the BFDI lore, I won’t discuss them.

Early on it’s established that Flower wants attention and admiration from other people, so you can imagine it must have hurt when she’s the first to get eliminated.

And we Know it hurt her. But we’ll get back to that in a moment.

BFB put a lot of effort into giving the very 2D characters more 3D personalities. In the first episode of BFB, we get an interesting parallel to Flower’s appearance being insulting in the first episode of BFDI

Ruby claims, seemingly out of no where, that she thinks Flower is beautiful. This immediately grabs Flower’s attention. As up until this point, no one has seemed to believe she was attractive.

Flower is later seen in episode 5 of BFB to be astonished by Ruby’s opinion of her, asking her to help get other people to think she’s beautiful as well. This re-establishes the idea that Flower’s main goal is to be seen as beautiful.

When Ruby says that she no longer thinks Flower is beautiful, it upsets Flower quite a lot. Leading to her changing her appearance in any way she can, allowing herself to be berated by Ruby in an effort to make Ruby like her again. All because “it does feel nice being called beautiful again,”

So right away we already know a few things about Flower

1. She wants people to think she’s beautiful

2. She’s willing to do things that are frustrating or demeaning if it means people will think she’s beautiful

3. It makes her feel good when someone says she’s beautiful

This behavior seems to stay solid for most of BFB, though the root of her desire does seem to shift.

The desire to be seen as beautiful widens over time into a desire to be Liked. As she shows in more and more competitions a desire to impress her team.

The fact that she wants to be liked seems to become more obvious post-split. Starting with her getting angry when Taco wants to be with Spongy instead of her, and her reaction Firey thinking of her as a friend in BFB 18.

Clearly Flower puts a lot of value on people who like her. And over time she develops more friends who really understand her and care about her. (Most notably Firey, Loser and Leafy), to the point where she’s not afraid to turn Taco away when she rethinks Flower’s alliance offer.

She is still very trusting and eager to form new relationships, which leads to TD being able to manipulate her in episode 27, but over all Flower seems to really evolve as a character. Shes more confident in herself and her abilities. She works to be more understanding of the people around her. And she tries very hard in everything she does.

She makes it clear in BFB 24 that elimination is something she fears a lot, which is understandable considering she was the only person to be completely alone in the TLC in BFDI, and being eliminated would undo all the hard work she put in.

Her panicked monologue after Purple Face leads her to believe she’s being eliminated tells us a lot about her. She tells us “I played the whole season wanting to redeem myself” which proves she’s been working hard to undo past mistakes and become a kind person. She feels humiliated at the very idea of being eliminated.

But something interesting that will be important to her behavior in episode 30 is that while she’s going over all her regrets, never once does she mention the actual prize. She says she wanted to prove everyone wrong again. “Everyone” being the people who thought she’d get out. She wants to show that she’s worth something. She wants to redeem herself. And in her eyes, winning is the way to do that. The actual prize of the game was never in her mind.

This is why it doesn’t seem surprising when she gives Gelatin the BFB. She knows he wanted it more than anyone else. And in the end, the prize wasn’t what she wanted at all. This is the same reason she eventually forfeits the BFDI to the announcer as well. Though she was reluctant to give it up as a sign of her effort. The actual prizes weren’t what she was fighting for.

Flower wanted something far more valuable than the BFDI and the BFB. She wanted people. People who saw her as beautiful. People who supported her. People that loved her. And people who she loved back. That’s what winning was to her.

And considering the show ends with her wishing two of her best friends good luck on their journey, and then turning to look at all the other people that she’s formed bonds with over the course of the show

She really did win, didn’t she?

[1863-project]

I definitely am concerned about the scheduling, though I do wonder what things might be involved/might be a factor in this. Like there were rumors of a new pokemon snap game ever since the 3ds. It wouldn't surprise me if that was a project they sorta worked on alongside other projects, and was only announced when it was near completion.

