#at least on the '3d' department

[stra-tek]

Random spoilerific reasons to read Star Trek novels, with little to no context:

Ro/Quark is a thing

A Jem'Hadar joins DS9, tries to fit in but eventually snaps and tries to kill everybody

You learn the origins and final fate of the Borg

A thinly-veiled Dr. House clone joins the Voyager crew

Geordi briefly has 2 girlfriends at once (due to different writers not co-ordinating enough, but still)

There's a TOS book that's a musical

There are YA stories about Jake and Nog making mischief on DS9

YA stories about Worf, Geordi, Picard, Beverly, Kirk, Spock and McCoy at SFA

YA series about the Kelvinverse gang (including Gaila!) as cadets, taking on a drug problem at SFA and a very unique Borg scout in San Francisco

We very briefly meet the people who are to Q what the Q are to humanity

Janeway/Chakotay is a thing

Kirk's first mission in command of the Enterprise! Erm, at least twice.

Kirk was married between TOS and TMP

Her name was Lori

In the future, you have yearly marriage contracts that you either update or you don't and I think that's amazing

Trip didn't die! He faked his death to join Section 31 and go undercover as a Romulan

It's not great, tbh

The ENT books get better after the Romulan wars though, it's proper founding of the Federation stuff

We meet Jack Crusher (erm, the OG) when 4 timelines start overlapping and he's a bit unhinged

Teenage Kirk stole a car and his choice was go to jail or join Starfleet

What happened when Voyager got home? Seven broke up with Chakotay like 30 pages in

Kirk gets cloned, and his clone becomes the sub of an evil invincible super genius and its all very gay

George Kirk was Robert April's first officer on the first ever mission of the unnamed starship with the Naval Construction Contract 1701

Robert is a hard-core pacifist and has to turn command over to George whenever it's time to fire weapons

Data becomes fully human for a couple of days and it's really sweet

They never say "wristwatch" or "phone", it's always "wrist chrono" or "personal comm"

There are gays but they don't say that word because it's the 1990's and Rick Berman runs the franchise

Spock has a son in the past with Zarabeth

Everyone in the post-Nemesis era does spy missions all the time non stop, as if Starfleet has abandoned exploring the cosmos for doing Space Mission: Impossible

Bashir does it better than anyone else, he takes on Section 31 from the inside

Remember Control? It's from the novels, except the novels do it SO MUCH BETTER.

Remember how we never found out who Future Guy was? We do.

It's very underwhelming, nobody we know

We find out how the Romulans and Vulcans split

Surak was a Vulcan internet blogger

A Borg Cube eats Pluto

Janeway dies

Janeway gets better

At least one TOS book features a wizard

There's a Star Trek TOS/Here Come the Brides crossover novel

It had cameos from The Doctor (as in, Who), Han Solo, Starbuck and others

Whole book series about Section 31

Whole book series about the Department of Temporal Investigations

One time they do the Bill and Ted thing to escape confinement and it works

Wanna know how Riker and Troi met?

Wanna know what Picard got up to on the Stargazer?

Andorians have 4 sexes and it's very complicated

Data comes back from the dead as Data 2.0, and it was fresh and exciting because it happened long before ST: Picard did it twice.

Lal comes back too and we get father/daughter android stuff! They have a home and everything but keep having to save the universe

One time Mirror Seven is led around on a leash naked on Terok Nor

Geordi becomes captain of the USS Challenger, decides it's not for him because plot, and goes back to engineering on the Enterprise

Kirk is shot on the bridge and dies

Kirk gets better

They watch 3D holos of old Doctor Who episodes in the Enterprise rec room

The Enterprise also has an AI named Moira, which was Zora long before Zora

The TOS crew get together for one last mission. About three times.

There's a Perry Mason book except it's about Kirk's lawyer from that TOS episode

Data 2.0 owns and runs a massive gambling empire on Orion

Spock keeps randomly showing up everywhere in the TNG era

Scotty keeps randomly showing up everywhere in the TNG era

Bones keeps randomly showing up everywhere in the TNG era

You're on Tumblr so you already know about Killing Time

There's a guy named McKenzie Calhoun and he's a total badass and captains a ship of weirdos and misfits

Kirk comes back from the dead, saves the galaxy repeatedly, has an intersex child (who identifies as male) with a Romulan/Klingon hybrid

Kirk beats up Worf

Kirk's child has superpowers

Kirk's child saves the galaxy at age 6

The Kirk stuff is 100% ignored in the other novels

About 50% of the novels are ignored in the other 50%, and the ones that are meant to be in direct continuity with each other aren't always quite

Just like the TV shows and movies, then

Lwaxana Troi meets Q, and it goes as well as you'd expect

Someone tells Data, yes you idiot you had emotions all along and he's like, oh shit you're right

McCoy is left in command of the Enterprise as a joke by Kirk, who is then immediately kidnapped

Ro Laren is captain of Deep Space Nine

Picard/Beverly is a thing, they get married and have a child named Rene. No running away and raising your kid in secret here

Riker and Troi are married, serve on the Titan together with a bunch of adorable weirdos and have a daughter named Tasha

You get to watch all the 24th century characters die horribly in the end along with their entire universe. Holy fuck it's a bleak horror show. Personally, I love it. But if that's not your cup of tea I'd skip the Coda trilogy

#star trek #star trek novels #star trek novelverse #star trek books #kirk #spock #picard #riker #troi #star trek tos #star trek tng #ds9 #Voyager #enterprise #add your own

[sleepypandaarts]

Mama Shroud x Papa Shroud’s HC’s:

Some fun hc’s I came up with cause I was not expecting Idia and ortho’s parents to be like that. And mama shroud’s voice is so cute I was not expecting that but I am living for it

Everyone’s confused

He’s confused

The gloomiest guy and the cutest girl in the Land of Woe getting together??? What’s next? Pig’s fly? The land of woe will malfunction and they all die under the sea?

Everyone thinks she’s dating him out of pity

In reality, she was the one who asked him out first

He probably thought he was dreaming until she pinched him to confirm that no it wasn’t a dream and no this wasn’t a prank and no this isn’t the punchline on reality TV

Blacked out for a good few hours. By the time he came to he was in the infirmary and she was gone.

Definitely thought it was just a dream until his mother congratulated him on getting a date

Like a real 3D human one

Blacked out again

Needs at least a good 6 months to mentally prepare

He has 1 month

His mom helps him because he’s still in shock

His mom also has to help him to his date because he can’t feel his legs

Honestly would’ve collapsed if not for his mom holding him up when he saw Eleanor all pretty and dressed up

Doesn’t really remember the first date

Was kinda just smiling that creepy Shroud smile. The waiter came by and asked if she was being held hostage

“Really? I think his little fangies are cute!”

