#z'oiseau | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

roukabi · 1 year

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Hee hee! hee hee ho! My grubby furry hands will contaminate everything you love!

(Designs are free to use with credit, if anyone’s interested!)

Exhaustive design notes/trivia/extras are under the cut!

[Image IDs: a series of animal designs for Vide Noir’s characters. Buck Vernon is a sand-colored whitetail deer (how creative) with dented antlers, a brown-and-white striped bandanna, and a guitar slung around his back. Lee Green is a peach-and-cream fox with a white lily above her ear. Frankie Lou is a clouded leopard with a wavy black ‘mane’ of sorts. Jasper and Hontanx are mutts; Jasper is slender and mostly grey with brown dorsal coloring while Hontanx is more boxer-like with short, white fur and grey patches. Johnnie is a german shepherd mix, with half of his face scarred by black-braining, and sports a red bandanna on his leg and a leather World Enders jacket. Moonbeam is a black lop-eared rabbit with lavender undertones, also wearing the World Enders jacket. Alex is a doberman with slicked-back hair, also (also) with a World Enders jacket and much smaller black scar on his cheek. Toby is a very scruffy rufous treepie (don’t ask), mostly tan with a black head and wings with white accents. Finally, Z’Oiseau is a melanistic Bengal tiger, where his stripes are large and take up the majority of his fur. The final image is a lineup of all characters, with heights considered. Each design is still sketchy, and construction lines can be seen. The artist’s signature overlaps each image. End IDs.]

Well, well, well. It appears I’m at the stage of obsession where I make furry designs for the characters. Because I’m always paranoid that I need to explain myself for everything I do, here’s the comprehensive guide to each design. If I’ve done a good enough job, you can tell who’s who pretty easily.

Buck: Hmm, now how did he end up as a deer, I wonder...?

Silliness aside, Buck’s antlers actually play a pretty big role in representing his psyche/self-esteem, as they break off in certain scenes until the end, where they become shattered stumps. Jasper breaks + steals one antler when Buck gets black-brained, which I’m sure can be used as a metaphor for something.

He’s also got big ol’ floppy ears. When I make animal designs, I try to mimic the form of someone’s hair via the ears or cheek fur, though, as you’ll soon see with Frankie, that’s not a hard-and-fast rule. You’ll also notice that he wears a bandanna, even though he doesn’t in the film. This is because I felt his design lacked color. And bandannas are cool. And my brain is addled with Hadestown parallels.

“But Rook!” I hear you say, “If Buck’s a deer, how can he play guitar? And how is he supposed to hold a gun?” Well, the answer to the first question is that he plays with his teeth. Obviously. And the obvious conclusion to the second question is that he doesn’t need artillery when he has a crown of stabby stabby bone.

Lee: Lee is a fox - outwardly desireable and a character of multiple folktales. There’s not much to say about her design otherwise, except for the addition of a lily - referencing ‘Fool For Love’ with “I’m asking Lily to be my bride” as well as ‘La Belle Fleur Sauvage’. Oh yeah, and she’s way too big compared to the other characters in the height chart lmao pretend she’s the average fox size

Lee fascinates me, and I think I’m the only one who thinks that way lol. It’s revealed at the end that she had Way more agency over her situation than everyone realized. Did she know about Z’Oiseau’s kill count before getting with him? Does she know now? AFWP says that she overcame the Vide Noir addiction, how did that go? Did severing herself from the drug sever connections to Z’Oiseau’s empire? What does she actually think of him? What are her songs like? Is she okay? Does she regret anything? Is she the same Lee who’s known as Lee Avery in the World Ender MV? AAAAAAAAAAAA

Frankie Lou: Picking the animal was easy, designing her was not. Clouded leopards are native to Cambodia, and I wanted Frankie and Z’Oiseau’s designs to complement each other in some way (I’d made Z’Oiseau’s design before I made Frankie’s). So there’s a spotty kitty and a stripey kitty. Clouded leopards are also insanely elusive, which adds to Frankie’s mysterious ghost facade in the film.

I normally don’t like adding ‘human’ hair to animals, but when I initially made Frankie without her hair, it really felt like something was missing. I like the way it looks now, and her plumed tail ties it together. The spots are not end-all-be-all, and can be simplified for animation.

Jasper and Hontanx: What better to chase after our Arthurian White Stag (Buck) and Teumessian Fox (Lee) than a pair of hunting dogs? Jasper and Hontanx needed to complement each other in the classic “Big Guy, Little Guy” trope, with the ‘little guy’ (Jasper) being tall, slender, and shrewd, while the “big guy” (Hontanx) is muscular and rarely speaks. Their names even follow the Kiki-Bouba effect.

I thought about making Hontanx fluffier, but the boxer look fits well, too. There’s some patches of longer fur around his neck and shoulders.

