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#this was an old sketch from my film project
netflix · 6 months
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Spotlight: Adam Stockhausen
Production Designer, The Wonderful Story Henry Sugar
Oscar winning production designer Adam Stockhausen (not pictured above, that’s Benedict Cumberbatch), whose work you may know from Wes Anderson films like The Grand Budapest Hotel, Asteroid City, The French Dispatch, Isle of Dogs, and Moonrise Kingdom, as well as titles like Bridge of Spies, and West Side Story (2021), took the time to answer some questions.
Which details from or aspects of The Wonderful Story Henry Sugar did you focus the most on while adapting it to the screen? How did you meld Roald Dahl and Wes’s worlds?
The details on this one started with Dahl’s writing hut! We matched the details pretty carefully and exactly. As soon as we step outside of the hut though we start to move through the world of the story and the world of the stage at the same time. Wes had the idea of how he wanted to do this from the very beginning. My main challenge was trying to figure out how to pull it off—making the parts move and getting each to have the right detail.
What’s a small change you made on a project that ended up having an unexpectedly significant impact? 
Lots of times this happens—where what seems like a small thing at the time becomes a very significant turning point. I’m in Berlin now writing this and remembering being here scouting for East Berlin for Bridge of Spies. We were struggling to find a section of town that still felt old enough to show the early 60s, and decided to take a chance on a quick search in Poland. That quick search changed the whole production plan and ultimately gave us the look of our East Berlin.
How has technology changed the way you approach your work? 
Technology has definitely changed the way we plan the work. We used to model everything in cardboard or sometimes just plan in two dimensions with pencil and paper. We can now plan in 3-dimensional space using modeling programs and see what real lenses will do.  This allows for more accurate planning and makes scenery moves like the casino set in Henry Sugar possible.
Do you have any signature easter eggs you like to leave? Any small details that you are particularly fond of? 
I wouldn’t say there are easter eggs in this one. But there are loads of special details! I think my favorite might be the levitation boxes where we painted a perspective view of the background onto a prop box. The actor sitting on the box appears to be floating in a very special and theatrical way.
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Did you talk about reflecting the iconic Quentin Blake illustrations in production design? How would you go about doing that? 
Not really. They are such incredible drawings and I’d say they’ve been inspiring me since I saw them as a child! But for this the starting point was really the machine Wes devised to move us through the story—and pairing that to specific references scene by scene.
There is such an intentionality to the aesthetics of a Wes world. Is there a set or frame that took you a long time to get perfectly right? 
All of them! It’s a very labor-intensive process getting these frames right. Occasionally one will click right away, but usually it’s a process of refining and refining. The jungle for instance went from sketches to models to samples and back again several times before the final look settled.
If you had to present one frame that showcases the best of your work, what would it be? 
Oh my. Maybe the jungle? I really enjoyed making the jungle!
With all the moving sets in the trailer for The Wonderful Story Henry Sugar, it feels reminiscent of a theatre production. Are there distinct differences in approach between film and theatre and how much do you blur the lines between them in your work? 
I think the lines are blurred completely! Or maybe they aren’t even there. I love that Henry Sugar is so incredibly theatrical in its storytelling.  It allows us to show the artifice of the sets all the time which somehow makes them even more satisfying when they finally do line up and create a complete picture. I think the casino set is a perfect example—the pauses where it all lines up for a second are even more enjoyable because we get to see it broken apart and sliding away.
Thanks, Adam!
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renthony · 10 months
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I haven't enjoyed a Marvel movie since I stopped bothering to keep up with the MCU in 2014. I don't care for most Marvel movies. I think Marvel Studios is a case study in things that are shitty in the entertainment industry. But holy shit, pretentious posts along the lines of "haha, I don't watch Marvel films, I have real taste, go watch another movie!" are so fucking annoying.
Like, go put up your middle finger at some preps or something. People are allowed to watch whatever they want and enjoy whatever movies they want and make whatever fandom stuff they want, and that doesn't say anything about their intelligence or morals or character. It doesn't mean they are somehow bad at watching movies, or are too stupid to realize whatever nugget of wisdom ye high-and-mighty Marvel Haters think you're the only ones to understand.
Again, not personally a Marvel fan, but this whole "haha, I'm better than Marvel fans" relates to something I've been musing on about media analysis as a whole. There is a persistent idea that mass entertainment is inherently lower quality or less artistic because it's made for a wide audience, and that bad art isn't worth analyzing or engaging with just because it's low quality. In this mindset, the only art that has the possibility to be any good at all is 100% independent projects made by amateurs, and anything produced by a studio or with wide appeal is inherently poser art with absolutely nothing meaningful to say. In this mindset, you can't possibly learn anything or take anything from bad art, and if you find meaning in bad art, you're clearly just stupid and uneducated and have bad taste.
The thing is? Liking bad art is not a sin. Having a different opinion about what constitutes "bad art" is not a sin. Finding something entertaining despite its flaws is not a sin. Studying bad art is not a sin. You can learn a lot from bad art, you can learn a lot from interpreting propaganda, you can learn a lot from engaging with things even if you don't think they're very "good."
My vaudeville research keeps turning up author after author who talks about vaudeville as some sort of "point of no return," like the performing arts all turned to shit the second things were intended to be seen by more than a single audience for a single show. Popularity gets equated with lack of skill or quality, because all the performers were "just pandering to the audience" instead of relying on "real skill."
For one, what the fuck does that even mean, but for two, the theatrical quality of vaudeville isn't what makes it interesting and worth engaging with. Every single thing that ever came out of vaudeville could be 100% total utter garbage, but vaudeville would still be worth studying because of how influential it still is on arts and entertainment today. It has significant historical and educational merit. And some of it is still genuinely fun and entertaining, once you pick out all the things that didn't age well or were just plain bigoted. There's artistic merit in those old sketches and songs, and there's meaning to be drawn from plenty of it even here in 2023.
You want to learn about the Hays Code? Well, let's talk about how early films were shown on projectors on vaudeville stages, so vaudeville censorship went on to influence American film censorship. Let's talk about how we still use slang to this day that originated on vaudeville, such as "skit" or "one night stand" or "ad lib" or "the big time." Vaudeville is still in the bones of the modern American entertainment industry and pop culture, and you can't really escape that influence.
People in modern day use Marvel movies as proof that big studio films are singlehandedly responsible for the decline of art, and there is nothing to learn from them or see in them at all, ever. But to me, "Marvel movies are bad" is such a flat, uninteresting observation, because when it comes to media analysis, it doesn't really matter if Marvel films are good or entertaining. If you want to actually dig into the problems with big-budget summer Hollywood blockbusters, and the way they're impacting the industry as a whole, you have to go deeper than "pop culture is all stupid stuff for stupid people, unlike me, who isn't like other girls actually has good taste in media!"
There are so many more factors at play than "mass entertainment = bad art." Let's look at the ways capitalism screws over small creators and forces them to seek funding from the very same studios that fuck them over. Let's talk about how the actual workers in the industry are fighting tooth and fucking nail against the exact same things all the Marvel haters harp on about. Let's talk about studios that accept funding from the United States Government to turn superhero comics into propaganda films, and then threaten the actual workers with never having a career again if they complain or quit. Let's talk about how the actors are regularly abused and treated to hostile work environments.
Let's talk about the people who made the films, because the films were not made by a CEO pressing the "make movie" button. The workers made those films. The workers were exploited by those studios. Let's try giving a shit about them, instead of taking the "haha, Marvel fans are stupid and cringe" route.
There is so much more fucking nuance and detail and conversation about mass media as a topic, and boiling it down to, "art made for a wide audience is inherently shitty and has nothing to say."
You're not a better, more intelligent, more educated person just because you don't like Marvel movies. Making posts about how much better you are than Marvel fans does nothing to either explain or tackle the issues in the entertainment industry.
It just makes you look like a dickhead.
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autisticgirliesbracket · 10 months
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What makes Midori Asakusa from Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! the autistic girlie ever of all time? Here's what the people have to say:
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Asakusa-related asks/reblogs: x This post will be updated after each round!
Image ID in alt text and under the readmore.
[Image ID. White slide with a low-quality screenshot of Midori Asakusa sitting on a large orange beanbag. She is surrounded by text boxes which read,
"She's clearly excited about animation and often ends up infodumping about stuff she's interested in, she often is in "her own world" and ends up goofing around during club work when alongside her friends in the film club, but also she gets clearly anxious and uncomfortable around strangers, stumbling over her words and clutching her plush bunny when trying to explain stuff to the student council. i just love having a character who can be BOTH silly and excitable and also more shy and awkward around different groups of people... relatable tbh (also a good article: www.animeherald.com/2022/07/02/a-neurodivergent-examination-of-eizoukens-asakusa-midori/amp/)"
"She loves animation. She knows so much about animation. She has drawings full of sketches and concepts and I will be honest with you I am not great at infodumping because I have bad memory but BELIEVE ME SHE HAD THE TISM SO MUCH"
"when i see her im like yaaay yaaay yaaay inthink its a sign"
"Our girlie here is NOT neurotypical! From the first pages of the first chapter we discover her special interests in the place she lives in and in animation as a medium (she infodumps). This results in several notebooks worth of schematics of the town and how it could be used as the base for wordbuilding an interesting setting for a cartoon. She also piles up vehicles sketches with detailed internal structure. In a later chapter she thinks so much about how a giant robot would work that arrives at the conclusion it would not work and tries to scratch the whole project she and her friends are working on, because if she cannot make it work irl other people would notice. The only way her friend could make her continue to work on the mecha suit stuff is convincing her that she was not making it for "other people" but for her own enjoyment. With this new rule in place she can move on. Asakusa does not fare well in crowds and with strangers. She constantly pushes forward her friend to do the speaking and when she speaks up for herself she rambles in dialect or uses quotes and catchphrases to keep the momentum. She gets soooo distracted by small things. A piece of obsidian in the back of the schoolyard, how did it get there? And oh my god I know we where talking about something serious but IS THAT A TANUKI? Also do not tell me a neurotypical sixteen years old girl has ever saved up for a big army regulation backpack to stuff it with things like a torchlight, a multitool, several feet of paracord, light-up shoes, and a stuffed bunny. She needs them to explore closed down buildings even if she is afraid of the dark. She needs her emotional support bunny." End ID.]
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lulu2992 · 7 months
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From the Inquisitor to the Baptist: The Evolution of John Seed
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Part 6: Sources, references, and further reading
(There are links under all the pictures in this post)
1: Concept art posted by Nick Arnett on Instagram
"Here is some more concept art I got to be in, that never made it." https://www.instagram.com/p/BvwpicenXHg/
And many thanks to @minilev for originally sharing the picture on Tumblr here!
2: “Last-Supper-like” images
The first picture was used to promote the game, for example during E3 2017 where it was on display outside the Los Angeles Convention Center (it briefly appears in this video).