Pokemon Legends Arceus felt like the actual game that they wanted to make, while the diamond/pearl remakes felt like 'yeah we gotta just shovel something out'. Its not a bad thing that they were outsourced. However, something about those remakes felt, awful in its balancing. Maybe the company wasn't aware on how to make a pokemon game? By what I hear, the game flat out reused so much of the original game's programing, that the mods people made for diamond/pearl apparently work just fine on brilliant diamond/pearl. So i'm not sure I count that one so much as a new game, as the actual work that went into it was almost entirely graphical and one puzzle tied to Legend Arceus. Work still was done with it, though.

I do worry because pokemon gets tied to so much other media. The anime, the card games, the plushies/toys/figures. Thats a lot of scheduling to balance, and leaves little room for delays. I worry this creates a unhealthy work place. I've also been told gamefreak is actually a very small company, despite how much it makes, so that feels even worse for the workers.

That's exactly it - Game Freak is very small, and that's why this is so concerning. Japan does have notably long office hours - "death by overwork" is an actual thing - and it's even more difficult with a small team. Unfortunately, a lot of game companies the world over are moving into this "grind" mindset and trying to pump things out instead of slowing down and working on both the quality of the games and the quality of their employees' lives and health - you'll see it a lot with AAA developers.

BDSP does feel more like a port than a new game, and ILCA probably wasn't fully equipped to do with it what was done with, say, HGSS or ORAS. This was the first time ILCA made a full game - normally they do things to support existing games, like Pokemon HOME. I personally found BDSP lackluster and have been struggling to motivate myself to finish it, because it feels more like a grind than an experience. I work hard enough in real life as it is and want to relax when I get home, not do more drudgery.

The Pokemon Company itself is the overarching umbrella under which Game Freak sits, and they've become a massive media empire of their own, which does likely create more pressure and time crunches for Game Freak, since the games are the heart of the franchise and where everything began. I sincerely hope things are going to slow down for the employees' sake - after all, BDSP had to be outsourced and it didn't work out too well, and PLA's story feels incomplete and unsatisfying (and perhaps could use a DLC to finish it, but that would mean even MORE work). PLA was absolutely the game they wanted to make, but there's even parts of that game that feel rushed to me.

I hope everyone's okay.

[ramblingguy54]

Sonic & Tails R: A Love Letter To Miles Tails Prower’s Characterization

     Warning: This will contain massive spoilers for the short radio play series of Sonic & Tails R. If you haven’t listened to the radio play yet on Youtube, I’d highly recommend any hardcore Sonic fan who hasn’t seen it check it out. It’s one Hell of a treat.

     For as far back as I can remember in my childhood, Tails’ story of trying to step outta Sonic’s shadow has been such a resonating one for myself. Even when I was a much younger kid playing my Dreamcast, during entries like Sonic Adventure 1 & 2, there was some idea lingering about why Tails just stood out more emotionally in his journey to grow beyond depending on Sonic all the time for help. Now here I am a young adult in my late twenties having such a deeper appreciation of this little two tailed genius kiddo because he’s got an important element that’s made him so beloved for good reason.

     In spite of his genius being a rival to that of Eggman’s high IQ and of course proving to surpass it plenty of times when scenarios boil down to being a high stakes battle, Miles Tails Prower beneath it all is still just like any one of us. We’re all trying to find our place in this world about what defines us for who we are as unique people. He wants to be more than just seen as someone who’s alongside Sonic The Hedgehog’s never say die attitude, but prove he’s plenty capable of standing on his own two feet to protect everything the kid holds dear to himself. Underdog stories, when they’re naturally executed very well, can reel me in so easily. They are very much my bread & butter trope I adore seeing.

     To no one’s surprise, the two Sonic Adventure’s iterations portrayal of Tails’ characterization are hands down some of my favorite writing for the two tailed fox, regarding what the 3D era has done toward him, development wise. It gave him more of an existential struggle to endure like, “What happens when Sonic isn’t around to help stop Eggman? What if I’m not strong enough to accomplish what he can?”, making Tails plight to be seen as an equal all the more endearing when stopping Eggman in his climatic battle against the Egg Walker in Station Square. This here is a great use of a timeless lesson you can apply in life that if you set you heart and mind on anything, there isn’t a thing you can’t accomplish on your own, which is why many fell in love with Sonic Adventure 1 & 2′s writing for Miles Tails Prower’s journey of independence.

