@cookiedoodlez - Tumblr Blog

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homkamiro

Well goddamn

demermio

Distraction

toastyglow

All the Escape from Divinity "fake screenshot" commissions I've done...so far, at least! If you're interested in getting one yourself, you can check out the pricing guide here!

cathartidae

hey. dont cry. 566 california condors, okay? 369 free flying.[1] it's gonna be okay.

cathartidae

for the record, in 1987 there were 27. [2] things can get better.

cathartidae

HEY. DONT CRY. 607 CALIFORNIA CONDORS, OKAY? 392 FREE FLYING. [3]

thefloatingstone

The next time you want to call a sequence “Well animated” do yourself a favour and rewatch it with the sound muted. Often times ir’s only after you remove sound from something that you can truly see if the animation underneath is actually good or not, or if the music/acting is manipulating you.

….but on that same note, “Well animated” does not mean “Fluidly animated”. Because something can be VERY well animated and have few frames if those frames are in the right place, or have a shit ton for frames and be badly animated because it’s over-animated and moves way too much.

scribblescript

The animation is kinda choppy, but its still likeable.

Vs.

The hair doesn’t need to bounce, every time this person blinks.

thefloatingstone

Bad animation

Limited but Good animation

Good animation

Over-animated (at least done on purpose in this case)

voidpaws

sailor-arashi

If Studio GoHands could read they would be very upset.

yampishna

capsyst

In the 80’s as computer animation was on the rise one of the thorniest problems was “how do we get this thing we made on the computer… OFF the computer?” There were a lot of unique solutions, but the one I’m fascinated by most is Disney’s solution of using a plotter.

A plotter acted as sort of a 3D printer but for 2D images. There was a ball point pen that could move up and down, and the paper underneath could be moved in and out. Using CAD based programs you could plot points in 2D space and the plotter would draw the lines between them and even do geometric shapes!

When it came time to do The Great Mouse Detective, the animators at Disney wanted to do more dynamic shots for the climatic battle inside Big Ben. Drawing all those gears and cogs would be a nightmare for the animators, so they experimented with using 3D animation.

But this was still the early 80’s. There was no digital ink and paint program, no way to merge the 2D animated characters with the 3D animated backgrounds digitally. So how did they get the 3D animated backgrounds out of the computer?

By drawing each frame on the plotter.

Every frame was printed out on the plotter, and then xeroxed onto animation cels, and then hand painted like traditional 2D animation cels are.

But why the plotter? If they were gonna have to export every frame anyway, why not use a printer? Well… because printers back then just weren’t very good. A plotter uses points and physically draws the line between them, much like how vector graphics work. It yielded a much smoother and higher fidelity line than if they just printed them out.

This was still a massive undertaking, but it was probably the best solution to getting the dynamic camera moves they wanted out on paper. 2D animation was drawn over top and then both layers of animation cels were filmed frame by frame.

And that’s how you got dynamic shots like this in the mid 80’s! 3D animated backgrounds, printed with a plotter, xeroxed onto animation cels, hand painted, and then re-photographed with the 2D animation on top!

This technique would be the standard way Disney got their 3D animation out of the computer for their 2D films… right up until The Rescuers Down Under which was the first fully digital animated feature. That movie used PIXAR’s proprietary CAPS System (hey that name sounds familiar 😉) to combine everything digitally. But that’ll have to be a story for another time!

radwolf76

"drawing all those gears and cogs would be a nightmare for the animators"

Yeah, about that. Seven years prior, this was all drawn by hand:

capsyst

I had a feeling someone was gonna bring this up, and I debated talking about it in the original post. But I decided against that because as much as I absolutely adore Castle of Cagliostro the actual animation behind it in comparison to what Disney wanted to do with Great Mouse Detective is so vastly different I felt it would detract from the point of the post. But since where here now let’s get into it 😃

The key differences between the two are camera movement and shifting perspective. In Cagliostro the backgrounds remain static 2D, meaning the animators aren’t trying to redraw every frame with a moving shifting perspective. They aren’t doing the sweeping dynamic camera moves Disney wanted for Great Mouse Detective. That reduces a lot of the work load on Cagliostro because they only need to animate the gears on 3-4 frame loops per scene.

Disney wanted more dynamic movement, where the camera could sweep in and around the scene. That places a HUGE amount of work on the animators to ensure that everything is being drawn in perspective while it’s moving. I can’t even begin to think about how much work and effort would’ve had to go into this sequence if it was done entirely by hand. It would’ve been a nightmare!

Please don’t get me wrong. I absolutely LOVE Castle of Cagliostro. It’s an amazing movie, especially knowing its history and the crunch they were under to get it made in such a short time. But it’s not exactly a 1:1 skill check comparison. Cagliostro used the fact the camera wasn’t moving much to reduce the work load and relied heavily on looping animation.

