#also take a shot every time the proportions on either of their designs goes COMPLETELY out of wack u'll be dead in seconds | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

superemeralds · 5 years

Photo

ive had my own idea for a sonic movie that would still be live action and a generic child-friendly action-comedy just like the “real” sonic movie is (presumably) gonna be

IN SHORT!

The main character that makes a duo with sonic for the majority of the movie is a young girl named June.

The overall plot is very similar to sonic x, but altered to fit the time span of the usual one and a half hours movie length in movies like that.

detailed description, explanation of the pictures and character info under the cut!

Through a mal-induced chaos control eggman and sonics friends get transported into the real world. this time space rift causes some really weird stuff to happen and June gets seperated from her dad, who was just on his way to bring her to school.

at first she thinks its cool to meet a talking blue hedgehog in a really pretty nature-y place and skip school to play with him, but soon they notice that they are not alone. Eggmans robots got transported to our world too! June gets captured because she is seen with sonic and therefore identified as a threat by eggmans robots! Sonic runs after her towards what seems to be eggmans base.

meanwhile the dad was transported to a really high place, whihc is bad cos he’s got fear of heights. Luckily tails and knuckles appear and offer to help him down

both teams start looking for eachother, but get interrupted by various obstacles. June and Sonic get hold off by eggmans schemes, while Dad and Sonics friends stumble upon amy, who just escaped a military research facility. she hoped that cream would be with the others, but it seemed that they had to go back and save her. the Dad used to be a hobby boxer, but since he’s a lawyer he doesn’t really do that much anymore. it surely helped him when taking out those government officials. its funny how a lawyer breaks the law, right? there’s many jokes on that and his character development goes from strict father figure that doesnt allow fun and insists on obeying the law to a wild and free man who does what’s right, even if he has to break rules. (also he screams “sorry” every time he KOs someone because hes that kinda guy)

June and sonic manage to infiltrate the egg carrier that was transported into our world and set it to crash and render all his stuff useless!

However, the ship is on course for the city which they didnt realize until it started losing height. eggman pretends that he can still stop this if the people are willing to make him their unquestionable ruler, but sonic and june are determined to stop the ship themselves. sonic keeps eggman busy while June is in the command center trying to find a way to make the ship change course and go crash in the ocean.

in the end everything is exploding and falling apart and eggman is fleeing, June managed to change the ships course and runs up to sonic telling him he needs to run, sonic says that she doesnt have to tell him twice and they go.

sonic gets blown to the side by an explosion and trips over debris, making his knee bleed a little (u cant see blood bc this is kid friendly hes just hurt like theres dirt or smth lol) and he tells june to run and not worry, but she comes back and lifts him on her back and is determined to run as fast as she can to get outside

when she reaches a door she screams because she’s scared. they are close to the ground, but not close enoguh to make it alive if she jumped... then sonic hugs her from behind and says “jump on my command” and shes like. no way. but he says “trust me we’re not gonna get hurt if we hit water” and shes like “but i cant swim that well” sonic chuckles “me neither” and then she gets the memo and is all determined and ready and they make it and its magical

they might also have a scene thats a nudge to 06 where sonic is very Positive and gives good life advice.

while everything seems like its perfect eggman is starting plan B of his conquer the others were all alarmed by the crashing egg carrier and therefore came speeding in the modified car tails rebuild for Dad (it can turn into a fucken plane. Dad and June are finally reunited and he thanks sonic for watching after her, and sonics like nah ur daughter totally watched after me shes a hero.

and then they work together to stop eggmans final boss robot and save the city.

at some point they all found chaos emeralds somewhere. and sonic can turn super to finish eggman off. yeah that sounds cool.

that also makes him and the others fade back into their own dimension, bc hes Got That Power

in the end its just him, June and Dad iin midst of a park in the city with debris and shit and June is like. sonic dont go we jsut became friends

and sonics like. treasure the memories you make and live life to the fullest bc u only got this one shot and u gotta make the best of it. n her dad is all agreeing and shakes his hand and is like. thanks sonic

and June hugs him and cries but smiles and sonic says nice smile bc im kinda getting emotional writing this all out and then he disappears in a flash of light and in that moment it cuts to the mom on the side of the park in her car with the window down going “what the-” and credits roll

thanks for reading

okay i know most of this was really silly and unfinished but granted i was making this all up as i went on and on about this and like. yea. i brainstormed this in like. 2 horus time completely from scratch, only using sonic X as basis for the plot and the humor of popular and successful action comedies as inspiration for the tone of the movie

as for the characters i just thoguht a carefree girl thats tired of being stuffed into a mold meeting sonic and learning that its okay to be herself and do what u think is right, learning that kindness really is the most powerful thing on earth and that friendships are precious??? hell fucking yeah!

also child character is more relateable than a fucking cop. kids will be able to relate to June, while adults (long time fans most of all) will be able to see their past self in her.

as for the dad, a lot of adults might see themselves in this dad role who just wants the best for his kid, while being stuck in a boring job that doesnt really fulfil them, but pays the bills and the lifestyle the family has.

I also really wanted characters that you have not seen before. Whenever i see a black dad he has a shaved head and thats kinda boring its just. basic. nothing agianst dads with shaved heads but why is Every Single(black) Dad Bald/Buzzcut? so i gave him dreads because why not? looks cool when he does action shit. whoosh whoosh

i knew i wanted a kid and i knew i wanted a girl. im really fond of puffy pigtails and i decided to go with a black girl just because! it was the very first thing that came to my mind when i was looking for an adventurous girl that wants to go on adventures with a blue talking hedgehog.

plus loving black dads that lov their girls rly rly need rep u_u

as for sonics design, i tried to compromise with the movie’s need for a more realistic sonic by making him overall fluffier to hint at texture, but keeping his core design and proportions.

the same goes for all the other characters.

I’m still very thinking emoji about eggman, I think it would be best to have him be either played by a fat person. Like Really Fat Person to resemble his original design (hes fat okay who cares abt slanky legs) or have him be CGI/partially CGI due to the fact that he’s from another dimension.

and uh. that’s all i have to say for now! it’s 1am and i should get to bed!

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic movie #my art #long post #shadows idea stash

841 notes · View notes

palegengarsiloved · 4 years

Text

Buddhism, Existentialism, Dark Souls

Fromsoft's games revolve around a core idea, one that other Japanese auteurs like Hideo Kojima, Fumito Ueda, Yoko Taro also touch on: the cycle of life and death, the suffering inherent in that natural system, and the connections we can still form and the meaning we can still find within them. It's obviously rooted in Buddhist and Shintoist beliefs, as well as other East Asian philosophies that acknowledge the supremacy of nature (and natural processes), accept the impermanence and imperfection of the world, and yet (therefore?) also the beauty found therein. First, how do other forms of media try to communicate these ideas? In traditional East Asian visual arts, humans are oftentimes either ignored or viewed as very small, distant figures, entirely dwarfed by nature. Early Buddhist art avoided human depiction at all, using instead icons like wheels and lotuses/cherries to communicate ideas of the cyclic nature of the world and the impermanence of the moment (it's argued that human depictions of religious figures only came into prominence after the whole Greco-Bactrian thing where Greeks set up shop in what is now Afghanistan/Pakistan and started carving gods-as-people, and I mean, you gotta compete with that seductive reification of divinity). Shintoist poetry is brief, fragile, incomplete, often summoning a brief moment of nature ("this dewdrop world / is a dewdrop world / and yet, and yet--"). Kurosawa's deep love of rain and bamboo, Ozu's pillow shots of landscapes and rooms devoid of people. All of these use tools unique to their respective mediums to manifest a sensation or emotion into the audience: Ozu focusing on an empty street for 10+ seconds wouldn't be possible in painting or sculpture; architecture's capacity towards grandness and sense of proportion to a person inside it can't be communicated through photographs. Think about the tools unique to video games, now. Think of all the ways you interact with a game: user interface, input controls, gameplay loops, level design, etc, and how those connect to create a totality of experience. All of these drastically affect the interplay between audience and art; think of if a Jeff Koons balloon animal sculpture were installed in some small garage versus a giant New International-style skyscraper lobby. (Imagine if Dark Souls was presented as a visual novel or whatever genre Undertale is.) Now think about how Dark Souls approaches each of those tools. User interface and item management is one that is quite clever: you are given an item, and you have zero idea of what it is, so you find a brief safe moment and take a look at its item description. It's vague and honestly impenetrable, with a little bit of equally-impenetrable lore on it. You only have one so far, so you're afraid to use it, but you have the feeling that not only could it be useful, but perhaps even necessary for some encounter. You see that you can carry up to 99 (and store 600) of them, so maybe there'll be more later? You know that you've picked up stuff that you thought might be one-off and found more later, or a merchant who sells it. Fuck it, might as well try it out - after all, this user interface is almost begging you to think about the lore meanings, the possible item use, and exploring for more of them, or how/where you could best use it. It's designed so that you acknowledge the rarity of it, but also are assured to not to worry too much about it and just try it out for whatever benefit you can get in this dangerous world. What's the worst thing that happens - you die and waste it? You've lost thousands of souls (the precious in-game currency) before, what's one lightning paper or green blossom whatever? You know this game is famously difficult; "It's like Dark Souls" is industry shorthand for "It's a fucking hard game" at this point. Might as well try something new in this brief cycle you have before the next inevitable death. That leads me to the next tool: the corpse-running / death mechanic. You'll die a lot, sure, but then you'll learn more, have the opportunity to think about what you might be doing wrong or not seeing, maybe even find a shortcut or trick or use a different item this time to make it easier. It's another ostensible punishment that's actually an opportunity for you to get better at the game, and to think about maybe using that one item for a boost or trying out a different weapon, but also it starts teaching you something very important to the series plot and themes: it's okay to die - natural, even. A part of life. It's not a waste any more than anything else in life is a waste - the only waste is if you don't learn from it, appreciate it, bask in the purifying fire of failure to find yourself in something close to Zen gameflow. Even then, it's not the game disrespecting your time; I would say that it's the player disrespecting their own experiences, discarding any outcome other than an easy victory as a waste, as pointless, as if progress is the only marker of a life well lived. Resisting death, panicking, generally facing it in an undignified manner... all of these are counter-productive. To do so is to miss the philosophy of why there isn't an instant boss restart button! The brief little life as you scurry to your undistinguished death is, perhaps, the point. I mean this in a game sense, too. If you are deeply reluctant and fearful of death, you won't have as much success exploring dangerous and unfamiliar areas. Once you accept that you might lose some paltry number of souls in exchange for new items, new shortcuts, new areas... the game becomes less of a hostile slog and more of this world that you want to explore and understand. Yes, there'll be some suffering; that's to be expected. But there's still rewards you can find, NPCs you can ogle, vistas you can enjoy. Kind of a blunt metaphor, huh? That leads to the level design. By that I mean not only shortcuts and verticality/horizonality, which are ingenious from a design perspective, but in how the levels evoke two major things: one is the lived-in nature of the world; the other is how small you are in comparison to it. Cathedrals are prominently featured throughout the games. Historically they were specifically designed to make laypersons feel small in the presence of divinity, to make their eyes look upward, and to contemplate the sheer power (physical and social) necessary to create these things. Think of how small you are, then, that there are even greater powers in nature that can make these monuments to humanity fall. As for the lived-in aspect, think of how strange the items you find are, how fragmentary their lore, and yet how they start to fit together, even from their placement in the world. (Why is a Choir investigator-assassin hiding out in the School of Mensis? Why does he drop sedatives?) There's this giant world taking place around you and you're so unimportant that no one really bothers to tell you anything more than vague prophecies and allusions. Anyone who points you somewhere concrete sees you as the pawn you are; you're also literally smaller than many other NPCs (Non-Player Characters) to illustrate this point. The NPCs are yet another way that the game acutely communicates its existential ideas to you. Everyone in the Dark Souls world is cursed to not die, but rather turn Hollow – that is, to lose their minds in lieu of death. The only way to fight against this curse is to commit to a purpose and use that willpower to stave off insanity. This is strongly absurdist in nature, as a cursed undead either completes their goal and then, newly purposeless, goes insane, or the goal is unfulfillable, and the goal-seeker is doomed to an eternity of Sisyphean torment. Some NPCs appear broken under this will, crestfallen or twisted or gleeful upon recognizing the sheer injustice of their burden; some soldier bravely on; some offer unconditional kindness; some perform a mixture of all three. There are startlingly few characters in this game, each almost hidden by the landscapes, and each clearly dwarfed – both literally by the environments they are lost in, and by the staggering difficulty of the tasks they took up. It’s almost easy to attack all the NPCs you come across, as you’re conditioned to be fearful of any other entity you encounter; many players kill a certain peaceful demonic entity because they’ve slain so many similar-looking monsters defending her. It’s easy to miss these connections, and the game makes no effort to protect them. It’s the hedgehog’s dilemma: can you let down your guard towards someone who very well may hurt you, in a world that has done nothing but hurt you? Will others do the same? The multiplayer component of this game adds a corollary to this social experiment: there will, inevitably, be those who seek to invade and destroy you, those who will defend and avenge you, those who will help you, and those who will dabble in all three. You see every day in real life: the wounded lashing out in pain, the happy few just trying to help others along the way, the people who want to create some sense of justice in an indifferent universe. Oftentimes, one human will try out all three roles in their life. Why do we do this? Perhaps it’s how we work through the cosmic injustice of our existence, in a form of primitive dialogue that we need to act out. The human condition, after all, is reconciling oneself with the fact that we, and everyone we know, are fated to someday die. That's where the plot intersects with the gameplay and themes to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts. The directive you’re given at the beginning of the game is to extend the Age of Fire, the era you are currently living in; you are told that this is because with Fire there’s light, and time, and the creative spark of divinity on high. However, it turns out that unnaturally prolonging the Age of Fire is actually pretty bad, and results in all sorts of upheaval and foul consequences (including, possibly, the undead curse itself, unless you believe a certain scholar in DS2…). We learn as we venture through this game and interface with its mechanics that death must be a part of life and dark must accompany light. We also know that something can arise out of nothing (as we know there was a “time” before the Age of Fire; think pre-Big Bang), so it turns out that even if you don’t extend the Age of Fire, the larger cycle of death and rebirth perhaps never ends. In any case: fighting against this inevitability, fighting against the possibility of pain and loss caused the Gwyn, the Lord of Fire and Light, to ultimately sacrifice and thus lose everything he defended in tragic irony; similarly, trying too hard to lean into the turn caused Oolacile/New Londo/Farron Keep to be lost in the Dark forever. By dying over and over in-game, by investigating the subtle hints of lore found in the items and the sparse dialogue, and by witnessing the sad existence of these once-great powers of Fire that have long-since shriveled up under the infinite and inescapable wheel of nature, you begin to internalize the themes these games try, through all the tools at their disposal, to make you feel. You can live, however briefly, and value it, but also learn to let it go. You can love nature and respect its impersonal processes, understand that ultimately it will reclaim us, and find some comfort that the end isn't necessarily the end. There will be suffering, but there will be moments of total (if brief) triumph. There will be moments of tenderness with NPCs that can only be generated by a video game world where life is immensely fragile and nothing but the curse of insanity permanent. Will you allow yourself to try and help them, knowing how difficult and obtuse it will be, and how little it might seem to matter? Will you extend the Age of Fire to uphold the lie, because this Age is the only thing you and the rest of the world has ever known? Will you be brave – or perhaps, human – enough to reach out to others in this brief moment before the end of the world, and when the time comes, to let the Age of Fire fade? Can you live, and perhaps just as importantly, die with dignity? The totality of the experience gets the player to directly feel these themes in a way that can't be done in other media. By showing - through the death mechanic, NPC quests that can permanently be failed or missed, unforgiving and vast levels with tons of secrets and shortcuts, obscure item descriptions and the resultant need for exploration and player-driven introspection and experimentation, and not by telling through cutscenes, everything works together to evoke a mood that the player directly feels like they're helping create. The sheer unity - the, ahem, ludonarrative assonance - of the design is beautiful to consider on an intellectual level but also satisfying on an interactive, practical level. You have fun not despite these things, any of which alone may be disheartening, but because together they're so thematically consistent. Taken by itself the corpse run mechanic might be considered unnecessary or anti-fun, but when placed among the larger picture it not only makes sense but makes the player consider that there might be something they're missing, that there may be more to explore elsewhere or some item that will help, because the game is so mysterious and rewards exploration and experimentation so much. This is in addition to how much it reinforces the themes of the game! I could expand on about how such well-executed unity of purpose and audience-medium interplay makes it high art, like, true fucking Michaelangelo's David type shit, but I don't want to get swept up in the hype, so I'll leave you with a classic Dark Souls quote: "therefore try tongue but hole"

#darksouls #dark souls

2 notes · View notes

destinywillowleaf · 4 years

Text

SWN-002 Wing Man

“That's the power of love!”

Wingman was created by Dr. Wily in an attempt to beat Mega Man in a field outside of battle by harnessing the power of love. Wing Man has flight capability and wields a piercing arrow called his "Cupid Crossbow". Being designed to defeat Mega Man through love, Wing Man has a large board dedicated to unravelling his love life. Similar boards exist for Proto Man and Bass, forming the "Tiny Trio". He'd call them the Big Three, but they're short.

Wing Man likes cheesy romcoms and dislikes Proto Man (for being hard to read). His strong point is his dedication to his task, though he can become blinded by the task at hand and not remember the other couples he's trying to get together.