She’s so patient and kind asking about his projects and talking about her own

She’s one of the smartest people in the land of woe and has plenty of offers from different departments in S.T.Y.X. A true genius. Even more reason why she was out of his reach

Even though he was the son of Aidne shroud and the next to inherit S.T.Y.X his smarts were mediocre. Average

There was no reason she would date him except for money. She’ll probably dump him once she’s done milking him of his money

But the thing is she doesn’t ask him to buy anything and he’s the one buying things for her out of his own free will. Things he saw her look at like jewelry, stuffed toys, dresses

She helps him with his projects all snuggled up to him in his hoodies

Still convinced she’s gonna realize he’s a loser and dumb him

Then skip a few years and he’s at the altar with the prettiest woman in Twisted Wonderland

Another few years later he’s holding the cutest little baby with that same shroud hair

Some headcanons about their designs:

I’m a sucker for goth bf x pastel gf

Papa shroud likes the whole goth thing but doesn’t really have the confidence to pull it off. Not until mama shroud tells him he looks hot

Confidence + 1000

Mama shroud’s name is Eleanor

Idk I just like the name and it means light.

Haven’t really decided for a name for papa shroud

#anime #manga #procreate #digital painting #illustration #sketches #anime art #twisted wonderland #twst #jack howl #Idia shroud #ortho shroud #shroud parents #Leona kingscholar #malleus draconia #Lilia vanrouge #silver #sebek zigvolt #riddle rosehearts #grim #her voice is so cute #ace trappola #deuce spade #epel felmier #vil schoenheit #rook hunt #azul ashengrotto #Floyd leech #jade leech #cater diamond

[sirfrogsworth]

hi hi!!!

I'm a CFX artist (I do hair and cloth for 3D animated movies) and I wanted to clarify something!!

the encanto post? we talked about that one at length at work when it was first made, and it is incredibly evident that the guy who posted it is just bad at his job. the exact same effect can be archieved by changing the camera focal length- but animators never reach for technically competent solutions. (this is a roast.) and even if thats not possible, there is NO reason for why her shoulder area or chest are completely crushed or why her feet are inside of her hip bone.

and also, since I am in the department that comes right after animation- if I had gotten that shot, I would have either sent it straight back to the animator to fix it, OR cleaned it up myself, by which I mean it absolutely did not look like this off-camera by the time we send it for final light render.

essentially if animation looks that messed up off-camera, it is not "animation magic", it is actually someone doing a bad job.

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree.

For one thing, the behind the scenes image was not close to a final render so I don't think you can fairly judge what was probably just the animator lining up and blocking the shot. I don't think at that state they were concerned with the shoulders, chest, and feet. I'm betting the final polished version looked much better.

And I also disagree the exact effect could be achieved by changing the focal length.

As a photographer, focal length is not just about cramming everything into the field of view. I don't only use a wide angle because I want more stuff in the photo.

It is also an artistic decision.

Wide angle lenses exaggerate distance and can make foreground objects seem massive and background objects seem tiny.

Look at this super wide angle shot of Otis lusting after a tennis ball.

The ball has a huge presence in the photo. It is only two feet away, but the distance between them seems immense. The ball takes up as much space in the photo as Otis.

Compare that to the ball in this telephoto image.

The picture now becomes less about the ball and more about the act of chasing it. The ball is literally only a foot closer to Otis, but it has no commanding presence like in the super wide shot.

So what artistic intention comes from using a telephoto lens like in Encanto?

Telephoto focal lengths compress distance. Background objects appear much larger in the frame. They also flatten the face and give a more flattering perspective of said face. Human faces can look a bit alien at wider focal lengths.

So what if you want the background to look large and encompassing and you want the flattering facial proportions from a telephoto lens, but you also want a foreground object to have a commanding presence like the ball?

You cheat!

This is not a technique confined to the world of 3D animation though. It is actually an old live-action trick. They will actually use another person's hands to do effectively the same thing as above.

In Hellboy II, Guillermo had two problems. He wanted a telephoto feel and depth of field and he also wanted a very intricate practical egg prop that could open mechanically.

To get the proportions and the framing and the feel of the shot as intended, he double cheated!

He made a big freaking egg with a big freaking fake hand.

(I know there is a picture of the giant hand somewhere but my googling failed me.)

In any case, I think this is just a case of good problem solving over incompetence. I think the director or the animation lead wanted this scene to fit within a specific focal length and it was easier and more efficient to just give her crazy long arms.

I'm not trying to dispute your expertise or animation-splain. Perhaps there was a better way to achieve the same look. But if the final result looked good, I don't think we need to bash someone who was probably under tight deadlines and had a lot of other work to complete. At least not without a lot more information.

[bloodshotgun]

okay so @shakedog made this post about mark hoffman and it got me thinking.

i find it interesting that every jigsaw apprentice was lonely before being picked up by john.

amanda didn't have anyone to fall back on after her own game. the only other person connected to her that we know of is cecil, and he was john's first victim. he died well before her game. she was a lonely survivor, traumatized and scared, not to mention a substance user who got punished for it, so is it any surprise that she latched onto the first person to offer her both compassion and a purpose?

lawrence was a lonely survivor, too. with adam dead, with his wife divorcing him (no ring is saw 3D), it wasn't unreasonable for him to cling to the man who put him in that bathroom, but who also cared for him afterwards, cleaning his wound, even providing him with his first prosthetic. and if lawrence convinced himself that what he was doing was good, that he was helping people... well, he needed a purpose too.

mark was lonely way before john even learned of his existence. and then, with his sister dead and his revenge exacted, what was there left for him to do? when john came for him with blackmail, why wouldn't mark help if the alternative was, what, continuing to support the system that failed to punish his sister's murderer? and to what end? at least while working with john he could make sure that criminals were properly dealt with.

and in the end, their involvement with jigsaw did nothing to alleviate their loneliness. they never even got along. amanda died, bleeding out on the floor beside the man who promised to help her and couldn't deliver. mark was left to die in the bathroom with only corpses for company, just as he worked in the department full of dead people. and lawrence lived on. the last man standing.

meaning, naturally, that he was once again completely alone.

#its being sad about jigsaw apprentices hours again #saw #saw franchise #amanda young #mark hoffman #lawrence gordon #jigsaw apprentices #daneil made #meta

[djthed]

3D Test Animation of my Character!

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Been once again super busy with work lately, but found some time to sneak in getting this little project done!

I've recently changed up my profile pictures to use a character design that I can actually credit to myself! I will always love Leafeon and will miss using them as a profile picture, but the biggest problem with using them as a way to identify me is that they aren't really my character or my design. And my own iteration of Leafeon's model isn't that derivative anyway, nor would I really want it to. And also considering how long I've been a FiM fan, I think it's a long time coming that I finally make a design of a pony for myself to use as a sona!

With that said, when it comes to this model, I started working a bit on it a few months back. Mostly in the coat coloring and headshape department. The head topology is the same as before, but now I have controls in the rig that can change the head shape to feel more "stallion"-like. For how I tuned the shape for my character, he's kind of got a shape in-between a full on mare and stallion head shape.

