release the original cut of Inspector Gadget (1999) cowards
@antagonistchan
Emily/"Antagonist", 27-yo white trans lesbian from Detroit with ADHD. Computer programmer in training, proud Linux user, 3D graphics hobbyist/enhusiast, astronomy beginner, writer. I'm also REALLY into Bandori (I would literally die for Tsugumi Hazawa and Kaoru Seta is my wife), Transformers, RadioTV Solutions, Mass Effect, Doctor Who, StarCraft, Lyrical Nanoha, the Sims, Haruhi Suzumiya, Inspector Gadget (1999), and more. I do lots of liveblogs; they're typically tagged with "AW: [series]". One time, someone wrote an article about me and I didn't discover it until over half a decade later.
i actually wanted to make this post yesterday but i ended up being busier than i expected and i just fucking passed out at like 5 pm
anyways. MAN. i'm dang tired of mostly keeping to myself until all my work is done. it's not sustainable, and i keep getting surprised by it all just not being over.
so. my birthday gift to myself is going "Fuck it, I'm getting back into things now." again, not all at once because holy fuck that would be exhausting, but easing back into it at a CONSISTENT pace.
i actually wanted to make this post yesterday but i ended up being busier than i expected and i just fucking passed out at like 5 pm
anyways. MAN. i'm dang tired of mostly keeping to myself until all my work is done. it's not sustainable, and i keep getting surprised by it all just not being over.
so. my birthday gift to myself is going "Fuck it, I'm getting back into things now." again, not all at once because holy fuck that would be exhausting, but easing back into it at a CONSISTENT pace.
I should be alive again sometime this week. Finally just about recovered from my health issues, but I got some responsibilities dumped on me that I gotta deal with first.
Responsibilities turned out to be heavier than anticipated but I've gotten in just under the wire
Now I can't be back to normal all at once, but I can at least say I'm steadily and consistently pushing back into normalcy within the one-week prediction
In fact I even intend to be more back-to-normal than I was before I got sick, actually addressing some more people I'd been afraid of addressing for months
I should be alive again sometime this week. Finally just about recovered from my health issues, but I got some responsibilities dumped on me that I gotta deal with first.
That’s a good question my aunt took me to see Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow and House Of Flying Daggers the same month when I was 8 but I have no way of knowing the order she took me to then.
@antagonistchan I am really curious about your answer.
the first movie i know for a fact i remember seeing in theaters was Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, when i was five. as a fun aside, i don't remember this, but i've been told that the first movie i saw in theaters was The Phantom Menace, when i was an infant. so that's a nifty coincidence.
however, i also definitely remember being familiar with going to the theater when i saw Attack of the Clones. if a family member named a movie i saw prior to that, there's a decent chance all the memories would come rushing back and i'd go "OH YEAH, I REMEMBER GOING TO SEE THAT".
and i suspect that the first movie i can truly remember seeing in theaters was the 1999 Inspector Gadget movie, which, as i advertise a lot, is still one of my favorite movies. i watched that movie over the summer between second and third grade at daycare, and i'd never heard of it before, but it gave me WICKED deja vu, and when i asked my parents about it that night, they were like "Oh yeah, we took you to see that movie when it was in theaters". i would have been less than two years old at the time, so i definitely don't have a COMPLETE memory of the experience, but i strongly suspect that i remember SOME part of going to see that in theaters. and if i'm right, then it's that.
WOW my night has been shit in three whole different ways
one form of deep embarassment and annoyance (misclicked and permanently deleted some important files. i'll live but MAN that moment of panicked realization)
one form of actual emotional drain (not gonna elaborate because that's personal but dw i'll be fine, it wasn't even that bad, it just made me a bit gloomy)
and to top it all off: i'm making plans to go to an urgent care tomorrow because i've realized that i've got an ear infection
was thinking about Carmen Sandiego because i was watching the DefunctTV on it
remembered the Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego animated series (because it came up). as you might glean from this blog's title, i'm a big fan of the 1999 Inspector Gadget movie. and because i loved that movie so much, i got interested in the original show. i specifically got a DVD of the show's finale- Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas. it came with a bunch of commercials for other shows by DIC, including Where On Earth Is Carmen Sandiego. it intrigued me, so i also ended up getting a DVD of a special from that series, Into The Maelstrom.
at some point in Into the Maelstrom, the weird disembodied head character makes a joke about Meatloaf (like, the rock star). i remember this very vividly because it was like the second time i'd ever heard of Meatloaf. the first was... well, that takes some backstory.
if you don't remember, in the late 90s and early 2000s, there was this weird thing called MTV Unplugged. it was basically just famous musicians recording acoustically in front of a small crowd. it wasn't very good but it was super hyped up at the time.
i mostly remember this phenomenon because as a kid, we had this one CD. a Muppets parody of MTV Unplugged called Kermit Unpigged. it was basically an audio drama interspersed with a few songs.
and the main joke i remember from it is a bit where someone gets excited because there was a door in the studio that said "MEATLOAF" on it and they're like "oh boy meatloaf is DELICIOUS, i can't wait!"
and then when they come back, Kermit's like "so how was the meatloaf?" and they just dejectedly go "Eh, there was just some big guy in there. I think he ate it all."