This took longer than I expected to actually write and get out to share.

With this year’s Valentine’s contest over(courtesy of rockmiyabideusexmachina), I can finally talk about this boy! He was so much fun to make and I’m definitely gonna be using him more in the future. I’ve got a lot of thoughts on him, the stages of his design, and a lot of pictures, so it’s gonna be under the cut.

Now that that’s outta the way, let’s get into the process of Wing!

...I thought we were talking about Wing Man, who’s this?

Meet “Playboy Bunny”, this duality of a Maverick and the first draft of a character for this contest. Usually she’s the sweet Playboy Bunny, a majorly human-like Reploid acting as a performer. However, once you’ve provoked her, she throws off the sweet guise and becomes Magnet Hare, the quick and fast-attacking Maverick with attractive properties.

To be honest, I’m half wondering if I would’ve done better if I had done more with her design and actually gone with her instead. The main reason I didn’t go with her in the end was cause I thought someone else was gonna go with it and then there would’ve been repeats.

I might come back and do more doodles of her someday, refining her design to be less human with bunny accessories and more rabbit/bunny with human-like proportions.

The very first drawings of Wing Man. The only thing I really had down at this point were the general heart-shapes, his name, and his weapon’s name. The one on the left was the first draft, and the right one was a case of “should he actually have wings or nah?”. The name actually came to me when I was sitting in class and I think that’s part of the reason I got attached. The pun name is probably the biggest holdover from Bunny, though another element did come by later…

This is where the magic happened. The front-facing sketch was the first real attempt and trying to figure out what I wanted from him. I knew that he should have a general heart-shape for his chest armor, and maybe his helmet could follow the same idea with one in the center. It took a bit to look through the other Robot Master helmet designs, but I feel like Wing’s looks like it could fit with everyone else’s. At one point I was considering giving him a heart braid kinda like Tundra’s, but I wound up scrapping it. I think it was because I was sick of braids after doing so many for Nahyuta…

Then some arrows! I couldn’t decide whether to have actual arrows or energy arrows, but I feel like the energy arrows make it look more unique. And the first appearance of the bowtie! I didn’t even know if I was gonna give him one at first but once I made the doodle I knew it was gonna stay. Bunny has a bow, too, but hers was just a regular ribbon one.

The collapsible crossbow was something I knew I wanted from the start, because Wing’s not a huge fighter. He will fight to achieve his goals, and sometimes it’s more necessary than at other times, but it’s easier to have it folded outta the way. The “string” of the crossbow forms when it is expanded out, and then he can start firing his weapon.

Also, his boot. Simple enough design. Not much to be said. Same goes for the side profile, I was just trying to get a better feel for his design.

I was debating for a while about whether or not to actually give Wing Man wings. On the one hand, it’d help for the joke of him being a wingman and a wing(ed) man, but on the other hand I don’t like drawing wings because I still don’t really understand them all too well.

The bottom center image was a pretty defining part of making Wing, to be honest. It’s probably one of my favorite drawings/doodles of him just because of the causal nature of suggesting a relationship with someone(and it’s up to you to decide who it is) and Rock’s immediate reaction of fear/concern. I don’t screw around with expressions enough anymore…

I don’t have any versions of this page without color on it, but that’s because this was a color testing page. I wanted to test out my physical colors first before spending too much time digitally experimenting, and I had two main ideas: either red-pen red in varying pressures or coral Sharpie highlighter. By the final design, you can tell which one I went with. I wanted to compare them side-by-side, and the half-and-half wasn’t really cutting it for me. I did a second comparison on the other page(which is gonna be further down this post).

I was trying to get a better grasp on the wings, too, since I eventually decided just to go for it and make it more of a pun.I couldn’t decide if I wanted the wings like on top of the jetpacks or off to the sides, but I went with on top of the jets in the end. The off to the side wings were taken from how Tengu Man’s “wings” are positioned. As for the wings themselves… I was honestly mostly taking reference from Pit’s emotion portraits from Kid Icarus Uprising. I had the image with all of his different emotions and it wasn’t like Wily would be going for complete accuracy how big wings would need to be since, y’know, jetpack.

The color scheme of the wings also changed over time, and I think probably for the better. Layering the colors instead of just making a weird gradient overtop looks nicer(even if those colors could probably use some refinement all things considered). I was also deciding on the weapon “type” for the crossbow, since Megaman’s weapon get picture is on this page. Piercer seemed like it would fit the best, going through multiple enemies in a straight shot.

Designing the ability get was actually pretty simple, which I’m glad about. I wanted to go more off of the Megaman 11 style of weapon get, altering the helmet, arm, and color only, and I wanted to stick to that. I also wanted to keep two of Wing’s more defining elements - his bow and wings - on the ability get, so I moved them from Wing’s torso to Rock’s helmet.

Alongside the ability get, an unfinished battle scene. Nothing too special here.

I tried the color testing thing again, and it was here, I believe, that I first settled on the idea of “hey what if he looked like he was wearing a suit or something” and colored it accordingly. The color on the feet honestly sold me on the left one, because the cherry-red was beautiful and it was just red pen under the highlighter. I was happy with the pieces I had and started to put it all together into the final product…

Every Robot Master needs a pose for their artwork, and Wing was gonna be no different. I could’ve gone for something more dramatic, I know, but I was really really happy how the posing turned out for the one on the left. The smaller one on the right was more for fun and was messing around with some line thickness. There’s also less feathers because I was kinda lazy.

The main reason I have him sitting is because I think his boss entrance, were he to be fought in a typical arena, would have him pulling a Meta Knight and coming down from a high ledge to attack. Saying his pre-battle line, sliding/jumping down from on-high, and with a flourish, the battle begins.

Also I just wanted to draw my boy looking cute. Sue me.

The physical version of Wing sitting(on the left) is what I had initially been going for in color scheme, with a lot less coral-ish colors in the mix. Trying to recreate those colors, however, was a problem, so for all intents and purposes this is what I hold as why he's really supposed to look like. But with a complete physical form, what's next?

...hoo boy.

Trying to make the leap from physical to digital was a pain. I realized after I had essentially finalized the physical sketch of Wing posing that the helmet and face kind of made no sense. I spent a while trying to make it right and nothing worked how I wanted it to so I eventually just moved on from that.

One thing to know is that I basically only work in MS Paint. I don’t have any other digital drawing software on my computer and the tablet available to me doesn’t respond to styluses as far as I can gather. So taking the widely-varying-in-color picture and making it not like that was something I had to remember how to do because otherwise I was gonna suffer the consequences. I knew it had to do with outlines but apparently Paint didn’t want to accept my drawn outlines and would only take ones made in the software. And jpgs were pixel-y, which I forgot since the last time I was extensively using the software.

Once I had my system back, I made the silhouette and digitalized “I’m just sayin” as a practice round of sorts. But with the simple pieces out of the way… the time came for making the whole reference sheet. The pose, the front and side views, the shipping board to serve as a back view, the wings, the Weapon Get, the weapon, and the little character-defining details.

Save states fill most of this folder for a reason. Working with what I had and going over and through everything to make sure I had all the pieces ready, making saves before the background deletion so I would just have outlines, and just hoping that this was all gonna be worth the work.

One of the more… challenging, I guess, parts of the design process for Wing: trying to give him a unique silhouette. Including the wings was, in part, because of this. Most, if not every Robot Master has a unique silhouette that you can look at and say “Oh that’s [name here]” or at least be able to tell them apart. Whether it’s fire, a boomerang, a snake tail, a lightbulb, a weird body shape, or their arms, there’s something to set each one apart. And I wanted Wing to have that same feeling, so if you were to see a blacked-out version of him you could still tell that it was Wing and not someone else.

Without the wings, he’d probably resemble a downgraded Quick Man - which makes sense, considering I was using Quick’s body shape as a base for Wing’s for a more subtle top of a heart. But I didn’t want Wing just to look like Worse Quick Man, so the wings had to stay. The crossbow helps in that regard too, but the wings really set him apart.

This is what I’m talking about. He looks like a generic character without the wings.

Trying to keep Wing in the same vein of design as other Robot Masters was also, I guess, the reason I used the colors I did. Robot Masters typically don’t have too many colors, and didn’t want Wing to be a colorful mess. Maybe I could’ve had another more striking color in his design, but I’m happy with the colors I have. Reds and pinks and white with a skin tone taken from the physical doodles that I tried to have be a brownish-cherry if that makes any sense. Like it was supposed to still be in the red(kinda orange) family of colors but still be distinct enough as a skin tone. I didn’t want to have too many variations on colors, but I do think I could’ve done better on some of the distributions(and holding onto the idea of “stop using so many colors”).

Like I said, I consider the physical drawing to be the true colors of Wing, and the digital can’t quite capture the physical.

...Okay, I think that’s everything I wanted to say. If you actually read through this entire monstrosity of a post, thank you. I do have a full colored version of the "I'm just sayin'" that'll go up eventually because it was fun.

#willowtalks #willowarts #wing man #rockmiyabideusexmachina #Valentine's day 2020 robot master design contest #mobile is a pain #even though i don't like drawing wings i love my boy #i should work on my other projects #like Golden Days #or school stuff #if someone draws him ill cry #i should draw my characters moreeee #finally went back and edited the images to be in the right spots ^^;#mostly because i wanted to draw him again #still don't like drawing wings

3 notes · View notes

cadpadawan · 4 years

Text

A Presentation of Epic Proportions

Just the other day, I had a school assigment of the most peculiar kind. It was supposed to be executed as a collaborative team effort in groups of 2-3 students. I was blessed with two individuals, whose contribution to the project was very minimal. One of the guys was too busy with his part-time job to contribute much, though I have to give him credit for trying anyway. The other one focused more on waiting for some kind of a divine inspiration to start working, and spent the time in the local pubs looking for it. Such a bohemian approach might have proven quite effective, had this assignment been associated with the nuances of various craft beers, but alas, it was about a sheet metal design that, by definition, must have dearly dispirited my fellow student not to give a shit. So, I basically had to maneuver this team project to completion practically on my own. For a solo endeavour, it simply was a bit too much to chew, especially as I initially set the goal a little bit too high, in some ill-adviced burst of optimism. Well, when the project started, I genuinely thought that these two heroes, without a cape, would actually contribute more to it. Eventually, I made it – but as you may observe in the transcription of the project presentation, that I had to perform in English...oh, well...check for yourself. Here it is, in full detail:

“Ok, ladies [articulated with an extensively sarcastic tone, as the audience was 99% young men], may I have your undivided attention, please...

We have gathered here today to witness the ultimate triumph of the human mind over matter, that is, sheet metal matter in this particular case. I have the immense pleasure to welcome y'all to the magical mystery Powerpoint presentation of a state-of-the-art sheet metal gun cabinet. This spectacle will be brought to you by this dubious threesome of mechanical engineering undergrads... Oh, wait. My dear colleagues in this joint venture could not make it today, unfortunately, quite like they could not make it most of the time, during this whole project. For starters, I might as well introduce you to my designer team, anyway – the aptly named Team Ahma [a reference to a Finnish sitcom]. My team consisted of these two characters, who magically were mostly absent throughout this ordeal. Had they actually made it to school today, here in the right hand corner of the podium, you'd be seeing a handsome young bloke named [I better not publish any personal information, y'know...], and in the penalty box, for cross-checking the progress, you'd be witnessing the hangover happyface [please, insert a sophomoric genitalia reference here]. Please, give a round of applause to these two high-performance individuals here.

The underlying objective of this collaborative effort was to design a steel cabinet, with the basic function to store away four individual pieces of firearms in an upright position, hence designed exclusively for weapons of the long-barreled variety, such as shotguns and hunting rifles – or, if this cabinet was targeted at customers in the Middle Eastern regions, also AK-47's. This design project was commissioned, supervised and reviewed by our Dear Leader and mentor in 3D design [well, y'know how it goes by now, don't cha...]. This sheet metal design project was commissioned with one precondition: the cabinet's storage capacity was to be limited to four guns. It was due to the fact, that the Finnish gun legislation had a thing or two to say about storing larger number of guns. The material thickness of the cabinet walls, locking mechanism and whatnot were strictly regulated if the number of weapons exceeded four. So, basically I had free hands to come up with pretty much any kind of cabinet, as long as I maintained some kind of an awareness, that the gun rack was not designed for more than four pieces.

Sounds relatively easy, right?

Except maybe for the fact, that the flood of options presented a kind of a challenge in itself. I was faced with the pointed question: where could I find a single, all-consuming concept for such a sheet metal design? You see, I didn't really pay attention when we had the theory class. I was too busy typing cover letters for a summer trainee position. Ok, where do people find info on anything nowadays?

Well, online, of course.

Despite being a member of the sad boomer generations, whose level of internet comprehension usually will not suffice for anything more than checking emails and watching dubious adult entertainment, I managed to do quite an extensive round of online research. So, before getting my hands dirty with the tedious maneuvering around the minute details of the actual design, I navigated in the cyber jungle of gun retail. I checked what kind of cabinet applications were available, with what specifications – and most importantly, for what price range. I browsed through the online bazaars of long-barreled guns typically stored in a cabinet like this, as well. In the hope of gathering some information that might prove useful in my project. I even gave a once-over at the legislation. It was totally unnecessary, but some of the imperatives imposed by the law actually seemed worthy of consideration.

Maybe I should elaborate...

As I do not have any prior experience in the sheet metal industry, except at the customer end, I was essentially shooting in the dark at random. I could have squeezed my brain juice into the project design, with neither forethought nor intention, and just hope for the best. I decided to implement some of the basic tenets of the gun regulations in the design, instead. Neither of my fellow designer students objected. One was too busy, trying to make some money with real work, and the other one just didn't give a shit. Why did I want to go the extra mile, then?

[Off-topic alert: here comes a lengthy rant about the sad state of affairs, when you’re getting re-educated in the ripe age of +45...]

I shall graduate in December 2021, and when the day comes, I'll be closer to 50 than 40 years old. My past work history consists of mainly irrelevant bullshit jobs. Until my life drastically changed in 2016, I used to consider work as just a nifty means to pay for my real passion, that was to make music with no inherent commercial potential, that is: all kinds of progressive rock, for beer money and ”exposure”. Work was just the necessary evil to pay for all this. What I actually did for work didn't really mean shit to me...and now, as I've been trying to apply for any kind of a trainee job, suitable for a mechanical engineering undergraduate, I've come to notice that my previous work experience doesn't actually mean shit to my potential employers either. I started applying for trainee positions starting next summer already in early December. Now, we're living in mid-March. Each and every application that I sent out, bounced back like a boomerang, with the bulk response written in the most dry and academic tone: thanks, but no thanks. So, if I wanted to make a difference in the eyes of my future employers, I would be compelled to go the extra mile every single time I had the chance. I guess I can now better relate to how it must feel to be, say, young, gifted and black in this country – or in any other Western country, for that matter. I had become an old white nigga in the eyes of society. I might as well have shot heroin all my life so far...I have skills and experience that are totally irrelevant for an engineering job.

I wonder if there was actually some factual point, that I was circum-navigating there...

To cut to the chase:

I chose to apply the minimum material thickness of 4 millimeters to the outer walls of the cabinet, along with the idea, that this cabinet ought to be practically impossible to break into. I hoped that these design constraints would lace this project with more focus and drive. After all, it's quite a hard-wired human tendency to fall into the trap of under-achievement, or to get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of a design project like this. In this particular case, lowering the standards would have probably saved my ass, though. Usually, being dolled-up with no exact destination to go, getting the job done without paramilitary leadership, or the channeling of demons, might prove unnecessarily hard.

On top of this, a sneak peek at the similar products on the market provided some crucial insight on the basic dimensions and structure for this type of a gun cabinet. There was no need to invent the wheel anew, when all I needed was some modifications on it. With all the necessary background information gathered, I was ready to outline the initial to-do list for the project, where to start, and how to stay on track. In short, I decided to go for a cabinet of impressive proportions and powerfully expressive character – a sheet metal cabinet on steroids, sort of. The preliminary online research also implicated, that the market was actually dominated by rather second grade tin cans. In this respect, I assumed that it wouldn't really take much of an effort to stand out. I concluded, that my desire to put a little more emphasis on the function and safety of the cabinet would suffice to differentiate it from the competition in this particular capacity range. Thus, one of the key elements in this cabinet design was the double-layered steel chassis, structured in 4 millimeter steel plate. For the sake of simplicity and cost-effective manufacturing, I favoured the basic perpendicular bends of 90 degrees. After all, I was not about to design a fancy mobile decoration of steel, to be suspended from the ceiling on Christmas eve. For such an unregulated cabinet design, the material thickness was probably a bit of an overkill, but I reckoned that it would prevent any unauthorized entering into the cabinet. Furthermore, I assumed – and quite rightly so – that these two layers of steel were prone to make the structure heavy enough, not to be moved into the pikey-model Toyota Hiace with Bulgarian register plates, at least not single-handedly by any amphetamine-fueled random break-and-enter artist. Obviously, a determined professional would make his way for the guns, no matter what this cabinet was made of. First and foremost, I designed this cabinet along the lines, that the robust structure would essentially discourage any half-assed attempts to illegitimately take possession of the goodies inside. I would guess, that it's not a thoroughly thought-out idea to break and enter into a house of some old timer who owns guns, in the first place. Let alone, the idea of trying to break into a cube of steel, without proper power tools. In the unfortunate case, that a random junkie decided to go for it, I would dare to envision, that all the meth in the world was not enough to grant manpower to manually force this steel door open. It would require spesific tools, paired with an exceptionally determined or desperate mindset. Although, I guess it would certainly make for a hilarious episode in one of those popular reality shows you can watch on TV nowadays

In conclusion, taking on such an extra challenge provided me with a clear objective for this design project. Had I known the amount of work that ensued, I might as well have chosen to install a beer tap, or a Nintendo Wii game console with motion sensors to my design. I opted for enhanced security. Although, the Finnish gun culture is nowhere near as bizarre as the American ”Shoot 'em up”-culture, quite the contrary, actually. In the outbreak of a zombie holocaust, the Finnish gunmen are more likely to remain as one of the last sane frontier guards on the fault lines of civilization, in my honest opinion. We don't get to witness random mass shootings, conducted in a spur of the moment drug-frenzy, so often. Nor do we need to read about juveniles shooting one another in a fit of an existential teenage angst, because the Playstation 4 abruptly went offline for no apparent reason.