     As someone who comes from a large family tree of relatives, I feel the weight of my existence on my shoulders at a number of points more than I’d care to count, admittedly. Seeing Tails struggle with his sense of purpose, in contrast to observing how much Sonic has accomplished with his carefree, yet deeply compassionate attitude, means the world to me in watching another trying to comprehend their value as a whole on how much they matter, overall. This is a big part of why my fondness for SA1 & 2′s quality has never wavered over these years, besides still obviously enjoying most of their game play mechanics. People can try to debate to their heart’s content on whether the Adventure games still hold up in their own eyes, but I’ll always respect them for how they tried to develop certain characters, such as Tails, Gamma, and Shadow The Hedgehog notably, to attempt expanding upon their characters, as well as world building.

     I won’t bother going into a rant about how Sonic’s recent 3D games have butchered Tails’ personality & relatable nature, due to the current writers in charge of handling the cast of characters. More or less, I greatly empathize toward the notion many have already stated about Tails being so cowardly and God forbid, looking at Lost World, downright severely mean spirited. Rather, I’m obviously writing this lengthy post to breakdown why Sonic & Tails R succeeds, where these certain 3D games have greatly faltered in exploring Tails’ emotional dilemmas as an insecure, yet still having the courage to prove himself, talented boy full of hidden potential he doesn’t quite realize, until his back is against the wall in life threatening situations.

“That day, I realized I couldn’t depend on you forever. Not that I can’t depend on you, but like, “What happens when Sonic isn’t here?”, you know?”

     Sonic & Tails R further delves into this fundamental rule of what has defined Tails in Sonic Adventure 1 & 2′s stories of events where Sonic wasn’t there to aid his best bud in taking down Eggman’s evil efforts for global domination, most importantly his fear of defending the Earth without his role model. Besides what I already stated in SA1′s events in Station where he stopped the Egg Walker, as well as the missile Eggman launched from detonating before their climatic battle, Tails watched Sonic blow up in ARK’s capsule presuming him to be dead after Sonic imparted how much faith he has in the kid’s abilities to be truly strong in the face of any foe. Sonic & Tails R manages to use fan service in a way that doesn’t feel like “pandering” for the sake of it, using this past canon material to do more of an in-depth study about Miles’ anxieties of existing without Sonic.

     Wouldn’t put it past them if EmuEmi & crew were using SA2′s Sonic death fake out scene in that space capsule to further add trauma to Tails’ psychological attachment to Sonic, as well as his insecurities of depending on him too much, to boot. While it’s never obviously outright stated in their radio play, I definitely believe they were factoring this element into adding dramatic exploration for why Tails is so self-conscious about the worst case scenario of permanently losing Sonic. Watching Sonic supposedly die put Tails into a deeper state of self-reflection, so I very much enjoyed how they went using these past events to create a thorough exploration about him learning just as it’s important to realize you need to stand up for yourself without using someone else as a crutch all the time, it’s doubly important to remember there’s nothing wrong about asking someone for help when you’re about to be down and out with little options left.

     Sonic & Tails R beautifully builds upon the foundation these two games’ stories left behind years ago, creating new damn great material to explore with the most iconic characters of this cast, Sonic & Tails brotherly dynamic. I’ve been praising Sonic & Tails R out the wazoo for how well it captured Tails underdog story of overcoming death defying odds, but it managed to remind me how simply adorable and outright wonderfully endearing their brotherly chemistry is as a whole. This is a big friendly reminder Sonic isn’t all about being cocky wise cracking character making meta jokes left and right, but he can be plenty capable of showing serious compassion to anyone he values as an ally and friend. This is no greater evident, than with him verbally lifting Tails up in his time of need when he’s self-depreciating his own significance. It can be seen in Episodes 2, 4, and 7 giving Tails motivational pieces of advice.