I couldn’t find who exactly made it, but you can see/download it in very high definition (12,500 x 2,000 pixels) here:
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The second is the “Key Art”, made by an entire team (and some of the people below most likely also worked on the previous one):
Creative Director: Michael Hammond Art Director: Brian Tippie Lead Artist: Wil Wells Assisting Artist: Camille Fache Assisting Artist: One Pixel Brush - Shaddy Safadi, Matteo Marjoram Character Art: Petur Arnorsson Brand Management: Dilip Priyanath, Ann Hamilton, Bailey McAndrews, Thomas Seris Project Management: Alicia Ruiz, Sam Nielsen Authenticity Coordinator: Travis Getz Reference photography: Ryan Flynn with Brick & Chrome Additional work by Blur Studio (they usually make the CGI trailers), Helix, and Studio Mtl.
See/download it in HD (7,000 x 4,054 pixels) here:
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3: AmCo Studio
See development sketches for the “Last-Supper-like” images here.
4: Fire Without Smoke
Find development sketches and details about the creation of the “Last-Supper-like” images here.
5: The symbols on John’s fingers
This mystery was finally solved in February 2022 by @commonant (deactivated account; if you see this, thank you) here!
6: “Taolennoù Ar Mission” by François-Marie Balanant
See the scans here on the website of the Bibliothèques de l’Université Rennes 2 (Libraries of the University of Rennes 2, France).
7: Seven deadly sins (Wikipedia)
The page that most likely inspired the developers a lot.
8: Infantry tattoo
An example by Garrett Tankersley (@tat2garrett) on Instagram:
"Infantry tattoo" https://www.instagram.com/p/66MheiDlc8/
9: Old Far Cry 5 official website
Still visible thanks to the Wayback Machine here.
10: PlayAsia blog
They posted information about Far Cry 5 and its characters here. I still have no idea if the pictures are official or not...
11: Promotional picture for Far Cry Absolution
Posted on X (Twitter) by the Official Far Cry account here.
12: Inside Eden’s Gate
The short film is available for free on Ubisoft North America’s official YouTube channel here.
13: Rob Evors’ actual tattoo
Visible in this picture (the three letters on his left wrist):
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14: John’s tattoos in Inside Eden’s Gate
Casey Lynn Stuckey’s Instagram post (3 pictures):
"Check out these sweet detail shots of the tattoos I hand painted on @foreversevors for Far Cry 5: Inside Eden’s Gate." https://www.instagram.com/p/Bf1q09eFJ1K/
And another Instagram post by Nina Shyne Alviar showing Casey Lynn and Sandra Stuckey painting tattoos on Rob Evors:
"My amazing MUFX/HMU team members Casey and Sandra, hand painting tats on Rob Sevors’ hands for his role as John Seed in Far Cry 5: Inside Edens Gate! Casey did it the first time all on her own, carefully matching the designs to the gameplay. Have you seen it yet? On Amazon Prime Video right now. And the game is out on 3/27." https://www.instagram.com/p/BgeuadJnNHj/
15: “Anything Can Happen, Everything Will” live-action TV spot
Watch it on Ubisoft North America’s official YouTube channel here.
16: Jon Oswald’s Instagram post about the Far Cry 5 TV spot
"New Far Cry commercial out today! Keep your eye out for me at the end. I'm the asshole in the GUCCI TRENCH COAT." https://www.instagram.com/p/BgRoavQhgcP/
17: Kenz Lawrén’s Instagram post about Inside Eden’s Gate and the TV spot (8 pictures)
"✨✨ I am so excited to announce the release of The FarCry5 short film: EDEN’S GATE on amazon prime!! ✨✨I had such an awesome time shooting in Montana and just wanted to take a moment to thank the production, the cast and the fans of Far Cry for all their love and support." https://www.instagram.com/p/BgpYTCojq7x/
18: Jon Oswald’s tattoos
In this picture (right wrist):
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And this one (dog on his left forearm):
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19: Storyboards for the TV spot
Drawn by Anthony Winn and shared on ArtStation.
20: The Book of Joseph
Rare promotional item given as a pre-order bonus for Far Cry 5. It’s never been available for sale (officially) but you can find several options to read it in this post.
21: “Far Cry 5: Why John Seed Is Your Charmingly Deadly Enemy”
Watch the video on IGN’s YouTube channel here.
22: John’s “You have been Marked” video
The source file (which doesn’t have sound) of the final in-game version was extracted by @hopecountyradio here.
As for the audio, you can go here to listen to John only, here for the background noise and voices, and here for the original, full version of the music.
23: “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” concept art
The artwork was based on a painting by Viktor Vasnetsov (1887). It’s official but I don’t know the name of the artist(s).
Find it in HD (5,000 x 2,672 pixels) here:
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24: Official screenshot(s)
Created by Screenshot Artist Jayden Bell and posted on ArtStation.
There are more here, here, and here.
25: Poster
Official picture you can find here (3,276 x 3,276 pixels), for example. I don’t know the artist(s) who created it.
26: “John Seed - The Inquisitor | Character Spotlight”
Watch this trailer on Ubisoft’s official YouTube channel here.
27: John’s vest
Its secret was exposed by @inafieldofdaisies here. Again, great find!
28: John’s 3D model and textures
They were extracted by HeliosAl and are available for download on DeviantArt here and here.
29: John and Sloth
Just in case anyone is interested, I posted my opinion and analysis here back in September 2020.
30: Pictures in the Holmes Residence
Extracted by @vls-gamingscrapbook here.
31: Seed family portrait
Extracted by @vls-gamingscrapbook here.
32: Picture in Dutch’s bunker
Extracted by @vls-gamingscrapbook here, as well as the source files for the poster and billboard (even though the images included in my post were my screenshots).
33: Journal image (The Confession)
Found on the Far Cry Wiki, but made by Graphic Designer David Bouchard-Gagnon.
34: Early version of the “You have been Marked” TV broadcast
The video I posted was recorded in my game, but the source file was also uploaded by @vls-gamingscrapbook here.
35: Pictures from the deleted in-game encyclopedia
Extracted and posted by @xbaebsae here.
36: Render
The picture I posted was my screenshot, but you can find the full, original render here (3,840 x 4,937 pixels):
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37: Early icons
Extracted by @vls-gamingscrapbook here.
38: “Seeking Absolution - Interview with Urban Waite”
Watch the video on Ubisoft North America’s official YouTube channel here.
39: Holly in Far Cry 5
NPC line about Holly Pepper:
I remember a girl named Holly used to live here with her girlfriend Charlie. They were the first people I knew to join Eden's Gate.
You can hear it in the game.
40: Drew Holmes interview
It was deleted so the link doesn’t work, but you could read it here:
https://www.gamecrate.com/far-cry-5-lead-writer-villains-cults-and-crafting-story/18396
I posted a screenshot of it here in September 2018.
41: “Far Cry 5 - Inside the intro sequence”
Watch the video on Ubisoft UK’s official YouTube channel here.
An article about it was also published on the now-deleted UbiBlog here (retrieved thanks to the Wayback Machine again).
42: oasisstrings
Available either here (website by Steve Botter a.k.a. Steve64b) or on the Far Cry Wiki here and here (subtitles).
43: John’s deleted lines
Listen to them here on @voices-of-hope-county.
44: Hudson’s comment about John
Posted here by @oh-the-bliss.
45: Seed Ranch concept art
I sadly don’t know who the artist is, but you can find it here (1,398 x 845 pixels):
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46: Tennis courts?
Listen to Sharky and Nick talk about John’s tennis courts (which don’t exist in the game) here on @voices-of-hope-county.
I tried to trigger Nick’s comment in the game but couldn’t, so it may have been cut, but Sharky’s line still exists.
47: Seed Ranch
Picture by Environment Artist Brian Harries found on ArtStation.
48: John’s “sex room”
I tried to find more information about this mysterious room here.
49: Survivor’s comment in New Dawn
Find it in oasisstrings here. I know it’s in the game because someone recorded it once, but I couldn’t find the post...
50: Cultists’ lines at Seed Ranch
I recorded two videos and posted them here and here. The comment about John being so busy he barely goes to the ranch is in the second one.
51: “Your Question”
John’s letter for a cultist named Terry. See the screenshot of the complete answer on the Far Cry Wiki:
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52: John and Mary May’s secrets
This was originally discovered by @xbaebsae in this great post I recommend reading if you like early/deleted content!
53: Abandoned storylines
Listen to three outdated lines here on @voices-of-hope-county.
54: Kim’s deleted line about John
Listen to it here on @voices-of-hope-county.
55: Joseph’s eulogy for John
Listen to the audio here on @voices-of-hope-county.
56: Joseph’s message for John at Seed Ranch
Listen to it here on @voices-of-hope-county.
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j4m3s-b4k3r · 4 months
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MONKEYBONE
Here are some pre-production drawings done for MONKEYBONE, a film directed by Henry Selick. I worked on the film very briefly, perhaps only a week or two, helping with story beat boards. It was a fun gig, in part due to the location in The Presidio.
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Nowadays The Presidio is one of the jewels of San Francisco - a truly beautiful parkland for residents to play in - but when I first arrived in San Francisco, it was still a functioning military base. It was already known that it would soon close, however. So discussion about what was next for the site bubbled for the first few years that I lived here. Would it become low income housing? Or yet another swanky property development, as seemed likely. Who else but big money could pay for the cleanup required after the military had left so many toxic cooties (asbestos etc) behind? 
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Anyway, while such things were being decided, some of the abandoned buildings would be rented out for short term projects, one being an animated/live action comedy, that was in pre-production circa 1998 (adapted from a graphic novel - DARKTOWN  by Kaja Blackley & Vanessa Chong). I worked on MONKEYBONE in the early, eager, happy, anything-is-possible phase. It may have been so early that our work was merely a proposal, before a ‘green light’. 
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Henry himself was in a great spirits, now that he was out of the shadow of Tim Burton, and Chris Columbus was his exec producer. Many of the crew were Henry’s old cronies from Nightmare Before Christmas, such as production designer Bill Boes. He’d already built models of some of the sets & locations, and these were great reference. With a tiny lipstick camera we could shoot the models from all kinds of angles, and this was enormously helpful, allowing myself & Lawrence Marvitt to bang out panels relatively quickly, under the guidance of Mike Cachuela.
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Many things had not yet been decided on, such as casting. The protagonist in my sketches here was based on Nicolas Cage, but of course Brendan Fraser got the role of of Stu. Other roles were played by Rose McGowan, Dave Foley, Bob Odenkirk, John Turturro, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Kattan and even Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito. The final film really had an amazing cast.
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The Presidio was not yet full of dining options, but our workspace wasn’t far from the Presidio gates, where we’d have lunch at Liverpool Lil’s, a great little pub (that has recently burned down, sadly). I also remember a really fun swanky dinner (I forget now where) with the entire tiny pre-pro crew, where Henry was in a jovial mood and writer Sam Hamm was too. Both hilariously regaling us with their Hollywood horror stories (and comparing their scars inflicted by Tim Burton). Best of all, someone else picked up the exorbitant check! (I think it was Sam Hamm?)