On a more serious tone, I started the project by searching for some vague idea for a steel cabinet, and the gods of mechanical engineering must have been in favor of this humble endeavour, since I managed to formulate the concept fairly quickly. At the end of the day, how hard can it be to sketch a rectangular box with a door? My kids are reaching teen age, but I'm sure they could have managed to draw something like this with a slide ruler and a pencil way back when they were only five years old or something. In retrospect, though, I feel compelled to make a bold statement, that it sure ain’t easy. Somewhere along the way, I was introduced to a phenomenon, that I would like to refer to as What The Fuck-factor. I apologize for the graphic and evocative term I coined for it, but believe me, it is quite an appropriate definition for such an indecent phenomenon. It is formulated also in the Murphy's Law: if something has even a slight chance of going wrong, it most certainly will. I had my fair share of that in this project, that’s for sure.

The next chapter in this surreal drama, the actual design process itself, was carried out with the PT Creo 3D-modeling software, in compliance with the guidelines imposed by the sheet metal standard DIN 6930. Without giving it that much thought, I adopted a kind of top-down approach. I decomposed the concept into smaller sub-concepts, such as the individual components in the assembly. It all sounded great in theory, but in the rush of a work overload, the emotional strength to actually keep the big picture clear in mind at all times...it just magically seemed to evaporate into the thin air, like fairy dust...

To be brutally honest, the design process was a fucking nightmare.

I apologize for my frequent use of French adjectives. I've been trying to discipline myself against the abundant use of such foul language, but I just can't help it. My mouth is quicker than my moral filters for politically correct choice of words. Besides, the occassional strong word usually gets the point across much better, and I wouldn't be surprised if the cuss words were accountable for the most part of the modern office communication. Before starting a new life as a CAD-padawan, I used to work for a company, where the corporate language was best described as management by perkele.

Perkele is a vintage cuss word in the Finnish language, loaded with some eerie sense of personal empowerment, thus way more powerful than the more offensive ones, that are trending in the speak of the millennials.

The sketching started in a tried-and-true manner: by throwing up some random ideas in whatever form seemed fit. The design concept for the steel door seemed to provide a promising start. So, without further experiments, the steel door design was underway. Since the door played quite an integral part in the cabinet, the dimensions of the door pretty much laid out the framework for the rest of the design. And this small, ill-considered choice of component was probably the single most damaging factor contributing to why things got essentially sour a little bit later. The overall thickness of the door, in particular, set all kinds of funny little restrains on the design of the other parts, consecutively. It was 35 millimeters, that is a relatively large number in this context, and it projected a certain set of esoteric demands on the dimensions of the doorframe, and particularly on the hinge mechanism needed.

Now, the hinge mechanism...

That was a real pain-in-the-ass in this project...

The ultimate can of worms.

There is an idiom in the Finnish language, usually uttered aloud in a fairly sarcastic tone. It goes: ”liian monta liikkuvaa osaa” - that stands for ”too many moving particles”, in English.

It's a perfect description for the hardships that I encountered with the hinge design. The mission objective was to control the movement of two metal bodies, in relation to each other. Or to be more precise, to control the opening of the door. The doorframe was pretty much a static component. So, I had one moving particle – the door. Due to all kinds of funny preconceptions, it soon became painfully obvious, that this one moving particle was actually one too many.

Liian monta liikkuvaa osaa, y'know...

And little by little, frustration was gaining momentum...

I had the steel door assembly figured out by now, as well as the design for the doorframe. Then I realized, that I had figuratively shot myself in the leg. I could almost taste the irony in my mouth. The universe seemed to have a sick sense of humour. Don't get me wrong, I am actually one of those Myers-Briggs personality types who prefer their humour just like they prefer their morning cup of coffee – pitch black, with absolutely no sweeteners. (I'm also quite fond of quality gin, and craft beers with a bitter flavour...so, I guess I'm a downright psycho, and those of you, who order soya frappuccinos in Starbucks, will be my first victims, when I finally lose my shit and dash off on a killing spree...I'm joking, right?)

I soon realized, that if I wanted to implement all the safety measures that I originally opted for, I needed to ensure that the door fit the doorframe like a glove. The tight clearance between the door and the frame was an inherent part of the whole concept for an idiot-proof gun cabinet. In practice, the idea was that the door would refuse to eject open, even if you cut your way through the bolt of the lock, or the hinges. This approach necessitated a lot of extra work. It also called for a special kind of double-action hinge mechanism, something similar to those jump-action hinges that come installed in some of the hipster brand kitchen cupboards, like Puustelli etc. This type of hinge ejects the door outwards first, before opening 90 degrees in the desired direction. Well, it works wonders in the kitchen fixtures, but...

Would it work with a steel door that weighed like a ton?

That was exactly what I needed to find out.

Had this concept fully realized in practice, which it obviously did not, it might have actually imposed an additional set of requirements on the hinges, in turn. I formulated all kinds of funny little mental configurations, how this particular type of hinge might have worked in this cabinet setting. At some point, it finally dawned on me, like a sudden moment of comprehension, or the sensation to which the Japanese zen buddhist tradition refers with the term ”satori”. I was practically shooting myself in the leg some more...

Even if I made this science fiction hinge mechanism work, so that the door would actually open beautifully, without any obstructions...then what?

In the name of safety, I had adjusted that clearance between the door and the frame to be extremely tight. Thus, it was absolutely necessary for the door to be perfectly aligned with the frame, vertically. Otherwise, the door would neither close nor open. This concept seemed to suggest that it was essential to lock the door into position, when either fully open or fully closed. Otherwise, it would get stuck. So, the deeper I delved into the details of this particular hinge mechanism, the more evident it became, that it would probably be way too complicated to design. I must admit that I felt tempted to call it quits, and go home and watch football on satellite TV. This project was turning into a joke, with me being the punchline, and it wasn't funny anymore.

I introduced this sheet metal project as state-of-the-art, remember?

Now we're getting to the artsy part.

I could have responded to this unfortunate turn of events by sketching an alternative, or even a set of alternatives, and then move on like nothing happened. Sticking to the idea, that my steel door insisted on the application of this particular type of hinge mechanism, was beginning to resonate the ambience of a game of Tetris, where you kept getting the wrong pieces round after round, ad infinitum. At this stage, however, my unjustified optimism hadn't been killed yet, so...when this issue called attention to an ever-increasing amount of detail, I simply considered it as a challenge accepted, or a personal insult to my intelligence, even. It was a call to arms. Thus, I insisted on not to seek any alternatives, not yet, as if bound by a samurai honour code. After all, I had the concept for this particular type of hinge mechanism clear in my mind. There was only the trifle matter of putting it into realization, to take care of.

At this stage, the summoning of demons might actually have proven quite handy.

I was faced with the ultimate question: how to tap back into the creative flow, when the empire was falling around me?

Maybe I should have attached a slide of the hinge mechanism I found in some engineering porn site that was infested with a multitude of graphic illustrations and video shootage of all kinds of highly technical gadgets and gizmos. Y'know, the one that I found most promising to develop further.

Well, I didn't – so, you'll just have to imagine how it looked like.

I'm sure this sounds like the stuff from some poorly screenplayed science fiction movie, or the mindless verbal rambling of a voodoo hierophant who's probably tripping balls on magic mushrooms. However, I'm afraid that I'll have to let you down on your vivid speculations about the origins of this concept. It was very real. We found something similar applied to safes and vacuum containers, and such, with more or less sophisticated mechanisms, that might have worked with our sheet metal cabinet. The only catch with all the mechanisms was that they seemed to require lots of time to design, especially to get the dimensions exact – and this project was little by little running out of time. Our cabinet door required something sturdy, like the hinges on a huge cast iron safe. The weight of the door, fully assembled, approximated near thirty kilos already. On the other hand, we needed something compact, in order to squeeze the hinges in the formidably narrow space between the outer sheet metal casing and the doorframe of steel.

For some peculiar reason, this project suddenly started to feel like the biggest wild goose chase in the history of gun cabinets...but, like I said: after an extensive online research, we finally came across such a sophisticated mechanism, that seemed appropriate for our needs, with just a few minor modifications. It called for an infinite amount of trials and errors to dimension right, but we gave it a go, anyway. The margin to have each component in our cabinet assembly in working condition by the deadline was getting incredibly small, and risk assessment probably wasn't our strong point. We took on a challenge, only to fail in the most beautiful fashion. Obviously, this particular hinge design proved way too sophisticated to execute in the given time. Eventually, we had to face the facts, discard this fancy hi-tech mechanism, and go for the second best option. Just twelve hours before the deadline for the final submission, I basically had to witness my deep faith in humanity disappear into the ether, as this issue with the hinges turned out to be such a gift that just kept on giving. I resolved this problem with a straightforward and brutal solution: by thrusting a simple rod of steel vertically through the door, attached with a pair of bronze sliding bearings. After that, I extruded a couple of additional holes in the doorframe – and voilá! The cabinet design was complete. This impromptu change of plans, conducted in the very last minute of the project, obviously compromised the original idea for an idiot-proof cabinet door, but we really had no choice.

Maybe next time we'll be equipped with more profound wisdom and battle-hardened experience, so that we'll be able to execute more informed choices. This project was supposed to be a crash course in the wonders of sheet metal design, and provide us with some hands-on experience with the topic. In practice, it was more like an experiment in the dark forests of the human mind. In this respect, however, we did quite well. Yes, the design process turned sour and frustrating at times, or to put it in a more evocative wording – it was a genuine pain in the ass, but did we die? Nope. It certainly is a very human trait to lose focus and give up, after reaching the ultimate frustration point. On several occassions, during this endeavour in psychological torture, I was tempted to take a Big Lebowskian stance, let go and cry out:

”Fuck it, let's go bowling!”

But I didn't.

Of course, I can only speak for myself, when I say that out of sheer hatred towards anything even remotely related to sheet metal, I forced myself to complete this assignment – like, when the software crashed on me for the fifth time during the course of just a few hours. My immediate urge, more often than not, was to smash the computer screen with a baseball bat, when things didn't quite go as planned. But, instead, I manouvered myself into a kind of zen state of mind. Of course, my mind was not completely empty, like in a genuine higher state of consciousness. It was actually pretty full – filled with some explicit thoughts, certainly Not Safe For Work environment, but I guess it's safe to say that these thoughts mostly hinted that I was not going to let a stupid machine get the best of me. Well, I have 15 years' worth of experience in logistics, so I guess I am more resilient to stress than the average person. I have worked for Satan himself, in a most high-stress job you can imagine. So, as an afterthought, I guess this project was actually fairly easy on me. It was challenging in many respects, but eventually the project design was completed with not much collateral damage.

Maybe this chunk of metal does not provide enough ground to build a profitable business model on it, but it just might suggest a novel and street smart way to store away your firearms. I'm sure you could get a bigger and standardized cabinet for almost the same amount of money, but then again: who actually needs to possess more than four pieces, anyway? If you feel a sting in your heart, when I say this, maybe you should ask yourself:

Did Jeffrey Epstein really kill himself?

Am I just preparing for the zombie apocalypse?

I would guess that no one in his, or her, right mind really needs five or more firearms. For those of us, who need a cool storage application for max. 4 guns, I designed this shiny little sheet metal beast. I am still entertaining the possibility, that this boutique cabinet might have an enticing appeal to those of us, who prefer a highly customised luxury approach, rather than a generic application of nothing special, dashed out for mass production in the sweatshops of the third world countries. Obviously, this design philosophy did not quite exclude the need to take the ease and cost of manufacture into account – and that's what I did.

I refrained myself from integrating overly complicated shapes, just for the sake of appearance. Every bend in the sheet metal structure was well-thought out. Maybe I could have done with less welding seam, but I opted for reinforced safety. Remember, the primary goal was to enhance the possibility to come up with an idio-proof cabinet design. You see, idiots and guns don't really mix that well. It sounds like common knowledge, but as we all can see in the nine o'clock news on a daily basis, not many are catching up...

From the very outset of this project, I tried to view this cabinet design through the imaginary lens of the potential customer. I dare to guess, that the most likely candidate to purchase a weapon storage application of this caliber (pun intended!) would be a white, heterosexual Finnish male going in his late 50's. This stereotypical character resides somewhere in the back of beyond, in the most rural areas of Finland, in the hard core of the Baby Boomers paradigm, that is the classic ”rintamamies”-house, built in the 1940's. Our protagonist here presents the Jungian archetype of a DIY-handyman, with a passion for hunting wild game in his spare time. He is quite an active and respected member of society – the local hunting society, in particular. He's got his mortgage paid off by now, which means that he can very well afford to treat himself to something special, every once in a while – like, a brand new, state-of-the-art gun cabinet, because the old one is...well, old. With this in mind, I decided to design this cabinet for the higher price range. I rest assured that the hefty price tag would be justified by the extra emphasis on security. I wanted to take my cabinet design to the next level, and to some degree, I guess I succeeded. After all, it usually is a tell-tale sign of an amateur-at-work to compete on price. I opted for excellence without compromise. All too many gun cabinet manufacturers seemed not. The vast majority of the products on the gun cabinet market seemed to capture the ethos of the classic one-liner, said by the American musical genius Frank Zappa, back in the day:

”If we can't be free, let's at least be cheap.”

For many, this kind of an approach seemed to be a very viable option in a gun cabinet design. I'm sure it can be a convenient philosophy in life, in general – as it seems to be for many, too. It was never an option for this particular design project, to say the least. I am a firm believer, that you are the sum of all the experiences you go through, as well as the people around you. Being surrounded by dysfunction and incompetence will eventually get you nowhere. At the end of the day, with all the designer's blocks and frustrations dealt with, after getting strangled in a multitude of loose ends, for God knows how many times, overcoming the obstacles in this ”joint” venture eventually provided me with a sense of pride in a job well done. My gun cabinet might not become a nifty prototype for a potential customer product, but nevertheless, I came up with something unique. The technical documentation of this project design might seem like a white paper on how to ruin a perfectly promising raw idea, but then again....there is no such thing as perfection, when it comes to rushing things to completion, especially, when it's not something you're doing by choice.

In retrospect, with the hinge issue aside, the design for this cabinet evolved pretty smoothly and effortlessly. The double-layered steel chassis took maybe a couple of days to sketch, model and annotate – just like most of the other components did too. Believe me, it's not an understatement, when I tell you that 90 percent of this project consisted of figuring out how to make a double-action hinge work in a desired way. Maybe it could serve as a topic for further development. It probably would require quite a few iterations to configure the mechanism to work perfectly in the context of this gun cabinet. With this project, though, I had to rush the design to meet the deadline. Thus, I cannot say for certain, whether this sheet metal cabinet will perform as desired, or if it has any of the enhanced technical value I opted for. Chances of true success might be minimal, respectively. With the benefit of doubt, however, I dare to suggest that the original objectives of this project could still be accomplished through the application of such customised hinge mechanism. Now, we'll probably never know.

Unless, of course, the conservative dark forces are going to bring back the good ol' times, and I can have another go at this...

Or, maybe not...

I thank you dearly for your time and patience. If you wish to ask me anything about this project, I will gladly answer. Of course, it would be more convenient to continue with the technical and psychological nuances of this project over a pint of beer...but alas, the school cafeteria does not have the licence to sell alcohol. Well, anyways...knock yourselves out.

Ok, that's about it. Now I'm excited to pass the torch on to the next project team: the podium is all yours.

Arrivederci!

It remains to be seen, how my English teacher reviewed this presentation. Most likely, the required level of formality was not reached, which might be reflected in my English grade. However, I think that there is only a narrow window of opportunity to make a lasting impression, in the everyday interaction with the people around you. I would guess, that this presentation will not be as easily forgotten as the ones peppered with rambling formalities. My last Powerpoint slide, that was depicting the benefits of this design project, was basically just a picture of a giant facepalm. Try erasing that mental image from your mind now, eh!

2 notes · View notes

mugen-monogatari · 5 years

Text

5 Quality Yet Accessible Tragic Anime You Should Watch

Let’s talk about tragedy in anime. Ain’t nothin’ like watching some sad anime boys experiencing sad things while I sit there and cry. I love tragedy in anime, there’s just a certain satisfaction in ‘dissatisfaction’. Sometimes, it’s far more meaningful for someone to lose a fight, to make a hard decision or sacrifice something. Maybe the hero never saves the girl, or a loved one just doesn’t make it. Yes, in a perfect world everyone ends up happy, but this isn’t a perfect world. People suffer, and sometimes it ends on a good note, sometimes everything goes to hell and the world burns. That gritty realism and human error adds a level of empathy and depth to many shows that would otherwise lack it. I personally think it’s worth talking about that, since I don’t think tragic anime get enough love.