Johnnie: Everyone’s favorite little hurricane! Johnnie gives me exciteable puppydog vibes, so I made him a German Shepherd mix (mix, being “something fluffy”). His cheek fur is missing on his black-brained side, and his eye is a little messed up, but here’s what he looks like when he’s a-okay:

Moonbeam: Rabbits are associated with the moon in multiple mythologies, so it’d make sense to make Moonbeam one. I haven’t drawn her in her fortune teller gear, but I think she’s happier to don the World Enders jacket instead. She’s also got some purple undertones for flavor, and they make her stand out as the only design with a cool color pallete. She’s just got that transfemme swag, I suppose.

Alex: For a character who only appears for 2 seconds, Alex seems to have made a permanent impression on Vide Noir fans, including myself. Strong, tall, and effortlessly cool, I wanted him to look like a model World Ender. This mayyyy have resulted in him looking nothing like his younger brother, but maybe one takes more after their father, and the other, their mother. Idk. I have this whole backstory thing with Cobb where the Redmaynes have this godawful father that Cobb helps them... get rid of. Because Cobb is the better dad.

Alex is the last of this bunch to be a canine, which I’m sure you’re all glad to hear. I don’t know why there are so many dogs. They just have that rugged look to them that suits the World Ender/Bounty Hunter style. Well, these ones do, anyway. Not Lee.

Toby: Toby was by far the most aggravating to design, and it’s pretty apparent in the final result. I mean, have you heard of a rufous treepie?

I had no idea what I wanted Toby to be, but I wasn’t about to draw another canine. As Z’Oiseau’s nephew, he’d be associated with birds by default, so I started thinking about the kind of bird Toby could fit - it’d have to be territorial, annoying, and/or aggressive.

Like... blue jays?

While blue is not a color I’d associate with Toby, for whatever reason, I was getting somewhere. Blue jays are a part of the family Corvidae. Corvidae has birds that are black. Blackbird = Z’Oiseau! See? There’s a connection!

I scrolled down through Wikipedia’s corvid list until I came across the Rufous Treepie, a bird not only described as ‘opportunistic’, but ironically has a symbiotic relationship with local deer populations... It’s also large enough to get stabbed by an antler from a certain less-willing-to-cooperate deer.

So that’s what I went with. Toby’s meant to look more like a fledgling, given the scruffiness. I took some creative liberties with facial markings, but like. Who cares.

“But Rook,” you say, “If Toby’s a bird, and Z’Oiseau isn’t, how are they related?” Well, the obvious conclusion to come to here is that you should stop asking questions.

Z’Oiseau: It’s Zazo time! With a name like 'bird’, you’d expect him to be a bird. But I figured that making him a big cat would play very well into the irony of his name and would present him as a real threat. After all, you didn’t find Tobey very scary, did you? And who names a bird “bird”?

Because Z’Oiseau’s original name, Zozo, is Euskara, a language spoken in the Pyrenees, that was my first place to look for animals. Nothing jumped out to me, though, so I moved on to looking up big cat species and hoping for the best. Then an idea came to me - what about a tiger, but with reversed stripes? It’d fit the reasoning behind the “blackbird” name, and he’d be the most powerful big cat out there. To my surprise, melanistic tigers do exist, and they’re really cool. I picked the Bengal tiger of India for Z’Oiseau, as most of the ‘black tigers’ have been spotted there.

Z’Oiseau’s stripes can be simplified for animation or what-have-you. Or you can draw every individual stripe as presented in the photo, I’m not gonna stop you.

Well, that’s that! Might make Tubbs Tarbell and Cobb Avery later. For now, as a reward for making it this far, here’s some silly scribbles + shitposting:

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danidoesathing · 10 months

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hey do. do you guys ever think about how Fool for Love is just Buck rewriting of the events of Vide Noir into a story and the main character is only ever referred to as "The Fool". do you ever think about how Z'Oiseau's original name had a secondary meaning of "Fool". do you ever think about how the Yawning Grave goes "Oh you fool, there are rules, I am coming for you." Do you ever think about the recurring storylines of a man falling in love with a girl and letting it blind him to the point of self destruction. Do you ever think about how it always ends in death. do ever think about how Vide Noir's Buck is the only one that didn't die.

do you yall ever wonder about that

#im having. feelings #just thinking about this trope that comes up in their stories and how its a cycle of futility #and how the narrator of the yawning grave is connected to it #and how Buck survives despite it all but only in the movie's version of him #both fool for love and emerald star end in his death. but not Vide Noir. and what exactly that implies for him #and how Huron's story also falls in line with this trope #im just. wondering what it all means #why make a point to tell us Z'Oiseau's name used to mean the fool if it means nothing #especially because he actively disrupts the balance of the universe by selling vide noir as a drug #(twenty dollars says he's the one Yawning Grave is referring to)#but whatever its fine im FINE #dani speaks #lord huron

