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As you might be aware I have big feelings about all besnouted creatures, but recently something has been grating on me. Sometimes, when people draw a snout animal, they draw the snout as a nose with the mouth as a separate entity underneath. This is a stylistic choice I greatly dislike because a snout or trunk is, by definition

A COMBINATION OF THE NOSE AND UPPER-LIP.

You can see here that the snout is not a separate entity from the mouth in these mammals, but is a fleshy protuberance emanating from the upper jaw. 

You can see in this illustration how a more anatomically accurate snout position gives an anthropomorphic pig a degree of charm that an inaccurate snout position does not.

Snout positioning can make or break a character design for me.

#Ty for bringing this to my attention I will now be making cold unfeeling on purpose #A strong emotion this one

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trying to figure out this design 

#Cute #!

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For all that I grump about unexamined nostalgia, nostalgia-driven media is… well, it’s fine, but the thing is: I don’t want a meticulously accurate reproduction of the media of your youth – and moreover, I don’t need it. Streaming bullshit notwithstanding, we live in an era of unprecedented media access. If I want to experience what the media of your youth was like, I can just, like, look it up.

Don’t show me what the media you loved when you were a kid was actually like. Show me the way you remember it after rotating it in your head like a rotisserie chicken for the last 1–6 decades, with a full understanding that this has no necessary relationship with anything that’s ever really existed.

#this is why shadow the hedgehog will always be infinitely cooler than any other thing imaginable #not necessarily cause of the thing itself #but because the capacity for my child brain to experience and comprehend the feeling of cool as a concept is infinitely larger #than anything my adult brain could ever manage #it’s like in the movies when the child protags grow up and lose their touch with magic #Because they lost that special child thing inside them that made that connection possible #I still have the memories of it but the pure simple unfretted joy I felt is no longer accessible in the same way #not because it has changed but because I have #shadow still kicks ass tho

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why do you think earthbound was THE progenitor of so many inde rpgs? was it just that it was an rpg that did something new with its setting published by a big name?

(With reference to this post here.)

The big-name marketing engine and where it happens to be situated in time is certainly a big part of it, but something that's easy to overlook about EarthBound if you're not familiar with the timeline of console generations is that EarthBound is so frequently name-checked by weird meta retro games because EarthBound is, itself, a weird meta retro game – one of the very first of its kind.

It's funny to think of a Super Nintendo game from 1994 as "retro" from the perspective of 2022 – isn't that just what games were like back then? The thing is: no, they weren't. Most Super Nintendo RPGs did not look like EarthBound.

A big part of EarthBound's aesthetic boils down to juxtaposing current gen flash and spectacle (understanding that "current gen" means "for 1994") with deliberately shitty graphics and audio, and mechanics that are janky and counterintuitive in a calculated way to create a very specific experience.

This is apparent in everything from the old school pick-a-verb menu interface that you literally never have to use because the game also has a context-sensitive action button, to the soundtrack's whiplash-inducing transitions between NES-style bleeps and FM synth (wait for it at about 0:53), to the American localisation's script being a blatant spoof of the frequently genuinely terrible translations of the game's NES predecessors.

Plus, the weird meta stuff that modern retro RPGs are known for? EarthBound already has that. It's famous for being one of the first console RPGs where diegetically acknowledging the human player as a separate entity from the player character is an explicit plot point. It even has a clever sleight of hand where it asks the player to fill out a fake consumer survey partway through the game so that it can drop your real name into dialogue later on, prefiguring the way that later games would lift information from your Steam profile to similar effect.

Bascally, EarthBound is a big inspiration for a lot of deliberately janky, insufferably meta retro nostalgia RPGs because that's literally the kind of game that it is.

#I can’t remember where I read it #but isn’t there something about how a lot of weird thing in earthbound are referencing old dragon quest games #I think this could also explain why it has an intentionally sort of quaint feel? #I know everyone already talks about the Americana but it always felt like specifically #60s to me #I mean I guess Americana #already is pretty 60ish but hmmm #(I’m not good with decades)

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some concept art of the Sonic Movie 2 post-credits scene

GERALD ROBOTNIK?????????

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HYPE IT UP FOR ANTHONY MACKIE!!!!!!

#ANTHONY MACKIE #Marvel #fatws #falcon and the winter soldier

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Covers from girl’s monthly horror/occult manga magazine, Halloween (1986-1995).

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Designs for background characters in Pixar’s Soul by Yingzong Xin

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Aphaneramma, a marine temnospondyl amphibian with a cute crocodile face

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Handbuch der Waffenkunde, 1890

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[David Castañeda] “In the tenth episode, we did a handshake. When we were shooting it, it sounded like a good idea but when we were done filming it, I was like, ‘that’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done’. And they kept it which I thought was so cool.” [Tom Hopper] “It’s a great moment. It’s brilliant!” [Robert Sheehan] “You were both so committed to it.” [David Castañeda] “The truth is that I actually made it up with Ritu Arya, who plays Lila. We had made it up in the beginning and she was pretty mad at me for passing it on between Ken and myself and using it. I think we’re okay now.”

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1980s New York City Street Style by Jamal Shabazz

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katsuhiro otomo’s akira (coloring by steve oliff) || 大友克洋の『アキラ』（steve oliffによって着色）

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- You’re okay, Jack. I think - under different circumstances - you and I… probably still woulda hated each other.

#starting a Charles Gordon specifically as the duke from midnight run Stan account #love the energy on this dude #he’s like #both incredibly low key #but also willing to jump off any vechical moving 40+ mph at any moment #AND he wants to help you sort out your family troubles while you’re on your way to turning into a mafia boss that will FOR SURE kill him?? #nice love it #unhindged isn’t the right word lol #but it’s something lol

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“You can have whatever your havin’ and I’ll have these.”

#midnight run #robert de niro #charles grodin #gif #film #old movies

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Johnny Cash is what a goth cowboy looks like

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How come there’s never been another character with hover boots as cool as shadow the hedgehog

#sonic #stupid #it’s true tho right???