So I thought I’d make a quick list of 5 accessible yet Quality tragedy series, ranging from pretty popular and accessible, to slightly more niche. Many of you have seen these series I’m sure, but with the continuous stream of shows being released every single season, it can be hard to either go back and watch older shows, or stay on top of newer ones. These are just a few picks that I would urge anyone and everyone to go and at least try.

I should also preface this by saying, when I say tragedy, it doesn’t mean the show has a depressing ending. By tragedy I’m referring to tragic events happening in a show regularly, be it at the end, the beginning or throughout. Simply putting something on this list, doesn’t mean it has a tragic ending, so you can rest assured there are still surprises to come when watching these.

Also, these are all my opinions, everyone is entitled to them. You can disagree or agree, it’s up to you, we can even discuss my peeps. Just don’t brutalize me for shows you don’t like or if one of your favorites isn’t on this list.

All of that being said, Here are 5 tragic series I think everyone should at least try:

1. Code Geass

Starting off simple we have Code Geass. What a show this was back in the day. Death Note, mixed with Mechs and sci-fi and chess and a whole lot of edge. For many people, they have already seen it, it’s almost guaranteed if you watched anime in the early 2000s. However, as time goes on, this series slowly falls into obscurity, many people being less attracted by its flamboyant art style and the ever growing age. It seems like Code Geass is slowly fading away with time, people online aren’t forgetting about it, but moving on, and many new fans are understandably detracted from a show like this.

But they’re all wrong. This series is incredible. It’s a fundamental “must-watch” show. Sure, it shows it’s age now, but that doesn’t detract from it’s plot and characters. With a very likeable cast, a constantly expanding story, high stakes, insane powers and mind games, politics and action, all of these make an insanely good series, one that warrants repeated viewing to this day. What starts as a boy being in the wrong place at the wrong time, blows up into a worldwide conflict. This is one of those series that sticks with you, there are scenes and moments in this you just never forget moving forward.

Some of the things I love is Sunrise’s mech designs, Lancelot as well as many of the Knightmare frame designs in the movies and show are still fun and vibrant to this day. Many old Mecha shows become redundant years later as the designs don’t hold up. This one though, certainly does.

I also really love the voice acting. Yes the sub is good, but the dub (fight me) is just mwah. Johnny Yong Bosch as Lelouch is nut worthy. Just watch the first episode where he gives his first command. Insta nut. I’m telling you.

I also love the endings of both seasons. I think the first is a really good climax, while the second season closes about as well as this could, while still coming out of left field.

Some things that I think detract people, definitely start with the art style. Sunrise’s designs for the machines and backgrounds and such is fine, it looks good, however Clamp’s character designs are definitely an acquired taste. They’re not for everyone. Everyone looks super slender, almost cartoon like in their clothes and proportions. Yes you get used to it, but they still look very “different” to the standard, even back when it first came out.

Another is sometimes, the show just goes to very strange places, for example having an episode to do with drug addiction that just came out of left-field. In the same vein, some people have very mixed opinions on season two, not entirely liking the direction it goes and some of the character developments. However, a lot of these things are subjective and I’ll leave them up to you to decide.

Spanning two, 25 episode seasons (you can definitely just pretend the movie never happened) as well as several spin off OVAs and Shorts (Those you actually can watch though), the series is a pretty long watch by today’s standards, but it’s definitely worth it.

2. Zankyou No Terror

Next up, we have Terror in Resonance. This one for sure is worth the watch even without the tragedy. This is one of those shows, which is so visually appealing to watch. It’s one of the most aesthetically pleasing shows I’ve ever seen. I guarantee anyone who’s interested in aesthetic gifs and images of weeb stuff, has seen shots from this show without even realizing it. It’s not exactly a niche show, but it’s a little less accessible than something like “Angel Beats”, with a much more serious and gritty tone. It’s not criminally underrated, but I just really wish more people had seen this, since it genuinely is a beautiful series.

Some of the things I really love about this show, is (as I’ve mentioned a thousand times) the aesthetic sense. Every shot in this series is screenshot worthy, with plenty scenes making for ‘straight-out-the-box’ gifs and icons and whatever it is you kids use screenshots for. Even the food, just like papa Gigguk mentioned, is just mwah, spicy stuff. I attribute this to the very well considered color palette, realistic lighting and designs, as well as just overall good cinematography.

On the less visible side of things, the story hold ups really well too, with some very genuinely emotional moments and scenes. Just like Code Geass above, this series has a very well considered ending, with a “Wholesome”(?) message at the end.

The only negatives I can really give for the series, is some pacing issues if you’re an impatient brat like me, as well as almost a complete lack of lightheartedness. The series can be sweet and touching, but it’s almost always dark and serious at the same time, with no time to relax or breathe throughout.

I think there isn’t as much to say about ZnT as there is about Code geass, as it’s not as subjective. It is an objectively high quality show, your own enjoyment of it is what varies. Unlike Code Geass, there isn’t many flaws, but it doesn’t take as many risks. To me, this show is a very safe bet. It looks gorgeous, is only 11 episodes (you big boys and girls can binge that) and tells a satisfying, self-contained story. A little bonus is that it’s directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, famous for Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, so hey- It has that going for it too.

3. Parasyte: The Maxim

Following on, we have one of the series that introduced me to tragedy, Parasyte: The Maxim. Let me tell you, this series is dark. And violent. Very violent at times.

When it first aired in 2014, the response was pretty good, it didn’t reach critical Acclaim, but had its own cult following, with the manga having been published from the late 80s to the mid 90s. For me, this was one of my first truly “darker” and more violent anime, having really only watched shounen and some seinen before that. This to me isn’t one of the best stories ever, the characters are fine, and the show looks acceptable. But while it doesn’t excel in anything, it does everything really well. To me, it’s the perfect bridge from Casual fan, to serious- or even as a primer for more dark and violent stories, such as Berserk or dare I say it Tokyo Ghoul (Read the manga, please don’t support the anime adaptation).

For me personally, I really Liked the main character, he drove the show on for me. Watching him develop into someone completely different from the beginning of the show, was a real draw to me. He’s likeable, relatable to an extent, and he had a complete character arc. Shinichi in the beginning is not the same character as in the end.

This character is also used to convey a deeper meaning about what humanity is and how we define the term. It’s a really interesting series about us as a race, with some genuine things to discuss and think about, which leaves a longer lasting impression than most shows. It’s the sort of series that makes you want to share it with other people just so you can talk to them about it. Ah- and it’ll hit you in the feels. This show is genuinely tragic through out, but still stays personal to the small cast, which to me, is the sign of a really good tragedy. Despite things going on in the entire world, they make you care about these few people specifically.

However, it has it’s own problems too. Art wise, it’s very faithful to the original source material, capturing the feel of it, the low key oppressive vibes. However, this also means, it can look a little… ‘Bland’? At times. The earthy colors can be a little drab, especially in an age were Studio Trigger, for example, can make an eye-gasm worthy scene using colours you didn’t even know existed.

The other problem, is some of the characters are very one dimensional. Take the love interest, she doesn’t really develop or change at all throughout the series, but I personally give this a pass as she’s not super relevant to the story anyway.

A fair warning though, this series has some strong violence, plenty of gore and mutilation, if that’s a problem for you, I suggest either giving this one a skip, or just trying to sit through it. It’ll be a good learning experience.

Spanning a fair 24 episodes, having aired in 2014, this series is both bingeable, and holds-up very well in the modern ecosystem of anime. To me, this is a pretty top tier show, a solid 8/10, it’s very good, a really well made show, It makes for the perfect bridge into far more serious and dark stories, such as maybe Berserk and Devilman, hence why I put it on this list.

4. Fate/Zero

For my second to last show, perhaps one of the most well known franchises, that is lowkey kinda niche. Fate is a series everyone knows the existence of, but not as many people have actually watched, especially not casual fans. To be frank, it’s intimidating. The series has no real easy entry point, and all the timelines are relatively interwoven, you can’t just bounce around. Everything spoils everything and it’s scary to even look at a list of fate entries.

That’s why I picked Fate Zero. To me, it’s the best entry point into the Type/Moon genre. For those of you who don’t know, it’s basically a battle royal between seven summoners who each have a servant of different classes. They all have to fight for the Holy Grail, an artifact that will grant them a single wish. Sounds simple right?

Well it’s not. The entire series is full of not only badass action, but plenty of mind games and ‘cat-and-mouse’ between the characters. It’s brutal, it’s tragic, violent and uplifting. Ufotable delivers some of the highest quality animation you’ll see in your life (they’re renowned for it), but it doesn’t just look good. The story is compelling, the characters are genuinely likeable and by the end, I wanted everyone to live and survive. Everyone has believable and compelling motivation, and even the objectively evil characters, like Caster, are still likeable, because you begin to love to hate them. The entire season honestly plays out more like a compressed microcosmic version of Game of Thrones, than a battle royal anime.

There are plenty of things I like about this series, the plot is really fun, the fights are pretty damn cool and it can be a very emotional show at times. I could talk about these aspects endlessly. However, the thing that really makes Fate for me, is the characters. Each individual characters gets some time and attention, and with the exception of a few, you really genuinely like and care about everyone. You want everyone to win, or at least survive, since all of them are either genuinely lovable, or have very compelling motivation.

The other part to it is, this is the best starting point for the rest of Fate, and I would actually argue that it enhances many scenes found in the subsequent (story wise) series, even if they aired prior to Zero. This series both introduced me to Fate, and got me attached and invested in the world, which is the sign of a good (technically) first series.

On the other hand, it has problems. First of all, it’s pretty interwoven with the later series. Those came before it and set up a lot of mysteries and ideas that Zero goes out of it’s way to explain, from character identities to events in the timeline, watching Zero will spoil a lot of those things, which may lessen the later experiences for some people.

The other flaw is despite being maybe the best starting point for Fate, it still isn’t entirely accessible. The show can be straight up confusing at times, at least for someone who hasn’t seen Fate. Many elements of the world aren’t explained and you’re just expected to go along with it, since it’s either just a part of this world, or explained in other series. Which is fine, but often lead to some rather “But wait… What just happened?” moments.

Ultimately, Fate/Zero is fantastic series for anyone looking for a really good character drama, full of magic and badass historical references. It’s not the best introduction but it’s the best you’ll get from Fate. Similarly to Code Geass and ZnT, the series has a really good conclusion in my opinion, with plenty of tragic moments sprinkled throughout.

For Fate, Zero specifically consists of two seasons of 12 episodes each, for a bingeable 24 episode series. For ideas where to go next from this, look for my upcoming Tumblr Post explaining the fate continuity.

5. Mobile Suit Gundam : Iron-Blooded Orphans

And Finally, we come to our last pick of the day. This is a series, I would urge anyone to watch. If I could make you watch one Single series from this list, this would be it. Throw away any views you have on the franchise or the genre, don’t be afraid of the name, just give this series a try.

Iron Blooded Orphans follows a small mercenary band of boys who just want to make a home for themselves in a galaxy strained by political unrest. The premise is simple, just people trying to survive and make a life for themselves.

Well what if I told you it was directed and written by the same Duo that made AnoHana, one of the most commonly acknowledged tragic shows out there. This duo write and direct stories about innocent children being put through immense hardship and this series is no different. This show is tragic, painful even. I sobbed as many times as I laughed and smiled in this show. We spend a season watching them come up in the world, only to watch everything get torn apart in the second season, and it is genuinely emotional and heart wrenching.

Something I love about this series, is the characters and how attached you become to them. Death is a genuine threat in this show, even if you don’t feel it in the beginning. When people die, it hurts, and that applies to IBO, where each death leaves resounding ripples on the people around them. It handles familial relationships really well, making you believe in these people and their emotions. When they suffer, you cry for them, and when they get brief moments of respite, you do too. I love how invested you become in this ragtag team of boys, making some of the later scenes all the more devastating when they happen.

Another thing I love is the stakes. Within the second season, the pressure to perform is on, the first season, while having threats and such, was never even close to season two. To be vague, one of my favorite moments is when a character has to land a decisive shot in the midst of a battle, and everyone’s lives are on the line. That entire confrontation is one of my favorite scenes in anime of all time. It is truly suspenseful and will take you on an emotional journey.

To top it all off, it’s made by Sunrise. If you like Mechs, well oh boy do they have you covered, and if you don’t- well oh boy, you will when you’re done. This show makes the mech Genre, and Gundam entirely accessible, you need no prior knowledge, you don’t need to be a fan to enjoy it. The fights are really fun and have genuinely cool moments, as cool as it can get for a mech anyway. The characters and story are well written and everything just comes together to make a very well produced show- Good job Sunrise.

It doesn’t go without it’s own problems though. The first 20 ish episodes, until they get to earth, are not pointless, but have some pacing issues, as well as low stakes. There are threats and people die, but you never feel that scared or intense. Then towards the end of season one, the show kicks into high gear. To counteract this slow start, the series has a phenomenal season two that I genuinely believe everyone should watch, as it’s a perfect example of character drama done exceptionally well.

The series is comprised of two seasons of 25 episodes each, totaling a measly (if you’re a big boy or girl) 50 episodes. There is several related forms of media, nothing worth mentioning though, for more Gundam, you’re better off watching other series from the franchise.

If I can only force you to watch one, please go out and watch Iron Blooded Orphans. To me, it’s 9- pushing a 10/10 series, with a undeniably slow start, but a fantastic heart felt, emotional ending.

So that’s it from me guys. Thanks for taking the time to read the ramblings of a mad man like me, but I hope this gives some people some ideas on where to go next or what they can watch now. If you enjoyed, make sure to follow me for more discussions and lists and whatever else anime related. If you have any advice, or want to discuss something with me, go ahead let me know, other than that- Leave, go outside, get some fresh air after reading all that.

#anime #discussion #Iron Blooded Orphans #Fate #code geass #Parasyte #terror in resonance #IBO #Gundam

49 notes · View notes

theadmiringbog · 4 years

Photo

Linearity and nonlinearity, one of the central distinctions in mathematics.

Usually, when someone announces they’re a “nonlinear thinker” they’re about to apologize for losing something you lent them. But nonlinearity is a real thing! And in this context, thinking nonlinearly is crucial, because not all curves are lines.

The generals who consulted Abraham Wald faced the same kind of situation: too little armor meant planes got shot down, too much meant the planes couldn’t fly. It’s not a question of whether adding more armor is good or bad; it could be either, depending on how heavily armored the planes are to start with. If there’s an optimal answer, it’s somewhere in the middle, and deviating from it in either direction is bad news.

Nonlinear thinking means which way you should go depends on where you already are.

There’s nothing wrong with the Laffer curve—only with the uses people put it to. Wanniski and the politicians who followed his panpipe fell prey to the oldest false syllogism in the book: It could be the case that lowering taxes will increase government revenue; I want it to be the case that lowering taxes will increase government revenue; Therefore, it is the case that lowering taxes will increase government revenue.

Linear reasoning is everywhere. You’re doing it every time you say that if something is good to have, having more of it is even better. Political shouters rely on it: “You support military action against Iran? I guess you’d like to launch a ground invasion of every country that looks at us funny!” Or, on the other hand, “Engagement with Iran? You probably also think Adolf Hitler was just misunderstood.”

The Pythagoreans, you have to remember, were extremely weird. Their philosophy was a chunky stew of things we’d now call mathematics, things we’d now call religion, and things we’d now call mental illness. They believed that odd numbers were good and even numbers evil; that a planet identical to our own, the Antichthon, lay on the other side of the sun; and that it was wrong to eat beans, by some accounts because they were the repository of dead people’s souls. Pythagoras himself was said to have had the ability to talk to cattle (he told them not to eat beans) and to have been one of the very few ancient Greeks to wear pants.

Linear regression is a marvelous tool, versatile, scalable, and as easy to execute as clicking a button on your spreadsheet. You can use it for data sets involving two variables, like the ones I’ve drawn here, but it works just as well for three variables, or a thousand. Whenever you want to understand which variables drive which other variables, and in which direction, it’s the first thing you reach for. And it works on any data set at all.

Working an integral or performing a linear regression is something a computer can do quite effectively. Understanding whether the result makes sense—or deciding whether the method is the right one to use in the first place—requires a guiding human hand. When we teach mathematics we are supposed to be explaining how to be that guide. A math course that fails to do so is essentially training the student to be a very slow, buggy version of Microsoft Excel.

The smaller the number of coins—what we’d call in statistics the sample size—the greater the variation in the proportion of heads. It’s the very same effect that makes political polls less reliable when fewer voters are polled.

The law demands that the proportion of heads must approach 50% as I flip the coin more and more times. Common sense suggests that, at this point, tails must be slightly more likely, in order to correct the existing imbalance. But common sense says much more insistently that the coin can’t remember what happened the first ten times I flipped it!

I won’t keep you in suspense—the second common sense is right.

Those first ten flips become less and less important the more flips we make. If I flip the coin a thousand more times, and get about half heads, then the proportion of heads in the first 1,010 flips is also going to be close to 50%. That’s how the Law of Large Numbers works: not by balancing out what’s already happened, but by diluting what’s already happened with new data, until the past is so proportionally negligible that it can safely be forgotten.