Work ceased for a while as I got involved working on a project called "Billie Bust Up!" (which I will talk more about later if that got your attention, don't worry!). It's been very busy, but the past week I decided to sit down and get this done on my own time. I did a few streams where I would work continuously on my model, like getting all the hair done, and working on all the animation. You can find all the VODs to these in the Live section on YouTube Channel. I really like doing livestreams, as it has a very VERY obvious affect on how I am able to focus, and makes working on things a lot easier and more efficient. I want to do them more again, I miss streaming a lot. Maybe for BBU I'll find a way, but only time will tell.

This animation was really fun to make. Haven't really done super dynamic quadruped animation since I was involved in the G5 pony game, so it was nice to get at it again to refresh my skills there. Didn't feel too hard, so that's a good sign I wasn't getting too rusty. And rendering was not nearly as bad as you might expect. Talked a bit about this during my Marina commission about my new methods of denoising renders that were done in Cycles. This entire render uses a flat 128 sample count, and using my new methods that keeps noise temporally stable and then denoise after, it produces a very VERY nice result. Once I rap up releasing this animation, I'll try to finally record a guide, or at least the process I take, on how I get this done, as it's definitely a viable option in a lot of cases.

Thank you guys for sticking around during my staggered activity on this channel! Once I started getting involved in real animation jobs, it's been tough finding a good balance between my own personal animation projects and actual animation work. And lately I've been feeling the urge to actually try to find that balance so that I can do both. Hopefully I find it, because I miss this!

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Special Thanks to my Patrons!: interru Katharine Berry CyberPon3 Nathan Copier StableCoder SteveLynx Subserial Guillaume Troton

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If you wish to support me, here's my Patreon link:

YouTube:

My Discord Server is now Public!: https://discord.gg/HvbDBxG6ff

Twitter: https://twitter.com/_DJTHED

Mastodon: https://equestria.social/@djthed

DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/therealdjthed

TikTok (experimental): https://www.tiktok.com/@_djthed

#pony #mlp #animation #3d animation #blender #djthed #blender3d #blender animation

[yridenergyridenergy]

Welcome! This is a special invitation to take the whole Dir en grey community for an enthralling ride into the Schadenfreude universe! 

That song’s lyrics are highly poetic, and seeing as it is a long song, we have even more to feed our imagination. These lines suggest an imagery, but far from forcing a specific one onto us, they peel at the layers of our creativity. 

We would love to see your approach on what those lyrics evoke for you. Some of you are incredible talented and this contest is less of a competition than it is an opportunity to create a gallery of amazing art dedicated to Dir en grey’s Schadenfreude!

Prizes

Still, as an incentive, you can expect not just many kudos and my heartfelt appreciation, but a couple of prizes! 

Two guaranteed prizes are sets of VIP & exclusive goods from Tour23 Phalaris Vol.II, which contain: portrait set (photographed during Tour23 From Depression To____ 25th Anniversary), drawing book (Perfume of Sins artist photo outlines), colouring pencils, wristbands set, and a large pouch. 

What’s more random and undetermined is that, on top of that, honestly, there are probably things that I would be willing to do or to depart with from my own collection. Whether it’s something in Photoshop, or you’re a fan of x member who is missing something, we’ll work out an extra prize that I can include in your package!

(Voting method and presentation of the entries to be determined - probably dependent on how many entries there are, if artists prefer to be presented anonymously or something, etc. I definitely won’t be making the decision myself, but I also want it to be as fair as possible for all participants!)

Deadline

I don’t want to rush creativity at all, but please submit your entries no later than July 7th 2023 at 11:59PM EST. Let me know if you find this too restrictive!

Here is the Google form to register your artwork:

https://forms.gle/BeBSzvgTj9GDvUfF7

Entries

You can enter as many entries as you wish to share! There are so many inspiring lyrics in Schadenfreude that would be difficult to mix into a single piece of art. At the same time, there isn’t necessarily strength in number in this case, since there will be at least two winners anyway. This is meant to give you flexibility rather than to force you to make a difficult choice on just one segment of Schadenfreude to illustrate, but don’t spread your efforts thin on too many pieces!

What medium? As long as it’s a still image, go wild with digital, paper, paint, clay(?). 

Literally no other theme than just: “Bring to life a part of Schadenfreude’s poetry”. The lyrics mention scenery for the most, but you could include a person in your artwork too. 

Do keep in mind the tone and way those lyrics are sung, as well as the surrounding melody, of course!

Tips?

This may be more distracting than helpful as it could create bias, but below the break, I’ll include some descriptions of how Schadenfreude was portrayed live by the band. 

Before the hidden break though, good luck to all and thank you to anyone who participates! If you can, please spread the word about this contest!

The lighting for Schadenfreude is overall very much blue and red, but I think there were scenes of red and green too. 

In the background, the accompanying video shows 3D graphics of: gnats, a featureless person praying on their knees, a corridor of material resembling inner linings or organs that leads to a wide room where a faceless branch being sits on a throne, the Devil with its horns, scorched paper, a devastated forest but also a jungle with a giant skull-shaped rcck or monument. Other parts of the video showcase sketches like those of the artist behind the Agitated Screams of Maggots and Rinkaku PVs, displaying a mage or a ghost. 

#Dir en grey #art #fanart #contest #Phalaris

[splatsvilles-fashionista]

Writing an enormous analysis of the patch is all well and good, but what do the balance changes actually mean for the meta?

Well, for one, I don't think any of the top tiers are going anywhere despite their nerfs, not even Sloshing Machine. Splash, Machine and Stamper all just have too much to recommend them. That said I think Neo Splash is probably leaving the top tiers, as with the paint and points for special nerfs it'll have a tough time competing with the Tentatek Splattershot for the short-range Triple Inkstrike Shooter niche (as a reminder, Ttek's Tri-Strike only costs 190p!)

The big, big winner this patch, however, is Ballpoint Splatling. It is the top tier weapon that got hit the least by a significant margin, only gaining another 10 points for its Inkjet, which only really undoes a buff it got in 3.0. Ballpoint was already considered a contender for the single best weapon in the game by a lot of pro players, and now it is no competition at all. Double Ballpoint is probably gonna become a pretty popular competitive team setup, and that would be bad for Splatana Stamper in particular, as it doesn't have a great matchup against Ballpoint (good lucking try to use Zipcaster while a Splatling is looking directly at you!). If Stamper exits the meta then this would be the reason, not the nerfs it got, though they hardly help.

In response to the rising stocks of Ballpoint and Inkjet, people will start looking for an answer, and the newly buffed Big Bubbler might just be what they're looking for. It remains to be seen for sure, but after the buffs it takes an Inkjet four shots, basically half its duration, to break the bubbler shield, and that's when hitting the weak point. It still gets torn apart by Crab pretty fast, but Crab in turn is very weak to Inkjet, and hey, would you look at that, we've got a bit of a rock-papers-scissors thing going on.