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selffagellation · 1 year

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YEAH SO APPARENTLY WATCHING PRODUCTS OF THE UNIVERSE HAVING SEEN VIDE NOIR AFTER ALL THESE YEARS IS A WHOLE NEW EXPERIENCE

#REMEMBER WHEN #REMEMBER WHEN CLIPS OF THIS MOVIE #REMMEBER WHEN THAT WAS INSANE #REMEMBER WHEN WE THOUGHT THAT WAS ALL WE WERE GONNA GET #JESUS HELL I BARELY EVEN NOTICED FRANKIE TALKING ABOUT Z'OISEAU WITHIN THE FIRST MINUTE #AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA #NO ONE FUCKING NO ONE DOES IT LIKE THEM #lord huron #im just #hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

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tinylongwing · 5 months

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I hope it's okay to ask Lord Huron questions on this blog.

Is Buck the narrator for all three most recent "lore albums" or something? I don't know how Lonesome Dreams fits into the storyline, but I might be wrong, and I'm pretty sure the movie soundtrack doesn't. I'm pretty sure he's the narrator for at least Vide Noir, but I'm not sure how he fits in with Long Lost.

If Buck is Strange Trails' narrator, he's not the only one, because Hurricane is from Johnnie's, and The World Ender is from Cobb Avery's. The Yawning Grave seems to be told by some malevolent, omniscient, ancient entity I don't really have a name for, but seems an awful lot like whatever Ender was summoned in Secrets of Life. It's almost like a camera pan effect with the transition to Frozen Pines, almost as if the focus is being shifted to a different character. I'm not entirely sure who that character is, and I'm not all up to date on the lore yet.

There's such a heavy focus on darkness being bad in Strange Trails, and then as far as I know, Vide Noir(the album) is about a guy, Buck Vernon, abusing a substance literally named Black Void, and trying to find his fiancee. Frozen Pines feels like Buck coming back to himself after taking Vide Noir, it basically references the Emerald Star without actually referencing it. It's like Buck talking to Lee; he'll be waiting for her, he's gonna look for her everywhere, etc.

Relistening to Strange Trails specifically looking for Vide Noir references, after Meet Me in the Woods there is SUCH a tone shift, and it starts referencing how he can't go back from the darkness, or how everything she touches turns to back.

This whole exposition has morphed into me actually asking if Vide Noir and Strange Trails are the same story from different perspectives or in different settings. Apologies for the rambling.

It is very okay! It is more than okay, it's great and I would answer Lord Huron questions every day all day if more people did this. ;)

I'm impressed with how much of this you've worked through pretty damn close to accurately without having checked the wiki or watched the movie, haha. I definitely recommend doing both as most of your questions here, the ones we have answers to anyway, will get answered.

But in short, without rewriting the entire wiki for you:

Strange Trails, Vide Noir, and Long Lost are all in the same universe with shared characters that weave in and out of those albums and there are many narrators among them. Buck Vernon is probably the closest thing to a main protagonist since his narration features heavily in Strange Trails and Vide Noir, but he's absent from Long Lost (well, as far as anyone can tell anyway).

Strange Trails is sort of like a loose connection of stories that establish a lot of the strange things and the characters in that universe and start us off learning about Buck and Lee and their relationship, but we also get a lot from Frankie Lou, the World Enders, and a handful of others. Some of the songs narrated by one character about their life in-universe tell stories that are shared in common with other characters (and the music video for The Night We Met in particular shows us this well - that song is by Frankie Lou and appears to be describing her doomed relationship with Z'Oiseau, but the video primarily focuses on Buck on his drive west toward California to find Lee).

Vide Noir is slightly more linear and slightly more focused on Buck specifically, except for where it's nonlinear and also has a whole bunch of World Enders/Phantom Riders narration which probably is doing the dual purpose thing again, describing what they're up to while also "coincidentally" helping describe Buck's confusion, anger, and anguish as he searches for Lee, gets black-brained and survives, and finds Lee only to learn that yes she did mean to leave him and she doesn't love him.

But you're absolutely right to dive back in to Strange Trails and look for references to vide noir because they're everywhere - Meet Me in the Woods is a great example of this, though it's primarily describing Frankie's experience with the drug in that case.

The Strange Trails album liner notes were very specific about which songs were performed by which characters and who the narration is supposed to be, so I recommend checking that out in the wiki as a starting point. Vide Noir didn't give us that so it has mostly been a matter of interpretation (though it's easy-ish to sort out which are performed by the Buck Vernon Band and which are performed by the Phantom Riders - but if there are other narrators in there it's still not totally clear and Moonbeam is sort of an odd track out in particular).