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Years after my brief stint on MONKEYBONE I got an invite to a preview screening in early 2001. The film was madcap, weird, & even disturbing at times. Much of what I’d thought would be animated was actually handled with costumed humans in the final film, surprisingly. But it was exciting to have worked on a feature film that actually got made. This was a period where I worked on many great projects that collapsed before making it to the screen. I remember enjoying it until the very end, when I saw that I hadn't got a credit (I hadn't worked on it long enough apparently). In the lobby after the screening, there were a lot of concerned/worried/disappointed faces. Whereas I was bummed that my name was was not in the credits, many people seemed unhappy that their names were.
Ha ha!
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Sure enough, the film was a financial & critical flop and has low score to this very day (despite a tiny subset of viewers who still love it, and look back on it fondly). I learned that there had been much tussling along the way to the screen. Perhaps the guy who'd done Home Alone was not the right choice to ‘mentor’ Henry? Did things go sideways after Rupert Murdoch fired Bill Mechanic? Or was it merely typical studio meddling? My guess is it was another case of AOTA: all of the above.
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Henry himself sums up MONKEYBONE this way:
"I have two thoughts: it never would have been a big hit. It certainly would have done better if they advertised it a little... I would still like to do a Director's Cut because there's a lot of cool stuff that was removed... my main lesson learned is, I don't really do well in the live-action universe... I love my world of stop-motion... I went down a slippery slope to make Monkeybone, but the film that came out it's not my vision of what the film could've been, and I just don't thrive in that.”
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Not long after I worked there, the fate of The Presidio was finally decided when George Lucas’ proposal to develop The Letterman hospital into a media centre was accepted in 1999. And it became the mixed-use space SF residents play in today.
----
Just last weekend, we spent a day in The Presidio, enjoying its restaurants & bars and exploring the new Tunnel Tops park. As we strolled around, I tried to figure out which of The Presidio's many buildings we worked in in 1998, but couldn't pin it down (of course, the Letterman hospital complex was levelled to build what became ILM/Lucasfilm, so perhaps the buildings we worked in are gone).
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magentagalaxies · 5 months
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hi @liliana-von-k, thanks for the follow! i have answered this question before but i love talking about kids in the hall and my "origin story" with them so i'm happy to tell it again (jsyk it will be a long post bc i always have to tell the full story bc i love it so much)
basically my parents have both been kith fans since the 90s, so even before i had seen any of the show itself there were certain kith quotes that were just part of my family's vocabulary. the first sketch i watched was "these are the daves i know" when i was like 8 years old and i became obsessed with that song. i watched a few other sketches/the first few episodes from season one but i didn't truly get into kith until after their documentary "comedy punks" was released
see, my mom is a big documentary person so she was like "oh hey there's a new kids in the hall documentary! do you want to watch it?" and i just kind of shrugged and was like sure i'll be in the room while it's on, probably working on my own stuff or scrolling on my phone. but like not even five minutes in i was hooked. while i'd always enjoyed kids in the hall's comedy, something about hearing the very personal histories of how the troupe came together and survived for all these years was so affecting. i think it was scott specifically that really signaled to me that this show was something special, and the part where bruce talked about comforting scott while he had cancer by telling him how the rest of the troupe would die first was so powerful. honestly no individual movie has changed my life more than comedy punks did specifically bc it gave me that push to get into kith and approached it from such a human perspective, which definitely informed my approach to the rest of their work and them as people. i remember watching comedy punks for the first time and getting this strange feeling i couldn't pin down yet that was like this is important, not just referring to the show or the troupe, but like this feeling that i had just crossed a turning point in my life, and i remember feeling this pull towards toronto which seemed frivolous at the time but has been so heavily solidified as i'm now planning to move there in just over a year.
so i bingewatched all of the kids in the hall tv show in summer 2022, as well as brain candy, death comes to town, the amazon season, etc. basically as much kith stuff as i could find. but i needed more. so i started getting into side projects, which brought me to "mouth congress" (a queer-punk band scott thompson and paul bellini had in the early 80s that they've recently started putting out new music with again). i found a youtube channel with a bunch of recent live performance clips of the band and each video had like less than 10 views. so since i didn't have anyone to infodump about kith with irl (aside from my very patient mother lol) i started commenting on every video, complimenting the performances and pretending i was talking to a friend, confident no one would actually see it
after 2 weeks of this, turns out someone did see it. PAUL BELLINI HIMSELF. this led to a whole back-and-forth which eventually ended up with him emailing me a copy of the unreleased mouth congress documentary, i emailed back asking if he'd be interested in meeting on zoom (since i am a queer comedy writer myself so both he and scott are my biggest comedy inspirations), and yeah bellini is a delightful person to talk to and we very quickly became friends. i ended up offering to run mouth congress's social media, which can be found on both tumblr and instagram as @mouthcongress and posts both vintage videos from the 80s/90s and recent live clips. they're currently working on an album of entirely new material written in the past 2 years which is going to be released soon (we don't have a specific release date but the recording is completed and they've started filming music videos for it!! but i'm getting ahead of myself lmao)
a few months pass and mouth congress is set to perform at a new year's eve show at a local club in toronto. i'd never been to toronto before, never even left the united states, but paul says it would be so great to have me there and by some miracle my parents say yes to making the trip (they still can't believe this is happening either, since they were kith fans first!). the trip is wonderful, i immediately fall in love with the city, i get lunch with paul irl for the first time and get to have my very first face-to-face conversation with my number one comedy inspiration scott thompson. it's honestly a little awkward but in an adorable funny way. i also have my first legal drink at that show (bc canadian drinking age is lower than the us), specifically saying i want to have my first drink with buddy cole, which both scott and paul are very into
it's actually only a couple weeks until i'm in toronto again, because scott is debuting a new buddy cole show consisting of monologues that were all censored by amazon that he pitched during the revival season. this is my first time traveling a long distance without my family which my mom is anxious about so paul bellini lets me have him as my emergency contact. the show is amazing, i get to stay for the afterparty, and while i'm there i casually mention that i'm surprised no one has made a buddy cole documentary yet. like, this character has such a rich history even beyond the kids in the hall (which i can infodump about all day lmao) and is such an important staple of queer comedy that doesn't get the attention he deserves. the kith documentary is great, but where's my buddy cole documentary? paul accepts my pitch (that i didn't even realize i was pitching), passes along the idea to scott, and yeah now i'm legit directing a film with my number one comedy heroes and i haven't even graduated college yet. what the fuck. i expected this to be the type of thing i accomplish over 20 years into my career, not at twenty!! so yeah that's how the buddy cole documentary started. i'm still in preproduction on it but we're launching an indiegogo crowdfunding campaign for it in the next 2 weeks bc this has evolved into a full feature-length film with some incredible celebrity interviewees, both kith and otherwise.
anyway a few months later it's announced bruce mcculloch is bringing his one-man-show to the city i go to school in. not only that, but his theater is literally 2 blocks from campus. i ask paul if he'd give me bruce's contact so i can set up an interview for my school's newspaper, paul gives me bruce's assistant's email, and i set up a 30-minute zoom two weeks before bruce will be in town. the conversation honestly goes bizarrely well. like it's honestly surreal how close bruce and i got after only knowing each other for a half hour? he's such an easy person to talk to and literally by the end of that conversation he was already calling himself my mentor, asking about my comedy, and offering to let me meet him backstage after his show. which is exactly what i did, launching yet another incredible friendship-slash-mentorship with one of the kids in the hall.
bruce eventually signed on to executive produce the buddy cole documentary (alongside paul bellini), i've been up to toronto in january, april, june, august, and october this year (so essentially every 2 months, though it was slightly offset by going twice in january) and i'm planning on going up in december, every time not only do i find time to meet up with scott, paul, and bruce but they all deliberately try to reserve as much "jess time" as they can because i have a unique and powerful friendship with each of them, every time i finish a new creative project paul has to see it bc he loves how ambitious i am, i repeatedly wake up to texts scott sends me at 3am about the documentary and how excited he is to have me on tour with him to film it next year, bruce thinks it's hilarious he used to think i was "shy" bc i've gotten so comfortable going on infodumps and tangents about things i'm passionate about, and the three of them all feel like extended family. best of all, i actually have plans to graduate from college a semester early so that i can use the money (and time) i've saved to find a place in toronto and start making even more connections with the comedy community up there (also for the record: no i have not met mark, kevin, or dave yet. i know kevin is aware of my existence from bruce giving me a shoutout at a show they both did but that's about it. but i know i will interview all of them for my documentary)
so anyway that's how i got into kids in the hall. i know only the first 2 paragraphs answer your question, but at this point my love for this show has become so so intertwined with my relationships to bruce and scott and paul as humans that i don't really consider getting into kids in the hall and getting to know the kids in the hall as separate things in my life.
(also if you have any follow-up questions on anything mentioned feel free to reply or dm me, this goes for everyone else too!)
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picnokinesis · 3 days
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I don't think you reblogged this but I am interested so 1&2 for the same ask game when you have time! Whichever WIP you want.
Oh my days HI GABE!!!! Thank you for the ask!! For everyone else there's a wip questionnaire here by @buffythevampirelover which maybe I'll reblog in a minute if anyone wants to ask me questions about my fan or og projects hahahah
1. What was the first part of your wip that you created?
Okay I'm actually gonna answer this about two different projects because a) I bugged gabe to actually give me a project and he said disarmed sksksk but also b) I have an interesting answer for one of my og projects
Disarmed, first of all - this is a fanfic wip that I'm currently working on (we're on the last chapter now, hurrah!). It's an idea I had in 2021, and I had actually decided that it was officially scrapped/permanently shelved at the start of January....only for me to then sign up to the goreswap exchange and decide to write it anyway SKSK ONLY TO THEN STOP because it got too long so I wrote something else instead.
If you don't like mentions of horrible injuries, I'd recommend stopping here and jumping to the next post on your dash haha.
Disarmed actually originally came about from a very rancid dream I had where the Doctor and the Master were both found in a forest on an alien planet, holding each other's severed arms over their shoulders rip. And so, from there, I ended up drafting this Idea in my brain - and I had this EXCEPTIONALLY clear image in my head of the Master sewing the Doctor's arm onto where his used to be (which...kind of doesn't technically even happen in the story anymore but the imagery remained), and so that was the first thing I created. Which is - actually tell you what, I'm gonna throw that sketch that i did under the cut along with the rest of this answer in case people scrolling don't want to see mild cartoon gore haha. Also this post might get a bit long anyway
Here he is!