The fun thing about the weapons with Big Bubbler is that I could see people going to any one of them for their Bubble needs. Jr is always a good go-to option, though it lacks punch in the fighting department. Blaster, Splat Roller, and Zink Mini Splatling are good alternatives if you want to scrap, though none of them have a lethal bomb, and that's broadly speaking a downside in competitive play. Finally, there's Squiffer and the new H-3D for long-range options, and I know some competitive players, like ThatSRB2Dude, were eying the latter even before the Big Bubbler buffs.

Another good thing about Big Bubbler is its new resistance to Tenta Missiles, and that might genuinely matter in the face of Wiper Deco (or Diper, as some people are rather condescendingly calling it), with its 190p(?!) Missiles. I really don't know why they cost that little, and I don't expect them to stay at that cost for very long. Missiles have always been very strong, but so far none of the weapons that have them, except Flingza, have had any meaningful impact on competitive play, and Flingza has been very heavily nerfed as a result. Wiper Deco does not just have the lowest points for special out of all Missiles weapon, it also the only one of them that can really fire off its Missiles and then go in to fight the people that are being targeted. This is a big reason why the Kensa Splattershot in 2 was as good as it was, and we've never had a weapon that could really replicate it, until now.

While Wiper Deco is looking threatening on the surface, it remains to be seen if it works out in practice. Without a bomb it will likely have a hard time dealing with Ballpoint, lacking the range and DPS to fight it effectively, and Ballpoint is looking to step up in a big way.

Speaking of unknown factors, there's also the S-Blast '92 and the Painbrush. S-Blast's kit is largely seen as underwhelming, but datamining has shown that the weapon itself is looking incredibly solid, a mix of many of the best traits of other Blasters with very few of their downsides, and that might be enough to carry it into competitive play. Painbrush is looking like it will have excellent range, damage and paint, but absolutely atrocious ink efficiency, some of the worst in the game, in fact. Inkbrush and Octobrush have both seen competitive success, though the former a lot more than the latter, and Painbrush might find a niche as well, especially in Splat Zones, though it remains to be seen.

But all of this is just speculation, though. All we can know for sure is that competitive play will very likely revolve heavily around Ballpoint for the foreseeable future, and that is going to be shaping the meta until the next patch. By hitting all of the top tiers with nerfs, some of them very hard, Nintendo more or less uprooted the status quo of competitive play even before you consider the new weapons, and I'll be very interested to see how things go from here.

#splatoon 3 #sizzle season 2023 #splatoon 3 sizzle season 2023

[seat-safety-switch]

Owning a farm is basically an excuse to get more farm equipment. There’s just no other decent reason to do it. Sure, those folks will talk a good game about “feeding humanity,” but we all know that any second now NASA will figure out how to 3D-print a cucumber, and they’ll still be out there trying to start a vintage tractor with a shotgun shell.

Despite the media’s pressure campaign to get you to accept them as unique salt-of-the-earth types who love to use common sense to solve problems, they are in fact your mortal enemies. At the auctions, at least. You see, farmers have an almost unlimited amount of space in which to toss broken-assed old cars, and so they will bid on anything and everything. Unlike normal folks such as myself, this copious space means that these basket-case cars will not be eventually given up on and returned to the auction, where they will find a new owner that also won’t finish fixing them.

Economists will identify this as a market inefficiency. However, the economics department at the university is no longer speaking to me after I did that whole six-hour guest lecture over there. It’s not my fault that I accidentally disproved their entire field of study by pointing out that cars with more options usually sell for the same amount of money as the base model does after a mere twenty-five years. I’m not buying that bullshit “we want to give you a job” message that they keep leaving on my answering machine, either. More like they want to throw a bag over my head and beat me with old textbooks about how to implement slavery. Sorry, where was I? Right: farmers.

The only way to beat a farmer is to think like a farmer. While my property may be limited in horizontal space, it turns out that this problem has already been solved. You see, barns have lofts, allowing you to store things over top of other things. With just one stolen forklift, I’m able to stack broken cars atop each other, free of municipal interference. I’ll be king of the auctions, at least until the airport starts to get a little froggy about runway restrictions.

[rabbivole]

my graphics professor is telling us to find groups for the self-directed final project, which is fairly open-ended; he suggests either some kind of informational video about a topic or a small interactive unity thing

i know what i want to do, which is a small proof-of-concept for a photography game ala interior worlds, umurangi generation, etc. this feels relatively attainable and would also demonstrate some unity/3d graphics concepts; a zoom on a camera is just a fragment shader, and you can do other fun photo filters/effects with convolutions and shit. i originally wanted to do this in VR when it was an idea i had for the VR class. having to hold your controllers in front of your face like you're taking a picture would be cute and i think i know how to implement that. however i'd have to borrow a quest from the department and uuuuggghh who has the energy (plus i'd have to look the hardware guy in the eye again after he saw me at my lowest point in the VR class)

however this has to be a group project. i know absolutely nobody; i haven't even been going to the QA sessions. he made a google doc where we can either pitch our idea for other people to potentially sign up for, or put our name down for an existing team and idea. and i am completely paralyzed by this. i talked to one girl in office hours who was cool and she's in a group that has an empty slot but i feel like a weirdo just. putting my name down. even though that's what i'm ostensibly supposed to do

i guess i could just slam my dick on the table and put my name down alone with 'i want to make a weird unity photography game' and be That Guy. the professor's going to auto-combine underfull groups anyway. somebody already put down that they want to make a groundhog day-esque game with horror/surrealism/nostalgia elements so i guess i'm at least not the only That Guy. i'm fine with anything as long as i don't have to make a fucking explainer video about nfts

#making me do group work with people i don't know already fills me with despair #making me do group work that is self-directed and creative with people i don't know makes me chew my own arms off #this is my saw trap

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Deep learning speeds up galactic calculations

Supernovae, exploding stars, play a critical role in the formation and evolution of galaxies. However, key aspects of them are notoriously difficult to simulate accurately in reasonably short amounts of time. For the first time, a team of researchers, including those from The University of Tokyo, apply deep learning to the problem of supernova simulation. Their approach can speed up the simulation of supernovae, and therefore of galaxy formation and evolution as well. These simulations include the evolution of the chemistry which led to life.

When you hear about deep learning, you might think of the latest app that sprung up this week to do something clever with images or generate humanlike text. Deep learning might be responsible for some behind-the-scenes aspects of such things, but it’s also used extensively in different fields of research. Recently, a team at a tech event called a hackathon applied deep learning to weather forecasting. It proved quite effective, and this got doctoral student Keiya Hirashima from the University of Tokyo’s Department of Astronomy thinking.

“Weather is a very complex phenomenon but ultimately it boils down to fluid dynamics calculations,” said Hirashima. “So, I wondered if we could modify deep learning models used for weather forecasting and apply them to another fluid system, but one that exists on a vastly larger scale and which we lack direct access to: my field of research, supernova explosions.”

Supernovae occur when suitably massive stars burn through most of their fuel and collapse in enormous explosions. They are so huge that they can, and do, influence large areas inside their host galaxies. If a supernova had happened a few hundred years ago within a few hundred light-years from Earth, you might not be reading this article right now. So, the better we understand supernovae, the better we can understand why galaxies are the way they are.