Long Lost mostly has told us which characters performed which songs again, which is nice and helpful! And the music/lyric videos have been a big help yet again, as has Alive from Whispering Pines, which obviously also deserves a watch if you haven't seen that series yet.

Anyway, hope this helps - I know some of it boils down to "time to read the wiki" but it just saves me from having to re-type the wiki, haha.

#lord huron #hey folks do you need a christmas gift idea for me?#just send asks my way #I won't divert to the wiki every time I promise #I still wish I had the time and energy to essay about the world enders #instead of keeping it all in my head where it only escapes in little doodles

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swamp-teeth · 2 years

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did anyone notice watching the Vide Noir movie that when Buck is talking to Z'Oiseau ,,,that the whole point is that he's missing a hand,, but when he's talking about the beautiful wild flower he moves the hand that's supposed to be missing LMAO 😭

#vide noir #lord huron #lordhuron #video noir movie #it literally doesnt matter but it was just something i notice and was like OH SHIT #its when he says ' theres more too it'#shut up ben

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aturnoftheearth · 1 year

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hi i'm sorry if this is something you already know but i just learned a thing that i. feel you need to know. z'oiseau was in an episode of supernatural. i mean i know that guy is a relatively accomplished actor so this shouldn't be a shock to me but. lordhuronnatural is real omg. made me think of you <3

HELP i recognized him from 4 different shows and none of them were supernatural 💀 BUT YEAH I LOOKED IT UP Z’OISEAU IS ALSO DRACULA LORDHURONNATURAL CONFIRMED

#asks

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mamusiq · 6 years

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youtube

Joséphine Baker * "La Petite Tonkinoise" 1930

("Pretty Little Tonkin Girl") C'est moi qui suis sa petite Son Anana, son Anana, son Anammite Je suis vive, je suis charmante Comme un p'tit z'oiseau qui chante Il m'appelle sa p'tite bourgeoise Sa Tonkiki, sa Tonkiki, sa Tonkinoise D'autres lui font les doux yeux Mais c'est moi qu'il aime le mieux

L'soir on cause d'un tas d'choses Avant de se mettre au pieu J'apprends la géographie D'la Chine et d'la Mandchourie Les frontières, les rivières Le Fleuve Jaune et le Fleuve Bleu Y a même l'Amour c'est curieux Qu'arrose l'Empire du Milieu

C'est moi qui suis sa petite Son Anana, son Anana, son Anammite Je suis vive, je suis charmante Comme un p'tit oiseau qui chante Il m'appelle sa p'tite bourgeoise Sa Tonkiki, sa Tonkiki, sa Tonkinoise D'autres lui font les doux yeux Mais c'est moi qu'il aime le mieux.

The song is by Christiné and V. Scotto.

#Joséphine Baker #La Petite Tonkinoise

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shinshun-chanson-show · 2 years

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＠La petite Tonkinoise　かわいいトンキン娘

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tauFAfQ9Aa8

アメリカのジョセフィン・ベーカー（1906-1975）の歌。

アメリカではアフリカ系ということで差別を受け、後にフランス国籍を取得。

レジスタンスや公民権運動に関わり、レジオン・ドヌールを受けており、先ごろフランスの殿堂入りをした。

日本にも来て広島などをまわっており、私が生まれる直前だったが、宝塚にも来たと知って驚いた。

It is a song by Josephine Baker.

She was discriminated in the US where she was born because she was Afro American.

After she took nationality of France.

She acted in resistance and civil right movement, so she received légion d'honneur.

And she recently entered in the pantheon of France.

She also came to Japan, went to Hiroshima and some other cities.

この歌はベトナム娘のことを歌っていて、アンナンはベトナム中部、トンキンは北部の名称。（仏領時代）

ミュージカルの「ミス・サイゴン」や、オペラの「蝶々夫人」などには黄色人種として微妙な感じがするが、これは歌手がジョセフィン・ベーカーだから許せる。

This song is about a girl of Vietnam, Anan and Tonkin are the names of regions in Vietnam.

Honestly speaking, I don’t like so much about the deal of heroines of “Miss Sigon” or “Madam Butterfly”, but this song is sung by Josephine, so I feel no problem.

歌詞と訳

C'est moi qui suis sa petite

Son Anana, son Anana, son Anammite

Je suis vive, je suis charmante

Comme un p'tit z'oiseau qui chante

Il m'appelle sa p'tite bourgeoise

Sa Tonkiki, sa Tonkiki, sa Tonkinoise

D'autres lui font les doux yeux

Mais c'est moi qu'il aime le mieux

彼の可愛い子は私

彼のアナナ、アンナン娘

私は生き生きして魅力的