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So in case anyone wasn't sure, the title is purely there for the pun and always has been hahah
For my og project though - this is a script that I'm not gonna say the name of because I submitted it to a BBC script call HAHA, but it's about a meteorite strike that causes a lot of problems, including giving some people dangerous powers. This idea actually started waaaaaaaay back when I was like, 16yo or so, when I wrote three songs that I wanted to make into a concept album. I'm pretty sure that the first one was actually one called Days Gone By, which I actually filmed myself singing here, back when I had long hair haha, although I think you could argue that the bones of We've Heard It All Before (which is now a complete song - and also YIKES I took this fast, baby taka what are you doing sksksk) came up before any of Days Gone By. How do I know this? I have a ton of old voice notes on my laptop. The interesting thing here is that Days Gone By is actually Plot C in my script and doesn't even come up in the episode that I wrote, which was the pilot, and thus only covers Plot A (Through the Dust and Blood, the third song which I did not film) and Plot B (We've Heard It All Before). Even funnier story - the idea for the original concept album which became the script was ALSO, like disarmed, based on a dream I had HAHAHA (but like, so loosely. I don't think any of the original dream other than the imminent meteorite strike has made it into the final project. Great jumping off point, though!).
2. If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be?
Gonna answer this one about my og WIP script, Onkalo, because this project has some original folk songs that I've written right at the heart of it - and so, naturally, I would have a rendition of Over Onkalo as the intro. I kind of imagine it like, a medley of an instrumental or soundtrack version, so more dramatic and orchestral, but with people singing the song coming in and out of it - and then it would end on just people singing the last line acapella as the rest of the music fades out and theeeeen - titles! Or something like that. If I have to go with a song that's already been written though, I'd probably go with maybe El Búho by Blanco White, or You Are a Memory by Message to Bears.
THANKS FOR THE ASK GABE!! <3
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simplysparrow14 · 1 year
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The Lackadaisy Film-Pilot Review
Please note that all opinions are my own. No one is paying me to talk about the film. I'm just a fan with a few opinions.
So I just watched the long anticipated animated film-pilot, based on the massively popular anthropomorphic comic, Lackadiasy.
And it was good. Not perfect, by any means. but good.
As with any independently funded project, there are undoubtably mistakes and problems that, with a professionally backed project, wouldn't be an issue.
The first 5 minutes can be completely cut out. In this scene, the titular character Rocky Rickaby (played by) pronounces an incredibly gawdy, overblown, too-long-for-its-own-good poem about the Mississippi River. From his violin, he spews glitter sparkles and gilded daises. The entirely of that scene could have been cut as it truly doesn't serve anything to the overall plot or character. Its truly a long-drawn sequence that is meant to show off the animation budget, which is mostly squandered since all Rocky does in that scene is prance across the bridge while hanging from the scaffolding beams. It feels as though the film is trying to pad out time. Instead of having this egregious poem play out, the film could have used that 5 minutes to help fully flesh out the overall plot that the film tries to explain.
The plot itself doesnt make itself known naturally. Often times, characters will have to speak a few lines of exposition. (this is scene with the Lackadaisy practiconer, Mitzi May, who monologues about the glory-days of the speakeasy to the giant portrait of her dead husband). We get vague hints that there was a falling out between Mordecai Heller (Played by Songwoo Cho) and the Lackadaisy Speakeasy. We get a vague sense of a rival business' called Marigold, and Mitzi's want of "the good old days" of the lackadaisy. But because the film itself spends a good chunk of its time with very well coreographic action scenes and car chases, we never get a real feel for what the lackadaisy represents to these characters, why its survival is important outside of "i miss the good old days" and "we need money" and why Mitzi is so hell-bent on bringing its corpse back to life. The film itself does a decent job of trying to que newcomers into the story, but truly the film is for the fans.
There were a multitude of scenes where it was too silent for its own good. Multiple scenes were lacking in background music, and as such, a lot of times you could hear nothing but sound effects. While not too egregiously overplayed like Hazbin Hotel, where even the potted plants had sound effects, Lackadaisy keeps it to the minimum. However in scenes where it feels like it should be big bombastic music to put forth a sense of urgency and fear, it's mostly kept quiet and as a result, make several scenes in which there is nothing but slamming doors and shotgun blasts become too common. Because Lackadaisy's is independently funded, there not at the disposal of a orchestra, or the technical capacity for a prominent OST.
Throughout the short film, there were multiple shots where you could see the sketch lines beneath the animation. Often times you could see the face symmetry lines, and as a result, felt jarring for a piece of animated almost 3-4 years in the making. While most likely a stylistic choice, it often makes the film look too unfished, like they didn't have enough time to pass over the animation a second time. This is juxtapose by after-credit sketch animation akin to Fleisher-brothers/Steamboat willie
Some of the voice acting is a little hit and miss. While some VA do beautiful work with their characters (SungWon Cho's Mordechai, Malcom Ray and Benni Latham's Brother-Sister Duo, Serafine and Nicodeme, Belsheber Rusape and Michal Kovach's Chaos Cousins' Freckle and Rocky) others feel a little out of touch (Ashe Wager tries her hardest for a southern accent, but ultimately fails while also giving Mitzi the deepest southern bell voice I've heard in a long time, while Bradley Gareth's cadence for Sedgewick Sable makes him sound just a few steps below a more proud but deep Jimmy Stewart).
However, the animated itself (when you don't see the sketch lines) is beautiful. All of the sound effects feel purposeful and appropriate. The techno-swing jazz music that is played feels in sync with the aesthetic of the whole piece. But truly the action scenes in which Ivy, Freckle and Rocky must outrace Nicodeme, Serefine and Mordecai are truly the best parts. Fun, fast, and exciting!
Overall, for a short film, independent animated it's one of the best, and id still recommend it for anyone who's a fan of the comic as well as newcomers.
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timpac-capstone · 5 months
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Week 10
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I finally did another digital drawing, this time using Adobe Fresco on an iPad Air 2. This piece was actually way more relaxing to draw than the last time I tried drawing digitally on Krita using my roommate's touchscreen laptop because nothing was glitching out. Everything worked perfectly this time and the Apple pencil felt very intuitive in my hand. I still struggled to get my line work to look nice and I'm not sure if the process in which I colored and shaded my drawing was the way most people do it but after finishing this piece I walked away wanting to do more digital art which is a victory in itself.
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When I walked out of Manga in New York I finally understood the importance of how the presentation of an art piece can add to the overall experience of the audience member. This was a quick sketch I did in Adobe Fresco of how I was planning to display my animation. I'm thinking of getting one of those old TV carts that I would often see in elementary school where it had a big CRT TV that was hooked up to a VCR. The VCR is just for display because I'm not sure how to put my animation onto a VHS tape and even if I did it doesn't really add anything but I was planning on displaying my animation on the CRT TV. The reason the setup is like this is because this is the same setup that the two brain cells have when they are watching Dillon's embarrassing memories. I will also have two bags that will be labeled Embarasing Memories and Good Memories, after the audience member is done watching my animation they will write one happy memory and one embarrassing memory on an index card/cassette tape and throw them into their respective bag. I'm not 100% sold on this idea but it is a good start.
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My professor recommended that I watch more animated short films that weren't just from previous alumni to broaden my horizons in terms of storytelling in a short animation and the way animation is used as well as its quality. I saw 10 animated short films but I'll only talk about the ones that stood out to me starting with This Actually Happens A Lot by Tom Law. I remember my professor asked me to explain why I love animation so much and I showed her the transformation sequences from Ben 10 (2005) and I just said "I mean just look at that". But she didn't see the same thing I did and said I needed to look deeper for the reason and I feel this short gave me that answer. Animation makes the unnatural feel natural without needing to explain why it is the way it is. In this short, we see that the male character's social anxiety is causing him to stick from wall to wall and be suspended in thin air. Obviously, this doesn't happen in real life but I didn't question it, I accepted immediately that this is how this world works and because of that I'm more in tune with the author's message instead of fighting the way he presented it, creating a much more enjoyable watch. If this was live-action I would be more interested in how they did the effect rather than what the point of this character being suspended in mid-air is supposed to represent in the first place.
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Resilience by Yunie Choi gave me a new perspective on the horrors of war and life after death. They used animation to do a timelapse of a decaying corpse over the course of several hundred years and it is quite beautiful to see how life moves on without you. The use of colors and interesting animal designs really add to the beauty of this animation.
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This guy, Manu Mercurial, does a lot of YouTube tutorials for animation but I haven't seen his animated projects in full before. I thought it would be topical for me since we are both interested in the subject of memories. He very much took a very different approach from what I was thinking of doing but I still think it was a good watch to see how people visualize revisiting their old memories
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I like Afternoon Class by Osro for the same reason I like This Actually Happens A Lot, I don't question why this kid's head turns into several heavy objects but I have an immediate connection to it because I understand the feeling of trying to stay awake in class. Also, the use of sound effects is excellent in this short.
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I put Forget Me Not by The Lonely Star Studio on here because it shows that even with terrible voice acting and mic quality I can still appreciate the animation of this short which has also been a huge stressor.
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Bounty by Arrowmi is on here because it has the opposite problem of Forget Me Not it has amazing voice acting but the art style and animation are pretty rough. It's not bad but it's not super pretty to look at either. However, it was still able to tell an intense story of an ex-bounty hunter and suck me into the world despite its noticeable drawbacks.
Going back through my old script ideas, I had this one part where at the climax of the story the main character would wake up in a car sitting next to his dad. He's in shock because his dad is supposed to be dead and yet here he is just driving nonchalantly, the main character knows this is a memory but he decides to ask his dad a bunch of questions to see if his dad would still be proud of him if he were to meet him as an adult. I feel that this entire scene I made was inspired by this Spiderman story I found 2 years ago on Instagram in which Peter gets 5 minutes to talk to Uncle Ben after years of being Spiderman, this story really connected with me when I first found it because what I want the most in life is to just ask my dad "am I doing good". There are a lot of things that I struggle with; not being masculine enough, I'm almost 23 and still haven't had a girlfriend, and I constantly wonder if I picked the right career choice. I don't know if my dad struggled with the same things but I assume that he didn't and I often feel that if he were to meet me as an adult he would be disappointed. I know that most likely he would say that he is proud of me despite all my shortcomings because that is what parents are supposed to do but the fact that I will never get that answer kills me. I decided to read all 3 parts of this story to get a better idea as to what led up to this Uncle Ben interaction and it was pretty good, if you watched Spider-Man 2 it hits the same story beats. Lately, I've been thinking of scrapping the two-brain cell idea and instead animating the car scene I described earlier on its own.
REFLECTION:
I'm really happy that I finally found a groove into digital art and I'm hoping this will finally jumpstart some animation this week. I'm also glad that I watched all those animated short films, they all had their unique quirks and drawbacks that you don't normally get to see in professionally animated TV shows. I also want to explore the idea of being able to talk to a dead relative for a brief period of time before you never see them again.
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Three years ago, on September 22nd, I formally started working on my first Silmarillion screenplay, The Darkening of Valinor; I also started outlining my plan for a series of nine films of The Silmarillion.