The tradable sector lost about 3 million jobs, while the nontradable sector added 7 million. So the nontradable sector accounted for 7 million jobs out of the total gain of 4 million, or 175%! The slogan to live by here is: Don’t talk about percentages of numbers when the numbers might be negative.

Dividing one number by another is mere computation; figuring out what you should divide by what is mathematics.

This vision of religious belief is extremely congenial to the mathematical mind. You believe in God not because you were touched by an angel, not because your heart opened up one day and let the sunshine in, and certainly not because of something your parents told you, but because God is a thing that must be, as surely as 8 times 6 must be the same as 6 times 8.

Magician Derren Brown pulled off a similar stunt, mailing various horse-racing picks to thousands of Britons with the result of eventually convincing a single person that he’d devised a foolproof prediction system.

It sounds improbable that an identical set of winning numbers would come up twice in a single week. And that’s true, if you agree with the hypothesis that the numbers are drawn from the cage completely at random. But maybe you don’t. Maybe you think the randomization system is malfunctioning, and the numbers 4, 21, 23, 34, 39 are more likely to come up than others. Or maybe you think a corrupt lottery official is picking the numbers to match his own favorite ticket. Under either of those hypotheses, the amazing coincidence is not improbable at all. Improbability, as described here, is a relative notion, not an absolute one; when we say an outcome is improbable, we are always saying, explicitly or not, that it is improbable under some set of hypotheses we’ve made about the underlying mechanisms of the world.

Does a new drug make a dent in the illness it proposes to cure, or does it do nothing? Does a psychological intervention make you happier/peppier/sexier or does it do nothing at all? The “does nothing” scenario is called the null hypothesis. That is, the null hypothesis is the hypothesis that the intervention you’re studying has no effect.

Here’s the procedure for ruling out the null hypothesis, in executive bullet-point form:

Run an experiment.

Suppose the null hypothesis is true, and let p be the probability (under that hypothesis) of getting results as extreme as those observed. The number p is called the p-value.

If it is very small, rejoice; you get to say your results are statistically significant.

If it is large, concede that the null hypothesis has not been ruled out.

Versions of this argument for divine creation predate Fisher’s formal development by a great while. The world is so richly structured and so perfectly ordered—how tremendously unlikely it would be for there to be a world like this one, under the null hypothesis that there’s no primal designer who put the thing together!

Bible coders but to the “creation scientists,” who argue, even today, that mathematics demands there must be a god, on the grounds that a godless world would be highly unlikely to look like the one we have.

The CSM reported a risk ratio: third-generation pills doubled women’s risk of thrombosis. That sounds pretty bad, until you remember that thrombosis is really, really rare. Among women of childbearing age using first- and second-generation oral contraceptives, 1 in 7,000 could expect to suffer a thrombosis; users of the new pill indeed had twice as much risk, 2 in 7,000. But that’s still a very small risk, because of this certified math fact: twice a tiny number is a tiny number.

The truth is, the null hypothesis, if we take it literally, is probably just about always false. When you drop a powerful drug into a patient’s bloodstream, it’s hard to believe the intervention has exactly zero effect on the probability that the patient will develop esophageal cancer, or thrombosis, or bad breath.

A player who made a layup was no more likely to shoot from distance than a player who just missed a layup. Layups are easy and shouldn’t give the player a strong sense of being hot. But a player is much more likely to try a long shot after a three-point basket than after a three-point miss. In other words, the hot hand might “cancel itself out”—players, believing themselves to be hot, get overconfident and take shots they shouldn’t.

If a hypothesis implies a falsehood, then the hypothesis itself must be false. So the plan goes like this: Suppose the hypothesis H is true. It follows from H that a certain fact F cannot be the case. But F is the case. Therefore, H is false.

In 1950, it took the early computer ENIAC twenty-four hours to simulate twenty-four hours of weather, and that was an astounding feat of space-age computation. In 2008, the computation was reproduced on a Nokia 6300 mobile phone in less than a second.

In a way, this is the birth control scare revisited. Being on the Facebook list doubles a person’s chance of being a terrorist, which sounds terrible. But that chance starts out very small, so when you double it, it’s still small.

Here’s how you compute the expected value of a lottery ticket. For each possible outcome, you multiply the chance of that outcome by the ticket’s value given that outcome. In this simplified case, there are only two outcomes: you lose, or you win. So you get 9,999,999/10,000,000 × $0= $0 1/10,000,000 × $6,000,000= $0.60. Then you add the results up: $0 + $0.60= $0.60.

So the expected value of your ticket is 60 cents. If a lottophile comes to your door and offers $1.20 for your ticket, expected value says you ought to make the deal. In fact, expected value says you shouldn’t have paid a dollar for it in the first place!

The Social Security Administration’s inspector general on Monday said the agency improperly paid $31 million in benefits to 1,546 Americans believed to be deceased.

As blogger (and former mathlete) Nicholas Beaudrot observed, that $31 million represents .004% of the benefits disbursed annually by the SSA. In other words, the agency is already extremely good at knowing who’s alive and who’s no more. Getting even better at that distinction, in order to eliminate those last few mistakes, might be expensive. If we’re going to count utils, we shouldn’t be asking, “Why are we wasting the taxpayers’ money?” but “What’s the right amount of the taxpayers’ money to be wasting?”

These were later collected as the Pensées (“Thoughts”) which appeared eight years after his death. It’s a remarkable work, aphoristic, endlessly quotable, in many ways despairing, in many ways inscrutable.

All mathematical writing is creative writing.

#How Not to Be Wrong #books

0 notes

peeppeephellofatface · 6 years

Text

Oh, I found those mini-fics I did back in like.. August and I guess I had actually finished three of them so here you go.

1. The fabled incident where Duke accidently tried to wear Oliver’s pants.

2. Mal cares for sick Duke

3. Evening Star tries to get Green Arrow to cal down by feeding her.

It was awkward to say the least to meet his much more successful cousins, the Standard 7s. After all, in service all the engines knew of his faults and to this day he still doubted himself, afraid they would come back or others still resented him. He couldn't really envision the vision going well at all since he knew it was going to be painful hearing their new praise of him only after he'd been substantial changed, with the knowledge that they surely looked down on him as a burden in the past and only kept it secret to spare his feelings. Surprisingly, they completely ignored the topic, preferring to chat about amusing things humans do, until Oliver had suggested they quit messing around and go help out the cleaners. Being a messy affair, they had changed out of their standard Brunswick Green clothes and into more suitable ones. The task wasn't as unpleasant for them as it often was humans, as they generally didn't mind heat and grime, though the tight spaces proved troublesome for them with their larger builds. Afterwards, the three dug their clothes out of the heap they had tossed them in. Seeing as the Britannias had had no trouble redressing, the Duke thought nothing of the fact that their pants all looked nearly identical. Something that was going to give him a moment of indignity. Oliver quietly raised an eyebrow as he noticed that his felt a bit loose, particularly in the rear. Perhaps he'd put on Britannia's instead, even as siblings their proportions in this form weren't identical. He looked up blank-faced as his sister seemed to have no issue putting hers on. It seemed they fit the way they always did. And then he turned around to see... well, quite a sight. The Duke was something of a cousin to them, having some similarities in design. They were roughly the same heights in this form, and back in the day had been roughly the same size as well. Clearly the latter was no longer true. They were stuck around the tops of his plump thighs as he struggled with the waistband, trying his best to pull them up over his rather ample backside. Oliver smirked a bit at his predicament as he looked directly into his frantic eyes, blushing with embarrassment. Britannia noticed the silence of the two and turned to look at whatever seemed to have caught Oliver's attention, only to bust out in raucous laughter at the Duke's predicament. "Preservation treating you well, Duke?" His gaze grew harder and he glared at Oliver's snide comment. He went to yank what were clearly not his pants up, only to relax again and bite his lip in shame. "Uh, a little help?" Fortunately, he was happy to comply and soon were fully clothed again. "Er, I need to go now... please don't speak of this again." "Of course we won't." He felt Britannia's hand press into his soft midsection and squeeze at the fat, getting hot from embarrassment again. "You're pretty cute with some pudge, you know. Goes well with your soft personality." He tugged her hand away and rushed out the door, not wanting to be in that situation any longer. ---------------------------- Mallard had gotten up very late that day after a restless night. It was probably the excitement of getting to meet the Duke again the next day that had kept him up, but he also just couldn't get comfortable no matter what he did. He kept hearing every little clack or bang in the museum, every fly landing on his casing, every minute thing going on that could possible distract him from actually sleeping. It struck him as odd that the Duke hadn't come out to meet him after presumably waiting so long. Sunlight already shining through the skylights, Mal stumbled over to the room where they usually met to see if he was late as well. He was there already, but not the way he was expecting him to be. He was huddled under the blanket, curled up and desperately attempting to avoid eye contact. He clamped a hand over his mouth as he belched rather loudly, coughing back black smoke. He looked mortified to see Mal while he was in this state, but sighed in resignation. "I'm not entirely sure what's wrong with me. All I know is I'm feeling awful and probably look like a wreck." Mallard looked at him with concern and a hint of confusion, not entirely sure what to do with him like this. He weakly gestured for him to join him under the covers and pulled his hands around his clammy body. He'd slowly but steadily been putting on weight in preservation, something that presented itself as a new roundness to his rear and thighs and a plump, gently curved belly. But by the upset gurgles and tightness in his middle, Mal could tell he was bloated. "See if you can press into it a bit. Or if all else fails, try rubbing." Mal gingerly began stroking light circles, unsure in his actions. He weakly met his hands with his own and urged him to rub a bit harder. His mouth gaped a bit, trying what he could to get out some of the gas. He felt some air coming up and Mal braced for one of his notoriously fierce burps. But felt stifled. Soft. He squeezed him a bit tighter as he saw him struggling, but he just whimpered in pain as the pressure shot a bolt of pain through his swollen gut. "It's okay, I'm sure you can do it." "urp." Another weak one. His face was strained as he tried to muster a stronger belch, but he just couldn't manage it. "Ugh, I'm usually more than adapt at this sort of thing." Mal was silent, not really sure what he could say in response to make him feel better. He curled his long limbs around him and began to gently rub him, one hand on his belly and the other drifting between the other places he knew he enjoyed having touched. The bit of muffin top that poked over his waistband, his broad, somewhat malleable chest, his rounded jawline, his full thighs and rear. The Duke sighed and rested his head on Mal's shoulder, as he often had done to him when he didn't feel well either. He closed his eyes and sighed in contentment, flinching as his stomach roiled and weakly managing another soft burp. "Thank you, Mal." ---------------------- Green Arrow wasn't exactly taking static display well. She could hardly stand to stay in her engine while the visitors were there as she was so jittery and kept popping out to run around and stretch her legs. She kept up the other engines at night with the rhythmic thumping of her pressing off against the walls at the end of the hallway she had chosen as her raceway. "Dear Riddles, won't you calm down, Greenie? Some engines here appreciate having some downtime, you know?" She turned to see Evening Star casting her an annoyed but half-asleep glance. "Sorry. Being couped up like this all day is just... intolerable. Ugh, I'm used to rushing about with freight and railtours, not sitting around like this all the time." "Eh, you'll lose the energy eventually. I guess I can't really blame you for enjoying it while you can." "What sorts of things do you guys tend to do when you're bored, anyways?" "Eh, you know. The stuff you hear Mal get up to. Deviant things, eating too much, arguing, sometimes venturing to the outside world if we feel like nobody wil notice we're gone. Though that can be tough if we can't find someone in better shape to help us sneak out. Hard to be stealthy when you can barely walk-" "We can eat?" "Well, plenty of us have. It's kind of nice, though not exactly necessary..." She suddenly got an amazing idea. Surely having something heavy to eat would calm her down. "I have some ice cream in the freezer. Well it's actually Scotsman's, but he goes through it fast enough I'll don't think he'll even care if it's gone. Want to try some?" She nodded. Soon she was helping Evening Star walk to the room. ---- "My heads hurts." "It's just brain freeze. Get used to it or try pressing your tongue to the roof of your mouth. How's it taste?" "It's wonderful. So this is what tasting things is like..." "Personally I like the satisfaction of swallowing as well." She winked. Her statement was both honest and a subtle prod to hurry up a bit, as she was getting rather tired and was hoping Green would settle down sooner if she got this done quicker. Green seemed content to have her feed her little spoonfuls of it. Eve sighed in a bit of irritation. Those Big Four locos were used to having to be fussed after so much compared to other Standards and it showed in this form as well. Preferred to be coddled and a bit dependent rather than be spared the indignity of having others do so much for them. Still, it was kind of nice. The more she looked at her, the more she realized she was rather cute. Looked a bit like Scotsman had back in the day, but a bit smaller. Typical straight torso and slight ramp to her hips like the larger Gresley tended to have. Perhaps not the most conventionally attractive face, but her features were bold and distinct, but approachable and gentle, with somewhat thick eyebrows, large eyes, and a straight, solid nose. She felt a bit guilty for feeling this way about her, given how she often seemed uncomfortable when others expressed their attraction to her. Still, she seemed distracted enough by the novelty of eating that she didn't seem bothered by her stare. She'd never paid much attention to her until now, but she did have nice lips. Green smiled contentedly and tried to get up, only to groan in pain and flop back down on Eve's lap. "Why does it hurt?" "Mmm, sometimes if you eat too much it can hurt like that. It usually happens when you try it the first time unless you only go with a little bit." "Any way to make it go away?" Eve blushed and looked away a bit. "Uhh, I can try rubbing you there... i-if you're alright with that." "That would be nice." She put the near-empty container and spoon down and rested her hands over her middle. Unsurprisingly, she wasn't as big as say, Mallard or Scotsman who'd been eating for a while and could handle a lot more. She began to gently stroke and knead at the slight bulge, which made Green squirm a bit from the tickling. "Do you like that?" "I love it, do it some more!" She began to relax a bit, and nodded in agreement. Green wasn't as soft as a lot of the engines in the museum, as she'd been active until relatively recently. Still, she had a nice squish to her like most bigger engines did and it felt nice. Seeing how much she was enjoying it and how her discomfort seemed to be subsiding, Eve began to tickle her sides and squeeze at her.

#don't expect much more with lady subjects #i learned writing this that imagining kink stuff with them is just really awkward for me #it feels too real #also I'll probably go a bit quiet for a bit. I've been feeling pretty dead inside lately and uninterested in contact #not sure why tbh #pphfffics #duke of gloucester #green arrow #evening star #tubbyducky

4 notes · View notes

chicagoindiecritics · 4 years

Text

New from Jeff York on The Establishing Shot: “CATS”, QUITE SIMPLY, IS A DOG

If you saw the trailer, you had a good idea of just how badly conceived the filmed adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical CATS was going to be. But after seeing the 110-minute, $95 million mess, bad is too small of a word. This film is a dog.

Seldom has an adaptation been as blundered at every level as this one. One could readily list a hundred mistakes in it, and I’m sure the makers of those “Everything Wrong With” videos on YouTube will go to town in exactly that way. Me? I’ll list nine, an appropriate number given the number of lives felines are supposed to have. This CATS, however, and all of its screw-ups, arrives in the cineplex DOA.

1.) The source material has aged badly

When he wrote the musical in 1981, Webber kept faithfully true to the T.S. Eliot source material – the book of poems entitled “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.” Eliot’s musings about felines were equally nonsensical and whimsical. He coined the term “Jellicle cat” to signify scruffy, black and white cats, which he had a fondness for. By the time you’ve heard the cast sing that gibberish word for the hundredth time, you’ll wish he had just used a term like “domesticated cat” or “pet.” The lyrics sound creaky, dated, and not particularly charming or funny, like a lot of Eliot’s misguided take on cats. (Cats aren’t supposed to drink milk or dream, for example. Need I go on?) The odd poetry really doesn’t play in 2019, especially when the one song that is crystal clear in meaning and intent is a new song written by Taylor Swift for this adaptation. There’s quaint, and then there’s irritating and worn, and too much of the jellicleness falls into the latter category here.

2.) The look of the cat/human hybrids is ugly and inconsistent

The form-fitting fur costumes for the big screen accentuate human anatomy more than suggest our four-legged friends. The film is supposed to be family-friendly, but the look of the characters is far too sexualized, too Dr. Moreau. Rebel Wilson’s Jennyanydots portrayal is the most egregious, as she rubs her loins and holds her tail between her legs as if it’s an erection. Why they simply didn’t ape the stage costumes is a puzzler as John Napier’s award-winning designs mixed dancewear with tasteful fur trimming and some human clothing, but nothing about it conjured the feel of a “furry” fetishist.

Also, the attempts to look like real cats are inconsistent. Sure, the ears move, as do the whiskers, but what good is any of that when all the cats have human hands and feet, and often left flesh-colored at that. Couldn’t such appendages have been painted or covered with gloves or socks? And why aren’t any of the cats’ noses painted here? Cats’ noses are pink, brown, and almost always a different color than the yap surrounding them. To a cat lover, it’s inexplicable.

3.) The special effects aren’t very special

The cat dancers here do a lot of wonderfully slinky moves, just like they did on stage, but the movie wants them to be able to leap about too and that requires wirework. Granted, the wires were removed in post-production, but when the dancers jump high in the sky here, it looks like crappy stuntwork. The movements are slow and rickety.