    Episode 2 In Adabat’s Cavern

-Sonic: Wasn’t it your radar that helped us find these Emerald shards in the first place? How could you be slowing us down when you’ve gotten us this far?

-Tails: But, I...

-Sonic: I could never make something like that. You’re the smartest person I know, Tails. One way or another, we’ll figure this out, count on it.

         Episode 4 In Holoska After Helping Silver Save The Chao

-Sonic: So, what was that back there? At the cave, in Adabat? -Tails: What do you mean? -Sonic: Frozen stiff. Confidence shot. It’s not like you. It was more than feeling like you were “slowing us down”, right?

        Episode 7 Inside The Egg Carrier 3

-Sonic: Let’s split up! I’ll distract them and you can go after the energy source. -Tails: You’re gonna take them on all by yourself!? Let me help, Sonic! -Sonic: No time for this, Tails. Stop overthinking and just go! If I can get their attention, I’ll take the heat off of you and that room you’re going to probably won’t have any security. Take this emerald and I’ll take the other one we have. It’ll lead me right to you after I beat these guys. -Tails: O-Okay... -Sonic: Hold on, Tails! Listen to me. Don’t stop moving and be careful. I’ll be fine and so will you!

     Sonic & Tails R remembers the most crucial detail of their important relationship. One isn’t better than the other and needing to always rely upon that notion for helping one outta a jam, but instead showcases how they’re equals as a team/bros. Sonic may be super fast and strong, however Tails has his intelligence to analyze situations in a different angle Sonic wouldn’t necessarily consider, per say. Which isn’t to say Tails couldn’t put up a fight either, as we’ve seen in SA1 & SA2′s stories where he faced Eggman one on one with no outside help to best him at his own game of wits & strength.

     We get see the apex of this idea through Tails facing Eggman in his super improved mecha walker. Although Tails may get thrown for a loop here at first by Eggman, it’s his villainous speech about winners and losers in their world that ironically does the exact opposite of what he intended. Eggman wanted to crush Tails’ sense of self worth before finishing him off, but all it did was reignite the very lesson Sonic told him earlier before running to distract Eggman’s robotic minions. That said lesson of he’s more than capable of facing dangerous threats

-Eggman: Poor boy. We all have to learn this lesson, sooner or later. In every game there’s no one you can depend on. You’re all alone and you’re either a winner, or a loser. And as you know, loser’s lose all of their lives. Say goodbye, fox!

-Tails: You’re wrong! I can depend Sonic! I won’t let him down! I can’t because...Because he’s depending on me! And because of that I won’t lose to you!

     This radio play strikes a good balance in utilizing the grey moral area about depending on someone vs it being an unhealthy display of attachment derived from serious insecurity. Word’s can’t begin to describe how much I loved this moment to pieces because it’s oh so important for writing Tails’ characterization. If you’re going to tackle him being super self conscious about his reliance on Sonic, then you gotta remember why they are so close to one another to begin with. Sonic & Tails have an unbreakable connection, considering they’ve brought out their best qualities in themselves from being together as individuals. For Sonic, it’s his older brother compassion to Tails to bring him outta feeling melancholy. For Tails, the kid finally understands there isn’t anything wrong with depending on Sonic when he needs it most.

     After all, that’s what a real healthy friendship is all about. Whether you’re giving someone a dose of tough love, or simply a piece of motivational advice, it defines how much you truly care about someone, period. Sonic & Tails have this very same power from their bond, which is why new emeralds form from their compassionate friendship that hasn’t been shaken after all the years they’ve been together. Another detail worth noting is it adds to the lore in an impactful manner when Tikal expresses in Episode 8 about positive connections and thoughts from users of the Chaos Emeralds having a strong will & heart. Using the ideas they had for encapsulating Sonic & Tails’ dynamic to create new emeralds from their love for each other as brothers adds an emotional weight.

“So, Sonic’s not the only one who harness the power of the Chaos Emeralds? I can too!?”