It’s amazing to think about how much time has passed since then, and how much has happened. Now there’s finally a complete version of the first screenplay, which took a tremendous amount of time and effort, but it was one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done. That doesn’t mean it’s finished, since I’d like to add a few scenes to it, but it feels incredibly good that the script is the most fully formed that it’s ever been.
(I still haven’t really come to terms with how big a project this was/is. I literally spent three years writing a screenplay—only the first of nine—based on a book that is widely regarded to be unfilmable, and the script has over 400 footnotes. I also spent that time rereading The Silmarillion and HoMe and taking detailed notes. Many people have told me I’m completely crazy, and I’m inclined to agree with them! But that’s just how much I love The Silmarillion.)
With The Darkening of Valinor script in good shape, now I’m ready to begin working on the next one, The Return of the Noldor. To be fair, I’ve already started it (and written more than several scenes), but I couldn’t devote my full attention to it while the first one remained in such an unfinished state. 
(Even though I was “supposed to” be focusing on The Darkening of Valinor—according to myself—that didn’t stop me from working on multiple other screenplays simultaneously because, as previously noted, I’m insane. I have outlines and some scenes—in varying stages of completeness—for the Return of the Noldor, the Fall of Fingolfin, the tale of Beren and Lúthien, the Fall of Gondolin, and the Children of Húrin. The other parts are less sketched out, but I’ve been thinking about them too.)
I can’t wait to move on to this next phase of the project!!! This is such a big deal!!! I felt like I’d never finish The Darkening of Valinor. And, yes, I will probably still add to it or make some small changes, but I can’t believe there’s actually a script now that people can look at. And it’s amazing that over fifty people have contacted me about reading it—that makes me so happy!!! I can’t even begin to express how grateful I am to everyone who has taken the time to read it, and especially the people who have written me such kind and thoughtful comments. 
I’m tentatively hoping that the next one won’t take three years. Part of the reason The Darkening of Valinor took so long was that life got in the way. But it also took a long time because it was just difficult. Nevertheless, I was patient, and eventually I had breakthroughs on the places where I was stuck, so it really felt like all the hard work was worth it. 
And during the last three years I’ve learned a lot about my creative process and what helps me write. (The best thing seems to be just rereading The Silmarillion and HoMe again and again! And listening to music.) I also think the first screenplay presented unique challenges that the other ones will not—not that they won’t be difficult too, but they’ll be difficult in other ways. At least I’m not starting from scratch—I already have many scenes sketched out, and the rest is in outline form. And I’ve learned a lot in the last three years about the approach I want to take. 
So it’s time to formally start work on my second screenplay. I’m so excited!!! I’ve literally wanted to do this since I was 13 years old and IT’S HAPPENING!!!!!!!!! I mean, it’s BEEN happening for the past three years, and I couldn’t be happier! I think now that I’ve shared The Darkening of Valinor screenplay with other people I’ve finally realized that this is real life.
Sometimes people ask the question, if there’s anything you could do with your life, what would it be—and why haven’t you started yet? And that’s what this is for me. I have other goals too, of course. But this has been something I’ve wanted to do for over a decade. I don’t know, it just feels good to have come to this three year milestone, and to be entering the next stage.
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quarantineroulette · 3 months
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12 Things That Didn't Suck this Year, plus 12 Films I watched and Liked
For me, 2023 was a somewhat easier year than most in recent memory. In the wider scope, everything remains very demoralizing and bereft of even a shred of hope. With whatever motivation I can find, my aim in 2024 is to refine aspects of my personal life I'm currently unhappy about; outside of that, things feel pretty much unsalvageable. May the new year surprise us all and give us a few glimmers here and there, culturally or otherwise. In the meantime here are 12 points that brought me some sort of comfort or release in the past year -- and also a dozen movies as most would agree it's been a great year for those. Maybe just maybe I'll finally take a crack at writing a screenplay in the new year so long as the world doesn't careen completely off its axis:
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Traveling: In late 2022 I got it into my head that it would be really cool and fun to plan a trip as if we were touring, going from location to location within a span of 2 weeks. I really wanted to go back to Spain, James has always wanted to go to Morocco, so I routed a trip from Madrid to Tangier and back, with stops in Granada and Seville along the way (and also we went to see Suede, because why not). This was an intense journey that involved multiple buses, trains, shuttles to ferries, and plenty of taxis, and I'm pretty shocked and impressed that we pulled it off without sleeping through any departure times or losing any belongings (apart from a pair of earrings of mine that fell out of my purse and got crushed in Granada). The whole trip was a highlight not only of the year but of our lives in general and I'll absolutely never forget getting lost in the Ancien Medina in Tangier, something which I still dream about on the reg.
I Think You Should Leave: This has been an intellectually rich year in terms of films and television shows. The third season of Tim Robinson's completely unhinged Netflix series isn't part of that particular conversation, yet nothing I've watched this year has brought me more joy. I've easily watched the "Jellybean" sketch alone about 15 times, and could easily watch it twice that many more with no threat of it ever getting old. Absolutely insane, ceaselessly hilarious, and sometimes even emotionally stirring. May Netflix renew this 100 times over.
PJ Harvey - I Inside the Old Year Dying: I'm maybe a minority PJ Harvey fan because I find her later output far more interesting than her early, more iconic records (excepting To Bring You My Love and Is This Desire? here). This maybe didn't stir me quite as much as The Hope Six Demolition Project, which I found to be truly radical, but it neither felt like a retread (although surface listens might lead some to write it off as a return to White Chalk-era atmospherics). Outside of the record itself, the video for the title song is outstanding, and all her collaborators (including the directors of the video, animators Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña) were expertly chosen. Personally, Ben Whishaw singing lines from "Love Me Tender" is something beyond even my wildest dreams (Fun fact: I met Ben Whishaw forever ago and gave him a PJ Harvey button I made, so this collaboration in particular is quite the full circle).
Books By Friends: This year I read several recent books: HellSans by Ever Dundas, Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez and The Ghost Theatre by Mat Osman, all very different novels but all incredible in their own right ( I believe I technically read Ever's book last year but including it here anyway because I loved it that much). HellSans is a dystopian cyber-horror that satisfied my love of experimental writing and body horror alike, Our Share of Night is a touching story about a complicated familial relationship with heavy occult overtones, and The Ghost Theatre is a lush historical fiction that at times reminded me of Patrick Suskind's Perfume in terms of sensory details. All three novels solidified all future output from these writers as must reads for me, regardless of genre designations.
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Movies: A short sub-list of 12 movies I watched this year that I liked enough to rank:
12) The Passenger (director: Carter Smith): Kyle Gallner is the #1 scream king to me and I'll watch pretty much whatever he's in as he usual picks interesting roles - plus, he makes me happy to be from Pennsylvania, and I can't say that about many people. Anyway, I've watched like three movies he was in this year alone but The Passenger was the stand out for its Falling Down-esque intro and fucked up reveals.
11) Beau is Afraid (director: Ari Aster): Docking this a few points because I think Ari Aster is pretty overrated, but I can't deny that this was an absolute trip to see in a movie theater. A quietly brilliant performance by Joaquin Phoenix as well.
10) The Royal Hotel (director: Kitty Green): Anything set in Australia instantly piques my interest, even moreso when it's as indebted to Wake in Fright as this film is. It wasn't the strongest year for horror films, and The Royal Hotel would probably be largely categorized as horror-adjacent, but it made me feel absolutely dreadful all the same.
9) Infinity Pool (director: Brandon Cronenberg): The unease I got watching this didn't totally stick, but the weird as shit Mia Goth performance certainly did.
8) Dream Scenario (director: Kristoffer Borgli): Very on the nose but I still laughed like a fiend over the whole "dreamfluencer" bit. Tremendous Nicholas Cage performance to boot.
7) Saltburn (director: Emerald Fennell): Sorry, loved its audacity and the way everybody in it dressed and how everything looked. A bit shallow but sometimes if everything looks great, I can hardly give a shit about any deeper meaning. Also, Barry Keoghan is absolute superstar and I don't use that term lightly.
6) Talk To Me (director: Danny and Michael Philippou): Easily my favorite straight-up horror film (not horror-adjacent) since It Follows, to which it certainly owes a debt. Funny, fucked up, and an amazing debut by Sophie Wilde, who gave the most underrated horror performance of the year imo.
5) Oppenheimer (director: Christopher Nolan): I liked it enough but what I liked even more was an on the surface "men's film" being embraced and subverted by a diverse, sometimes irreverent, audience (just look up Oppenheimer on Know Your Meme or TV Tropes and you'll get what I mean). July 2023 was a glorious period of people celebrating films and for one brief moment everyone seemed to love small, beautiful men just as much as I do.
4) Asteroid City (director: Wes Anderson): I'm generally iffy on Wes Anderson but this was just gorgeous and a truly profound experience that I'm still revisiting regularly and piecing together in my mind. If Jarvis Cocker doesn't get an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song with "Dear Alien," I will punch through a wall and all the way into a different reality.
3) Killers of the Flower Moon (director: Martin Scorsese): No movie has angered me this much since Judas and the Black Messiah in terms of a despicable moment in human history, but of course it was extremely gripping and moving, too. Say it's boring all you want but nothing this year has packed as much poignancy as that ending.
2) Anatomy of a Fall (director: Justine Triet): Best ever child acting in a film, best ever dog acting in a film.
May December (director: Todd Haynes): Todd Haynes is so intelligent, I love hearing him discuss his films and he's without a doubt one of the all-time greats for me. Even with my high expectations for everything that he does, May December still blew my mind. The marriage of Lifetime aesthetics with arthouse cinema is insanely deft, the "final showdown" between Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman's characters is absolutely chilling, and Charles Melton crying behind that fence will stay with me long, long after this year has ended.
Protomartyr Live at Johnny Brenda's: I really liked Protomartyr's 2023 release Formal Growth in the Desert, but it didn't fully hit until I attended this gig. It's been hard to get excited for gigs in the post-Covid era, but when that happens I'm reminded again of the pleasures of live music and its overall importance. I've seen Protomartyr several times in the past but in my humble opinion they've never been better than right now. Wanted to experience the whole show again as soon as it ended. The projections were really cool, too.
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Living with a Cat: My parents got a kitten this year and shortly thereafter a cat mysteriously appeared in our alley. She was very scared and hungry, so we fed her and she found her way inside our home shortly after that. Cats are a lot of work, but she also brings us a lot of happiness and comfort. Sometimes she'll for real wink at me and it's very cute. Her backstory is a total mystery but she was clearly a house cat and we're very delighted to give her a new, happy home.
Swarm: Atlanta is one of my favorite things ever, plus fandoms and horror are two major interests of mine, so it was pretty inevitable that I would love this. The show was brilliant in itself, but Dominique Fishback was particularly phenomenal and delivered the horror monologue to beat going forward. A wild, funny, wicked ride.