“The problem is the time it takes to calculate the way supernovae explode. Currently, many models of galaxies over long time spans simplify things by pretending supernovae explode in a perfectly spherical fashion, as this is relatively easy to calculate,” said Hirashima. “However, in reality, they are quite asymmetric. Some regions of the shell of material that forms the boundary of the explosion are more complex than others. We applied deep learning to help ascertain which parts of the explosion require more, or less, attention during a simulation to ensure the best accuracy, whilst also taking the least amount of time overall. This way of dividing a problem is called Hamiltonian splitting. Our new model, 3D-MIM, can reduce the number of computational steps in the calculation of 100,000 years of supernova evolution by 99%. So, I think we’ll really help reduce a bottleneck too.”

Of course, deep learning requires deep training. Hirashima and his team had to run hundreds of simulations taking millions of hours of computer time (supercomputers are highly parallel, so this length of time would be divided amongst the thousands of computing elements required). But their results proved it was worth it. They now hope to apply their methodology to other areas of astrophysics; for example, galactic evolution is also influenced by large star-forming regions. 3D-MIM models the deaths of stars, and perhaps soon it will be used to model their births as well. It could even find use beyond astrophysics altogether in other fields requiring high spatial and temporal resolutions, such as climate and earthquake simulations.

IMAGE....The upper images show a wide area of a galaxy being simulated. The time resolution is very low, in which each “step” of the simulation is around 100,000 years. The lower images show the specific area affected by a supernova explosion and have a finer time resolution where each step is under 10,000 years. These regions are combined with the more general simulation to improve the overall accuracy and efficiency of the simulation. CREDIT ©2023 Hirashima et al., NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESO/R. Hunt/Hubble/L. Calçada CC-BY-ND

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #nasa #esa #astrophysics

[vintagecandyshop]

SO LET ME TALK ABOUT THE VILLAIN FROM WISH

Spoilers (barely) ( I haven't even seen the movie just the music video )

I need to rant about this ok

The problem is obvious at a glance, right? How did they manage this I don't understand-- I really feel like the most damning issue with Disney's modern art style is that they are petrified... of making someone look ugly. Ugly by their standards. Or the 3D art style limited their ability to, at least. Like, what always made the villains in classic Disney so much more iconic than just a background character or sometimes even the protagonist is that they were willing to cut loose and make "extreme" body types and facial shapes, since they had the freedom of making a character you weren't supposed to like. Dr Facilier being what most consider the last classic Disney villain, had an incredibly oddly shaped face, he was spindly and lanky in a way that made him expressive but conveyed that he was not soft or warm. Gaston, another character meant to be comically attractive, had a massive cleft chin, sharp little eyes that could be charming when happy but turned ice cold when angry, and this exaggeratedly triangle-esque upper body. But look at him? Magnifico?? Eyes much too big and bubbly for a villain design, they can't convey anger at all, completely mundane and forgettable features, ( it doesn't even scream "cartoon man that is handsome" to me except maybe the unusually long eyelashes?) they did absolutely nothing memorable with the shape of his hair, his body type, even his clothes offer nothing totally unique to his silhouette like say-- Malificient's dragon wing cloak. And I blame the 3D animation department for this, honestly I do. How much do you wanna bet that he had some amazing concept art design and the second he had to be translated to 3D he lost all his personality and iconic shapes? Its this obsession with pretty, soft roundness and realistic facial structures that have to logically move on a rigged 3D model that just sucks the life out of their villains istg.

And his villain song? Ugh.... yknow its not..... terrible? My first response was " I could listen to this without being annoyed " but the thing is-- I can listen to it because its just a normal pop song. A pop song about an unusually aggressive and narcissistic man, but its not a musical number. It doesn't convey anger and spite and entitlement and cruelty-- not without stopping itself with a self aware joke. Its bland and inoffensive and overly modern just like his design, just like the way he talks, just like everything about the film.

#ok i'm done #back to art commissions pfft #chatter

[fishfacedterror]

favorite and least favorite saw movies?

ive only actually watched the first one so i suppose that the only one i can really vote on in any certainty, but that one left a good impression on me anyway (i mean, it has to, its the first one, it has to try and appeal or bust, yknow?). compared to the gore of the later instalments it is a bit more subdued, but i actually like that for it because it sets the level from which other movies try to surpass in the gore and story department, even if it can quickly become a jumping of the shark. my least favourite part of the first saw movie is zepp, but i think thats a good thing considering that hes supposed to be creepy and unlikable (good job to the actor!)

what i have heard and seen so far of saw x i have really liked (how could i not with a john focused movie tobin bell just absolutely kills it) but will probably have to work myself up to it (as i will with the other more painful sequels) since the descriptions of many of the traps here makes me squirm in a way i gotta brace for. in terms of the movies i don't like- v and vii (aka Saw 3d) are my least favourites. v because it just didnt really leave a great impact in me, and vii because it just makes me pissed at hoffman and what feels like a bungled 'finale' to the series.

#asks #thoughts #saw #this isnt in any offense if v and/or vii were your favourites tho #im definitely open to having my mind changed if/when i see the series in its entirety but this is how it stands thusfar #lockhartandlych

[canmom]

Animation Night 133: Disney, Dreamworks and the Emperors

Hey everyone, happy Thursday! It’s Animation Night. Come, have a seat~

We’ll get to you, Iron Giant. Hold on.

Earlier this week, I got fixated on writing a post attempting to figure out my answer on the question of why the big American animation studios abruptly turned away from traditional animation in the early 2000s - a subject previously visited, if briefly on Animation Night 31 and Animation Night 49. A string of high-profile 2D and 2D-in-3D failures, such as Treasure Planet, set against a string of 3DCG successes by Pixar, Dreamworks and increasingly other studios may have been the justification for executives claiming audiences no longer want to see 2D animation - but were they really the reason? Did the higher-ups deliberately sabotage 2D with (for example) scheduling decisions in order to make cheaper, non-unionised 3D films?

I’m grateful that people seemed to like my post there, but I actually don’t think my argument is quite satisfactory. I argued CG films by the same studios weren’t cheaper to make by and large (and also aren’t entirely non-union), but I only pulled up a handful of data points to make that claim. A more thorough investigation is due.

But in the meantime, it’s Animation Night. When I made that post, I was critical of the artistic decisions made in the post-Prince of Egypt films of Dreamworks, such as Spirit and Sinbad, which we watched back on Animation Night 43. I speculatively extended that to The Road to El Dorado, which I haven’t seen, and was promptly challenged by fans of that movie to give it a fairer shake. Sorry guys!

Let’s put that right. Tonight we’re going to be taking another look into that era. You’ll get to see this gif...

...and this one...

...in their original context.

But this is Animation Night, so we’re gonna be putting some Context down.