The effect of removing the human ears in post-production looks wrong too. Not enough hair fills out the edges of the face, giving some cast members the look of a burn victim or plastic surgery gone amuck. Placing human faces on the mice and cockroach characters is ugly and cheap-looking as well, but then so is the whole grotesque concept of Busby Berkeley dancing vermin.

4.) The acting soars…over-the-top

On Broadway, you can be as big as you want because you’re playing to the balcony. Movies are a whole other matter. Close-ups on film don’t require the same large efforts. Director Tom Hooper failed to learn from his mistakes in the movie version of LES MISERABLES that he directed. He shoved the camera right up into the actors’ faces to prove that they weren’t lip-syncing. Unfortunately, it showed off too much spittle and spray too. The same happens here. Jennifer Hudson’s Grizabella is so screechy, melodramatic, and moist, it makes a sympathetic character into a shrill one.

As for most of the rest of the cast, they either mug shamelessly or overdo the cat clichés. James Corden is slyly funny until he starts hacking up hairballs. Ian McKellen creates some pathos as Gus the Theater Cat, but then he vamps through his solo number and the heart-tugging moment almost becomes laughable. At least Judi Dench attempts to underplay throughout, but she’s not helped by a costume that makes her look more like Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion than a dignified Old Deuteronomy.

5.) If you’re going to write dialogue, resist hoary cat puns

Webber’s original stage production was a sung-thru musical. Adding dialogue now, with cheap puns like, “Cat got your tongue?” and “Cat’s out of the bag” should’ve given the filmmakers pause. (Not paws.) There are too many cat behavioral clichés on display too, with the cast leaning hard on traits like hissing, preening, and lip-licking. They’re like students in a freshman improv class – “Okay, everyone, now you’re all cats!”

6.) Taylor Swift is wasted in a nothing role

She looks quite good in her “Josie and the Pussycats” kind of way, but her role as Bombalurina is virtually a throwaway. For starters, she doesn’t appear onscreen until the last 30 minutes, and then all she does basically is sing about what a badass Macavity is. We already know that as Idris Alba’s character is clearly the villain of this piece as evidenced by his every insidious action and all the snide lines he utters. Where’s Bombalurina been the whole time?

7.) The scale is all wrong

The cats here are too small in the context of many of the film’s settings, particularly its human homes. The scale isn’t properly proportioned as almost everything is too oversized, reminiscent of the fantasy sequences in ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. Such satirical scale worked there because it was a spoof of childhood. Here, it just looks wrong.

8.) Are we in a human world or a cat world?

The opening scene has a high-heeled woman step out of a car and throw her bagged pet away in a dirty alley. Additionally, Gus sings about appearing on stage with Shakespearean actors. But then the city marquees, billboards, and hotel names all are ‘cat-ified.’ So, are we in the human world or a modified cat one? Such inconsistencies should have been taken care of in the first pass through Final Draft.

9.) Tom Hooper is not a natural for such material

The Oscar-winning director for THE KING’S SPEECH tends to do well with character-driven pieces, like JOHN ADAMS on HBO and PRIME SUSPECT on Granada Television for the UK. Musicals are different though, requiring a sophisticated blend of the extroverted and the intimate. Too much of LES MIZ felt histrionic and broad, and the same goes here. He’s also not a natural at moving the camera and relies far too much on actors moving in and out of frame to give his film action.

Casting principal dancer Francesca Hayward of the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden as the lead cat Victoria here was his one inspired choice. She’s got expressive eyes and entrancing moves, and she makes her audience conduit character the calm in all the storm around her.

Alternately, Hooper badly botches the presentation of magical Mr. Mistoffelees, letting actor Laurie Edwards play him as far too irritating. The “Skimbleshanks” number not only feels extraneous here, but the character comes off as completely lackluster in the way Steven McRae performs the part. And the estimable Ray Winstone is given little to do but growl as Captain Growltiger, another throwaway role. So much for Hooper being such “an actor’s director.”

Perhaps the simple, stage-bound show should have remained so. Doing an adaptation of it almost 40 years after the fact is crazy late too, not helped by the fact that playwright John Guare satirized the notion of a CATS movie musical in his award-winning play SIX DEGREES OF SEPERATION way back in 1990. CATS is not a great musical onstage, anyway, but it’s been an enormous success for decades and should have garnered a better adaptation. And cats, as a superior species, certainly deserve a lot better than this effort too.

from The Establishing Shot https://ift.tt/2Mc8HpO via IFTTT

from WordPress https://ift.tt/2Z43HJ2 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress #CIFCC #film critics #movies #film #Chicago

0 notes

akamaru01 · 5 years

Text

Ya know what I didn’t want to really get into the shit show that is the discussion on the Sonic movie but here we are

I’m gonna try and make this like an analysis, what it looks like happened in chronological order, and what the hell is going on and maybe a bit on how people are reacting

For a bit more info on me I am currently a studying 3D artist because I will get a bit technical at times

I’ll also put it under a read more because not everyone wants to see it so HERE WE GO starting off with where I think shit went wrong in production (Spoiler: People high up on the food chain probably fucked up big time and interfered too much)

(Note: This will be mainly about the design, not about story)

So obviously as with everything it begins with the original designs made by a character designer. Now from what I have seen the studio actually doing all the CG work for the movie also worked on the cinematics for Sonic Unleashed that released back in 2008. Love or hate the game, you can’t deny that it looked and felt like Sonic. So clearly the studio itself knows what it’s doing.

However, the movie might be made with Sega helping (maybe) on the sideline but the production is controlled by Paramount. That means everything goes through Hollywood Big Wig Executives who probably don’t care about source material and also have no creative abilities and also don’t listen to anyone besides themselves and their investors. SO here is a very short, exaggerated idea of the conversations surrounding the design.

Exec: Hey we’re making a Sonic the Hedgehog movie so make us a Sonic that can fit in a live action movie.

Designer: Okay here you go he looks like regular Sonic but with some texture/material/fur touch ups to look more real

Exec: Too cartoony/Not real enough/Something something make it more like humanoid

Designer: But if we do that it wont look like Sonic, might be too creepy or weird, just looks weird/bad in general

Exec: I can have you fired

Designer: Here it is but people won’t like it

Exec: Yes they will, now get to work and make some posters people will love it (or not, it’s hard to say if they would really care as long as people see the movie and it makes money)

You get the idea. This probably continues all throughout production, maybe eventually they give up trying to change minds or they’re just too tired or it’s too late who knows.

So the posters come out and oh boy they were a thing that exists now

And so people do the thing and dunk on the look of it, get in their criticisms, which I think criticising or not liking something is well within peoples rights ya know?

At this point maybe the conversation comes back something like this

Artists: Yo we told you people wouldn’t like this let’s change it while we’re still relatively early in production (mabey) and can adjust it and not spend months with actual animating/lighting,post production

Execs: No no this is fine who cares it’s not even moving yet it’ll be fine

Artists: No it won’t

Execs: Jobs

Artists: Fuck, alright

So nothing changes, time passes, and here we are and by the way

Trailer editor: Hey for the background music I am thinking something upbeat and fun like the Sonic music from the games

Execs: No no make it edgy and cool like Gangsters Paradise

Editor: .... fucking why

So we got the Sonic trailer drop and guess what everyone dunked on like this isn’t even a shock at this point people analyze and criticise fucking everything (especially 3D) this time it just so happened to be on a massive fucking scale

So from a personal note my reaction was “This looks like shit I ain’t gonna bother with it”. From what I saw the general consensus’ were either basically what I said or “This looks like shit I’m gonna watch it anyway”. Absolutely no one I saw said “This needs to be fixed before the movie comes out” from what I saw people basically were just ready for it to flop and we’ll try again later. Even if some people were calling for a redesign I doubt even they expected what was coming next

So, this seems to be what ended up happening

Execs: -trailer release-

Internet: Yo this looks like shit wtf

Execs: Oh shit we fucked up

Internet: Yeah you did

Execs: Don’t worry we’ll fix this

Internet & Artists: What

Execs: We’ll overhaul and redesign him before the movie releases as scheduled

Everyone else: WHAT

Because here is what that means. The artists and animators will have to redesign (or maybe go back to an old design), adjust the model or maybe worse completely redo it, change textures, possibly adjust or recreate the rig, REANIMATE ALMOST IF NOT EVERYTHING, adjust lighting, re combine the new CG footage with the live action, make sure it all looks good and no clipping

What’s most likely is that this is gonna be hell for the studio leading up to release if they don’t delay the movie, which they have not said anything about yet and that’s not a good sign.

But now here is where the biggest variable comes in: How much will change?

Minor changes that don’t affect overall proportions and placement of details means they could keep the same rig and animations and just check for touch ups. HOWEVER these kind of minor changes probably won’t help much, if at all. Honestly besides textures and small changes to fur the only thing that can really be adjusted without much worry is the teeth because they can be the same size and they don’t have to deform or do a lot of crazy movement.

But in order to fix any of the actual problems with it, besides teeth, will require a crap ton more work. Any changes to the eye shapes, sizes or placement, and any changes to the mouth and surrounding areas will require a new or heavily adjusted face rig, which will completely throw off eye movements and lip syncs and those will need to be redone.

Any changes to proportions of any kind will require an adjustment of the rig, which could throw off the animations already set and need to rework them almost everywhere, and maybe redo them completely in a worst case scenario. If the hands change at all they have to adjust every single shot where he is holding or touching something, same with his feet, and really same with his head, quills, freaking everything.

All this in 6 months? Doable, but not without a fuck ton of unnecessary sacrifice.

But we don’t know what this redesign will look like, so it’s impossible to speculate on how much these artists and workers are going to be fucked over and pushed and destroyed for this.

Basically, odds are the artists are gonna be the ones paying for the mistake of those higher up on the food chain, and if the movie does well then, similar to what recently happened with game studio Bioware, they’re going to think “Oh it’s okay that it’s all shit for so long and then we push and destroy our artists at the last minute because it works” which it fucking doesn’t. If they had listened to their people at the beginning, this could have been avoided. No matter what some people still would have been like “ew 3D sonic live action” but no where near this degree.

So the final thing to touch on is some of the reactions after the announcement of redesign. Because I have seen... a lot. All across the spectrum.

I am going to try and talk about some of the more basic groups that these reactions fall under that I’ve seen.

Before we get into those though I want to say something that kind of applies to all of them: I think criticizing the design and look is okay. Talking about how you don’t like it and why and how it could be better is good, outside of ya know the extreme stuff like death threats or whatever, not that I’ve seen those really around this project but they probably exist.

So the first one is basically where I stand on the issue personally. The design sucked, they should have listened more and let it be more stylized and it still would have fit (because suspension of disbelief is a thing and what they have now certainly doesn’t fit in any more than regular Sonic would). I expected them to release it, it flops, no more Sonic movies for a while. If they were gonna fix it they should have done it a long time ago. I am not happy that they are going to punish their staff and artists for their own mistakes and now they’re trying to cover it up.

Now the next argument is one I have seen around here and there, and I understand it, but don’t completely agree. It’s the argument that we, as a collective group, complained about the design, and now we are at fault that the artists have to redo it. There is some truth that if the internet did not go “This sucks” then it would be over and it would have gone on to release as planned. Personally though, I feel like this takes away 2 things: 1) The right of consumers to dislike a thing and 2) The blame away from the executives who made the decisions not only about the initial design but also to change it so late in production. Should they not be held accountable as well? There is a piece that occasionally goes along with this along the lines of “You’re getting so wrapped in a kids movie” or something like that but like: This might (?) be a kids movie but really the target audience is largely the adults who grew up with Sonic. Also bad is bad and kids movies can be great they don’t have to be trash and also kids movies can be enjoyed by people of all ages.

There are smaller sections of discussion, usually quickly stamped out, about how “They fucked it up this is their fault” placing blame on the artists, but this usually comes from a place of ignorance and not knowing how the process works and who makes all the final decisions. The other side of that is “Whatever it’s gonna be shit no matter what I am/am not gonna watch it regardless” or “Idk looks fun I’ll watch it either way”.

To basically sum it up The people in charge probably fucked up, people rightly were like “Lol look at this shit” and now those same higher ups are gonna overwork the artists to fix their own mistake

#Sonic #Sonic Movie #Sonic the Hedgehog #fuck that was more than i expected to type #the end

0 notes

drink-n-watch · 5 years

Text

Genre: Supernatural, romance, reverse harem, adventure, isekai

Episodes: 26

Studio: Gonzo

They say that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. But I’ve long suspected it’s the way to anyone’s heart. It certainly works for me, as well as every single pet I’ve ever had. Turns out, it’s also the way to a Yokai’s heart. This is very good news for Aoi when she finds herself suddenly spirited away to the hidden realm having been left as collateral for her grandfather’s debt to the great Orc master. If it hadn’t been for her prodigious cooking skills she might have found herself married off to the great spirit without so much as a say in the matter. Now at least she has a chance to work off the debt as a chef at the master’s Inn. But great Orcs might not be quite as bad as they seem, there are worse things than a powerful mate to take care of us. Still Aoi is determined to prove her worth on her own in this strange new world full of supernatural threats, wondrous magic and delicious delights.

Occasionally I’ll do this little exercise at the beginning of a new season. I’ll line up a bunch of shows and watch the first few minutes of episode one to determine whether I should just installed drop them, continue watching them as they air or set them aside for binge consumption. Option 2 doesn’t get a lot of use.

Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast for Spirits was one of those shows I was holding off on until it finished airing and I was really looking forward to it. I already knew it was a calm slightly silly story filled with Yokai and magic. I realized that the art was not my favorite but it was serviceable and the colors were nice. I built up some fairly unreasonable expectations based on my past experiences with Yokai themed anime. Did it live up to my self generated hype?

I’ve exercised, I’ve earned this!

Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast for Spirits is a two cour show. I mention it because I assume this has some impact on budgeting. I don’t actually know. However, it’s what I’ve decided to blame for just how uneven this production is. Soundtrack is fine but extremely repetitive. The voice cast is a bit all over the place. Although no one is downright awful, you can clearly hear the difference in acting levels between the different characters, which robs a lot of scenes of emotional resonance.

But of all the technical elements, it’s art and animation that suffer most. Animation is fairly minimal in general, which isn’t a bad thing in this case, but occasionally episodes will throw in so many still shots you could start thinking you’re watching an extremely slow stop motion animation. And art is completely uneven. The base designs are pretty good. I think there’s something wrong with the proportions of Ali’s head when her hair is down but otherwise everyone is good to great looking. The problem is the art is so inconsistent it can be difficult to recognize characters if it weren’t for their outfits. You have no idea how many screenshots I threw out because they were ugly.

others are adorable

This inconsistency is glaring from scene to scene and can really take you out of the moment. The show is mostly an isekai adventure with some romantic elements and a few dramatic beats. It’s the sort of story that really benefits from suspension of disbelief and allowing the audience to get lost in the adventure but this goes straight out the window when you find yourself bursting in laughter at how randomly derpy everyone looks every other episode.

However, I really mean the art is uneven. There are also beautiful scenes and great design choices. I regularly found myself staring at how Ginji’s kimono was held together by a strap around his shoulders. It folded with his movements as well. It’s a traditional men’s kimono design, nothing particularly extravagant but it was well executed band suited the character. Little touches like that are also omnipresent so you just never know what to expect.

this guy is probably the one that is the most difficult to recognize from time to time

I won’t lie. Of course I thought of Natsume. I always think of Natsume so if you give me a story like Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast for Spirits, full of sad childhoods and feisty Yokai, I really don’t have a choice but to make the comparison. This is unfair to any show and seems particularly cruel to a reverse harem. Not that genre means anything…. Fact is I really should I should have been comparing it to Ayakashi Gohan! For those of you that have never heard of it, it’s a delightful of otome that I played because Naja told me to. The stories aren’t identical but definitely similar with the orphaned lady taken in by Yokai and the importance of and connections we make through food.

That doesn’t tell you much though. Let’s put it this way, Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast for Spirits is a shaky structure built on strong foundations. The base premise is downright wonderful. After the death of her grandfather and guardian, Aoi, a strong willed young woman who can see Yokai, finds out that her beloved grandad left her as collateral for a huge partying bill he wracked up in the Yokai world. Now she must either marry the ogre lord who owns the Dept or find another way to repay it. It’s a fun and full of possibilities. I really like it as a start off point. Even though the actual plot (or rather plots) stray from it quite a bit, eventually turning the second season closer to a quest based adventure, it’s also consistently interesting.

we even got a villain!

The inhabitants of the southern reaches of the Yokai world must perform a ceremony every 100 years or so to avoid disaster but in order to proceed they must collect an assortment of elusive treasures and face deadly obstacles. Cool right? Sounds like you could have a lot of fun with that. Throw in just a peppering of romance, a bit of humour, and you have a sturdy formula.

Unfortunately, the character building and dialogue just doesn’t do it justice. There’s a lot of clunky exposition and lackluster wordplay. Everyone is a slight variation of eccentric but nice with Raiju being the only exception. Mostly every character was pleasant and the anime as a whole was comfortable but forgettable.

I’m a fan of reverse harems, anime recipes and Yokai centric stories so Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast for Spirits checked a lot of boxes for me. I can’t say I regret watching all 24 episodes and would probably watch more if available. However, there’s no denying that this is an objectivity average show at best and there’s no need to go out of your way to watch it unless you also have these particular fetishes…

I’m just gonna leave this here

Favorite characters: The krane twins but I’m also team Ginji

What this anime taught me: I was looking at the scene showing Ginji in his beast form and he really reminded me of someone… Is Nyanko a kitsune spirit??

right?