Our first gig in Boston: We only played three shows this year but the best by far was our set in Boston at the Dark Springs Boston festival this past May. We played a bunch of our new, as yet unreleased, songs for the first time, met some bands we'd been longtime fans of, and just generally had a great time. Sitting down at the bar afterward, we met some festgoers who were genuinely star-struck, which was both flattering and very, very funny. May that be the first of many such experiences.
The Bear Season 2: Fishes and Forks. Enough said.
Cillian Murphy's Radio Show on 6Music: I listened to previous series of Cillian Murphy's Limited Edition radio show and it was my favorite thing then, but 2023's iteration was somehow better than ever. Played lots of Aldous Harding, my favorite cover song ever (Sonic Youth's cover of "Superstar"), and I'm still shocked that he threw in something from Cindy Lee, whose music I had just discovered like two weeks prior (and from a Protomartyr interview! Everything is connected!).
The Curse: There's an episode of Succession in which Roman Roy utters the phrase, "I cringed so hard I turned into a fossil." That's me with every new episode of The Curse. This would be way higher but it won't actually end 'til 2024 so it could possibly show up on next year's list as well! Also, let's give it up for Benny Safdie, who rules in this and in every other role he's played this year (and also on late night tv appearances).
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teejaystumbles · 11 months
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3 and 8 for the ask game?? Love all your art and writing <3
Ooh these are nice, thanks!
3. What ideas come from when you were little
I was always fascinated with mythology and ancient cultures like Egypt, Mesopotamia or Maya and Aztecs. I guess that's why I went and made a webcomic in an Aztec setting (see my sideblog). That would probably be my oldest idea that made it until today. I've been influenced heavily by such gems as The Last Unicorn, a lot of Wolfgang Holbein books, The Labyrinth, The Neverending Story (book and film) and Ronja Robbersdaughter and Mio my Mio. Then came manga/anime and the Sandman comics in my teenage years. I've drawn a lot of inspiration from all of these sources and continue to do so.
8. What's an old project idea that you've lost interest in
You know how hard it is to remember things you've lost interest in? Oof. Let me think... I have a lot of OCs and story ideas that were mostly typical teenage romances and cliché yaoi manga stories. I've lost interest in manga and anime in general over the last decade, and I've also grown up so a lot of these ideas make me cringe now. (Some of them are OK I guess and I love a lot of my OCs - feel free to ask me about them!!!! I'd love to talk about my OCS LOL)
After I made a paper doll of Chris Corner for a friend (as part of presenting her a concert ticket) I once wanted to craft tiny paper dolls of my OCs or beloved characters. Haha. Never did that. This sketch is as far as I got:
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ashes-writing · 2 years
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light my fire pt two | stranger things ; j.byers
|| taglist,babes + req rules + send ?s + masterlist ||
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chapters ;
one can be found by clicking. stranger things masterlist is here if you want to see that. needs to be updated though.
summary ;
-- school projects have a way of bringing people together.
warnings ;
female reader with working female parts from birth. mutual crushes/pining, awkward but cute 'getting to know each other' phase, writer completely took it upon herself to invent an urban legend for Lovers Lake -and a 'haunted' out of order bridge to go with it, set in season 1 -have not decided if I want to have the Upside Down / it's events through the series take place here, if y'all want that, I'd certainly be willing to try. Other warnings to come as plot is decided. For contextual purposes, this is set in October, towards the end. And this chapter is later in the evening from the last. Let me know whether you think I should have the events of the series occur here, i'm undecided so for now, it's vague on that..
taglist ;
- these are the only people on my taglist. If you'd like to be added, please click the link at the top of the page.
@musichealsscars
@allelitesmut
@hcloangcls
@aries-arcade
@scoobiessnacks
@krys-orion
@heyaitsklaudia
@cole22ann
@letsbedragonstogether
@untitledarea
@icequeen1371
@suits-and-smirks
@aurumbelis
@louderfortheback
@secretsicanthideanymore
@hoeshii
@thechoiceslookgrimm
@ebonybloom
@hotgirlsshareaccounts
@oflavenderandevie
@chieflawyerpastatoad
@fandomfreakforever
@untoldshortsofthefandoms
@thatsthewaythechrissycrumbles
@Sporadiccherryblossom
@sparkletash
@liberhoe
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He’s more than a little nervous as he stands on the steps outside of the brick building. It takes a minute or two but he finally makes himself pull open the heavy wooden door and step inside. The sounds of music playing softly trickle out to him and he starts to call out your name but he stops himself. 
Then he spots you, further to the back, attempting to climb up onto a higher shelf to put away a pile of books. He makes his way over and he doesn’t mean to startle you when he clears his throat quietly to announce his presence, but that’s what happens. He manages to catch you before you lose your balance and fall, holding you in his arms as he wants to disappear into a hole. He almost made you fall off the shelf and he feels like an idiot. He could’ve just waited until you climbed down from putting away the books.
Meanwhile, you’ve melted against him just a little before you can stop yourself and once he puts you down, you have to take a second or two just to attempt pulling yourself together.
“Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. I was up on the shelf in the first place. If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine.” you insist, trying to reassure him. Smiling a little as your face heats up when you tell him, “Besides, you caught me. That more than makes up for any fault you think you had.”
And there’s this just slightly flirtatious tone that creeps in before you can censor it -or yourself. Jonathan takes the last three books that went up on the shelf and raises up on his feet, reaching the shelf easily to put the books away.
And then, before you can stop yourself, you’ve grabbed hold of his hand and you’re dragging him over to the section of the library where all the microfilm, old newspapers and documents are kept, excited. And your excitement is contagious, because he chuckles and smiles to himself as you’re leading him over.
You’ve already got the micro film and a short book written about the story behind Lovers Lake and the old bridge nearby set aside. Jonathan sits down and you pull over a chair, settling in next to him. 
Jonathan starts to read and you’re sitting beside him, doodling on a piece of blank paper. You start off doodling but you wind up sketching him as he sits there because the angles and the lighting and the way it just makes him look so… Pretty. That’s too good to pass up.
You’re careful to keep your little sketch hidden though because the last thing you want to do right now is making things weird or creepy. 
When Jonathan finishes reading all the old news clippings, he rubs a hand over his face.
And he steals a look at you, staring for a second or two. Watching as you draw something on the paper in front of you, the way your tongue drags soft and slow over the outline of pillowy lips. Mesmerized by it until you seem to sense him staring and sit the book and paper to the side, meeting his gaze.
You give an annoyed eye roll as you push your glasses up onto your nose yet again and he chuckles quietly.
“All of this really happened out at Lovers Lake?”
“Mhm… and supposedly, if you go to the lake on midnight on Halloween, you’ll see the headlights from the car shining under the water. They never found that guy or his girlfriend.”
“Wow.”
Jonathan was still taking in the fact that there was an urban legend about Hawkins that he hadn’t grown up hearing. The fact that it was based in truth, well.
“Okay, so what’s the rest of the legend? Like, what do people say happened?”
“Well, they couldn’t ever figure it out. One of the cops over the case said that it was raining that night, it looked like the guy’s brake lines had been cut or something, so they think someone cut his brakes and then when he was taking his fiance home, he hit a water pocket on the bridge and the car went off the edge. That’s why the bridge isn’t in use now, actually. Took all that for them to realize it's not structurally sound. Then they just couldn't fix it, I guess." you pause a second, biting the edge of your thumb in thought as you add quietly, " This actually wasn’t the first time someone drove off, it was just the first time foul play might have been involved.” you realize you’re rambling, off on a tangent and you go quiet, giving a sheepish and apologetic shrug. “Sorry..”
“No, it’s fine. That’s actually interesting.”
“One of my aunts went to nursing school with the guy’s fiance. She claims that an old boyfriend or something cut the brakes.” you laugh it off, shaking your head. “She also claims that the bridge and the lake are haunted, so…” you trail off.
Jonathan happens to catch sight of what you’re actually doing on the piece of notebook paper and when he realizes you’ve sketched a side profile of him, there’s this slightest flutter that happens in the pit of his stomach. And he’s staring at you under the hazy glow of the crappy overhead lighting as you concentrate. If I had my camera right now, he thinks to himself, this would make a beautiful shot. Even with the shitty lighting.
“There are so many other urban legends about Hawkins.” you blurt out after a few seconds when the silence is just too much and you feel the need to ramble in order to break or fill it. You laugh quietly and admit, “I spend hours going through all this stuff.”
“You like history?” Jonathan asks. Some of your hair brushes against his arm and he bites the inside of his cheek just so he doesn’t freeze or flinch or do anything to make things awkward because it’s the last thing he wants to have happen.
“A little, yeah. Especially the creepy and weird side of it.” you admit it with this cute little sheepish look, face on fire as you get lost in his eyes just a little. You’re twisting your hair around your finger and trying to get his jaw accurate in the sketch you’re doing and you must be staring a little too hard, because he looks back up at you after a second or two and nods to the way you have the hardcover book and the paper balanced on your knees. He nods to the paper in front of you. “What’s that?”
You bite your lip a second or two, gazing at him. Mulling over whether or not you should show him the sketch you’re doing of him. Ultimately, you see no point in hiding it or anything because that’ll just make things weird and right now, they’re not. You hold the paper out to him and raise a hand, letting it settle in your hair. “It’s not my best one, but the lighting was uh.. Too good to pass up and you were reading, so gave my idle hands somethin’ to do.”
Jonathan’s cheeks are on fire all over again as he looks at the sketch of himself. “This is really good. Do you draw a lot?”
“Draw, paint, write…” you laugh a little as you shake your head. “It’s not my best one. Hold on.” you raise up from your chair and wander over to your tattered and patched black backpack, digging through until you find the sketchpad that’s full to bursting with sketches coming loose from the binding. You hold it out to him and he gazes at it and then you, unsure. 
“It’s okay, take it. It’s not like it’s top secret.”
Jonathan takes the sketchbook and flips through it, pausing on the sketches that catch his eye. The one of the local cemetery explains what he saw you doing out in it a few weeks back when the weather and the leaves were just starting to change colors.
“These are really good.” he mumbles as he flips through, lingering on another page, this one a full body sketch of him, he’s leaning on the brick wall outside of Hawkins High before school starts. He’s glad he’s not looking right at you because he knows he’s definitely blushing even more now. He clears his throat and flips the page to find a random drawing done in watercolor pencil of a man in a black brimmed hat with black eyes and a bloody Glasgow smile. “What’s uh… what’s this?”
You shrug. “Just me goofing off, honestly. Told you, I like creepy stuff.” you laugh but it’s awkward and it falls silent quickly. You were expecting it, truth be told, outside of your mother and the aunts, nobody really gets your dark humor or the attraction to dark and scary things. 
Jonathan surprises you when he chuckles quietly, “This is really good. My little brother… he draws a lot too. Sometimes his drawings are similar to this. I mean not the same, but like… Same creepy factor.” Jonathan wants to kick himself as he stammers through what he’s trying to say because it’s a good drawing, it really is.