“Yes, you have a strong heart! There is a power waiting to be unlocked within you, as well.”

          I’d always daydreamed about in my childhood seeing Super Sonic & Tails take down a threatening villain, whether it was Eggman or different powerful creature such as Chaos or the Biolizard. You can imagine how fucking giddy I was beyond belief to see this artwork of Episode 9′s cover for the radio play. Tails not only got to have another one on one with Eggman, but a team up with Super Sonic in his own respective Super form? Sign me the Hell up! Talk about an all you eat buffet of good writing for Tails’ journey reaching its climax. Getting to hear this play out, alongside the amazing song of Fly With Me, made it authentically feel like something straight outta if there were an installment of Sonic Adventure 3 being brought into reality, which certainly feels like it now.

     Episode 9 has so much awesome stuff with Sonic & Tails working together in their super forms. Particularly, my favorite scene is at the beginning when Sonic teaches Tails how to navigate his newly acquired speed in his respective Super form. My heart melted hearing Sonic help Tails through it all, while he was overjoyed about how fun this new form is for himself. Wholesome Sonic & Tails content is the perfect daily serotonin for me, easily. It’s an awesome fun fact to know they used a scrapped boss from Tails Tornado segment in SA1 for Eggman’s flying dragon three headed robot in their big final battle, once again using old canon material in a very effective manner to boost the quality of their fan made story.

     It’s been a real thrill to hear Mike Pollock play a straight forward serious Eggman making my day in more ways than one, considering that’s another thing I’ve been yearning for desperately besides Tails being a competent character again. His performance in Episode 9 when Eggman gave that speech about how long he’s been at odds with Sonic & Tails stubborn will power was simply excellent. The moment he told his mechanical dragon to crush them I got serious chills. That’s the Eggman I remember and grew up with. He could be a hammy villain sure, but Eggman wasn’t a doormat that could be swiftly beaten. Robotnik can be considered a serious threat in his own right and this radio play nailed it down to the very letter with how much he predicted their actions.

“Sonic, all I ever wanted to do was be like you. You’re not scared of anyone or anything. I could never be like that. At least, so I thought. I grew from that, but then I got so caught up in trying to prove it that thought it wasn’t okay to depend upon anyone, especially you. I just didn’t want to be that scared little kid in Station Square anymore, but now I understand. It’s okay to depend on your friends. It all means is that we’re stronger together, so the next time Eggman comes back and wants to start any trouble with you, or any of my friends. Emeralds or no emeralds, he’s gonna have to get past me and he won’t!”

Sonic By Episode 1′s End: Aww, yeah! Adventure, here we come!

Tails By Episode 10′s End: Aww, yeah! Adventure, here I come!

Turn your thoughts into power. Be all that you can be.

     The ending legit got me choked up because what of they decided to do for wrapping up Tails journey in a poetic fashion. Having Tails go off on his own separate journey to grow more independence pulled on my heart strings perfectly. Very much so, as I’m transitioning slowly, but surely, into gaining more freedom to go out into the outside world in my own life. Concluding the story, by Sonic & Tails holding onto the two Emeralds their bond had formed from positive energy, due to their powerful friendship, was so heartwarming. This is how you write an overview of what makes Sonic & Tails chemistry work so well as it does.

     Sonic & Tails R’s ending represents while some things never change, like Sonic and Tails bond for each other, it also shows there’s very much a necessity for people to grow, hence Tails’ whole solo journey in the epilogue. People can’t stay in the same place forever and will need go about finding their own path, even if it means saying “goodbye” periodically for a notable amount of time.

     It’s for these reasons I’ve listed in great explanation above throughout this detailed post cement Sonic & Tails R high on my list of favorite Sonic fan projects. They captured the magic of what made the Adventure games so beloved. Gonna be looking back on this passion project for many years to come. Everyone involved in this year long effort of a project dating all the way back Summer of 2020 ought to be immensely proud for how much their hard efforts paid off in the long run.

Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts here! 

Hope you enjoyed.