The first decade or so of Dreamworks was defined by sour grapes. To summarise briefly, Jeffrey Katzenberg left Disney after a bitter falling out with Michael Eisner over succession following the death of Frank Wells. Instead of promoting Katzenberg to Wells’s position of President, Eisner took over Wells’s duties himself, in part at the behest of Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney. A furious Katzenberg, who was already not loved by many animators for his heavy-handed meddling in the direction of films, departed and founded a new company with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen. (He’d also start a lawsuit with Disney, eventually settled for hundreds of millions of dollars. It was bloody!)

Thus began the years where Dreamworks seemed to be trying very hard to show up Disney and Pixar - although Katzenberg always denied this and insisted the similarities were coincidental. This was primarily true on the CG side, with movies like Antz targeting A Bug’s Life (much to the upset of Pixar’s John Lasseter) and Shark Tale targeting Finding Nemo.

But the year 2000 also saw a battle of traditionally animated films on the subject of the Maya and Inca, both with the conceit of someone assuming the position of Emperor. Disney released The Emperor’s New Groove, while Dreamworks released The Road to El Dorado. Whether these films were intentionally similar is not entirely clear, but Disney certainly thought Katzenberg was copying them, and both studios ordered their animators to race to get their movie out first. (In the end, Dreamworks won by some margin, releasing in March.)

Since these two movies deal with at least superficially similar subject matter, coming from the same era and animation tradition, it’s interesting to contrast them. Disney’s character designs are highly graphical and stylised, pushing into more angular shapes and generally very broad, exaggerated movements. To an extent its characters share some DNA with Mignola’s designs for Atlantis: The Lost Empire. The backgrounds are just as stylised, the stagings more flat and theatrical.

Dreamworks, meanwhile, takes the same semi-realism approach as all its other designs in this period; its cinematography is a little more towards the live action end of the scale with more close-ups and a stronger sense of space, the proportions of its characters a bit more grounded.

Beyond the setting, the major similarity between these movies is that both were conceived initially as a dramatic story, and retooled into a comedy during production.

In the case of Groove, the story goes that Lion King director Roger Allers was called into the office of Thomas Schumacher, who proposed making a film about either the Maya, the Inca or the Aztecs. Allers liked this idea, and set about drafting a film that would be called Kingdom of the Sun, drawing on 1894 novel The Prisoner of Zenda. An outline of this film is available (ty wikipedia)...

Kingdom of the Sun was to have been a tale of a greedy, selfish emperor (voiced by David Spade) who finds a peasant (voiced by Owen Wilson) who looks just like him; the emperor swaps places with the peasant to escape his boring life and have fun, much as in author Mark Twain's archetypal novel The Prince and the Pauper. However, the villainous witch Yzma has plans to summon Supay (the evil god of death), and destroy the sun so that she may become young and beautiful forever (the sun gives her wrinkles, so she surmises that living in a world of darkness would prevent her from aging). Discovering the switch between the prince and the peasant, Yzma turns the real emperor into a llama and threatens to reveal the pauper's identity unless he obeys her.

During his time as the emperor and doing Yzma's orders, the pauper falls in love with the emperor's soon to be fiancée Nina who thinks he is the emperor that has changed his ways. Meanwhile, the emperor-llama learns humility in his new form and even comes to love a female llama-herder named Mata (voiced by Laura Prepon).[12] Together, the girl and the llama set out to undo the witch's plans. The book Reel Views 2 says the film would have been a "romantic comedy musical in the 'traditional' Disney style".[13]

However, after Pocahantas and Notre Dame failed to make the stonks go up enough, Disney got cold feet about another movie with such dramatic scope. First, they called in Mark Dindal of Cats Don’t Dance to co-direct; then, worrying about making the summer 2000 release, Disney producers Thomas Schumacher and Peter Schneider ordered that the animation team would split in two and fight to the death each produce its own proposal to fix the film. Dindal proposed making it a straight-up farce; Schumacher and Schneider liked this and Allers quit, rather heartbroken at having spent four years of his life on the project.

Thus, starting in September 1998, with about a quarter of the film already animated, the project was extensively retooled on pain of cancellation. The basic premise (evil witch, emperor gets turned into llama) was kept, but the tone changed, and the animation was to be made simpler. A number of people left, notably animator Andreas Deja supervising Yzma, who went to work on Lilo & Stitch. You can read this grisly details here. The whole affair was documented by Trudie Styler as a condition of her husband Sting providing music, which is probably why we know quite so much about it. Sting actually also intervened in the story, demanding a rewrite of a planned ending where the emperor Kuzco, restored to humanity, bulldozes a rainforest to build a theme park (idek).

The movie that resulted from this tortured production process is basically a long string of rapid-fire visual jokes in the manner of a much older cartoon; it didn’t make a lot of money, but nevertheless gained something of a cult following. Which is also something that can be said of Road...

The story with Road is not quite so messy but still pretty messy. While Disney steered well clear of having any Europeans involved, Katzenberg decided to set a film during the Spanish conquest of the Americas, contemporary with the invasion of Hernán Cortés. Cortés, exploiting the tensions created by Aztec imperial rule over the many other peoples like the Totonacs and Nahuas, pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy which resulted in the Spanish and their new allies sacking the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán, thus installing the Spanish as the new imperial rulers... who unfortunately turned out to be even worse than the last guys. In place of the Aztecs’ system of tributary provinces and spectacle of human sacrifice, the Spanish brought in hundreds of years of genocide, epidemic disease, brutal slavery under the encomienda system and indoctrination to Catholicism, which would in the end constitute one of the largest episodes of mass death in human history.

Somewhat fraught, you might say. However, it doesn’t really seem like anyone did say.

The impetus for this movie came from above: Katzenberg summoned two of his screenwriters and said (this is definitely a direct and real quote) “here is a book about the Maya and the Conquistadors, write me a movie about this kthx”. “How about,” said Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, “a spin on one of those Road to... movies from the 40s, a buddy comedy with a guy following a map to a mysterious city of gold?”

“Great!” said Katzenberg. “Sounds like another grand, dramatic animated film like Prince of Egypt! That’s the kind of movie I like.”

“What if it’s a kind of white saviour thing where our guy, who accidentally becomes Emperor, goes on to save the Maya residents of a fictional city from Cortés? And we’ll make it horny, we’ll have a Maya princess love interest who doesn’t wear a lot?”

“Mm, sounds good.”

“OK, cool. Yo, Will Finn and David Silverman - direct it! Elton John, get us some of that Lion King score magic, eh?”

Time passes. The Prince of Egypt is well underway, with all of Dreamworks’s best animators, such as James Baxter, drawing it.

“Actually,” says Katzenberg all of a sudden, “I’ve changed my mind. We need a comedy to follow that. Movie’s on hold. Rewrite it to be funnier. And that’s too horny, let’s keep it PG-13.”

“Oh.” say Finn and Silverman. They leave. Finn writes to Katzenberg to try and smooth things over, but Katzenberg brushes him off. “You don’t quit Jeffrey.” said one unnamed source. “If you do, he closes the door behind you.” Instead, the film goes to some guys called Eric “Bibo” Bergeron (no idea where the nickname comes from) and Don Paul.