,,Then again, he finds himself thinking, you like her so anything she does is gonna seem good or amazing to you.”
He’s on the last page and he finds another original drawing, this one looks a little messier than the rest, but it’s of a 2 story house similar to the one you actually live in and it’s on a cliff. There’s a group of women in the backyard in a circle, the full moon high over their heads. 
You nod to it when you see him staring at it. “It’s a coven of witches. That house is one that’s back where I used to live, actually. It was outside our town, everybody used to insist the old women who lived in it, as well as my aunts and mom, were witches and had a coven? People are weird, right?” you explain, going quiet. Trying to shut your mouth before anything else comes out to make things more awkward than you’ve already managed to. Palming your face while he’s not paying any attention.
You nod to the sketchpad. “You can take a few if you like, it’s not a big deal..”
Jonathan’s brow raised as he nods to it as well. “Are you sure?”
You wave off the question. “Definitely. It’s not a big deal. I have a box full at home.”
Jonathan picks the last picture in the book -to your surprise, you honestly felt like it was not one of your better ones, and one of the cemetery sketches where the focus is a barren tree near the back and the sunset behind it. He pushes the two sketches towards you and your brow raises until he asks, “Will you sign them?”
You laugh softly but nod, digging around in your bag until you find one of your two favorite ink pens, the calligraphy one you keep on your person at all times. After signing both drawings, you push them back to him. “There ya go. So… the library is gonna close early today… where do you want to work on everything at? We can start tomorrow if you want?”
He chuckles and nods. Thinking it over as he rubs his chin. “We could do it here or your house?”
“How about my house? The aunts are making brownies tomorrow night, they always do on the weekend.” you smile and so does he. “Yeah. Tomorrow, your house… The same time as today? Will that work?” Jonathan asks and you nod, smiling as you slip your backpack onto one shoulder and tug on the straps. “Yeah, that’ll work great. I warn you now, my room is probably going to be a disaster.”
Jonathan laughs it off and shrugs. “It’s not a big deal.” he mutters as you both step out of the library and into the evening chill. You hug yourself a little bit and he nods to the house right across from the library, the one with the arched rusty wrought iron gate out front. “Is that your house?” he asks. You nod and give him a thumbs up.
The porch light is on.
He clears his throat. “It’s getting late. I can walk you over?” he suggests, wanting to kick himself for asking, it’s not as if you’re going two or three blocks away and you might be ready to get away from him by now. But he doesn’t want the little meeting to be over just yet.
He’s surprised when you smile and nod. “Yeah! I don’t mind at all.”
And as the two of you wait on the sidewalk for cars to pass through, his hand finds the small of your back. You’re super aware of how close he’s standing, the clean scent of his clothes and something earthier mixed in with his usual shampoo fills your nose and you take a deep breath to breathe it in a little better. Before you realize you’ve done it, you’re stepping closer to his side as the two of you take off across the street.
You see your great aunt Bernadette peeking through the curtain in the parlor window as you stop at the gate out front and you’re bracing yourself already for the endless menagerie of questions and good natured teasing you’ll hear when you go into the house soon. You shuffle your feet against the concrete and play with your backpack strap as you look up at Jonathan and smile. “See you tomorrow!”
Jonathan smiles back. “See you tomorrow.”
He watches as you take off your boots on the porch and leave them sitting by the front door before stepping into the house, closing a white door behind you.
As he walks back to the parking lot beside the library where his car is parked, the realization hits him and it hits him hard.
If he thought he had a crush on you before, it’s so much bigger now.
And he knows already, this project is probably going to be his undoing because he’s going to be around you a lot more than he usually would. Which means he’ll get to know you better. Maybe even make friends with you.
He shakes his head at the thought and laughs as he gets into his Galaxie to drive himself home.
If the project ends with at least a friendship between both of you, he won’t be mad at it, not at all…
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caixinliang · 5 months
Text
Practice 1:
Assignment 3, Concept Art - Nostalgia and Memory
. Blog post 02
I want to depict the scene of myself climbing the stairs at that time and the imaginary creatures that emerged from horror movies in my mind.
Composition Design:
Because there are two segments of stairs between each floor, I decided to place the camera between the two sections of stairs. I used a "fisheye perspective" to not only capture me climbing the stairs from a bird's-eye view (depicting a sense of smallness and fear) but also to capture the creatures hidden in the darkness from a menacing, upward angle (conveying a sense of horror and threat).
Thumbnail Design:
After completing the sketches, I realized that this project was quite extensive. I needed to draw the scene, lighting, and eight characters in less than a week. So, I decided to step out of my comfort zone and combine 3D and 2D for this concept creation.
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3D Part:
I chose to use Blender to create the 3D portion, establishing the basic scene ambiance, lighting, and applying some simple materials. I used "simplified box shapes" to represent the positions of the characters for later convenience in painting. Although the polygon count for the 3D models was relatively low, I was still quite satisfied with the final result, as being "smart and quick in getting the work done" is more important.
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Final Touch:
After completing the illustrations, I added a photo-like border to the images and introduced some noise for an aged look. I aimed to achieve an "old photo" effect to better align with the "Nostalgia and Memory" theme.
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The creative process for this project was very enjoyable. Thank you for reading all the way through!
Reference:
Rings 8/3 (2005) Directed by Jonathan Liebesman [supernatural horror short film]. American : DreamWorks Pictures.
Saw 19/1 (2004) Directed by James Wan [horror film]. American : Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation.
Dead Silence 16/3 (2007) Directed by James Wan [supernatural horror film]. American : Universal Pictures.
'Slender Man' (June 10, 2009) Wikipedia. Available at: URL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slender_Man).
Slender Man (2018)Directed by Sylvain White. [horror film]. American : Sony Pictures Entertainment.
'Heibai Wuchang' (July 01, 2023) Wikipedia. Available at: URL (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heibai_Wuchang).
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upalldown · 9 months
Text
PJ Harvey - I Inside the Old Year Dying
Tenth album and first in seven years from the alt.rock singer-songwriter produced by Flood and John Parish
10/13
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“I was quite lost,” says Polly Harvey of the period that produced her new, 10th (and first for seven years) LP I Inside the Old Year Dying. “I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do: if I wanted to carry on writing albums and playing, or if it was time for a change in my life- ‘OK, I’ve done this for a long time. Do I want to carry on for the remainder of my life doing the same thing?’”
It probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise to hear that Harvey, burnt out by a gruelling year-long world tour in support of 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project, found herself in a rut. There hadn’t been a single whisper of new studio recording since then – she had worked diligently on music for the stage and for film and TV soundtracks and, of course, had been working on the beautiful, strange Orlam, her poetry collection that published last spring.
Sprinkled in the middle of this period was a delicious reissue campaign of her entire back catalogue with accompanying demos albums – manna for the PJ Harvey fan. But you got the sense that there was something of a shift happening in real time for Harvey; the album-tour-album cycle had been resolutely broken and she was pursuing her artistic urges in oblique and sometimes obscure new directions. 
It wasn’t the first time Harvey expressed doubts on her future in the music business – she told Q magazine in 2001 that she almost gave up music to retrain as a nurse in the low period between 1995’s To Bring You My Love and 1998’s Is This Desire? – but the move towards writing, particularly on such an all-encompassing work as Orlam, had an air of finality about it and the lengthening gap seemed to support a sense that Harvey might just be done in terms of recording new albums. 
So seeing studio photos by Steve Gullick uploaded to her Instagram account in February 2022 was, certainly, an exciting and surprising change of pace. As it turns out, Harvey was in the thick of recording her new album at London’s Battery Studios with long-time collaborators John Parish and Flood. She describes how the songs “fell out of [her]” within three weeks, and indeed the music has both an immediacy and a haziness that suggests a conception that is far from studied and rehearsed.
What is a PJ Harvey album in 2023 going to sound like? Harvey has made a career on sharp turns, unexpected diversions, the persistent search for new ways of singing, writing, recording. Hope Six, for all its lively garage-rock swagger and vivid sketches, felt somewhat distant and cold and, following on from its counterpart Let England Shake, seemed to occupy a similar kind of space thematically and in terms of performance – Harvey’s voice high and reedy, the outside narrator observing the scene without opinion or emotion. The last time Harvey felt such an innate need for something new was on 2007’s White Chalk, where she ditched the guitar for the piano and traded the raw energy of her previous records for an album of strange, austere, gothic ballads of autumnal beauty. She sang in a new, plaintive voice – her “church voice” – and wrote songs that were somehow both thrillingly different and offbeat but made sense within the Harvey oeuvre.
I Inside the Old Year Dying, perhaps not coincidentally then, most closely resembles White Chalk in terms of its mood and style – perhaps incongruously released in July, it is certainly an autumnal listen; Harvey sings most of it in a higher register and there is an elegant, restrained intimacy that recalls some of White Chalk. But it does not share the same piano-centric DNA and, indeed, some of it also recalls the ramshackle folksiness of some of the deeper cuts on 2004’s Uh Huh Her. In fundamental terms, it trades Let England Shake and Hope Six’s looking-outwards philosophy to focus firmly on the interior. “I instinctively needed a change of scale,” Harvey has said. “There was a real yearning in me to change it back to something really small – so it comes down to one person, one wood, a village.”
The “one person, one wood, a village” refers to Ira-Abel Rawles, the central figure in Harvey’s poem Orlam, which forms the basis for the lyrics of I Inside the Old Year Dying. Ira is a young girl growing up in the fictional Dorset village of Underwhelem, surrounded by a peculiar crop of villagers and family. Orlam is a story of awakening, the tension between the natural world and physical reality, and the inevitability of the passing of the seasons, all of which are loosely evoked throughout the album.
The Harvey of 2023 is no longer an artistic compartmentaliser, which is why it might take some getting used to in understanding that the album occupies the same artistic terrain as the book. The filmmaker Steve McQueen told Harvey during the Hope Six era: “Polly, you have to stop thinking about music like it’s all albums of songs. You’ve got to think about what you love. You love words, you love images and you love music. And you’ve got to think, What can I do with those three things?”
It’s not necessary to know Orlam to be able to enjoy I Inside the Old Year Dying, but such is the esoteric nature of the work that, as song lyrics, they are far more oblique than we’re used to from Harvey. As a lyricist, and indeed as a musician, Harvey has always been pretty direct. The deceptive simplicity in her work, both lyrically and musically, has always been her superpower. I Inside the Old Year Dying marks a significant change in this regard – written in Dorset dialect and sung again with her natural accent (yes, recalling that “church voice” of White Chalk), the text is an allegory of childhood, adolescence, the natural world – it’s an evocation of the English countryside and rural magic realism.