Exercise makes you look better naked, so does wine. Your choice..

Suggested drink: Fir Gin Fix

Every time Aoi is threatened by her fiancee (this will make sense) – take a sip

Every time Aoi cooks – breath in

Every time the debt is mentioned – take a sip

Every time we see Aoi’s grandfather – get some water

if he’s young – switch back to booze

Every time Aoi takes care of an injured or sick yokai – take a sip

Every time we see falling sakura petals – take a sip

Every time discovers something questionable about her grandfather – raise your glass

Every time there’s a double entendre – just me?

Every time anyone says Aoi resembles Shiro – take a sip

Every time anyone gets drunk – join them

Every time flashback to the time Aoi’s mom left – be sad

Every time anyone mentions or eats curry – et a snack

Every time Ginji shapeshifts – clap

Every time chibi eats a cucumber – get a different snack. You’ve drank a lot, you need something to soak that up with.

I took a completely unreasonable amount of screencaps so here are a few, you can see the rest here!

Kakuriyo: Bed and Breakfast for Spirits a Light Distraction and Snack Genre: Supernatural, romance, reverse harem, adventure, isekai Episodes: 26 Studio: Gonzo They say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

#adventure #anime #comedy #food #isekai #Kakuriyo #reverse harem #romance #supernatural #yokai

0 notes

toptecharena · 6 years

Text

The Nikon D850 is finally here. After months of speculation, and Nikon itself teasing us back in July that the camera actually existed and was in development, the D850 has been officially announced – and boy, does it look like it’s been worth the wait.

Superseding the brilliant 36.3MP D810 that’s loved by both pros and enthusiasts alike, the D850 certainly has big shoes to fill. That said, while the D810 ticked a lot of boxes for photographers, its modest burst shooting speed of 5fps meant it wasn’t the perfect all-round DSLR.

Nikon doesn’t appear to be holding back with the D850, though, boosting numerous areas of the camera’s performance to make it appear (on paper at least), the most well-rounded DSLRs we’ve seen. Is the D850, then, the ultimate DSLR?

Watch our hands-on video below

Features

Full-frame CMOS sensor, 45.7MP

Large and bright optical viewfinder

4K video capture

While the D810 retained the same 36.3MP resolution as the groundbreaking Nikon D800/D800e, it’s been eclipsed by both the 50.6MP Canon EOS 5DS and 42.2MP Sony Alpha A7R II. The D850, though, gets an all-new 45.7MP full-frame back-illuminated sensor (BSI), which is a hefty increase in pixels over the D810, and only marginally behind the 5DS.

Thanks to the light-collecting elements being closer to the surface of the sensor, the BSI design should deliver better low-light performance than previous sensors. Just as we’ve seen with the D810 (and D800e), the D850 forgoes an anti-aliasing filter, which means even more detail can be eked out of the sensor, although there is the added risk of moiré patterning.

On the occasions where you don’t want (or need) to shoot at the D850’s full resolution, there are two reduced size options, 25.6MP and 11.4MP, recording either raw or JPEG files. We can certainly see this feature appealing to news and sports shooters who’ll want to transmit images as quickly a possible to picture desks, and might have otherwise passed up the D850 in favor of the 20.8MP Nikon D5.

Another trick up the D850’s sleeve is the camera’s DX Crop mode, in which the perimeter of the viewfinder is masked to provide a view equivalent to that of an APS-C-format DSLR. The resolution drops, as you’re only using a portion of the sensor, but thanks to the D850’s huge resolution you’ll still be able to capture 19.4MP files – that’s impressive stuff, and not far off the 20.9MP resolution of both the D500 or D7500. There’s also a new 1:1 aspect ratio at 30.2MP.

Compared to the D500 (and, for that matter, the D5), the Nikon D850 has quite a modest ISO ceiling of 25,600, with a native base sensitivity of ISO64. This is no surprise really when you consider how densely populated the sensor is, but there is an extended sensitivity range up to an ISO equivalent of 108,400 (Hi2), while landscape photographers will be happy to learn that the D850 also has a Lo1 setting equivalent to ISO32.

The D850 sports a new 0.75x optical viewfinder – that’s the largest magnification factor ever on an FX Nikon DSLR, and also a touch bigger than the 0.71x viewfinder on the 5DS. Unlike the D810, the D850 also features a tilt-angle, 3.2-inch 2,359,000-dot touchscreen. It’s similar in spec to the one on the D500, but offers greater touch control, enabling you to navigate the menus as well as touch to focus, trigger the shutter and review images.

The D850 can shoot 4K UHD video in FX format with no sensor cropping at up to 30p, allowing you to take full advantage of the field of view of your lenses. Lower-resolution video modes are also available, including Full HD footage in 60p, while 4K UHD timelapse movies can be created in-camera.

If 4K timelapse footage isn’t quite enough for you, the D850 can also create a full resolution time-lapse videos in third-party software thanks to the camera’s built-in intervalometer – you can now create a new folder and reset the file numbering for each timelapse sequence, and avoid the rigmarole of stripping out the desired files yourself.

The D850 drops the CompactFlash card slot that was on the D810 in favor of an XQD slot

There’s also an electronic Vibration Reduction system to reduce the impact of camera shake when shooting movies handheld, and there are ports for an external microphone and audio monitoring.

The D850 drops the CompactFlash card slot that was on the D810 in favor of an XQD slot and the performance advantages that brings (although at the moment Nikon is the only manufacturer to take up this storage format on its cameras), while the SD card slot supports cards up to UHS-II.

The D850 gets Nikon’s SnapBridge connectivity for wireless transfer of images, which establishes a low-energy Bluetooth connection between the camera and your smart device. Images can then be transferred from camera to device via as you shoot at either 2MP or full resolution (though we’d avoid this with 45.4MP files), or individually if you select images on the camera. For speedier Wi-Fi transfers you can use the app to browse and select the images you desire.

Best full-frame camera: 10 advanced DSLRs and mirrorless cameras

Nikon mirrorless camera release date, price, news and leaks

Build and handling

Magnesium alloy body

Comprehensive weather-sealing

Weighs 1005g

The Nikon D850 may share similar proportions to the D810, but quite a bit has changed.

Pick up the camera, and if you’re coming from a D810 or D800, the first thing that strikes you is the re-worked grip. It’s now that bit deeper, and much more comfortable to hold than its predecessor, especially for longer periods.

As on the D500, Nikon has omitted the pop-up flash in an effort to make the camera even sturdier. Some may be sorry to see this feature disappear – we’ve found it useful in the past for triggering remote Speedlights – but it’s always felt like a bit of a weak link on a pro-spec DSLR.

And with no pop-up flash, a tough magnesium alloy body, and weather seals to protect it from the elements, the D850 feels every bit the pro DSLR you’d expect it to be. It’s incredibly well made, and there’s no question this camera’s up for the rigors of professional use.

Compared to the D810, the controls have also been tweaked on the D850 – in fact, if you’ve been shooting with the D500 or D5, it should be pretty much home from home for you, and if you’re planning on using different bodies side by side it should making switching between them pretty seamless.

If you’re coming from a D810 though, you’ll notice that the top plate arrangement has changed for a start, and it’s much better for it. The ISO button now sits just behind the shutter button, which makes it easier to adjust single-handed; it’s an improvement on the slightly awkward positioning on the D810, where it sat in the cluster of four buttons above the drive mode selector.

The D850 offers a refined shooting experience

Round the back, and along with the tilt-angle display the other notable addition is a small AF joystick, like the one we’ve seen on both the D500 and D5. This enables you to quickly select your desired focus point, although you can still use the eight-way controller on the back of the camera if you prefer. Its positioning means it falls under the thumb easily; if we’re being super-picky it would be nice to be able to assign this as the back-button focus control as well, but the AF-On button is positioned just above the joystick.

As on the D500, you can set the majority of the controls on the Nikon D850 to light up (along with the top-plate LCD) by rotating the on/off switch beyond the ‘on’ position – it’s a really useful feature that makes it much easier to quickly change settings in poor light.

All in all, the D850 offers very refined shooting experience. You’ll be able to happily shoot and tweak core shooting settings without taking your eye away from the viewfinder.

Autofocus

153-point AF, 99 cross-type AF points

User-selected array limited to 55 points

Impressive coverage across the frame

The 51-point autofocus system in the D810 is still one of the best performers out there, but Nikon has equipped the D850 with the same Multi-CAM 20K AF module as its flagship D5.

In our book this is one of the best, if not the best, autofocus systems we’ve seen on any camera to date. It features an impressive 153 AF points, of which 55 are user-selectable, while 99 are the more sensitive cross-type points for even greater precision. That’s not all – AF sensitivity goes all the way down to -4EV for the central AF point (with the remainder focusing down to -3EV), which should enable the D850 to focus pretty much in almost complete darkness.

As we’ve experienced with the D5, the system is excellent, with sports and action photographers unlikely to be disappointed by the D850’s autofocus performance.

If you’re coming from the 51-point AF system in the D810 you’ll notice the difference, particularly in poor light – even in these tricky conditions the D850’s ultra-sensitive AF snapped into focus incredibly quickly.

We tested the D850 in a range of conditions, with its toughest challenge coming when we shot the Tour of Britain’s Time Trial stage. With cyclists going flat-out, the D850 didn’t let us down; focusing speed was incredibly quick, even letting us grab shots when cyclists appeared in the frame without warning, while it would happily track fast-moving subjects as they moved towards and across the frame.

This scene was almost in pitch black when the shot was taken, but the AF performed extremely well. D850 with 85mm f/1.8, 30 sec at f/16, ISO250

As with the D5 (and the D500), Nikon has included its clever automated procedure for fine-tuning lenses on the D850. It’s an incredibly useful tool for tweaking the performance of prime lenses for critical focusing, and the system on the D850 has been improved to make it even easier to set up and calibrate your lenses.

Something the D850 can’t quite match Canon’s latest DSLRs for is Live View performance. While the Dual Pixel CMOS technology used in the likes of the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV can rival that of mirrorless cameras, Live View focusing with the D850 is still a little clunky; it’s better than previous models, but still not as swift as it could be.

Best Nikon lenses: 10 high-end optics for full-frame Nikon DSLRs

Performance

7fps burst shooting (9fps with battery grip)

51 shot raw file buffer

1,840-shot battery life

Despite the decent increase in pixels over the D810, the Nikon D850 features an increased burst shooting speed, up from 5fps to 7fps, making it an even more versatile piece of kit.

Furthermore, attach the optional MB-D18 battery grip to the D850 with a large EN-EL18B battery (as used in the D5) inserted, and that rate will increase to 9fps. This certainly compares favorably with the 5fps shooting speed of both the Canon EOS 5DS and Sony Alpha A7R II, and considering the size of the files the D850 has to process, the 51-shot buffer (at 14-Bit raws) is also very impressive.

The D850’s standard battery is the EN-EL15 – it’s the same power pack used by the D810, but Nikon has managed to squeeze even more life out of the battery here to deliver a staggering 1,840-shot life. To put that in perspective, you’d need seven NP-FW50 batteries with the Alpha A7R II to reach anything like the D850’s battery capacity, or two LP-E6N batteries with a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV.

Something that’s bound to appeal to wedding and social photographers is the D850’s ability to utilize an electronic shutter to shoot silently at 6fps in Live View mode. Need more speed? Select the DX crop mode and you can shoot 8.6MP pictures at an impressive 30fps.

The D850’s Matrix metering system performs well in a range of lighting conditions

The D850 employs a 180K-pixel RGB sensor (the same as the D5’s), offering metering down to -3EV. This may not sound like a big deal, but if you’re shooting long exposures with ND filters you can now rely fully on the D850’s AE and AF without needing to detach the filter. In our tests, the D850’s multi-zone Matrix metering system performed very well under a range of lighting conditions, while the breadth of the camera’s dynamic range (more on that in a bit) means you’ve got a fair bit of leeway should the camera get it wrong.

The D850 features three types of auto white balance to cover you for most scenarios. Auto 0 should faithfully render whites under any light sources, Auto 1 maintains a balance of the original subject color and ambient lighting, while Auto 2 renders colors with a natural sense of warmth, retaining the color of incandescent lighting.

The optical viewfinder is stunning; it’s incredibly large and bright, while the clarity of the rear touchscreen display doesn’t disappoint.

Image quality

ISO64-25,600 (expandable to ISO32-108,400)

Additional 25.6MP Medium and 11.4MP Small raw file sizes

Built-in focus stacking

As you’d expect from a sensor packing 45.4 million pixels, the level of detail the Nikon D850 is capable of resolving is impressive. You’ll be able to produce large prints rich in detail, although it goes without saying that to make the most of the sensor you’ll need the best glass.

When it comes to high-ISO noise performance, again the D850 doesn’t disappoint. Images up to ISO3200 display excellent levels of detail, with minimal noise, while at ISO3200 there’s barely any luminance (grain-like) noise in images, and no hint of chroma (color) noise.

Push above that to ISO6400, and while luminance noise is slightly more pronounced, it’s still very good – we’d be more than happy to shoot at this sensitivity. Even at ISO12,800 and ISO25,600, while noise is more noticeable it’s still well controlled, and results are more than acceptable. Above that we’d try to avoid the two extended settings, which see saturation dropping off a tad; however, with some tweaking in Lightroom or similar it might be possible to get a satisfactory result at ISO51,200.

The D810 has always impressed with its dynamic range performance, and the good news is that despite the extra pixels populating the D850’s sensor it appears to be a similar story here. It’s possible to severely underexpose a shot and be able to happily recover shadow detail without unwanted noise encroaching on the shot.

Manually shooting focus-stacked images can be a chore, but the D850 introduces a focus shift photography function, which enables it to shoot a sequence of up to 300 frames, while gradually and automatically shifting focus position from the start point to infinity. The shutter release interval can be set from 0-30 seconds, while the focus step width can be selected from 10 levels.

You’ll need an image-editing program like Photoshop to then combine the pictures in post-production, but this looks like a great way to quickly shoot highly detailed macro images

Best DSLR camera: 10 models to suit all budgets

Verdict

It’s felt like a long time coming, but the Nikon D850 has definitely been worth the wait. To say the specification is comprehensive is an understatement; the D850 is packed with desirable photographic features, while it backs these up with impressive performance and stunning image quality.

Live View focusing speeds could still be better, while the rather rudimentary SnapBridge connectivity offered is disappointing; but those issues aside, whether you’re shooting weddings, landscapes, portraits, action or wildlife, the D850 won’t leave you wanting.

A much more versatile proposition than the D810 (and its closest rivals), the D850 is a brilliant DSLR, and perhaps the most well-rounded camera we’ve ever tested.

Competition

Go to Source Author: Nikon D850 review The Nikon D850 is finally here. After months of speculation, and Nikon itself teasing us back in July that the camera actually existed and was in development, the D850 has been officially announced – and boy, does it look like it's been worth the wait.

0 notes

milliepartlow24-blog · 7 years

Text

Seven Priceless Tips To Help You Get Better At group.

This Year Will Be The Year of group.

Although playing video game is a healthy activity that maintains an individual literally and also emotionally healthy, however there are likewise several minus factors. A great sales group should be able to persuade their customer that they require information systems jobs - click through the up coming web page - exactly what is being marketed to them. The number of runs scored per period by the team has improved considerably throughout those years of 2004 via 2012, from 33 to 114 crowning achievement. A coach keeps her eye on the big picture and maintains that vision in the leading edge for every person on the team. This is incredibly challenging to do which's its factor, it makes a sales team think hard concerning just what questions to ask and also how you can ask them. Possibly a youth team structure workshop is in order if you're tired of dealing with limitless conflict as well as observing circumstances of pecking order in your classroom. The smaller sized the team, the extra quickly it will be for every staff member to stay on task. There incredible ability to win games and also edge out opposition teams is amazing for such a small nation. These types of events are almost like bribes to keep the worker pleased, instead of possibilities to discover and become better as a group. The turbulent worker( s) will certainly aim to gather 1 or 2, and also often more individuals to support their disruptive tasks and actions. Spenti i riflettori sulla Granfondo San Camillo De Lellis, registrato il grande successo organizzativo, è pace di bilanci in casa Bike Team Bucchianico che non ha trascurato ogni minimo dettaglio agli occhi dei bikers e degli addetti ai lavori. The team effort should come prior to any type of employee's very own personal or specialist schedule in the organiztion or team throughout the task. Each team was to designate a captain responsible for setting the approach as well as directing the soldiers. TeamViewer is an essential structure, which assists bring innovation as well as art with each other. Group building tasks should entail as lots of people from the business as possible, and many businesses have discovered that scavenger hunts job truly well. When they understand that they could rely on the support and also encouragement of the group, people will often go to what seems like extreme lengths. TeamViewer sticks out due to the fact that our team love using it. We have not found other remote management software that comes close. One reason is that time is normally a critical component so the group claims Why not simply start addressing the problem as soon as possible?" Well, for a number of reasons this is ineffective. During my succeeding research study I pertained to the final thought that a lot of everyone agrees that there are 3 primary abilities that a good leader must possess: 1. vision, 2. social abilities, and also 3. technological abilities.

Five Reasons You Must Buy team.