Katzenberg’s micromanagement seems to be the throughline for a lot of this. At one point, he was so overbearing that James Baxter had to intervene:

In one meeting, character animator James Baxter, a normally shy and bashful Brit, stood up to his boss in front of the other artists and told him to back off.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.” Baxter said. “You’re too involved. You’re losing the respect of the artists.”

Katzenberg, who respected Baxter, had seemed to listen. For a few weeks, at least, he kept a greater distance from the production. But soon, he was back to his old habits. 

The other notable development in this movie is the increased use of painted CG sets, similar to the tech Disney would use on Treasure Planet. A contemporary Animation World Network article talks about it in detail, describing how the film’s backgrounds were completed on computers by the new generation of ‘tradigital’ artists - so for the first time you couldn’t hold a painting in your hands to review it. As well as a shortcut to complex staging in 3D space, the new technique allowed economical reuse of background elements in different shots. Further digital tricks could be used to add small amounts of animation to background characters without increasing the drawing count. The character animation pushed for naturalism and subtlety to suit the ‘buddy comedy’ tone. And judging by the tone of that article, Dreamworks had high hopes for the reception of this movie.

But on release, the movie was met with... a pretty lukewarm response. Mainstream critics were dismissive of its animation and found its characters unconvincing. Indigenous organisations were especially unhappy; Olin Tetzcatlipoca of the Mexica Movement, appalled, compared it to making an upbeat film about a guard in a Nazi concentration camp that doesn’t mention the Holocaust. Audiences, for the most part, paid it little regard. So, like Groove, it dropped out of history, only to be rediscovered decades later and gain a small cult following who declared it a hidden gem. (A large part of the reason likely being that the main pair is eminently shippable.) A couple of gifs were extracted as memes, as seen above.

What do I think? Haha, well, I haven’t watched it yet. But this is going to be an interesting review to treat after we have.

Now, I’ve covered Disney and Dreamworks, but there was another player in the 1999-2000 period who’s relevant to the story. That’s Warner Bros., and director Brad Bird, who would in the future go to direct The Incredibles and Ratatouille at Pixar; his 1999 movie The Iron Giant is as I recall a good film, and interesting as one of the very few animated films to address a cold war setting and the terror of living under nukes. (We watched another, When the Wind Blows, on Animation Night 26). That’s a story worth telling, but with an eye on the time, I think it’s going to have to be told another night.

So, if you will join me, tonight we’ll be watching Groove and Road. Are they indeed forgotten gems that did not deserve their dismissal? Are they just shallow comedy? Big racist messes? Let’s go and find out.

Animation Night 133 will be going live shortly at twitch.tv/canmom, and we’ll be screening movies in about half an hour (22:20 UK time roughly) - hope to see you there!

#animation night

[suomeen]

Chapter 4: Hyvää Joulua

We arrived on December 21, which was just a day before the Winter Solstice, the year’s longest night. And winter nights are even longer in Finland. The sun only rose up around 9 and by 15 it got dark. It’s interesting how it moves in the sky too. It rises about 30% above the horizon, goes “nope!” and goes down again.

We stayed at the house of my mother’s Ukrainian friend, or rather, her Finn husband, Markku. He lives far from civilization, out on a hill among fields. There’s a rather notable village that’s just 5 minutes’ drive from there, [more on that later], but the house feels very secluded in winter.

Our friend is named Oksana, but in Finland everyone calls her Oona, which is supposedly a local equivalent. Oksana lived in Bucha but thankfully left the country just as the war started. She worked in Finland and met this nice local man. He’s 55, a mechanic who works at a sawmill. He used to live near Helsinki but he hated the city so he moved out into the wild. He’s tall but has a heart of a child. She’s small, 53 but looks 40 at most, a single mother who lost her parents early and had a very tough life. She looks like a kid next to him. They got married within a few months. They take good care of each other.

The next day, we drove to the city. Oksana had a doctor’s appointment and we had to go officiate our visit. Markku dropped her off at the hospital first and took us to the police department. It was a bit nerve-wrecking as we weren’t sure what to expect. I was preparing myself for some degree of humiliation, ready to tell my story to justify them welcoming us and giving us home. There was no humiliation and no hard questions asked. The staff were calm and friendly. When we were done, the young handsome officer said “Dyakuyu!” It felt very misdirected.

We then had to go to the reception centre to fill out all the forms and applications regarding our stay. We knew there shouldn’t be any issues but it was still stressful and confusing. The staff were friendly and almost seemed sorry they couldn’t do more for us. Well, the Finnish staff at least. The few Ukrainians working there always look mildly annoyed. And frankly, I can now understand why.

We took care of all our stuff and were immediately given the keys to our apartment. We went there, dropped off the bags and then left again. We were supposed to pick up Oksana afterwards but things didn’t go as planned. It was supposed to be a checkup, because her blood pressure was getting too high. Turned out 3 of her heart arteries were partly blocked and needed to be fixed. What’s more, they were ready to operate her immediately.

The hospital itself is a large regional medical complex, very spacious and modern. Cozy even, for a hospital. There are pictures on the walls that make it look like a museum. There is also a nice little cafeteria for staff and visitors where we dined. Not to mention the kind of technologies they use. They basically cleared and repaired the arteries without cutting up the chest while watching the process through some kind of 3D imaging.

The surgery went fine but they only cleared one artery, so two more surgeries were needed. But that day, she was home by evening. The bill came in later. She owed them a hefty sum of 42e.

Oksana wasn’t feeling great in the following days and we didn’t either. The stress of the trip was heavy and for days I had a vertigo and a headache. We weren’t going to stay at Markku’s place for a whole week but they insisted we stayed for Christmas and it was an hour-long ride to the city, which was hard on them, so we relented.

I am very unreligious but Christmas is all about traditions so I was curious so see how it was celebrated here. I have to say if there’s one place that’s perfect to spend Christmas in, it’s Finland. Finland on Christmas looks like a place from a Coca-Cola commercial. It’s like they made a set to film it and then forgotten all about it. Small quaint houses covered in snow, perfect pine trees and illumination, it all makes one’s heart warm.

There wasn’t a big celebration, however. Markku brought in a tree and we decorated it. We ate some of the traditional foods, including a number of gooey purees, made from sweet potatoes, beetroots, and carrot. Not a fan. On Christmas eve, we went to a cemetery to put candles. It was already dark and a very solemn sight.

Markku shares the house with his mother who is the head of the family. Around Christmas, many members of the family came to their house to have a nice little gathering. It was a good chance to observe Finns in their natural habitat.

About 15 people came, mostly women. There was no alcohol and no feast, as one would expect, just a few tables set up with tea, coffee and snacks everyone brought in. People just grabbed drinks and snacks and went to hang out wherever they wanted with whoever they wanted. Nobody was dressed up. Literally just regular comfy clothes and no make-up. The only festive elements were a few cutesy headbands with reindeer antlers. Worm by older women. It was a very quiet evening with a family catching up, exchanging sentimental gifts and singing a beautiful song at the end.