But if you’re looking for a 1:1 comparison skill check I’ve got you covered!

See, the purpose of this post was to talk about how the computer was making it easier on animators by not making them have to draw every frame in perfect perspective. If you wanted a comparable skill check then I would instead suggest comparing the clock tower sequence in Great Mouse Detective to the airplanes in Porco Rosso.

Every single shot of the planes in that film was done by hand. Miyazaki famously refused to use CGI for the longest time on any of his films. If Porco Rosso had been animated by anyone else, those planes would’ve been CGI planes. So every shot, every dogfight, every moment of these planes flying around and turning slowly in perspective was done meticulously by hand, and it looks absolutely AMAZING! That’s a technical marvel in and of itself!

Oh and if you want more examples of animators being absolutely INSANE and doing everything by hand, I strongly recommend the works of Richard Williams. Not only was he instrumental in making Who Framed Roger Rabbit look so convincing, he’s also the insane artist who animated things like this:

You wanna talk insane skills? How about animating every single card in a deck of cards as they fly about the screen? The guy was a technical perfectionist!

I get wanting to compare the clock tower sequence from The Castle of Cagliostro to the Big Ben sequence in the Great Mouse Detective. Story wise they are doing very similar things: having the hero fight the villain on giant moving gears. But the execution of how that was achieved is so VASTLY different it’s really not fair comparing them at all on a technical level. And I hope me pointing that out doesn’t make anyone think I’m being dismissive of Cagliostro either.

voidsentprinces

marvinprefect42

tadc is a very dangerous thing to watch. why am I having Feelings about a chess piece

cookiedoodlez

I never would have expected having an emotional support chess piece, but here we are

katherinehoughtoncastle47

Come in and know me better, man!

THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL (1992) dir Brian Henson

ladyaldhelm

HOW TO TURN OFF GOOGLE AI in GMAIL:

Open Gmail in your browser

Click on the Gear Icon ⚙️ in the upper right

In the General Tab, scroll down to "Smart Features" and UNCHECK THE BOX. It is about halfway down.

Then, right below that is Google Workspace smart features. Click on the "Manage Workspace Smart Features" and make sure both toggles are OFF

were--ralph

oh shit wait brainblast incoming

were--ralph

[loading...]

were--ralph

starting october and through to halloween on this site there should be a splatfest-type thing for tumblr where you choose a team like team vampire vs team werewolf, maybe a third one maybe not, but idk maybe the team with the most posts gets like a cool badge or something at the end

were--ralph

@humans @staff you're welcome

were--ralph

there should be a team vampire vs team werewolf counter at the top of the site and during october you get a fun little badge next to your name just something for fun

were--ralph

Choose Your Team

Team Vampire

Team Werewolf

Voting ended onSep 7, 2025

OBVIOUSLY reblog this because I appeal to werewolves and this needs to break containment so it gets a fair shot but i also want more people to see this in general

callizinc

I do not "render." I do not "shade." I do not "paint," I do not "detail" and i do not draw "Backgrounds." I draw BLAND CHARACTERS standing in WHITE VOIDS And if it doesn't look good i GIVE UP.

patheticperipatetic

DuckDuckGo's new search feature comes as the internet is being flooded with AI-generated slop.

The filter relies on manually curated open-source blocklists, including the ‘nuclear’ list, provided by uBlockOrigin and uBlacklist Huge AI Blocklist,” DuckDuckGo said in a post on X. “While it won’t catch 100% of AI-generated results, it will greatly reduce the number of AI-generated images you see.

Left: AI filter is off Right: AI filter is on

rhetoricandlogic

Another tip for DDG - if you want to permanently get rid of DDG's AI features (which you can turn off in settings, but only temporarily) - for now you can just use noai.duckduckgo.com as your search engine. Works as advertised in the name.

arianod

moonshinemagpie

Everyone: Please please please don't write your books in Google Docs. Frankly don't use Google Drive for personal stuff.

Their terms of service say they take down stuff like content related to terrorism and trafficking, but this Google Sheet was literally a list of movies I'd watched this year and books I'd read.

moonshinemagpie

Holy smokes, guys. It's way worse than I thought. Google actually took away access to every single file of fiction writing I'd made on that account. BUT I backed it all up on Scrivener yesterday by coincidence. So I haven't lost my work, but I could have just lost the 12,000 words I've written this month after a year of really intense writer's block. I honestly don't know what that would have done to my psyche.

Please be careful out there, folks! <3

aerialworms

That is awful! If you're looking for a gdocs-like replacement, Ellipsus @ellipsus-writes is a queer friendly, anti-AI equivalent with online syncing and sharing - I've been using it for almost a year now as a replacement for gdocs and absolutely love it.

I do still back up all my work to local storage on LibreOffice too though, thank goodness you backed up to Scrivener OP!