The 1942 Gaslight remake is honestly one of the greatest horror movies ever made and i personally can’t remove the term gaslight from the film it came from. In which it meant to purposefully drive insane by convincing someone they already insane.
Oh wow, I knew that movie was old, but I didn't realize it was so old that it had a 1942 REMAKE. Like, 1942 is about when I thought the original would have come out. I mean, I guess I've heard about silent films getting remade with audio once that became possible, and in that case it's probably not such a drastic difference in age, but I'm used to remakes happening like thirty years after the original lol
I feel like that was kinda the appeal of The Great Ilusatsted Classics that you could read kid friendly versions of Jules Verne and Alexander Dumas before you read the real things.
see the difference is that Wayside School wasn't like a kid-friendly version of Holes
they're two completely different stories by the same author for different demographics. Wayside School is about a fucked up school that was accidentally built on its side and everyone there is fucking insane and there's weird noneuclidean geometry going on (there is no 19th floor, it goes straight from 18 to 20. except there actually IS a 19th floor, and the people there only half-exist); meanwhile Holes is about a kid who goes to juvie where he digs holes in the desert and it's like a commentary on prison culture and the history of race relations in America
Holes isn't any more "real" than Wayside School, it's just more mature. and Wayside School still has value to me as an adult, it's had a long-lasting effect on my taste in surreal media
+Shaders
PaletteShader (colorrim, spotadult)
Green Wire Shader
AlternativeFull
+Fonts
Crostan by Genetypeco
+Programs Used
MikuMikuDance
MikuMikuEffect
DaVinci Resolve
Krita
MAN so this was a journey.
I've been TRYING to get back into MMD seriously for years now, ESPECIALLY since early 2024 when I got really into Koikatsu (yes, getting into ANOTHER 3D program also encouraged me to do MMD too. Koikatsu is really good but it can't replace MMD. I have two hands. Well, really more like FIVE hands since I also wanna dip my toes into Blender (I already use Blender for modelling but not for animation) and SFM and-). But I REALLY started getting back into gear in April of this year, when I started doing a bunch of spring cleaning of my massive filesystem- and my first order of business was completely overhauling and cleaning up both my Koikatsu and MMD folders. Getting really acqainted with all my data again REALLY got the itch going, and I even did a couple practice things… but I soon realized I couldn't publish them for various reasons. So I got to thinking- WHAT, exactly, do I want to make to establish my silver age comeback? Unfortunately, it turned out that the practice animations were the beginning of a CURSE.
The first thing I really wanted to do was an animation of Do What U Want by Lady Gaga, after I used it to test a model (specifically DatMMDGuy's Uni, funnily enough)… until I remembered that the featured artist was R. Kelly. Now, this doesn't COMPLETELY rule out using it, because Lady Gaga also released an alternate version of the song that replaced him with Christina Aguilera… but I've always found the Aguilera version to be a bit disappointing. I love the idea of a Kellyless Do What U Want, but unfortunately I just don't like the Aguilera version as much. And I'm not confident that the timing would match up perfectly.
Shortly after that, I was going through my motions to see if there were any I really meant to get around to using back in my golden age but never did, and I quickly found Ass On The Floor. Oh yeah, that's one I had an itch to use back in the day! Now, just to jog my memory, who exactly made the song…? Oh, fuck. In the time between my golden and silver ages, the song's creator, P Diddy, got exposed as a horrific monster of a person.
After THAT, I got pulled around the ringer for a number of reasons- largely stemming from the rather dramatic end of my time in the Combofriends Creative Collective- so I didn't have much opportunity to work on further MMD stuff. But eventually, I stumbled upon a video of Turn Up The Music, and remembered how much I absolutely adore that motion. That dance is SO up my alley. But then I remembered… that song is by Chris Brown. Oh my god, I am cursed.
But FINALLY, my girlfriend sent me a video of Matikanetannhauser from Uma Musume dancing to Forget Me Nots, and I got hooked. And after a week or two I suddenly realized: Hey, I can do THAT motion! Finally, I had a plan!
Now, the motion didn't come with a camera motion. The Uma Musume video just went with a static camera, so I was originally planning to do the same- but then I thought… why not get a camera? Better yet, why not MAKE a camera?! This motion's only 35 secs long, and really clean and simple camerawork is fitting for Tiktok-ass stuff like this, and the claps are a really nifty thing to work around, so this is like, a REALLY good opportunity to REALLY try to SERIOUSLY make my own camera motion! I've already been dipping my toes into that for years, and I even did it in the practice animations, but this is my first PROPER attempt. And I'm proud of it!
Basically, the camera cuts every time there's a clap. Since the claps come in pairs, this means there's a split between the shots that last for less than a second, and the shots that last for about four seconds. Since the shorter shots are barely even there long enough for you to process them, I decided to do a bunch of strange and uncomfortable camera angles for them- angles like "looking at her from a distance" and "looking at her from upside-down". And since you actually need to sit with the longer shots a bit more, for them I went with more smooth and dynamic looks at the scene. Towards the end I even play around a lot with dolly zooms, which are a ton of fun. I'm proud of this.