There are thematic threads that weave in and out – the shadowy symbol of Wyman-Elvis, who is both a Christ-like mythical figure and a ghostly spectre (“are you Elvis? Are you God?” she sings on the fragile and folky “Lwonesome Tonight”), the dreaded feeling of starting school, and the haunting refrains of “Love Me Tender” that shift in and out of several songs. It’s not something that the listener is particularly able to pin down, and that appears to be the point – I Inside the Old Year Dying seems not to be an album that you are supposed to “understand,” but instead one that you feel. A lot of the songs are about memories and delving back into the past, and the music and production – which is not rough in the sense of Uh Huh Her but not polished like a Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea – perfectly captures the distance, both physical and mental, of memory and the passing of time.
The Dorset dialect lends the album its unique poetic sensibility and also contributes to its slippery feeling of unknowability; “Quaterevil takes a wife / chilver meets her Maker / as the grindstone turns the knife / o’er Eleven Acres,” scans “The Nether-Edge.” It’s beautiful and strange and not your usual PJ Harvey lyric. But, just as readily, she emerges with imagery as familiar as “Pepsi fizz / peanut and banana sandwiches.”
Some songs have a formative, Beefhearty vibe, from the rough-hewn guitar roll of “Seem an I” (translated as “Seems to Me”) to the ramshackle chaos of the delivery of “Autumn Term”, but anyone familiar with Harvey’s soundtrack work post-Hope Six – particularly All About Eve – will recognise the restrained elegance in some of the chord structures of songs like “Prayer at the Gate” and “Lwonesome Tonight”. I Inside the Old Year Dying is an album that seems to hinge on these kind of fault-lines – between the corporeal and the imagined, the poetic and the prosaic, the bridge between childhood and adulthood. Of “life and death all innertwined,” as she keens on “Prayer on the Gate”.
Musically, the deft fusion of the delicate and the hearty reflects Harvey’s thematic explorations; the production is full of strange quirks, whether found sounds or unusual effects that are sometimes inserted and not repeated. The effect is that the music feels both hazy and alive, evoking the Orlam world in its strange splendour.
Another key to the sound is the use of male vocals not just for contrast but for poetic resonance, and the way Harvey employs the voices of Parish and actors Ben Whishaw and Colin Morgan is haunting and rather beautiful. The interpolation of Whishaw singing a segment of “Love Me Tender” in the foggy magnificence that is “August” is nothing short of stunning, while Parish’s crazed singing with Harvey on “Autumn Term” has a bizarre, nightmarish vibe that captures that first-day-of-school dread – “I ascend three steps to hell / the school bus heaves up the hill.” Morgan, meanwhile, provides the folk-horror chant that “A Child’s Question, July,” is built around – all Wicker Man ritual, with its “twoad��-licking and rural dance around the phallic Ooser-Rod. 
For an album that evokes childhood and adolescence so strongly, I Inside the Old Year Dying makes use of some of Harvey’s most girlish singing – the beginning of “Seem an I”, for instance, is sung as if she were a girl singing to herself at the bus stop. It then morphs into its Beefheart roll, and it also puts me in mind loosely of “Heaven”, one of Harvey’s earliest recordings, that later emerged as a b-side in the White Chalk era. There is that same innocence of sound, the simple and joyful guitar pattern (although slowed and rougher), and the murky merging of the past and the present. In some ways, it makes sense on such a record that Harvey might subconsciously revisit something from the past.
The Beefheart influence found in so much of Harvey’s work can also be detected, for me, on “Autumn Term”, which seems to heave and creak like the bus in the lyrics; it’s sung in a deranged yet contained A Woman A Man Walked By style. “The Nether-edge”, meanwhile, begins with a disembodied vocal effect; it has a strange, strident beat that recalls Pink Floyd’s menacing “One of These Days”, before becoming something altogether jauntier. 
“I Inside the Old Year Dying” is a classic Harvey acoustic guitar D-minor stomp with beautiful, reverb-drenched piano piercing the fog; “All Souls” is a melancholy dirge, one that starts so purely and softly, with one of Harvey’s gentlest and loveliest vocals, before the arrangement builds into a heavy hymn. “A Child’s Question, August” is both a deceptive and appropriate trailer for the record – it’s probably one of the least interesting songs on the record, but successfully suggests its broad themes and style. Following on from “All Souls”, though, is a sequencing gamble that threatens to swamp the mid-section of the album in sloth.
The gorgeous “I Inside the Old I Dying”, though, is one of the album’s gems with its shuffling percussion, Parish’s gossamer guitar part, and Harvey’s graceful melody; the uncertain vocal delivery was a purposeful choice – “I was standing in the vocal room with the headphones on, and Flood said ‘No, no–you sound like PJ Harvey.’” Harvey ended up recording the vocal with her eyes closed, unaware of where the microphone was, which lends it its blurred, out-of-focus quality. “Flood would just experiment all the time like that, to find the thing he wanted,” says Harvey.
The same can be said of the magnificent opener “Prayer at the Gate”, which is sung, as a lot of the album is, in Harvey’s upper register – but there is a warmth and strength in the delivery that is so much more appealing than on Let England Shake or Hope Six. It’s a beautiful, emotional invocation that recalls some of her work on the All About Eve soundtrack and, at its climax, Harvey sings in an unabashed, radiant high vibrato that is somewhat new for her and possesses a real yearning and sad desperation. It’s a beauty. 
At the opposite end of the record, “A Noiseless Noise”, seemingly from nowhere, brings out a heavy, propulsive rhythm not heard on a Harvey record in a while and she also unleashes a vocal that is pure Stories grit, power, and sheen. As much as one respects Harvey’s resolve in not wanting to repeat herself, it’s a joy to hear something a bit more unbridled again that, to her credit, hangs together well with the rest of the material.
Although comparisons with earlier records might provide loose reference points, ultimately comparison is futile in trying to pin down the sound of an album that simply will not be pinned down – I Inside the Old Year Dying succeeds where all Harvey records do, in breaking new ground for her. Its plaintive beauty and major/minor contrasts recall some of her more intimate work and it exists within the same world as Harvey’s more apparently personal, “English” work, but there is a newness in the decision to include more found sounds and effects – birdsong, bells, schoolchildren, strange nocturnal noises – that make it sound alive, immediate, and particularly with Orlam as a base text, it’s definitely its own universe.
Somehow, though, it feels transitional. It doesn’t present as a bold step forward, nor Harvey’s most daring volte-face. This isn’t to say it is not an important artistic moment for Harvey – in many ways, it might be one of her most personally important records. Breaking new ground doesn’t need to mean something entirely leftfield. It feels like a gentle but decisive turn towards a new direction, the sound of Harvey making sense of where she is at artistically. It’s the sound of an artist who had obviously been uncertain where to go and how to go about it but has pulled the threads together into something meaningful for her creative future – Harvey speaks about being “broken-hearted” at fearing she had fallen out of love with music after 2017, and how she slowly found a way in again by playing her favourite songs by other artists on the piano or guitar – Nina Simone, The Stranglers, The Mamas and the Papas.
I Inside the Old Year Dying is probably most important because it represents Harvey’s vision clearing – the confusion about which direction to take, having become more comfortable with writing music as accompaniment to existing work and focusing on poetry, has crystallised into the realisation that there needn’t be a choice. At one point, Harvey thought I Inside the Old Year Dying might end up as a stage piece; instead, it’s its own world on record, the aural cousin of Orlam. Harvey describes it as a “resting space, a solace, a comfort.” That can be said for both its content and its result.
I Inside the Old Year Dying is a record that takes time to find its way in. There is more to uncover than might first appear – which is also one of the general themes of Orlam and the associated song lyrics. You’re never quite sure exactly where you are – Harvey’s voice is often mixed very much front and centre but is deliberately contrasted with the reverb in the instrumentation and the comparatively dry recording of the percussion to create an eccentric, ambiguous hinterland that moves in and out of focus.
“I’m somewhere I’ve not been before,” says Harvey. “What’s above, what’s below, what’s old, what’s new, what’s night, what’s day? It’s all the same really – and you can enter it and get lost. And that’s what I wanted to do with the record, with the songs, with the sound, with everything.” On this basis, Harvey has succeeded in her aims. 
There is enough here that suggests both a looking back and a looking forwards – again, that bridge between new and old, the past and the future, the real and the fantastical. As ever, where she goes next is anyone’s guess.
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grad604-kannonhen · 6 months
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mid sem objects 3
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The two art books:
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Tekkonkinkreet art book Shiro:
Tekkonkinkreet is an animation film by Studio 4C, original manga by Taiyo Matsumoto. I was gifted this book for my 18th birthday by my mother and younger sister. The Shiro (meaning white in Japanese, also being the name of one of the main characters) version showcases the background art used in the final movie. Background art of animation movies, particularly hand-drawn ones, has always been one of my core artistic inspirations starting from Studio Ghibli. It has always been a dream of mine to collect art books and this is the first ever one I owned which already makes it incredibly special for me. Tekkonkinkreet has won many awards, one of which is the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year; it incorporates hand-drawn illustrations combined with 3D technology which creates immersive camera movements while keeping the tactile quality of hand-drawn background. The artwork of Tekkonkinkreet stunned me and has affected my creative eye. The old nostalgic broken down cityscape and the density of the place are inspired by actual location in Japan and is depicted in the fictional reality, realistic fiction. It reminds me of the Tokyo Chaotic style named by Perimetron.
Tekkonkinkreet art book Kuro:
I was gifted the Kuro(meaning black in Japanese, the name of the other main character) version this year for my 20th birthday. The Kuro version showcases more of the behind-the-scenes works like the storyboarding process and initial sketches done by the art director of the film, Shinji Kimura. After having looked through the Shiro version first, looking at the sketches that came before all that deepens the world-building and makes it even more immersive. As a viewer we rarely ever get a chance to see the storyboarding process or initial sketches so it was a special experience for me.
Drawing tablets:
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Wacom drawing tablet:
Wacom is a Japanese company famous for creating drawing tablets, founded in 1983 having its head office in Saitama prefecture Japan. This is the first ever drawing tablet I bought for myself. It's the smallest size sold from Wacom and honestly, it isn't the easiest thing to use, but it still is special for me because it is what enabled me to start digital drawing. Digital drawing as a medium was a complete change from the traditional paintings and analogue drawings that I did throughout my life up until then, and it has influenced my interest in Japanese internet culture. It led to me looking through many artists online with the same practice and learning from their beautiful works. It was also a tool that was essential for creating some university projects like the concertina or the awareness campaign. It is a beginning and an end to certain chapters of my creative journey and as crucial key object for the development of my illustration practice.
XP-Pen display drawing tablet:
The display drawing tablet was an upgrade from the small tablet. I only got this last year and it was a major turning point in my illustration process and workflow as well as my mindset as a creative. I used to not take illustration very seriously and was only little doodles on the side of school work I didn't want to do, thus why I spent a minimum amount of money for the smallest tablet available. However, as I drew more and more, like any other creative person, I started seeing my limits and lack of technique or skill. I abandoned drawing all the time, and I still do, but purchasing this large tablet marks a change in my efforts and the significance of illustration within myself that it's a good equipment that I own so I must use it up to its potential.
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