Knockback - If you roll increases and hit the opponent, he gets knocked back squares equal to the amount of damage you do. So claim you roll two 5's, and do 2 clicks of damages. GROUP EMPLOYEE - caring; diplomatic; works to deal with dispute in between members; may be indecisive. Concentrate on supplying data based efficiency responses to the team including the effect of current performance both restorative as well as favorable. The primary training school goes to the FIGC headquarters in Coverciano, Florence, and also the interplay their house matches at numerous arenas throughout Italy. The people on the group could have individuality kinds that are rating versus each other. Your totally free test consists of 10 cost-free customer accounts to share, so give it a shot and also get social with your tasks today. Via the years I have actually discovered creative team building workouts help students to join class and to communicate with fellow students in a laid-back non-threatening setting. Open up Expression - Every participant group requires recurring opportunities to share her ideas concerning the group's purpose, procedure as well as procedures, performance, and also personality. Not also the excellent Brazilian Football Group can match the happy winning record of New Zealand.

Right here's What Market Experts Say Regarding group.

Its one-to-five nurse-to-patient ordinary proportion indicates much more customized care from professionally-trained clinical team, including a registered nurse team completely licensed in innovative cardiac life assistance. Keep in mind that these objectives, standards, and goals must be quantifiable, otherwise they will be useless, and also the team will certainly never ever understand if it has accomplished its objective. Amy van der Hiel is the assistant to Tim Berners-Lee as well as part of the W3C Communications Team. She has actually gotten on Group U.S.A 4 times considering that 2006 and has actually helped IMG Worldwide, a global business associated with sports, style, and media. The outcomes are: Time saved, issues solved, more team teamwork, better communication, higher morale, more energy, harmony, interest, imagination, commitment, participation and also higher quality work. She signed up with the Administrative Team in September 2003 and is the primary conference coordinator for European meetings. So not just will your work be a lot more satisfying, it will likewise be much more successful with people you such as on your group. . Ancora un weekend break dall' attività differenziata each il group Silmax X-Bionic che vedrà i suoi atleti impegnati individualmente sia nelle Granfondo che nell' attività Cross Country. Successful group leaders acknowledge this and also look for to leverage this variety of experience to attain also far better outcomes. In fact, as you most likely already know much of the players on 1961 group were developed under Stengal's monitoring. Team advancement is something that is frequently forgotten by companies, especially in these difficult financial times, but they need not take up much business or individual time, as well as they do not have to be costly activities either to be successful.

0 notes

wellmeaningshutin · 7 years

Text

Short Story #58: Star Material.

Written: 3/6/2017

-Okay, its just right over here. Watch your step, and- Tada!

-Is she dead?

-Oh, yeah, but not that dead. She still seems relatively fresh, you know? And look how gorgeous she is, real bombshell, like that pin up girl level of beauty. I think we may have found our next star.

-Yeah, she does still seem a little warm… And she’s not very pale… but I’m not sure about this.

-Why not? This is the chance of a life time, and all we have to do is pump her full of fluids to preserve her. Formaldehyde, right? We just get-

-No, no, I understand all of that, that’s pretty obvious.

-Well, is it the smell? She doesn’t smell that bad right now, and hell, I can smell the fumes right off of the highway more than-

-No its, not-

-Plus, what if some other talent scout comes driving by, sees her all sprawled in the bushes, just like I did.

-No-

-Knows that she has got what it takes, just like I did. See, you don’t get talent like this just any day, these are like once in a life time kind of looks. If you want looks like these, you have to do some digital editing, like this is a woman who would be great outside of photo shoots, and imagine the television interviews.

-Interviews? She is-

-Yeah yeah, okay, I’ll admit that was a dumb idea. Its not like she could talk, so I guess that angle is completely pointless, but the idea behind it still stands. You know, this girl is so ridiculously beautiful, like I bet a model was probably the one who offed her, just to make sure that she’d never get a shot in the spotlight, and this girl is all spot light, she-

-Dave-

-Designers would have to pay fortunes just to get her to wear their clothes, like she is-

-Dave-

-just really gives “drop dead gorgeous” a whole new meaning, like-

-Will you shut the fuck up already? God. You keep yammering off like that, and we’re just going to be bickering in the heat until she gets too hot and bloated, and then she will never be able to be the hotshot model that you want her to be. If we don’t talk about this rationally, there will be nothing to talk about anymore, and then we’re just going to feel like a couple of assholes, aren’t we? There are problems with you whole plan, and you really need to hear me out on them, because this might not be an opportunity in the first place. We need to figure out, too, if we should or shouldn’t load her into the car, but we have to do it like adults. Don’t look at me like that. Do you agree? Come on, don’t act childish right now, we don’t have time for it. Do you agree?

-Yes, okay, whatever.

-Good. Now, one thing I’m worried about is consent, because I’m not sure if she is able to agree to anything.

-Like, wait. Are you talking about for sex, or just the rights to photograph her.

-I’m talking about both. No, don’t give me that look, I’m not going to be the one getting into bed with her. But you know this industry, and you know that the only way you can get anywhere is by sleeping around. I don’t like it either, but we have to be realistic about the situation that we’re in.

-Jesus.

-Jesus couldn’t survive in the fashion industry, so leave him out of it. Shit, the trendiest thing he’s been able to do was with all of the crosses that you see on clothing, but the Romans are more responsible for that than anything. They existed way before him, they had the style already, Christ just gave them his celebrity endorsement. Doesn’t mean he looked good on one, just means he got the word out about it.

-What does that have to do with the girl?

-Sorry, thanks, I was getting a little off topic. But, she really is going to have to put out if she wants to achieve that start potential of hers, but only at the beginning, just so she can get her career going. Now, we need to figure out if she is able to consent, because it could be a whole rape situation, and that’s a rather big turn off. Nobody wants to sleep with a girl who could turn around and accuse them of rape.

-Well, I don’t think she’d be able to accuse them. I don’t think she’s able to do anything except to lie there and stay beautiful.

-Okay, yeah, you have a point there. But I guess family members or feminist groups could come out of the woodwork, just to threaten this good thing we have going here. I guess the threats could exist in that sense, but, now that I think of it, if we just kept it hush hush, there would be no way for those people to know and get all of their grubby hands onto our operation.

-Why would feminist groups care? What business is it of theirs?

-I don’t know, but you know they just like to stir up needless trouble anyways. They tend to blow every little thing out of proportion, and even something as small as the situation with our potential model could set them off into some hysterical rage of theirs.

-Ugh.

-Yeah, I know, but like I said we just have to keep it quiet I guess. That problem kind of worked itself out.

-You’ve been talking for a while now, I’m starting to think that you just wanted to shut me up so that you could dominate the conversation. I’m the one who found her, and we wouldn’t even be having a discussion if it weren’t for me, so-

-Actually, I’m the one who turned it into a discus-

-See! There you go again! You’re just trying to silence me so-

-Alright, alright, say what you have to say.

-Now, law and all of that, we could just have our lawyers on it so there’s really no need to worry about it anyways. One big area of potential I see with her, is one thing that seems like it could be a big disadvantage. She’s very pale, right? Now, what if, when she was getting a lot of traction, we started to allow different cosmetic companies bid for the right to get her all dolled up. Like, she could be a blank canvas for their products, and they could get all the credit for making her look so alive, so beautiful. And then all sorts of sales would come in, because, you know, people would start to think, “Hey, if they could turn a corpse into the most beautiful person in the world, then think of what they could do for me!” I know, you don’t have to say it, she’s already stunning without the layers of gunk, but they won’t know that. And they’ll also think, “Wow, because of whatever cosmetic company, she was some sexy male celebrity’s date to the Oscars, maybe it could do the same for me.” So like, basically, we could really help out their advertising, get their sales up, and line our own pockets at the same time.

-Wait. What was that part about her arriving as somebody’s date to the Oscars.

-Yeah, well, she’ll clearly become a star, the ultimate cover girl. Plus, if you think about it, she’ll never, ever, get old, so who knows how long she’ll stay in the industry? She’ll outlive all of the new talent that comes in, and there’ll be no way of stopping her-

-Now, I want to point out that I’m interrupting, yes, but I’m not trying to silence you. I just wanted to point out that you’re starting to get off topic, time is valuable, and I wanted to hear your idea about her being the date of a male star.

-Oh, right. Well, with all of that star stuff, who wouldn’t want to take her? I figure we could auction her off to any hunk celebrities, because, well, think of it! If those guys could show that they were able to get a girl like this, one that should have a religion based around her beauty, then all of the women out there will start to think, “Wow, if he was able to get her, he must be sexy.”

-”He must have a great personality, too, because she can have anybody she wants.”

-”If she’s the perfect woman, than he might be the perfect man.” People could rent her out to enhance their careers, plus it would have the additional effect of giving her more time in the lime light, the public eye, because while their talking about whatever star she’s with, they’re still talking about her. The attention is still on her, and any that is on the guy is only secondary. It works both ways, it’s really-

-Fuck, sorry for interrupting, but I just realized a major flaw in your idea, which really is great in theory.

-What?

-Well, it all goes back to that consent thing. People could falsely accuse those men of being rapists, or whatever words they love to throw around, and it would just cause much more trouble then we really need. Now, I’m not saying they’d be right, I’m just saying that its most likely how they’ll react.

-Fuck, a good plan wasted, and even some time has been wasted now too. Why do they have such a big issue with us?

-I don’t know, I guess some people have nothing better to-Oh shit. What the hell is that thing?

-I think it may be a coyote. I used to have to deal with them all of the time when I grew up, and its probably just hungry and wants to eat her.

-Oh no, we can’t have that, then who will want to have her wear their clothes? She would be less than perfect and-

-Here, let me just, there we go! No reason to worry, all you have to do is throw a rock at them and they’ll leave you alone. And yeah, you’re right, plus who would want to sleep with a girl who had a couple bite marks out of her? There goes her career, right down the toilet, just because some animal got a bit hungry. At least the sun is going town, that will probably give us more time to think this over, but it is strange that it was out this early. Let’s keep an eye out for it, I don’t really trust it.

-Okay, will do. Also, I’m starting to get pretty on board with this idea, but I just want to make sure that we will be able to do this. I just don’t want to end up in any unnecessary trouble.

-Isn’t that right. Did you hear about Gary?

-No, what happened to him?

-Well, he found this girl, and she was a beauty, but not like the one we have in front of us, but good enough to have some money making potential. Now, the girl’s actually fifteen, but he figures that she looks old enough to pass as eighteen, and tells her to keep it on the down low, tells her its for her career.

-I know this game.

-Haha, aint that right. However, little did he know, she had this heart defect that she never told him about. Her mother apparently smoked a pack a day or something like that when she was pregnant, and now whenever the girl gets excited she is at risk of her heart popping. Apparently that’s why she wanted to model, because all you have to do is stand there and look pretty. Now, she’s climbing the latter of success, and, well, she’s having a little bit of fun with this older designer, furthering her career, and all of the sudden, when he rolls off of her, she’s pale and not moving. Dead on arrival.

-Shit.

-Yeah man, no way anyone could’ve seen it coming.

-That’s just a load of bad luck. It was kind of his fault, you know, because in the first place he really shouldn’t-

-Shouldn’t of done a thorough background check with her health and everything beforehand, I know. Its still a shame though, poor guy didn’t deserve it, he did nothin’ wrong.

-What a shame. But lets get back to business, I don’t want to spend my day standing next to the freeway, keeping an eye out for coyotes. Now, another problem I can think of is the police? What if it turns out if this broad was murdered, and all of the sudden they have to investigate it, and start cutting her open, ruining her body and any chance she would have of making it big? One warrant and her career goes down the drain, then we’re back out here scouting, instead of vacationing and cashing in all of the checks that she’d bring in. Even worse, what if when the fuzz got their hands on her, they found her family, and all of the sudden those schmucks are burying her, or worse, cremating her, and we don’t have a say in it.

-Well, if she was buried it wouldn’t really be to bad, you know. All we would have to do would be to dig her up on night, plus she would be all preserved anyways and they would do a couple of steps anyways. Plus, with a girl as beautiful as this it should be a crime to even cremate her. There’s no way the would do that. So, worst case, if the family is involved it just turns into a waiting game.

-There’s a major flaw in your plan, because there’s a good chance she’d get all crushed after she was buried, and who knows what kind of damage that could do to her.

-What do you mean? Its not like they’d just toss her down by herself, cover her with dirt, call it a day. Nah, she would be in a coffin, and that would seal her for us, preserving her beauty, like Snow White or something.

-Coffins don’t do shit to protect the bodies.

-What?

-Yeah, whenever the dirt gets poured on top, the weight of it is so heavy that the lid just pops right off, the whole thing falls apart. I had an uncle who used to sell them, and he used to explain that to me. Its all just kind of a racket. Especially with the very expensive ones, with the beautiful interiors that are comfier than most people’s beds. The dead couldn’t care less for comfort, or the box they’re in when when they’re thrown away, so the people who sell coffins tell their little lies just to sell the better ones, cause if they’re dumb enough to seek out comfort, then who cares if the thing falls apart? None of it matters. That’s why we can’t let her family get their hands on her, they’d just throw here away, crush her body, waste her potential. We want to make her a star, give her the world, and they-

-Woah woah woah. You’re getting pretty angry there, and this is just a hypothetical situation you know. Where is this coming from?

-Maybe its the heat, maybe I’m getting hungry, I don’t know.

-If it makes you feel any better, we could call up a couple lawyers, get like a patent or a copyright on her, and they wouldn’t be able to touch the body at all. She’d be legally ours, they couldn’t do a thing.

-That doesn’t sound right.

-Of course it doesn’t, I’m not a lawyer, I’m a talent scout who’s about to become an agent. Who knows what they’re really talking about anyways. Its like her hypothetical family you were ranting about, they don’t know much about the fashion industry so they throw away the next it girl. We’re all just a bunch of people who don’t know much, walking around, pretending like we understand something. Look at the-

-Okay, I don’t have time for this. We need to settle this once and for all, because if this seems like a good idea then we should probably load her up in the car and get her preserved as quickly as we can. Then we got to get a bite to eat somewhere, and I’m so fucking hungry, I- listen to that. Did you hear that?

-Yeah man, that was a loud one.

-See, I’m so hungry that my fuckin’ stomach is shouting at us to get all of this settled. So consent isn’t something we have to worry about if nobody knows about it, and if the law gets a whiff of this we’ll probably have to hope for another miracle, but that’s very situational. Any other problems you can see?

-You’re the one who wanted to look at all of the problems in the first place, I don’t know why you’re asking me. I was ready to just load her up and-

-Okay, okay. Now, oh yeah, one last snag, but this should be easy to figure out. How to we get her to sign onto any contracts? And if she gets paychecks, how do they get cashed? How does any of the financial aspects of this work?

-Like we said earlier, we just trademark her or something, and then we just license her image out to whoever wants to have her in a shoot or whatever, and all of that jazz. We could probably have all of the checks go to the agency, in order to avoid any questions of what to do with her paychecks.

-But wouldn’t that be slave labor or something? Like, don’t we have to pay her something? Wouldn’t all of those so called activists accuse us of exploiting her if we-

-Look, I’m tired, I’m ready to go, let’s just let the accountants deal with the money, and the lawyers deal with the law. We’re really just wasting our time talking over problems that we don’t have the answers to, and no matter how much we talk about it, its not like we’ll get anywhere, because we don’t know what we’re talking about.

-Are you just saying that because you’re hungry too?

-Yeah, you got me. I think I’m really in the mood for burgers, or at least something greasy.

-Aren’t you greasy enough? Why do you gotta eat something like that then?

-Haha, you are what you eat. Now lets, shit.

-I don’t have to go right now, but if you gotta make sure you get far enough away from the- hey. What are you doing with that rock?

-There’s more of them, this is what I was kind of worried about. Look over there, see all those coyotes? I think they’re waiting for us to walk away from the body, and they usually don’t attack people like this, but we also don’t know how hungry they could be, which would also make them really desperate.

-Aren’t we all hungry? Now, one last thing before we go-

-Ugh, seriously? Let’s just get her in the car and worry about everything later! I’m sick of-

-This will be quick, don’t worry. I was just thinking about the murder thing, and that story about the young thing whose heart popped, and I just want to make sure of some things. Lets just check her body for any signs of murder, like blood, cuts, all of that, and if she doesn’t have any we could load her into the car, and finally get a bite to eat. Is that alright with you?

-Okay, yeah, but lets do it quick. And if we’re on top of her body like this, there’s probably less of a chance that they’ll lunge for it, and ruin our- Uh oh.

-What? What is it? You find blood or something? She a murder?

-No, not that, this is worse?

-What?

-Wait, I have to be a hundred percent sure before I-yep. That is definitely a dick. This is a guy, we just wasted all of our time. God damn it!

-So this was just a dead tranny? What are we supposed to do with that? You fucking brought me out here, wasted my time, and in the end its just some guy? Fuck!

-Shit, lets just go, I’m starving. I have to wash my hands too, I can’t believe I touched his-

-What do we do with him then?

-Leave him for the coyotes man, I don’t care. Its not my problem if they eat that bastard up, he wasted our day anyways. We could’ve been out at the malls or something, getting some real talent, but instead he just.. Fucking.. Good riddance, lets just go.

-Where were you thinking of eating at? If we go to that place where you park and eat, and the food is brought to your car, we might get lucky and find some potential there.

-Nah, I need to go somewhere with a bathroom. I gotta wash my hands for a long time, get this filth off of me.

#Free Write #Short Story #Writers on Tumblr #Fashion #Modeling

0 notes