My heart is broken for a nation full of such strong and loving people. I have friends in Ukraine, several of whom are married with little kids. I taught a class of middle school students there, so full of joy and excited to learn about the world. I met people who had fled their homes in the East, and been physically and emotionally traumatized by the war.
I wanted to share a handful of the photos I took in this beautiful country. My thoughts and my prayers are with everyone there, with those living outside of Ukraine worried for family members still there. May everyone stay safe, and stay strong. 💛 💙
How to draw underwater settings: make everything floaty and weightless. Done! ✅ Unless you're a geek like me and want to learn all about how to paint the lighting: the highlights of the ripples, the bluish glow, the reflections.. there's a lot to think about but it's so satisfying once you get it right!
I painted these for last month's Patreon challenge on underwater lighting! If you like drawing challenges, join us: we’re studying wrinkles and folds this month. It's time to walk away from those face-smoothing filters and draw some textured skin!
Redrew a screenshot from the anime, realized I never drew Lithuania before now - I'm ashamed. I loooove their clothing in this episode. Also inspired by concept art featuring more flowers on them as well. 🇵🇱 🇱🇹
Added the I Love Gold guy because why not 🇳🇱✨
the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be apart of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.
The Project Hail Mary soundtrack works extremely well by using a similar formula to the emotional pacing and beats of BBC Planet Earth documentaries which are scored by the genius himself, Hans Zimmer.
Nature documentaries feature four main emotions:
Wonder
Tension
Whimsy
Connection
Wonder
In nature docs: These are the huge panoramas, the drone and helicopter shots of wide landscapes: mountains, desserts, grasslands. It features long soaring chords that mimic a choir in a church, a big open sacred space. You just sit and stare in amazement of nature.
In PHM: It works because, space, duh. You need time to appreciate the wonder of space, just as we appreciate the wonder of large open spaces and views in nature. The movie needs to slow down to SHOW us the vastness of space to create a sense of the wide unknown, how beautiful yet scary it is, a reverent feeling. Otherwise the setting will feel cramped and controlled. The whole point of space is that we don't control it. If you are in space, you play by space's rules and it can and will kill you with its gorgeous space dust. This music often features in wide shots of the universe, stars, planets, etc.
Tension
In nature docs: These are the hunting scenes. Will the lion catch the zebra!? Will the penguin escape the orca!? It has to build over time because hunting is not immediate. There's the stalking phase, then with a burst the chase takes off, the predator has to wear down the prey, the prey tries to escape. There are many stages of building tension in which you are invested in either the predator catching the prey, or the prey escaping. The stakes are high: life or death.
In PHM: The tension in space travel comes with atmospheric re-entry scenes or when something goes wrong on the ship, usually at high velocity with lots of high-stakes spinning and colliding and potential ship leaks, malfunctions, etc. It is also a life or death situation which builds over time, as usually these scenes feature a time limit. Like the predator, usually the crew enters the situation willingly knowing the risk. Everything has to be done exactly right or the crew will die.
Whimsy
In nature docs: People love animals because animals are funny. They do goofy things, they don't have as high intelligence but their behaviors can seem so endearing to us: dances, back scratching, play fighting, clumsy moments. Baby animals are especially funny and cute to our mammal brains. Animals dance and play to communicate and practice their social skills. Hans Zimmer includes these funny moments in his scores.
In PHM: Project Hail Mary is funny, in the miscommunications between Grace and Rocky, and Rocky's animal-like or child-like clumsiness or innocence. Our brains read that as cute. The whimsical tone is what sets PHM apart from a similar high-stakes movie like Interstellar. It has emotional whimsical breaks from the heavy high-stakes premise. It gives you a moment to catch your breath and relax.
Connection
In nature docs: Animals are social, and humans connect with that, too. Everyone watching can relate to a mother whale swimming with her calf, two mates cuddling together on a branch. Not all species evoke this emotion, mostly mammals and birds, so it's less featured in documentaries, but this could be considered the "heart" of why humans can be so empathetic to animals. We can emotionally care about another species because we recognize social connection.
In PHM: The most touching moments of the film are the connection moments between Grace and Rocky. Their developing friendship and sense of self-sacrifice for one another. This is a universal language across species and of course is the heart of the film.
The composer, Daniel Pemberton, scored the Spiderverse movies and is a genius in his own right. But I love how they treated a Sci-Fi movie to have similar emotional beats to a nature documentary, scored it similarly, and it worked so well and was such a joy to experience.