A few members tried to talk to me and some expressed their sadness at the things going on in my homeland. But most politely ignored us. Which was fine, I suppose. It was their day and we were just spectators. It didn’t feel right to ruin the innocence of this day. Who know how long they can stay in it?

[galaxygermdraws]

can i ask for that luigi's mansion remake rant? i'm genuinely curious about your thoughts on it!! :0

Okay so I will admit I have not played the remake. So like I'm sure it's a good experience for those who haven't played the original, but just from the visuals I have seen of it, I personally think it's a massive downgrade in the atmosphere department. I am gonna put this under a read more because. It is very long.

My primary example of this is just to show screenshots of the foyer

It's like, fairly obvious they changed the palette, made it brighter, more vibrant, etc. Which doesn't really work when you consider this mansion is based on old timey mansions, its palette shows off its age. Not to mention the lighting. i do not get why they made the lighting yellow. Yellow lighting usually signifies comfort or hominess, as it's associated with stuff like fireplaces or lamps, but white light is a lot more. Discomforting. It's like hospital lighting, you know you're not in immediate danger, but it does not make you comfortable.

Not to mention what they did to King Boo, and I know they did this for continuity and because the 3DS hardware is more limited

But I just don't think he looks as interesting as his original design. The original game had this green overlay to pretty much everything, like the mansion had greenish-brown walls and stuff, and King Boo's model is actually green. It just kinda made him seem more spooky, as he wasn't just pure white, he was an off white. Plus him being green made his crown and eyes stand out more, and because those are some of his defining characteristics, it actually helped define his appearance (I have. an entire rant on King Boo's designs but that's not what this is)

Again I'm sure this game isn't like. Bad. I'm sure it's a good experience if you've never played the original, but as someone who has the original and has played it more times than any other game I own, I don't know why I'd play the remake over it. The remake jus lacks the atmosphere, and I know that's a complaint levied at LM2 and LM3 as well, but it's worse here because this isn't a new game this is a remake of a game that mastered the spooky atmosphere

And I know people say "they cant make it too scary, it's a kid's game" as if the original game was not made for the same audience as every other game in the franchise, since Mario games are made for everybody, not just children. Also that argument doesn't work when you consider there are much darker Mario spinoffs (*coughs in Paper Mario TTYD and Super Paper Mario. Also Mario and Luigi Partners in Time*).

Also I don't know why they added new rankings to the game, but at least it lets you replay boss fights. I also appreciate the Dark Moon control mode, because the Dark Moon controls do have some improvements, most notably the dodge feature and the strolbulb (makes it easier to see the ghosts' hearts, which I know some people struggle with doing in the original). I also like Gooigi's lore in this game, since he was introduced here and this game is canonically an alternate timeline if you really think about it.

(Also anybody who says LM3DS has the PAL Hidden Mansion mode is wrong. no it does not. The LM3DS Hidden Mansion removes like over half the features that make the PAL Hidden Mansion so insanely different. I have watched an entire video about this, I have a lot of thoughts. I wish i had a PAL Gamecube.)

#germtalks #germ talks #germrants #germ rants #havent used THOSE tags in a while #luigi's mansion #luigi's mansion 3ds #not art #i just feel very strongly about the original luigis mansion

[whatudottu]

You know, at first the idea of the Galvans being high intelligence-low wisdom made me wonder if the Cerebrocrustaceans have slightly more wisdom than the Galvans to contrast being slightly less intelligent than them.

Then I remembered that one of their best scientists thought that a reasonable response to First Thinker-senpai not noticing him was to blow his planet up, and realized that nope, they’re just as lacking in the wisdom department.

Now I'm just imagining the Contumelia coming up with alien species to populate the newly-created galaxy with and making two ridiculously smart ones before going “wait, we can’t make them too OP, we have to nerf them somehow”, and in addition to having one species be five inches tall and giving the other species no hands, deciding to make them complete dumbasses when it came to practicality and sound judgment.

Galvans are considered smarter on the long term, being typically more intelligent than cerebrocrustaceans on the technicality that they plan thinks beyond one certain goal; there's a longevity to galvan tech that cerebrocrustacean tech has not been designed around, which is not quite 'planned obsolescence' persay but 'right to break' style fixing and updating versus 'goal a, b and c' design philosophy.

But that tends to make galvans 'slower' to think because they (as a generalised statistic) like to plan things to a more completed state, whereas cerebrocrustaceans are great at coming up with disposable instant ideas and solutions and move on to the next to outthink the situation they're in. In other words... autism vs ADHD /lh /hj adlkfhgfkl-!

I think the reason why species known for their wisdom aren't heard about in the wider galactic sphere (beyond just not having a concept in the world of Ben 10) is because they have a high enough wisdom to not get involved too heavily beyond their own scope. I mean certainly they'd be wise enough to retort were anything to happen to drag them out but, unless you're a 'wise guy' sarcastic trickster individual or 'look at what i can make' big brain smart alec, wisdom might not get you heavily well known (unless you're a geochelone aerio against a power hungry Aggregor)-

Nnnn the contumelia... considering that the construction of the universe is beyond our feeble human understanding, being the looks something up fifth-dimensional beings that they are (depending on what Ben 10 defines as dimension, this could mean they are beings of split timelines and come in the visual form that they do because of the very limited 3D snapshot a three dimensional being imagines which at the very least manifests in matters of emotional sway) they may create and destroy universes for perhaps the intrigue of divergent timelines, but I do not think they have control over the actual species that make that universe home. Something something I don't want to discredit achievements (even fictional ones) to the work of one specific cause, yada yada the contumelia being5D beings that are perhaps entertained by the comparably one dimensional 3D lives merely through the creation of new variable timelines.

#ask #anonymous #galvan #cerebrocrustacean #contumelia #ben 10 #this slightly derailed because i found an ancient ass video how-to-imagine-the-tenth-dimension to respond to the contumelia idea #but i really like to imagine the difference in galvan and cerebrocrustacean intelligence #to really be the matter of 'how long does it last' rather than 'how fast can this happen' #if it were a race- cerebrocrustaceans can give you a handful of ideas and solutions #but in the grand scheme of the universe longevity is sought after and the galvans excel at long term investment #a galvan with a cerebrocrustacean assistant/idea pitcher would be unstopable #a cerebrocrustacean with a galvan assistant/idea pitcher would invariably be halted by the hemming and hawing #and through impatience would rush what would've been the final project rather than rough drafts #in education perhaps galvans may worry about their roughest draft not being perfect enough #meanwhile cerebrocrustacean students are the experts of - heh - brainstorming and roughing out some concepts #if dr psychobos had sat on his plans perhaps a little bit longer or had thought things out #maybe he wouldn't have come to the 'destroy all galvans' route- but like considering he's also xenophobic towards them... #ya know not very wise and certainly not wise enough to go 'maybe i shouldn't mindlessly hate an entire species because of the one guy' #side note: why in the hell is ben's emotional sway mr smoothie beyond the 'comedy' of seeing incomprehensible beings #as a smoothie cup